INtrO
I first met Wayne Dollack at one of his legendary Grand Finale events at his home field in Ocala, Florida, in the late 1990s. I ' ve officially interviewed Wayne twice; once at the field in 1999, and again in 2018 for the documentary film,‘ The Complete History of Paintball’. And I had a good chat with him at his 40th anniversary game this past December. Wayne is a storyteller and a good one. He lights up a room. But what I find fascinating is that over the course of 40 years of running scenario events, he remembers every last detail of his games and the people that played them. Even at age 85, his stories always line up. What he told me nearly 30 years ago, he will retell now in the same, exact detail, with the same level of enthusiasm. Wayne is one of the most interesting people I ' ve ever met in my 40 years in the game. And he ' s left a legacy in paintball that not many people can match.
HOw it all beGan
It ' s been well established that the first documented commercial scenario paintball game ever was written and produced by Wayne Dollack at the Survival Zone in Ocala, Florida— a field
owned by Fred " Doc " Miley and his son Patrick-- and run mostly by the home team, Marion ' s Raiders. I chose my words carefully when I said“ first documented commercial scenario paintball game,” because I am 100 percent certain that someone somewhere deviated from the simple capture the flag format widely used in the early 80s, creating a different“ scenario” to play. But that ' s not what we are documenting here. We are documenting the inarguable fact that Wayne Dollack ' s 1985 game, Operation C. I. A.- Cash In Action, was the first known game of its kind. A completely new kind of paintball game. A game that included a storyline, missions for players to complete, and a prize for the winning side.
“ I believe it was 38 of us that played for the night. And everybody put $ 2 in the pot... and it was hidden on the field,” Wayne Dollack told us during the interview process for the film,‘ The Complete History of Paintball’.“ You were given a mission. The idea was to find out where that objective was on the field. If you found it, you got to keep it or distribute it among your team... which means you got $ 4 back( laughs).”
“ Lenny Lancaster was a Vietnam veteran who played paintball with us at the Survival Zone. He used to play role-playing board games,” Wayne continued.“ He did fictionalized war games, where you would roll dice and move accordingly.
Cecil " Thunder1 " Brackett( early magazine writer) on the left with Wayne Dollack far right- 1993, The Survival Zone, Ocala, Florida www. paintball. media
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