Inside the landing craft is the overwhelming smell of sweat and adrenaline, the referees holding large loading doors shut against the sea of players. A great cheer rises as the last of the water balloons go sailing into the trees-U-S-A! U-S-A! On cue, doors drop and half of the 3,137 registered players run screaming onto Normandy Beach!

They hide behind pallets and Hyperball tubes, turning the mock helicopter on the Blackhawk Down field into a mass-refuge. Paint flies in from all directions in great ropes, the white and pink Diablo Nightmare breaking white on goggles, hoppers and bunkers, splattering players and bruising egos.

Last year the Axis forces held the beach, pouring players and paint between the bunkers to stop every tentacle of the Allied attack. This year, General Monty (Tom Sutton) worked different tactics and angles, ultimately setting a new Skirmish record: the Allies set up their beachhead in only 28 minutes. The previous record stood around an hour and a half-their accomplishment was substantial, and put great fear in the Axis players.

The game started in earnest, moving from the Allied command center established just inside the trees from the beach. Scenario Director Chuck Stoner radioed General Monty and Axis General Rob Wood their next missions. New opportunities crackled over the radio every twenty minutes for the rest of the two-day scenario game.

Players drove and flew from all points in the country, and several beyond. They met near Jim Thorpe Pennsylvania at Skirmish USA, one of the country's premier fields. In business since the early 80s and now featuring over fifty courses, Skirmish has played host to the Invasion of Normandy (formerly, though no longer, the Skirmish D-Day) for four years running. Their first crowd numbered 1,500, the second around 2,000, the third 2,711 and this year's attendance-at 3,137-was more than double their initial showing!

Campers took over the fields around the gravel road that leads to the heart of Skirmish. They pitched tents and slept in cars, cooked over small fires and enjoyed the vendors' village while waiting for the action. Social alliances formed, and one particular group of players emerged from the shadows with contracts and propositions...

Tyrell Corporation debuted this year. A multi-national corporation with resources and secrets galore, they aimed at war profiteering in the most extreme and decadent ways. "They're the people to go to for fuel," Chuck Stoner explained. "If you need fuel to mobilize your forces, Tyrell's the people to go to. There's a rumor, but it's been unsubstantiated, that they're involved in gathering some historically significant-some religiously significant-props out of the Mideast."

A. Eldon Tyrell, CEO, explained that their goals were to increase the level of role playing in the Invasion game, add a new element to strategy, and have fun. As military actions-from which the Invasion was inspired-require supplies, so too must many scenario paintball missions. Those supplies, often in the forms of plastic "oil drums," were available from Tyrell...for a price.

In a game with thousands of players, a group of thirty who intentionally put themselves at the political fifty yard line and then surround themselves-literally-with potential points is a gutsy group indeed. They realized their forces alone could not protect their fuel dump and offices, so they set about a hiring campaign. The Friday evening before the July ninth and tenth games, just hours before the Friday night game, Tyrell held a job fair near the CO2 fill station.

They attracted hundreds of inquisitive players, and signed up nearly three hundred players from both the Axis and Allied-and French, even-teams to work security at various times during the scenario game. On Saturday these players worked to bend the conflicts around the Tyrell facilities at the Airfield to keep the props safe and the facility from coming under indirect attack.

It came under direct attack, though, several times. A band of Axis players overran the facility and looted some fuel barrels, but the most egregious offenses came from "rogue" Allied players. They hit the facility several times, hauling away props and leaving the site sacked.

Eldon Tyrell called these raids in to the Scenario Director, who discounted the points for the props, as they were stolen-and even with imaginative storylines and free-flow creativity, there must be some rules.

Sharing the CO2 fill station staging area with the masses was a Ronn Stern Paintball Camps group numbering nearly eighty. These camps normally focus on helping tourney players hone their speedball skills, but in a special departure from formula these campers came to Skirmish to live, learn, and play woodsball.

