The National Xball League, paintball's premiere competitive league, has announced a change to the bunker kit for 2024; eight new snake beams will be added to the bunker kit. The bunker kit is an assortment of more than 40 bunkers of various shapes and sizes that the NXL uses to create unique layouts for each of their five major events across the United States. The bunkers are used as blocking obstacles for players to maneuver and get an advantage over the opposition. 

After a 2023 season in which the Los Angeles Ironmen narrowly avoided relegation and struggled to compete, three key players from their roster are departing the team. While Corey Field and Paddy Gleason chose to leave the program, Chris Tregarthen has decided to retire from professional paintball. 

It was previously rumored that Los Angeles would be finally entering a rebuild in the 2023 offseason and this could be the starkest sign of an impending roster churn for LA. With major superstar players already connected to their camp, we could see a major change coming for the Men soon. 

The Iconic Awards have been one of the most intimate and personal projects for me over the last few seasons and were the culmination of seasons of effort to honor the best paintball players in the World. I have spent hundreds upon thousands of hours watching tape, conferencing with the most analytical brains in the sport, and dedicating all of my free time to this project. I am proud to announce that Iconic Paintball and the Major League of Paintball will be partnering on this venture moving forward for an exclusive awards show, the Summit Awards. Additionally, the joint venture between Ryan Greenspan of San Diego Dynasty and Iconic Paintball, the Hall of Icons, will get a stage truly deserving of its magnitude, as an exclusive presentation for each years inductees will take place. 

The Summit Awards will be a true red-carpet, exclusive event for players, industry titans, and creators to bring a truly Iconic event to the sport of paintball. The Sahara Hotel and Casino will play host to the event for a celebration unlike anything the sport has ever seen with its 200+ foot screen and extravagant accommodations. 

This new evolution of the Iconic Awards will see the leadership and guidance of the Major League of Paintball help to increase the reach and long-term goals of the awards. My goal has always been to honor the truly best players on the professional field, as well as the talented and diverse creators in the paintball industry; a strategic partnership with the MLPB will go a long way in continuing to grow both the scope and the mission of the awards. 

The same energy, dedication, and focus on historic preservation will continue and newly expanded categories will make this venture even more exciting for fans and players. We will be expanding our community vote program after we received more than 100,000 individual category votes in 2022, and introducing expanded on-field voting with coaches and team owners. 

More than a decade ago, Corey Field first set out on the PSP professional division field with his newly minted team, Seattle Thunder. Featuring a diverse roster of the Pacific Northwest's best players, Corey took over the mantle as the owner of the premiere professional team from the region, with the ghosts of the Portland Naughty Dogs still looming.

The team was a diverse mix of young and hungry upstarts and league veterans all looking to make their mark when they entered the first event of the 2012 PSP season in Galveston. They did something quite unexpected of rookie xball teams, and they made Sunday their first event as an official PSP pro team. However, they would have to wait nearly a month to play that Sunday match, as a freak storm pushed the Galveston playoffs into event two of the season where teams would play an entire Sunday playoff the Thursday before event 2 started. They may not have won the event, but they set the stage that paintball is still strong in one of the most forgotten regions of the country.

Thunder would spend the next few seasons fighting to keep their pro status in the final days of the PSP tournament series and did enough to earn an invite into the NXL, what would be the newest premiere tournament xball league in the country. Thunder would retain their position in the NXL pro division for the next seven seasons, never being in serious threat of relegation. Across their final two seasons of professional play, Thunder was able to make some serious noise, placing in the top six a total of six events and pushing some of the best teams in the sport to their breaking point. 

Corey Field unintentionally became the patron saint of paintball in the Northwest in the process. Known for his generosity and support of growing the game, hundreds and thousands of players would come through his field, watching his team, and the dream of paintball would be ignited in many because of his dedication to the growth and sustainability of Northwestern paintball. 

As of the start of the 2023 season, the Seattle Thunder Franchise final sale would be completed and the team will now move forward as a Northeast team from Brooklyn, known as the Bears. It brings the end of an era to the PNW's favorite professional team but not without the fingerprints of Thunder all over the pro division and the sports popularity in the region.

​From Iconic Paintball and the rest of the sport, we just want to thank Seattle Thunder and Corey Field for all the growth they helped to create for the sport, and for all those they inspired to get out and play the game. We loved watching you play on the field as both fans and analysts of the game the last decade. We wish you the best as you move forward in your paintball endeavors.  

Joe Barrett announced that he would be departing San Diego Aftermath just a few weeks ago, and now he has decided to sign with Los Angeles Infamous for the 2023 season. This is a move that continues the youth movement trend for Los Angeles, as they now have the fourth youngest roster in the NXL Professional Paintball division.

