Looking back on the start of the 2014 season.

So I've played a couple events now with my boys after what felt like an eternally long off season. Our first event at the CPS in Rome, placing 3rd in Semi Pro, went better than I personally expected. CPPS round 1 was a heart breaker, but no-one can say we didn't play well as a team. Every team says they'll play smart, aggressive paintball and adapt to overcome.. it's a huge cliché but I'm actually starting to learn what that feels like. We have a solid core now, with Shayne and Liam seeming to work well together on the snake side and me and Andy (shake and bake) have been gelling well teabag side whilst our back guys, Tom & Dave are consistently doing a good job as turrets and game closers. Of course we've all been playing different roles but that seems to be our primary setup.

Last week I was asked fairly last minute by Manchester Firm if I could come and play at the first round of the Millennium-Series in Southern France, then Germany and maybe more. I asked Andy about it and to be fair he wasn't overly enamored with the idea but I told him I want to play as much competitive paintball I can but my priorities lie with my team, I sorted it with work and said yes.

I'm looking forward to playing all this paintball! Nothing else I do in my life is able to make me feel large degrees of elation, fear, hope, disappointment, anger, superiority, anxiety and other cocktails of feelings in one weekend.

This weekend I trained on Saturday with Dave and Sunday with Adam. Saturday we just worked on our skills, snapshooting, breakshooting and running & gunning. Dave set up 3 bunkers in a row and another 3 bunkers opposite which we propped targets against. We were were practicing our snaps left and right, then running and gunning across, just firing 4-5 shots throughout the run to keep paint consumption down. At the end of each set I started running down a cone before switching hands to shoot the other.

Today (Sunday), I put a teabag in between the stand up and the small temple to make reasonable sized distances to bump to. Me and Adam were working on our dominance, gunfighting, snapshooting and run&gun skills by making a game out of seeing how many bumps you can make against the other person.

I'm glad I got a chance to just work on the basics again, the past 5 weekends I've been playing tournaments or scrimming and so haven't had a chance to brush up on my snapshooting. But now I'm quite confident across the board and I'm looking forward to hitting Puget-sur-Argens this coming weekend!

Good luck to all the other UK teams heading out, make sure you say hi!

I shot 1 box on Saturday and split 3 boxes with Adam on Sunday so overall that makes 51,000 paintballs!

CPPS Round 1 (22-23rd March): After the dust has settled.

Sorry for the delay on this one but this event was a bit of a punch in the face for me and the team and so I wanted to wait so that I could write a more balanced entry as opposed to head bashing the keyboard.

So this weekend just gone was the first round of the premier UK tournament: The CPPS. Last year myself and the guys from Reading Entity played in the Elite division among the best teams in the UK. In the off season we planned to play the Millennium series in Europe and so felt we may not be able to afford to put our 5 best in to perform in the Elite division. We figured we would put a team into div 1 made up of our less committed players and some of our international players. As it turns out when we made the choice to play the CPS, we figured we were able to afford to put a competent team in. Unfortunately we had missed the window as the division had now been filled. This meant we had to fight our way through Division 1 and win an event to earn promotion into the Elite division.

Fight we did.

Saturday

 

We brought some paint from The Cribb with us to go training on-site at the CPPS on the Saturday, we arrived and kitted up and to be honest we came out pretty flat. The training fields were a bit of a free-for-all for teams to jump on and shoot at whoever ended up on the other side of the field. We had some scrappy points with random teams and we weren't performing too well as a team to start with - winning very close games due to individual skill. However towards the end of the day something clicked and we seemed to have everything down. We even won a point against Nexus and also the Firm (the two teams playing in the finals of the Elite division on Sunday). Of course winning a point in training on a field void of refs with training paint isn't a true measure of the better team or how you will perform in the tournament, but we were confident we would do well. We brought on new blood Adam Budd who has been training with the team for the past 12 months at Cribbs. He wasn't sure of himself to begin with but when the team clicked around midday he seemed to follow suit and was playing well on the teabag side.

I tried a few different positions on the Saturday and ended up being most comfortable either playing as the 1 (front player) on the teabag side or the 3 in back center. Our game plans mainly involved doubling up the back center as our laning was looking pretty good and I ended up shooting the snake side lane as I was most comfortable with that one compared to the tighter teabag-side lanes.

