The most exceptional part of my weekend was laser tagging for a very worthwhile cause while playing alongside two Olympic athletes. For those who don't know, I lost my brother several years ago to cancer, so when I heard about a laser tag tournament happening in Denver, Colorado to benefit the Doreen Katz Memorial Cancer Foundation I was immediately interested in being part of it. This amazing organization raises money to benefit the children of parents dealing with cancer and is operated by Adam Katz in memory of his late wife Doreen who was from upstate New York, not far from where I live. Obviously the reasons for me wanting to be involved were plentiful from the start. However, it wasn't

The majority of the laser tag I play is traditional, so on the rare occasions that I get to play tactical it is always an interesting experience. When I paid a visit to American Paintball Coliseum in Phoenix, AZ I had a terrific time playing with the iCOMBAT Barracuda system with the staff who gave me a great game in a really unique arena atmosphere at their multi-functional facility where they offer paintball, airsoft and laser tag. The manager, Alex, put together a game for me to join with staff members Travis, Marie and Jacob. We each selected a Tippmann paintball marker that had a Barracuda all-in-one laser tag unit attached above the barrel. Before playing our first game I was given a t

Typically once I know a system I assume that there won't be too much difference in playing it between arenas. However, there are some interesting and unique things that I noticed the last time I played Infusion at Stratum in Mesa, AZ that I got answers about when I played there again this past weekend. The major thing that I wanted to know about were their totally unique "crystal" plastic panel bases. They have two very unique base designs. One looks like a series of five crystal panels like what you see here and the other is a four sided rectangular crystal box. Now, they have very firm rules about not taking photos in the actual arena, BUT the manager on site did give me the go ahead to ph

So many things happened this weekend that I don't really know where to begin...but this time it won't be from the beginning. The next couple of posts will be a little bit out of order. You see, as I was traveling through Colorado and Arizona I had a few particularly noteworthy things happen and a few of the more interesting parts of the adventure really warrant more detailed posts. So for the moment I'm just going to begin with an overview of the things that happened in Arizona and then circle back to take a bit more time to share the other things that particularly stood out, such as intriguing custom crystal bases, checking out a unique tactical arena and...I kid you not...playing laser tag

The fall laser tag league in Syracuse got started this past weekend and if night one is any indication I think this is going to be a fun eight weeks. After updating our roster a couple of times we were ready to go in and have a good time playing some tag without taking ourselves too seriously, which I think is evident by our team name...we are "The Mood Killers". :) Here is the roster list of the other teams involved. You can see by the levels that this is a pretty decently balanced group for the most part. Actually, there's a decent amount of experienced players in this league, so overall the quality of games is good and so are the attitudes. We're playing three team standard games of Laser

Playing laser tag in a league in Syracuse always seems to be preceded by two or three (or 12) rounds of musical chairs. But I was feeling a little too much like Roger Murtaugh for that last night, so I opted instead to get in some practical practice in Queensbury so that my Cyber Blast skills are dusted off and ready for qualifying in New Hampshire in a couple of weeks. So I headed off to Adventure Family Fun, the closest Cyber Blast site near me in Queensbury so that I could get in some practice time and refresh myself on this system that I really only get to play every few months or so. This turned out to be a great night to be there because they had a steady flow of players rotating in an