Joe played a key role for Aftermath in 2022 as a disciplined and stoic gunfighter. He additionally has greatly improved as an offensive player in the center of the field over the last year with San Diego, and he should fit right in to an Infamous roster that needs a more stout center attack. By signing on Joe Barrett, Infamous now can focus on a rebuild around their core roster of Kali Rudolph, Harrison Frye, Ryan Hall, and Jonah Jamroz as the next great Infamous lineup. We talked with Joe a bit about the move;

In one of the more shocking developments of the 2023 NXL preseason so far, longtime veteran defensive star of Los Angeles Infamous, Cody Mickowski, has parted ways with the team to sign with San Antonio XFactor for 2023. The moves comes as a surprise as Cody was one of the core members of the Infamous franchise and brand for more than half a decade.

The move is massive in scale for XFactor, as they finally get their replacement field general following the departure of Archie Montemayor last season. Cody should instantly plug into the starting lineup beside Colt Roberts, Meter Ninios, Billy Bernacchia, and LJ Parrish and provide a much needed boost to the anchor position on the field for San Antonio. 

Players like Billy Bernacchia and LJ Parrish really benefit greatly from having a solid and anchored gun on the field like Cody, and his elite ability to command players down the field while providing some of the best zone control in the game will really improve the offensive attack for XFactor. 

We believe this move will really balance the XFactor roster out and gives Coach Ryan Brand arguably the most weapons he has had on the field since the departure of Montemayor. This may very well move XFactor into the top two or three spot in the NXL Pro division and we believe it will lead to an event win in 2023 for this franchise after not winning and event since 2019. Anchors like Cody are very rare in the NXL, with the elite echelon being guys like Margott, Rabackoff, Harmon, and Cody; and this is a massive addition for one of the fan favorite NXL franchises. 

Next weekend, San Diego Aftermath is hosting a mega-practice tryout with invitations sent out to some of the nations top young players as they prepare to rebuild their roster around their young core. With rumors already swirling about a few new pickups, Im sure we will get more clarity after the tryouts next weekend. 

Mike Hinman, the owner of Aftermath, has always specialized in finding uncut gems in the paintball world and polishing them into top level star players with athletes like Marcello Margott, Alex Goldman, Raney Stanczak, and Dalton Vanderbyl all coming from the legendary Hinman coaching tree. 

We will provide further updates as to who is attending the tryouts and who makes the cut. 

Baltimore Revo has made a big splash to start off their 2023 preseason with the signing of Caleb Abuhl, formerly of NRG Elite, and Shon Saucedo, formerly of Infamous. Both players are very competant offensive attackers down the snake side of the field and each bring their own individual style in the way the play

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1. Helps relieve some of the offensive burden from Chris Schehr and opens up the spacing for Revo.
2. Enhanced Rob Velez's skillset as a poised and patient snake side 2.
3. Opens the field back up for Stephen Omara to be used in more natural and versatile role.
4. Takes the pressure off the break off of Benny Carrol, draws guns wide to open up the center.
5. Potentially could see a change in play style for Revo to a more aggressive posture. 

NXL star player, Raney Stanczak, has signed with his former team Tampa Bay Damage for the 2023. Raney will depart San Antonio XFactor after a four year stint with San Antonio that saw Raney help bring two event wins and five finals visits over his tenure with the franchise.

The move comes as a bit of a surprise after Damage had their best season in a decade behind star players Jason and Jacob Edwards. Raney will immediately be a starting player and fill the final starting spot that Tampa Bay has struggled to find a consistent player in. The projected starting lineup for Damage for 2023 will be Jason Edwards, Jacob Edwards, Raney Stanczak, Chad Busiere, and Keith Brown as of now. 

The addition also brings up the conversation that Tampa Bay very well may be the best defensive unit in the NXL after the addition of Stanczak. One of the most reactionary and poised players in the pro NXL division, Stanczak will bring closing ability that was sorely needed during the 2022 campaign, and his emotional leadership will be a critical add to a Tampa roster that can struggle to make comebacks. 

Damage may now very well be the best defensive unit in the NXL with only Dynasty able to match their backline star power. Of course, the depth of Damage will still be on full display after a 2022 campaign saw Head Coach Joey Blute utilize the depth of his roster more than any other pro NXL coach. It will be interesting to see exactly how Coach Blute uses Raney on the field with an already talented anchor player in Jason Edwards; he may potentially become more of a center attack player akin to his early usage with XFactor in 2019. This would allow Damage to move Chad Busiere back into more of a dorito attack role and balance out Tampa Bay's spacing pretty effectively. 

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