That evening we went out for a carvery, being the athletes that we are. We stayed at the Hilton Park travel lodge (Don't be misled by the word Hilton!) and had a bit of a meeting in one of the rooms where we just confirmed our game plan and any alternative switch ups we may need to have in our arsenal before cleaning the guns ready for the day ahead.

Sunday

Game 1: Chimera

 

The mighty Rich Harris and the rest of the Chimera guys were pitting next to us. We got warmed up and had to keep a sense of humor about us whilst Rich heckled us (playfully) from next door, we were the 6th game on but we were there ready to play at 9am. When the game eventually came round, we went out and played a good game, we lost bodies and some of the games were a little chaotic (as I kind of expected) but we still netted a 4-0 win.

In one point I thought I saw an opening to make a superstar move, so I took it. Me and Andy were both in Back Centre, I was on the snake side taking no heat and he was taking a gun from the teabag corner and the house (tall temple) bunkers, I could see their paint in the air (as it was fluorescent yellow) and thought I could run from the BC through the M and past house and shoot everyone. As it turned out, by the time I got to house (it was a long run!) their coaches had called it and the teabag corner switched up on me after I got my first G. Even so we were bodies up and won the point and the game.

We told each other we needed to slow down our games as although rushing around trying to shoot everyone was working just now, we need to be more methodical if we want to win the day. After a long wait we got to..

Game 2: Snatch

 

Snatch are my old team, I played with them in 2012, I would call every member of the team a friend of mine. This may be the reason behind me consistently playing REALLY bad, I mean "Luke, what the fuck man I'm going to have to sit you the next few points" bad, against them in 2013 whenever we matched up.

Fortunately though this wasn't the case, although this game was very weird. After 10 seconds there seemed to be a cluster of buzzers going off around the same time. In the first point I had a false start, fortunately recognized it before shooting and tagged my barrel back before starting off the point again. Unfortunately for Snatch they had a couple guys pulled on the false start and the rest shot / penaltied very shortly after, making it a very quick point.

We didn't take that for granted though, we knew Snatch could roll their guns and they did beat us and have a very close loss against us in 2013. The next point, Andy false started behind me as I ran out to the teabags, I got shot trying to force a move too quickly without realising the snake side temple was shooting that lane, however Stafford came across from the Back Centre to the Teabag Corner to do some damage control and we managed to pull it back after a slow point. We were shooting good lanes off the break and moving up the field very quickly afterwards.

We eventually won the game 4-0.

Game 3: NPF Raiders

 

We watched Snatch, who we just 4-0'd, beat NPF Raiders 4-0 earlier on in the day. Of course logically that would mean we should trounce them, however paintball doesn't work like that. Team A can smash Team B who smash Team C who smash Team A - like rock paper scissors!

We had some close games against these guys, a bit of chaos in one point where we shot the whole teabag side off the break and Andy went to run through the middle to clean up. He got shot whilst making the move and got a penalty called on him whilst I made real estate off the back of his move getting up the teabags and shooting the last couple players very swiftly - before the ref managed to get to me to call the 1 for 1. It was a sloppy point but the rest of the game, we looked good. A nice 4-0 to add to the collection.

After this point we huddled round whilst the rest of the prelims were being played - it was about 3pm at this time. Andy told the team something along the lines of "We have done well to get this far without losing a point, I mean statistically in 3 games of Race-4 we should have lost a point by now by accident or by sloppiness. These next two games are going to be harder, but we came here to win and that's what we will do. If we lose a point, keep your head on, it doesn't necessarily mean we're being outplayed, it's just the odds."

At this point we watched some games on the mound, including the finals Nexus v Firm where Nexus won but it was close at points! The first point lasted half the match time as it boiled down to a 1v1 between Wozza (Warren Pitterson) and James Granville. Wozza was low on paint towards the end and so was trying to bait Granville out into a gunfight but Granville, with the paint advantage, eventually closed it out. After that the game went to Nexus.

