Formula 5's Format - just some thoughts.....

[Nicky T]

As many of you will know I had the pleasure of playing alongside the Robinsons (Pete and Mel), John Sosta, Marcus Davies and the Outrage guys in yesterdays opening round of the 2011 Formula 5 season. Having not picked up a paintball gun to play in almost 2 years I was a little apprehensive of what laid in store for us, but any worries soon evaporated once we watched the opening games of the day and was instantly replaced by excitment and anticpation.

The Formula 5 format was enjoyable to play and interestingly for me was the most "complete" format of the game that I have ever experienced. By this I mean that players realistically had to be capable of playing a variety of different bunker shapes and sizes, get to various positions on field (dependant on how the game was progressing) and most importantly had to be able to adapt to the style of play required at any given moment of the game; control of the buzzer was of paramount importance. If you had it, you had to protect it! If you didn't have it then you needed to get it damn fast or you'd give away valuable points.

IMHO there is very definitely a place for Formula 5's in tournament paintball; infact i'd go as far as saying that if we'd had the format 5 years ago we would have a much stronger breed of current professional players due to the necessity of having to adapt and evolve throughout the course of a Formula 5 match.

Anyway, back to the present day; Formula 5 is the ideal format for anyone wanting to progress out of the woods and experience tournament paintball. It's as demanding as you want it to be; if you want to play aggressively then so be it; if you need a breather or want to take your time gaining real estate then go for it too.

All in all i thoroughly enjoyed yesterday and thanks especially must go to the Sostas for putting on such a great event and the Outrage guys for hosting us oldies Hoping to make it back for the June event

 

[baudsenseless]

I'll echo that!
I wasn't playing, went along for a watch not having played tornie paintball for quite a few years, and it has got me reinfused!! I'll be at the next one hopefully playing!

 

[phil-boy]

Its amazing how much game time you actually get and the buzz/adrenaline racing away.

After playing this I dont think I could go back to a normal sup air type event and play 8 games at 2 mins max.

Formula 5's is the future

 

[Robbo]

I think the only tweak I'd consider is having maybe three buzzer sets, only one of which is ever active and these are randomly changed throughout the game maybes .. and they should be spread along the half way line .. going from one side to the other .. and so, you have one pair of buzzers [yours and your opponents] on the left of the field, one pair in the middle and the last on the right .. for every 15 minute period you could have 3 random changes from the game start ....

The reason I suggest this is obvious to anyone how has played in that once you lock down the middle buzzer, it is exceedingly difficult to take back if the defending team know what they are doing ...
Point here is, if you get two teams who know what they are doing then I think even then it is still disproportionaltely difficult to get that buzzer back ...
I'm not sure if this is plausible or even required because I've only played it this one time and maybe the teams still have to catch up with the format before we get any real appreciation of any format difficulties but apart from that .. I echo everything Nicky T says ...
But I know one thing, the fact that this is a really good format is the one thing that will stop it from being adopted by the top event promoters ... after all, when have you ever looked toward them for commonsense decision making ?

 

[Biscuit]

this format sounds really good and one day hope to get down to play it
know just a side note bully has a game on site for lazertag that is very similar to this format and it goes down a treat customers love it
so with that in mind
could this format be used in the woods making it even easier to run anywhere in the country:first:

 

[John Sosta]

We will be testing a woodland version of it very soon , only thing we could think that may be a problem is the buttons where in woodland it would not be equal both sides in approaching them but we should be able to use 6 sup air coke cans to even it up just in the middle .
I will keep everyone on here posted when we have the trial.
In fact if any sceanario teams are interested in playing tourneyball in the woods using this format contact me and i wll get them involved in the trails.