Laser Storm Pittsburgh Draft Tournament

30 minutes ago

3 min read

This past weekend’s draft tournament at Laser Storm Pittsburgh was a great time and (spoiler alert) a victorious night for the Splinter Squad!

I arrived in Pittsburgh for the final stop of an awesome tag trip that led me to some cool (and a few unexpected) stops across three states. When I got to Laser Storm I immediately found some familiar faces and even more friends started to arrive in time to play a few practice games.

Matt “Red Dog” Mator gave me my special 30th anniversary member card to sign into the games. This one goes in my permanent collection! ;)

I took my card over to the member log-in station here in the vesting room.

Then we headed in for some practice and to check out the arena to see how they had positioned the barriers to form the divided map.

I feel like I spent more than my share of time back at the energizer.

But at least my nails looked great glowing under those black lights!

And in between practice games I got to appreciate some of the cool theming throughout the rest of the facility.

This was a late-night tournament that got started around 9:00 pm, so while waiting for the competition to get underway I did my second favorite thing (after laser tag)…shopping! Laser Storm Pittsburgh had some awesome tag swag that I was able to add to my collection as well.

Matt started the tournament by announcing the team rosters.

I was part of Team Splinter Squad along with Clayton (Demideath), Chachi (Ice), Ryan (RyeGuy) and Tom (FunkSoulBrother).

As my Storm experience is rather limited comparatively, it was a pleasure and a privilege to get to play with these guys. I learned a lot from them in short order and really enjoyed getting to play alongside them.

I also really enjoyed catching up with other members of our tag family and bringing along a new plush for luck.

We had a good start in the first couple of games of round robin. We won our first game against the Pointy Planks by only one point, but took the win in our next game against the Whittling Wildcats by a wider margin. However, after that we took a couple of losses, falling to the Lumber Punchers and Sawdust Kings in that order. Ultimately, we came out of the round robin in third position.

We were able to sit through round 1, then won our first game in round 2, advancing to go up against the Lumber Punchers (who had beat us during round robin) in the semifinals. This was some intense competition against Matt’s team. Our team’s more experienced players hashed out a strategy to aggressively go for base runs and it worked! We took the win and watched to see whether Lumber Punchers or Pointy Planks would come out on top in round 3 to go up against us in finals.

Well, looks like we get to face Lumber Punchers for a second time, now going into the final round. This team is incredibly competitive and no doubt would be pushing just as hard as us to get this final win. We tried to implement the same strategy on the other side of the arena (we ended up playing this last round on the green side, which was not our preference) and I think we all felt like it was “give it everything” time. For me that meant not giving up any unnecessary points and just staying focused with my beam to support my teammates who were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this game…and we won!

Wow, that felt amazing! Now, I know that I am not as strong a Storm player, so I realize that my part in the win was small compared to the amazing skill shown by my teammates, but it was truly an honor to be part of this victory with these guys who played with tremendous passion and heart. Go Splinter Squad!

https://youtu.be/TpJpnGfPvPU?is=-Y4ukOl3yYdF5kXQ

And if you are wondering why all the teams had names related to wood, it all tied into a clever theme. Check out these awesome wooden awards that Matt made for the occasion!

My thanks to everyone who made this draft tournament happen. It was a really enjoyable evening getting to play a system I don’t experience very often. It also was perfect timing, as I left Laser Storm Pittsburgh around 2:30 am and was able to stop by Taco Bell (always open late) before heading straight to the airport for an early morning flight back home. What an awesome ending to a fantastic tag weekend!