The sun was starting to set, the division 1 field we were playing on was playing the seeding games for 5th-12th but for some reason instead of alternating the field (playing 2 games at the same time, switching game every time a point was played) they were running just a standard 2 minute (or more it felt like) turnaround with 1 game on at a time. In between the games there were long gaps and we were losing light.

We checked the scoreboard and we knew we were the 1st seed of our division with the best point difference (of course) and so would play the 4th seed who would be the team that had the most points who ranked second in their group.

Eventually, around 5:50pm, we played our semi final match

Semi Finals (game 4): Lucky 15's Mustangs:

 

If I'm honest I don't know how or where it started, this time last year we trained with Lucky 15's first team the day before the first CPPS and seemed to get on amicably. But it feels as though there's been a bit of a grudge between our two teams for a while. Without looking back I know we have beaten their first team at CPPS (close games if I recall!) but they also beat us down 4-0 at Campaign last year when we had a pull-together squad.

On Saturday when we were scrimming we came up against 15's once or twice. Adam, our new guy who hasn't even played at the CPPS before, walked off the field with a hell of a lot of paint all up his back. I understand giving a few extra shots to make people lose their heads or lose precious time in the pits, but whilst training? I didn't really get that.

When it comes to grudges or putting some extra shots on someone leaving the field, I've personally adopted the philosophy since the end of last year that I'm cool with any player or team as long as they're cool with me.

We walked onto the field and chose the far end towards the sun. There was a hoo-hah for a while as one of their guys was having a debate with a ref, who eventually walked over and said we had to toss a coin to choose the starting end. They won the toss so we had to switch sides. As we were walking to the opposite side of the field I said to the guys "Now they've made a big deal about the starting end, let's embarrass them by winning these next two points."

They gave us a good game, we lost bodies in most points, but we won 4-0.

During the last point after we had cleaned them all out apart from Back Centre I was all the way up the teabags. He was shooting the other way and so I could just make out his pack, I kept shooting it until he was called out, at which point he walked backwards and my paint that was already in the air hit his back. One of the guys from 15's shouted from outside the field "STOP OVERSHOOTING OUR PLAYERS!".

I doubt they'd read this but if they do: I am sorry if your player took some extra shots after he got hit from my guys on the snake side - I have no grudge against any of your players, on the first or the second team. If there are any hard feelings, I'm sorry, we play an adversarial game, but I respect anyone I play against and don't want to make enemies with anyone.

At this point of the day people had left or were leaving. A lot of people were coming up to me before and after this game asking how we got on. I worship the paintball gods and as a result try not to upset them with any bad karma or cockiness. I always remember punching the air with my fist as I ran to score a 3rd point against London Defiance in a row in 2013. We went on to lose the game after they equalized with 2 seconds of playing time left and beat us in an overtime point! Therefore when everyone asked how we got on, regardless of our flawless (in terms of points) performance I said "We're doing okay, we won our games.".

We moved over to the Elite field to play our finals game.We were losing light as time went on. London Samurai & Volatile were seeded 2nd & 3rd after the prelims and were having their semi final game. It looked like a close game - I believe it ended up being 4-2 to Samurai.

Finals game: London Samurai

 

We stepped out onto the field, all other games had finished, this was the last one of the day. It had already gone 18:30 and the light was fading, however it was playable, as we waited for Samurai to prepare as they had just finished their game moments earlier.

The first point played out pretty well for us, we got a G on the break and won a convincing point. There was a bit of confusion as we had to switch ends every point.

We went out for the second point and I remember I got shot very soon after getting into my primary. All day I was used to Parkey coaching us by simply calling the G's, the O's and the other team's positions. This time Clarkey was also on the mound talking me through the game. He was pushing me quite aggressively up the field telling me to make the next move and in the first instance I made a bump to the 3rd teabag and took a clip on the shoulder from the Teabag corner. In all fairness I was happy in teabag 2 shooting crossfield at the shadows I could just about make out behind their bunkers, unfortunately I was losing sight of the paint shortly after it left my barrel so I couldn't tell where it was dropping! When I made the move I shouldn't have been clipped from the corner really due to the layout, so I put it down to a sloppy bump on my part - regardless of whether or not I would have made the move without Clarkey's call. They won that second point and so it became 1-1.

