Red Surge - - - - A Brief History:
Back in 2002 Doug Nelson and his son Tom were hiking around the old gravel pit site north of their farm buildings. The two had attended an indoor laser tag facility the day before and were fantasizing as to what a great battleground the gravel pit's craters and berms would make, if only there were an outdoor laser tag technology. As luck would have it, a couple years later Scott Seymour and his brother Andrew were out gopher hunting at the farm when Andrew mentioned that before he left his home in Australia he had played an amazing game of outdoor laser tag. It sounded promising so Doug took the brothers over to the gravel pit area and asked them what they thought. The Seymour brothers thought it looked great. That evening Doug googled the gun manufacturer in Australia and started a dialogue which eventually saw one of their reps, Jason Wragg, stop in Alberta on a fall trip to North America.
Duly impressed with the Battlefield Sports' guns, Doug, his wife Patti, Scott and his wife Evelyn decided to start up an outdoor laser tag business. The company, initially named Red Surge Tactical Sports, ordered a package of guns and some camoflage coveralls and began setting up the game site. I should mention and interesting sidebar to the gun order. When the shipment arrived at Calgary Customs, the laser taggers were labelled as 'Morita Sniper Rifle', 'Commando Carbine', 'M4 Assault Rifle' and 'Scorpion Sub Machine Gun'. Unfortunately Battlefield Sports had not noted on the shipping documents that these were laser tag, not real weapons. Since the M4 looks very much like an M16, the package was held up for almost three weeks in Customs. Meanwhile, at the gravel pit, Doug & Scott busily hauled over a dozen buildings onto the site, filled up a number of sandbags and utilized bales, tires and wooden pallets to create battlefield bunkers. After a few practice sessions Red Surge was in business the spring of 2005. After one year of operation, Doug & Patti bought out the Seymours and are continuing to run the operation on their own.
A board game creator, Doug designed a number of war game scenarios, several of which were based on actual battles involving Canadian troops during WWII. The battle for Ortona in Italy, where Canadians suffered their greatest WWII losses, is recreated utilizing the town site and a tire bunkered crater area to the west. In Doug's scenario the Red Surge Canadians must first breach a well defended bunkered area before beginning the vicious house to house battle with German defenders for possession of the town site. Flag poles and flip flags represent ownership of bunkers and buildings.
How the Normandy scenario came about is an interesting story. Doug was checking out the south side of the gravel pit's topsoil berm and trying to determine how that location might be used. The 300 foot long berm was a perfect site for some kind of bunkers, but the area to the south was completely void of protection, no use at all! With WWII on his mind, Doug surmised that the open area would have been just as unprotected as the beach head our Canadian troops encountered coming out of the landing craft at Normandy. That was when the lightbulb went off! But what to use for a landing craft? A glance at the Nelson's horse trailer solved that problem. A few, a very few pallet bunkers now give the assaulting Red Surge Canadians a modicum of protection as they attack the well defended German hillside bunkers.
Doug has designed the scenario as a timed event, where the Germans get no immediate reinforcements or ammunition, and the Canadians have unlimited respawns. The Canucks also have the option to drop several paratroopers behind the German lines. Red Surge makes sure that the Canadians always win (Juno Beach, not Dieppe) as each outdoor laser tag team gets a chance to attack and defend the hillside bunker. Like the Ortona scenario, each Red Surge team get a chance to play as Canadians and as Germans.
