Paintball Magazine Paintball.Media Magazine, June 2019 | Page 60

Photo By Billy Jack Mefford
During the weekend of April 13 and 14,
over 500 players, friends, family, and
vendors converged upon Roodhouse,
Illinois at PaintballToGo for the 16th
playing of Battle for Monte Cassino. It
was easy to feel the excitement in the
air as players looked to find and meet
the commanders for the game. For the
second year in a row, legends of paintball,
Bud Orr and Dan Colby agreed to lead the
Axis and Allies, respectively. To help Bud
Orr out, Matt Shook was tapped with the
job of XO. Torre Briguglio agreed to be
there as Dan Colby’s XO. Players couldn’t
wait to take to the field and find out who
the winner was going to be – was Dan’s
team going to walk away with a second
win in a row, or would Bud and his team
find a way to stop them, and tie up the
series to 1-1? Only time would tell!
the field, they were met with thousands
of paintballs heading in their direction.
(If you’ve never been to this game, the
first several minutes of this game are
something you don’t want to miss! The
amount of paint flying through the air
easily rivals the final battle at many games.
It is quite the experience!) Little by little,
the Allies worked their way forward, and
were eventually able to capture the first
flag of the day. From there, play moved
onto Mortar Hill, in a more wooded area
of the field. While play for the morning
was continuous for the entire three hours,
each hour saw a new flag in a new area of
the field become the primary objective.
While the points for the flag during the
first hour of the morning were winner
take all, for the remaining flags of the day,
points were available every 15 minutes.
With fierce battles back and forth, the
The first session on Saturday started Axis forces held the flag for the first two
with the Allies storming the beach. As scoring periods. The Allied forces were
they charged out of the “boats” onto determined though and fought hard to
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