The next point we played I moved up and shot at the bunkers where I thought I could see people, I must have got a couple crossfield shots from the teabags, I saw someone make a move into the snake and they were crawling relatively slowly in the open, I shot towards him but couldn't tell if my paint was going over him or dropping first. I heard teabag 2 and teabag corner and then Clarkey shout "go get him" so I ran down the highway and shot them both who were looking down the teabag wire. I hit the teabag corner and he came back infield to shoot me back. In my opinion that should have been a 1 for 1 as he only turned on the inside to shoot at me when he felt my shots hit him. I guess the referee's either didn't see it or weren't in the mood to cause a fuss. We won the point after wasting as much time as we could to make it 2-1.

I took another shot on the same bump, this time was because someone in Back Center or Orange was posted waiting for that move and after I heard the call to go I trusted I was okay to move. I felt a hit on my shoulder, looked towards the ref who didn't seem to register it, I looked down towards my shoulder and pointed at it at which point he called me out. I took an early walk and when in the pits I checked it out and no-one could see any paint - just a logo. Our guys knew they had to run the time down and so kept the cross going, they started moving down the field and eventually we lost the point. Watching the game I could just see hopper lights flashing in peoples goggles it was that dark. The game was 2-2 and there was only 6 seconds left of regulation time.

So we headed out for an overtime point. Shayne said walking to the start gate "guys I'm struggling with these goggles." I took an early walk, again, not able to read the paint or see the crossfield guys to check off the lanes I made a bump between teabags and got shot. I watched this final point unfold with Tom in the teabag corner, Andy in Teabag 2, Liam in God (the small m on the way into the snake) and Shayne in the snake corner. I could see that Shayne's mask was steamed up and so he was just shooting towards their snake tape and hoping for the best. Liam was trying to find a way into the snake but evidently was struggling to check off the lanes to make the bump. I saw a guy launch from their teabag 3 towards Andy. I knew the field very well at this point and I knew that the teabag corner could see any runs down the tape from teabag 3, Tom was watching that lane the entire time, there's no way the guy couldn't have been shot. Andy was also at that point in time looking teabag side. The way I saw it they must have run into two guns to get to Andy's bunker and mug him out, the ref walked over and Andy clearly tried to argue a case but both players were called out. I'm not saying the player played on - all I'm saying is he ran into two guys looking at him and ran a fair distance before shooting Andy. I couldn't tell if he was hit or not, and that was the frustrating thing as the refs would have had a hard time telling too, perhaps explaining the neutral call being made to just remove the two players.

They sent another guy down the field who mugged out Liam & Shayne, Tom (teabag corner) had crossed up with Liam (snake insert) at this point, Tom was shooting at him the whole way - if he was able to see his paint in the air he may have hit him, if he did hit him the refs wouldn't have been able to tell and neither would he. Shayne may of had a chance to pick him up if he was able to see, masks steaming up plague us all now and then but you can usually work through it, but steaming in the dark? Not a chance. He ran through and shot both Shayne and Liam before another guy came down the teabag tape to trade out with Tom. Leaving one of their players left to hit the buzzer and win the point.

We came 2nd, losing to Samurai 2-3.

It sucked. Everyone was angry as we felt we would have won the game in the daylight. Whether or not we would have, we don't know. But fair play to Samurai, they won the game on the day. They played a better game of night paintball than us by pushing the moves whereas we were crossing up the field.

The part that annoys us is that whether or not Samurai would have beaten us in the daytime, we don't know. Both teams were playing in the dark, but I couldn't help but feel that good field awareness and good lanes are big factors in winning a game, both of which were key factors in our success during the day and both of which were impeded by the darkness. One of their guys even said whilst shaking hands with us "I'm sure it would have been a different game in the daylight". We still feel that regardless of the results of this finals game, we deserve to be in that Elite division, especially after winning 17 unanswered points in a row.

Unfortunately it seems we're going to have to wait until at least Round 3 to play in the division we know belong in. I know that the teams we beat 4-0 aren't going to want to see us again next round, just as much as we don't want to spend any more of our time and money winning easy games. But it is what it is and we will have to come to terms with that.

