Blue says. “Whereas most of the fields in the U.S. cater to the part-time recreational player, to walk-ons, beginners and maybe bachelor parties or groups from the office, we have taken our fields in a different direction. We want the top five percent of players, the people who are serious, really love the game. We’re open to anyone, though, and we try to help newbies feel comfortable and have a good time.”
EMR holds Big Games and Scenarios on its 20 outdoor fields. Blue and crew have built a castle, villages and 35 bunkhouses. “We have 110 20-foot by 20-foot campsites and can sleep up to 600 people in the bunkhouses,” he says. With 400 to 700 players showing up for a Big Game, EMR is obviously big-time paintball. “So far, 756 is tops, but we’re still growing!”
For a typical Big Game event, players by the hundreds will show up and generals will be chosen for each side. “Tom Kaye , president of marker manufacturer Airgun Designs , was here as a general for our last game,” Blue says.
“Twin Towers” was the most recent Big Game at EMR. “We kind of imitated [J.R.R.] Tolkien’s book The Two Towers. We had castle attackers and defenders. It was a huge hoot. Obviously, with that many people, paint gets thick in the air, so if you get hit, you come out of the game, we chronograph your marker to keep you legal and then after 10 or 15 minutes, we reinsert you. This lets everyone get plenty of playing time. One of our Big Games can run from six to 26 hours, from noon on Saturday until two o’clock PM on Sunday.”
Even though he is in his 40s, Michael still stays in shape, practices and will shoot up a case of balls when he gets a few hours to himself. “I used to hunt,” Blue says, “but now I’m 100 percent paintball. A big difference in hunting and paintball is that the average hunter shoots a few times before the season to check his scope and then may get a couple shots during the season. Paintball is just the opposite. You can’t get really good by conserving your ammo. When I was really into playing, I’d go out and run and shoot up maybe 4000 balls in a weekend. Try that hunting and you’ll go through a dozen gun barrels .”
Blue’s wife, Sue, also plays. “That’s another thing I like about paintball,” Blue says. “When I got started maybe one half of one percent of all players were women. Now, they may make up five to 10 percent or even 10 to 15 percent of the total number of players. I imagine many women think they’re going to go out and get bruised and muddy and have men run all over them, but paintball isn’t like that. Size and strength really don’t matter. Endurance matters and someone of smaller stature, someone who is agile and fast actually has a better chance than some 200-pounder. Paintball is an equalizer.”
“Blue’s Crew ” represents Michael “Blue” Hanse’s EMR Paintball Park at big games around the U.S. Blue says he organized his famous scenario team to “play hard and have fun!” (Photo by Ted D’Ottavio .)
So, how did Michael get nicknamed “Blue?” And how about “Blue’s Crew ?”
“Believe it or not, that all got started when I went to an event in Paw Paw, West Virginia in about 1989,” Michael Hanse says. “Tippmann had just come out with the first really good functioning semi-auto, the 68-Special, and I went down there to try it out.”
About 50 players showed up and Michael says 50 people was a real crowd in those days. On the way out the door, he grabbed a case of Nelson paintballs and when he got to Paw Paw, he realized he was not only the oldest player, but he was the only player not shooting bright red or orange balls. The Nelson balls were blue.
“That was 15 years ago,” he says, “and I was running and shooting a lot then. I was pretty quick and a real good shot with that 68-Special. We ran game after game and … to make a long story short … at the end of the day, I had shot everyone at least one time and had shot some many times. So, there were 49 guys standing around covered with blue paint. To make matters worse – well, for them – they hadn’t hit me one time. Not once all day! The guys began to give me a hard time in a joking kind of way and they nicknamed me ‘Blue,’ then and there.”
Over the years, Blue has organized several well-known paintball teams, but his current team is named after himself, Blue’s Crew. The 31 members and 12 associate members are fully sponsored by manufacturers for their clothing, equipment, game entry fees and even some of their travel expenses.
Imagine fighting your way through an Old West mining camp in a 24-hour scenario game. With practically a dozen years of producing role-playing scenarios and big games across the U.S., the producers have the games down to Safe and Fun! There is usually plenty of camping and a good time is had by all.
INTERVIEW: THE FATHER OF SCENARIO GAMES
Wayne Dollack is considered the “Father of the Paintball Scenario Game” and a number of today’s scenario producers (Diane and Patrick McKinnon of Mackz Xtreme Sportz , for instance) originally worked with him. Today, Wayne operates a paintball field called Wayne’s World of Paintball in Ocala, Florida, and produces scenario games as well.
Paintball Digest sat down with Wayne and Jackie Dollack at their playing field and pro shop “Wayne’s World of Paintball” in Ocala, Florida. Wayne, who was 63 years old in 2003, laughed about his reputation as the “father of scenario games” because it made him sound sooooo ooold.
Paintball Digest: Wayne, I understand you had a colorful life long before you got to be the “father of paintball scenario games .”
Wayne: I played my first game of paintball in 1983 after we moved to Ocala. Paintball was mostly rogue fields out in the woods in those days. Before that, I’d been a graphics artist specializing in advertising. But in the early’80s, artists began switching to computers to do all their art, and I figured that after 38 years it was time for a career change.
Paintball Digest: So, tell us about your first scenario games.
Wayne: It was back in 1986, I think, and the field was quite large. We called it “Operation CIA.” We put in $2 each and buried the money in a cash box in a hidden tower we’d built in the middle of this field. The object was to find the money and keep from getting shot. If you found the money, you got to keep it. We had a ball.
The next year in “Operation Stealth,” we built an airplane out of plywood that looked like a Stealth bomber and tried to get all 38 players in the mood. Then we looked up, and honest to God, we had police department helicopters circling overhead taking pictures. They were watching that black-painted Stealth bomber, I guess, because they never did contact us about it and we couldn’t figure out what they wanted. Eventually they just flew off. What we didn’t know was that the real Stealth bomber was about to be unveiled and it was real Top Secret stuff. How about that! Since then, we’ve had a lot of law enforcement people come out and play. That game, “Operation Stealth” in 1987, was our first role-playing scenario game.
Paintball Digest: So, your very first game drew a lot of attention, but it wasn’t necessarily the kind of attention you wanted. How did the idea of playing roles in the game come up?
Wayne: I swear that story is true. But a buddy of mine , an army engineer who had been in Vietnam named Gaylan Lancaster, came up with the idea of character cards, and we got together and made up roles for some of the games. Gaylan, of course, wanted to be the “Game Operations Director” and called himself GOD for short. We soon discovered that the more you become your character, the more you get into it, the more you enjoy the experience and that’s what it’s all about.
Paintball Digest: Was that your first 24-hour game?
Wayne: Yes. In those