Personally, I think Deal (the location for apoc) is one of my favorites. There's a lot of variety. It's more open fields than dense woods, but there is still enough cover. It's big enough to have a large event, but if you've got a small event there are small areas with reasonably well defined barriers. The couple of times I've been there, the place was pretty empty, but I'm sure if we ran into a bunch of non-nerfers, we could move to another area.
The only disadvantages are that I don't recall a bathroom being close at hand and I know we had to schlep our stuff all over the place because the parking wasn't anywhere near where we nerfed.
One of my least favorite is Mill Creek, the old apoc location and the home field of the LCM. On the plus side, there's a nice gazebo area with picnic tables, which is a nice place to sit between battles, especially since I can't remember the last time I was there and it didn't rain. The place is also pretty much always empty except for the playground area, which always seems to have that one little kid with mommy looking on at us in disapproval.
On the minus side the pine trees are really dense in most parts of the park, keeping you on the path, and I always seem to find myself trapped as soon as I step off the path. On top of that I can see my opponent way more often than I can hit them because the pines are really good at stopping darts as well as nerfers. Finally the park is pretty small. I wouldn't want to nerf with more than about 12.
I'm kind of on the fence with respect to my old home field of Tindall Park, where HershFEST takes place and where GnomeFEST used to be hosted. It's big, and usually pretty empty. Parking is right in the middle of where we nerf. Theres a really cool obstacle course that the local high school uses for team building activities, and it has a lot of trees and other equipment, without all the brush that gets in the way elsewhere. The park has a few different areas to play in aside from the obstacle course, including a large wooded area with paths, a basketball court frequently used for pistol matches, and a small playground area with woods on one side and parking lot on the other. There's also (gasp) changes in elevation.
There are a few problems with the site. The obstacle course is pretty small for more than about 8-10 people. There are also a bunch of ankle-height steel cables (used as balance beams by the HS) that become invisible when you're nerfing (especially if you're Hersh). From one year to another the wooded area may be absolutely perfect for nerfing, or it may be full of spiders, broken beer bottles, thorn bushes, or poison ivy. The brush will be totally under control or completely unmanageable with no regard for what time of the year it is. At "The Hill" you can usually get about 1-2 good rounds in before the homeowner at the top of the hill comes out and starts giving us a hard time for being sort of close to his hedge. Finally, I think the park fucked VACC's mom or something, and he's taking it real personal.
Finally, I'm pretty ambivalent towards the two schools DCNO is traditionally held at. The trailers that are next to the school are pretty neat at first, but they're difficult to move around very quickly, and it's easy to get pinned. They aren't nice and open and spread out like the ones in the old YANO and 'geddon videos look. I also recall having a problem with the soccer field being full of little kids for almost the entire day one year. On the plus side, the trailers are an interesting change of pace from the woods I'm used to, and the big open fields are perfect for setting up homemade barriers like the ones Slug brought last time. There's a nice staging area with tables that's pretty nice too.
Keep in mind that I've had a fun time at every one of these venues. I've also had a pretty shitty time at about half of them, at least in part due to the venue. So what do you like about the places you nerf, and what do you think makes a good battlefield?
Edited by Langley, 21 July 2008 - 01:22 AM.