The car journey home was a hard one. We like to break down what happened at a tournament to take something away, however this time we didn't really know what to take away. All my guys who played, played well and I'm proud of what we showed we can accomplish.

The CPPS is the premier UK tournament for a reason, Ainsley and the team put on a great show and put a lot of hard work in. We're blessed to have such a good grounds in the UK, it's the one domestic tournament that everyone uses as a benchmark because all the teams worth their salt play it. My criticism this time is solely with time keeping. The Div1 field was taking it's sweet ass time in between games, with long pauses in between sets. I also don't feel that the seeding matches for 5th to 12th should have been played 1 game at a time instead of in 2-game sets. I also don't see why they played these seeding games before the finals matches when daylight was an issue, I understand it was planned so that the finals are exhibited on the Elite field at the end of the day, but when the finals match is such a pivotal promotion game it should take priority when it comes to the daylight. After speaking to Ainsley he confirmed there was a mix up resulting in some of the ref teams having a longer lunch break than planned which pushed most of the fields back, he also confirmed it's not something that will be a problem in future rounds.

Next round will be our chance to get back to where we should be!

I played every point this weekend and shot 2 cases on Saturday and 3 cases during the tournament so that brings me to: 46,500

The Puget-sur-Argens Field & CPPS round 1 prelude

So last weekend I got a chance to play the layout that we'll be playing next weekend. The Millennium Puget-sur-Argens 2014 layout. I'm not going to go too deep into what I learnt playing it in case any teams we're playing get an idea of our plans (there's spies everywhere!). But one thing I did find out - it's chaos!!

The lanes are a bit easier to shoot on the snake side than the teabag side and with the lack of bunkers I imagine most teams will be stacking the teabags. There appears to be a few cheeky blind shots from that side of the field so be prepared to see some people walking out looking confused! There's only a couple bunkers that can contain the teabags also so I imagine it's going to become a race to the 50. Don't forget the coaching is going to be on the teabag side for this event so it will be interesting to see how that is used and how the snake is played.

The snake does look a little difficult to play. A lot of players have been avoiding the mini M bunker sitting on the edge of the field and been crawling straight towards the M. The snake position seemed to me like a glass cannon, harder to get into alive, harder to stay alive inside, but a lot of easy kills early in the game if allowed to do some work.

What I'm expecting to see is a lot of teams getting G'd off the break, the Snake being pushed for a high risk high reward play and people getting into the Teabag 3 pretty quickly! Should make for some interesting games as it's hard to play safe on this field.

We play quite an aggressive game usually so I'm hoping it will play to our strengths - but on this field anything can happen!

Come see us on the Div1 field on Sunday at the CPPS.

Last weekend I shot about 2.25 boxes so my running total is: 36,500

CPS Rome

The journey

2am and the alarm on my phone goes off. A clumsy hand turns it off after 3 hours sleep, before it's owner even gains consciousness. 2:30am and again the phone illuminates. This time, it gets noticed and instead of an alarm, I was terrified to find it was Dave's number on the screen as I was meant to be at his house by now. Luckily with good preparation on my side I jumped out of bed - in the clothes I was already in - picked up my bags and was on my way. Dave called again and I was panicking trying to explain / open the door / think of a way we can get on the road quicker, "Look, sort your shit out..." an unimpressed voice spoke, "OKAY!" I responded as I hung up.
8 minutes later and I'm outside Dave's house after what's usually a 15 minute drive, all the bags are lugged into my boot, Dave gets in the front and new addition Tom Stafford and special guest Jonathan Clarke of The Manchester Firm jump into Andy's car and we head off to pick up Shayne and get a move on.
We get to Gatwick in time, on the flight with no issues, a bit of shut eye later and we touchdown in Rome.

EasyJet could do with cleaning the windows.. but you get what you pay for.

After picking up the rental car we had to make our way to the tournament venue to make our training slot.
We saw quite a lot of Rome that we didn't necessarily need to see, Dave was using the map as opposed to actually using the sat-nav as he didn't get my Android phone, being the Apple fanboy that he is. Therefore we spent a lot of time lost in a terribly planned ghetto - when the roads weren't one-way I was in the left hand lane risking the lives of myself and others.. the stalling definitely didn't help either, especially on the busy junctions.

