Paintball Magazine August 2017 Paintball.Media Issue | Page 25

Axis, US/Allies and French Generals. The crowd
was fired up and ready to rock!
At 11:00 players started setting up on both
sides. The landing craft at Juno, Gold, Sword
and Omaha beaches were full and Allied players
were chanting “USA, USA, USA.” Meanwhile
a couple hundred feet away just inside the
tree line stood more than 500 Axis players
ready to drop a ton of paint on players exiting
the landing craft. By the time the one minute
warning was given the tension was so thick you
could cut it with a knife. “Game on!”
If you’ve never been to an ION event, watching
the opening assault on the beach may be the
most exciting few minutes in paintball each
year. The German side occupies the tree line,
almost shoulder to shoulder across the beach,
which is probably 1000 feet wide or more. The
instant “game on” is called the German line fires
thousands of balls per second towards the five
Allied landing craft at the exiting players. As the
landing crafts empty they are immediately filled
and released, so every 20-30 seconds there’s a
new wave of Allied attackers.
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