Their week culminated, at the invitation of Paul and Cleo Fogal of Skirmish, in playing Axis forces during the Invasion of Normandy. True to expectations, the campers figured prominently in the Friday night pre-scenario game and made their presence known-and felt, to opponents-in the weekend game as well.

With nearly two thousand people on site Friday evening, there were plenty of players looking for something to do...enter the Friday Night Game, a side event for fun and bragging rights...and to showcase the amazing castles at Skirmish. Axis forces wrapped their hoppers in purple tape-the official team identification method, along with coded player ID cards-and congregated within the Tippmann Castle. This phenomenal structure includes twin three story towers, full ramparts...even oxcarts to use as cover!

Allies commanded the Dye Castle just two fields away, and at game-on, nearly five hundred players flooded the fields between the castles. Their goal was to breach the castle defenses, then steal all three white barrels within and take them to their own castle for the win.

The Axis forces launched several small-scale attacks on the Dye castle, finally capturing it in the wake of a major push. Night and the castle fell within minutes of each other, dozens of skirmishes raging in the darkness. Finding only two barrels inside the castle, a group of three players peeled away from the force to probe the depths of Skirmish's forests.

They found the barrel nearly an hour later, glowing green from chemlights the referees attached at dusk. It was guarded by a lone sniper, a sniper who was quickly dispatched with. In dragging the glowing plastic drum back across the fields, they ran across several refs and at least one friendly-fire ambush. The referees called the game just as they managed to get the barrel through the backdoor of the Tippmann Castle. Victory was theirs...a good precedent for the weekend to follow.

After the beach fell, the teams set upon the individual missions. These varied hourly and drastically in type. Word came to Axis General Wood during the afternoon that a group of his players were being held as "prisoners of war" in The Pentagon, a field several hundred yards into the forest and adjacent to the tangle of the rhododendron woods. He mobilized a force of around one hundred players to push through The Hood and storm The Pentagon.

Their progress was impeded by the second rain of the day, a passing shower that power-washed the forts and trees with an amazing display of nature's power. The players kept about their business, hunting props-and each other-even as their boots filled with water. In half an hour it was gone...but the attack on the Pentagon raged on.

The Axis forces rescued their players, then moved to hold the fort against the Allied counterattack. Referees called a ceasefire and moved the Allies back, back across a small clearing to offensive positions some distance away. At game-on again, they stormed from the shadows to reclaim their stronghold!

After more than half an hour of intense altercation, they successfully routed the Axis players. The victory was overshadowed, though, by the Axis' early lead in overall points.

Other missions were geared for snipers and recon teams, precision assault teams and role players, scenario hardcores and newbies alike. Select spy and recon teams were issued disposable cameras and given the job of taking reconnaissance photos of base security around their opponents' command centers. These photos were developed by Skirmish staff, then used by commanders to plot massive attacks.

"I like my missions to be pretty concrete," Chuck explained, "so they always have specific objective locations to go to. I also like them to deal with tangible props." For this event, he went with historically inspired missions, and together with Paul Fogal, planned missions that would make for exciting game play. The ideas are only inspired by history, though-not exact representations.

"The games aren't choreographed based historically on who was where," he continued, "that's just not going to happen." They used a map of the facility as a chessboard, moving pieces that represent various groups. The missions were then dovetailed so opposing forces would be fighting for similar objectives, or run into each other along the way.

The action raged back and forth, the Allied compound coming under direct attack, and both leaders dealing in various ways with Tyrell. A shifting allegiance formed, with the assistance of Tyrell and at the behest of vocal players: the French felt more strongly allied with the Axis forces than they did with their historical partners, the Allies. The pull of history was not enough to preserve their fidelity, and late in the day the French Resistance turned hostile against the Allies.

Spread throughout the forest were sheets of paper stapled to trees. They contained the stories of French resistance during WWII, told of major battles and influential leaders. Players who stopped to read were treated to lessons in the history of the very battle they honored...a nice touch.