Thursday training

We got to the venue on time (just) and hooked up with Helsinki Cyclone who were ready and waiting and welcomed us onto the field. The site was a little smaller than we expected at first, but they had managed the space well. We simply played point after point with Cyclone, the London Impact guys were on site as well and so helped us out in the pits. We won quite a lot of points and at this stage our main game plan was to send one up the middle to the A shooting the snake side, 2 to push teabags and the rest to control the snake side. We tried a few different breakouts revolving around that concept but usually we had a midfield attacker and a teabag push (my role) and just anchored the snake side down - it didn't seem to be a good side to push. We were almost always shooting guys off the break. This did build our confidence but also didn't mean that we particularly knew how to play this field in the mid-end games when on the back foot or level pegging.

The field layout

I was running to the first can on the teabag side (what we call Cali) and shooting my first few balls between the pin (apple) and my mirror, before shooting my main lane at either the teabag corner runner or my mirror depending on the breakout and what my team-mate going to house (the tall temple) was shooting and/or whether or not we pushed the teabags hard and stuck an extra guy going to apple (pin) to get some aggressive movement on that side.

Home sweet home!

After we finished up at training we headed to our campsite where we had a mobile home with 6 beds and a sofa! It was pretty cosy. We made a rule that from here on, the player who got the most penalties would be sleeping on the sofa. We started to go over the game plans and what we learnt from training. We discussed a few different game plans with the same 4-5 positions being played (cali, house, orange (snakeside temple) and snake 1/corner) with a 5th person used to either attack the A or push a particular side harder. Either way my role was the same - get to Cali before moving into the teabags to start doing damage. Usually by the time I had hit my primary we had shot the teabag corner and so I was looking to dominate my mirror before moving into the first (small) teabag and working my way from there.

Paint shot: 1 box.

Friday: Prelims

We got on site with plenty of time to spare, we found a space to kit up and went to get some paint from the ever-enthusiastic Nuno of Emboscada paintball. He welcomed the team and asked for me by name - he had messaged me after I registered the team to the CPS and I signed us up to shoot his evil paint so I guessed that maybe he wanted to deal with me. "Hi yeah, Luke Williams - Reading Entity" I said. "Luke! Your pictures always make me laugh!" he said with a big grin. I knew what pictures he was on about - if you haven't already been following my dating shenanigans, I recommend you do (message me for a link!). It's spread internationally now, one day I will be an internet superstar / role model / fashion icon. Anyway, let's get back to the paintball!

Prelim 1: Druids

So we played Celtic Druids first thing on Friday. We won most of the points off the break by shooting the teabag corner and often more then moving down the field to close out the game. We changed up the game plan and tried a power play when we were 3-0 out. We sent two guys out to the corners to draw the guns wide and put 2 up the middle to try and get a couple easy G's and shock them. The point ended up with a lot of chaos followed by a slow 1v1 between me and the guy in the Orange bunker. I moved up the teabags and dominated him most of the time, only gunfighting when I was comfortable and eventually I clipped him in the hopper to win the last point 4-0.

Prelim 2: Black Legion

Black Legion shocked us. We were to and fro a couple points and they were very scrappy. Our paint seemed to be bouncing them on the break, but they started pushing the snake side really hard - not something we were used to whatsoever!! They really dominated us and our snake guys didn't have the right angles to contain the snake from the Orange / Snake corner. We tried to control them through middle moves and had a couple penalties really hurt us. During one point I was played out of position and got bounced on the way to the A shooting at the snake side to try and contain them - I missed the snake player but hit his support player meaning I was sat there waiting for the snake guy to show himself, I then put the pressure on them and we won that point, but asked not to be put in that position again as I felt I would have been hit off the break if I tried it again. It turns out where I was running in a straight line towards the center A, the correct way to do it on that field was to stay towards the teabag side before cutting across. I have learnt a lesson in this and that is to try and learn not just my own role but the roles of everyone else on the field in case I have to be played out of position.

We lost this game 4-3. It hurt but we had the best possible score going into Saturday short of winning both games so we didn't let it get us down.. too hard!

