Tag 4 A Cause at My First Laser Storm Tournament

A regional Laser Storm tournament taking place at Skyway Laser Storm in Warren, OH seemed like a perfect opportunity for a Tag 4 A Cause pop-up event to involve the Laser Storm community in the laser tag 5K challenge. After all, when you play in a tournament it is a forgone conclusion that you will have played at least 5K of laser tag during the course of the event. It was so great to have all these players donating to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief while earning their 5K medals at the tournament!

When I arrived it was great to see George Raptis (aka Icarus) setting up and he pointed me towards a nice spot in the lobby to set up as “home base”.

And we displayed the custom high score golden phaser trophy I had designed myself, specifically for this event.

At this point in time I did not expect to be playing in the tournament, but I had let it be known I would happily sub or fill in on a team if needed. To be clear, I love to play all systems of laser tag, but in the company of REAL Laser Storm players I recognize that my handful of games on the system do not land me in this category, so I was just delighted to be adopted into Team Chupacabras for a chance to play in the tournament and have some fun.

This was actually my very first Laser Storm tournament and I had a wonderful time! Although this is not an easy system for other laser tag skills to carry over, everyone was wonderful and I had a very positive impression of the Laser Storm scene.

I felt like I started out as the weak link, but things definitely improved for me as I went along. It has simply been too long since I had last had any game experience with this equipment.

If you have never played Laser Storm, the divided arena is, well… a little different!

I was appreciative for a piece of advice I was given. I was told the red beam is not what actually hits the sensor, so it is better to aim the beam at a face in order to line the side phaser sensor with the opponent’s headset. I’m not sure how well I executed that, but where I saw improvement in my own game was when I defaulted to my more comfortable “sniper” mode and watched for opponents to come into my path.

We enjoyed some success, specifically in game 9 against Brandon’s Portable Wilson (love that team name!), but the bottom line is after the round robin we were out of single eliminations pretty quickly. That’s ok, because I had another important cause to focus on here. :)

All throughout the tournament players were participating in Tag 4 A Cause and making donations to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief, which you can still support through December 31st using the link on this page: https://www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com/to-benefit-red-cross-disaster-relief.

My thanks to the players who got behind this great cause!

With all this support we exceeded my weekend goal, bringing the current tally to just over $1000 raised for the Red Cross!

Everyone who donated qualified for our high score trophy competition, for which I randomly separated players into two groups for a qualifying game and then pulled the top eight for a bonus chance to pull the high score. The trophy would go to the best score out of all three games. Congratulation Ins you the top players who made the elite eight!

When all was said and done it was my former Armageddon teammate David Hatt Jr. (aka Professor Shaggy) who pulled the highest score of 37,481 and took home the golden phaser trophy. Congratulations!

I thoroughly enjoyed my first Laser Storm tournament at Skyway Laser Storm. Thank you George for running an enjoyable tournament and for hosting Tag 4 A Cause!