As darkness fell, the play consolidated to the eastern end of the forest, around the Allied command center. Weary players disengaged and returned to their tents for dinner and sleep, while nearly 1,400 hardcore players stayed on to attack-or defend-the compound. When the last rays of daylight retreated, the Allies flicked on spotlights. Referees wandered around with lights as well, the beams searching the shadows for Axis players.

They didn't have to look hard...the attack was upon them from the first minute, hundreds of players pushing from the beach through the tree line. Under cover of night a group of Ronn Stern Campers infiltrated the woods two hundred yards west of the action, then flopped down and belly crawled past lost patrols and through dense woods to the edge of the Allied perimeter. With the primary action towards the front, only a few dozen players held the northwestern edge...and despite their searchlights, they missed the crawling snipers.

This stealthy attack preceded a major shift in the deployment of Axis forces, as they swung northwestward into the darkness after an hour of grinding down the southwestern defenses. By the time the attack commenced on the perimeter, the snipers were inside barrel tagging opponents.

The base fell in time, and the Axis departed for the evening with high hopes-and high scores for the Sunday game.

As retribution for sacking his facility, Eldon Tyrell brought charges against the Allied team in the First Court of Skirmish on Sunday morning. The Allies blew off sending a representative, so a public defender was assigned to defend them in absentia to a panel of judges and jury members...comprised of French and Axis players. The ruling handed down found in favor of the plaintiff, and Tyrell Corporation walked away from the proceedings with strengthened alliances to the Axis and French teams...and a bench warrant for the arrest of General Monty and his commanding officer.

Serving the warrant was difficult, so Tyrell settled back into their traditional role of muckraking and racketeering, and waiting...waiting to see what became of the Arc of the Covenant, a prop they acquired from the Middle East and sold Saturday evening to the Axis forces after a particularly impressive demonstration.

Sunday morning was bright and clear, with the few clouds in the sky afraid to do more than smile down at Skirmish as they passed harmlessly across the sun. Players packed the field, their tents jumbled and muddy messes of dirty equipment and wet socks...there was a game to play, and nothing held them back!

Action raged near The Hood and through the rhododendron forest, and included an Axis bombing mission against the Allied compound that was aborted due to lack of fuel. General Monty paced his headquarters, listening to his radios and desperately dispatching troops to capture as many points as they could. He found himself beset by every other team and group on the field, and though the Allies were strong, the odds were daunting.

The missions wound the teams back towards the beach for one final attack on the pallet-and-pipe field adjacent to the camping and vendor areas. A large crowd gathered a safe distance away to watch several thousand players mass behind impossibly small bunkers and trade unfathomable volumes of paint. The "German Secret Weapon" made an appearance-a man in a large box with a target painted on the front, dancing through the action while paint exploded all over his outfit. The Cat in the Hat was there, along with Laura Croft, Clint Eastwood, and other costumed characters. Creative anachronism is celebrated in scenario paintball, and fully embraced there at the Invasion of Normandy.

Then a wave of Axis players marched through the open, markers throwing clouds of paint into the air, their ranks lead by players with a strange staff-the Shield of Ra-and the Arc of the Covenant. Orange smoke popped everywhere, thickening the air with pungent smells and swirling clouds. The Allies counterattacked one, twice, then three times, gaining and losing ground like they were running on a treadmill.

Axis forces stopped these advances and pushed back, negotiating the ground with stomping boots and empty pods dropping like leaves. They finished on top of their game, pushing the Allies completely off the beach and then taking the battle beyond the required lengths, into the trees, and back towards the command post. When the referees called the game, the Axis force had dominated the beach every bit as decisively as had the Allies not but twenty four hours earlier.

When the points were tallied, the final anachronism came to light: the Axis team won. Next year new commanders will weave the saga of the Invasion of Normandy...and they hope to see you there!