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Paintball: The Formats

Just as there are huge differences between recreational, scenario and tournament paintball, there are many different game formats used in tournaments. Today when looking at paintball magazines, web sites and videos, one thing that makes tourney play stand out from the other styles is the field – bright colored jerseys on grass with big balloon bunkers, but not only is this a very new look for the top level pro and amateur tournaments, it's not the only way tournaments are played today.

The game of paintball started in the woods, and that's where tournaments were played too – until Dennis Bukowski said it didn't have to be that way. Bukowski, partnered with Giovanni D'Egidio, owned Sat Cong Village (now known more politically correctly as SC Village.) a massive paintball field in Southern California. Because it was massive, and built up (fields ranged from military camps with aircraft to deep jungle and door to door) and because its location close to CFW Enterprises meant it was the location for many Action Pursuit Games magazine photo shoots, SC Village was the world's best known paintball field in the 80s and 90s. People traveled across the country and from other continents just to play there (for us, it was a 6 hour drive, and worth every minute.) One of the parks most popular fields was "Beruit." Completely bereft of trees or natural cover, this field was a village of small, roofless plywood buildings for door to door and down the street paintball combat. Beruit proved to be extremely popular because of its fast paced action.

Bukowski took that fast paced action one step further, tweaking it into what has become the grandfather of modern concept field tournament paintball. While that name today is often used by paintballers to describe any concept field, Speedball was originally trademarked and applied to the SC Village Speedball Arena. Instead of creeping slowly through the woods, Speedball players played on a very open dirt field, which had...