That night we talked about it and decided that the best way to combat a team like that when we weren't consistently hitting them off the break, was to match their snake aggression and just do it better than them. We didn't feel that many bunkers were able to control the snake very well at this point so that was our best option.

After our games, we watched Ronholt Blast play against Bandits, the two teams we were playing the next day. Blast looked REALLY good and in my heart of hearts I didn't feel that we could beat them. Bandits looked pretty flat in comparison and so we didn't really get a good feel for how the teams would come out the next day.

Both London Fearless and London Shock were also on site between Friday and Sunday lending us a hand in the pits. It was very much appreciated and we are very grateful!

Saturday, more prelims:

Prelim 3: Bandits

So we had watched them get smashed by Blast 4-0 the day before, but we didn't know if that was a testament to Blast or if Bandits just had a bad day. We played quite early in the morning and it was nice and cool, the temperature may have been what hindered our lane shooting against Black Legion, because we took 1-2 G's consistently every game against these guys. After that we closed most of the points quite convincingly! During this game however they did have one successful snake push which wiped out most of the team, it came down a 1v2 where I was in my Cali primary and their snake player was in the 50 and they had one guy left - who I wasn't sure was there or not at this point - in the Teabag corner. A call from Dave coaching at the sidelines confirmed he was there and I realized that I couldn't live in the bunker I was in. Logic would have dictated I try and bump out to the corner, however I realized there was a line of bunkers which blocked the snake guy out and so I moved down them, towards the middle of the field, keeping half an eye on the other tape, until I had blocked them both out of sight. The snake player started shooting at the bunker I was in a couple seconds a go so I shot him in the face (shapow!) and then I switched up to the guy on the teabag side who had just moved to the first bag, a short gunfight later and I had won it! I was elated and in the end we won the game 4-0.

I don't know why I made that move and if the guy in the teabag corner was actually on me from the start I would have been up shit creek without a paddle.. but as he was quiet and I figured I would get pinched from the corner if I made it, I went into the middle.. right or wrong, it worked at least!

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Prelim 4: Ronholt Blast

Okay so at this point we were 2:1 with a point difference of 7 (won 11 points, lost 4) so we knew that we had a very good shot at getting into Sunday regardless of this result. We had seen this team play really solid on Friday and we knew they were very established kids who were competitive at the Mills last year. I didn't think we would win.. But then we won the first point, we didn't seem to shoot anyone off the break but then a yellow flag flew in the air above the snake side so we closed the game down. Then the second point, another penalty! These guys didn't seem to want to get shot off the break even though we must have been shooting them. The 3rd point went a bit slower but we eventually won it! 3-0.. we had momentum and we were buzzing! But then the next point, there were no penalties and it was a very slow game which they won during the mid-game. They were putting a lot of paint on me and stopping me from getting out from Cali to the teabags and they had got some real estate and started closing out the points. The score was 3-2, I got to Cali and shot at my mirror, seeing him tuck in I jumped across to the teabags and could hear the paint flying past both sides of my bunker so I tucked in.. then I saw a red flag fly down the teabag wire.. I came out and got a shot on House and we closed down the last guy, to win the point.. 4-2! I couldn't believe it. After hanging the flag I was jumping up and down and hugged everyone I could.. We were definitely through to Sunday and we believed we could win the tournament!

We were this happy

During the games on Saturday, our communication was pretty on point, we were playing as a team and not just individuals. Yeah everyone contributed and had stand out games themselves, but we were winning the games through smart paintball. We ate out that night, at a place round the corner that did awesome pizza, steak and pasta. I asked two waitresses out on a date as it was International Women's day. I'm glad I did as well! I can finally cross it off the bucket list.. Not many people can say they have had the experience of being rejected by two beautiful women simultaneously. We knew we were through to Sunday and were seeded 2nd overall in the prelims, beaten only by Black Legion who beat us 4-3. We could win this.

Sunday Club

Semi-Final: Phoenix

We didn't scout Phoenix, we didn't want to underestimate them but they were seeded 3rd and so we genuinely thought we should have a good game against them. They really came at us and we lost 4-0. We couldn't work out what did it, but we concluded that the paint was a bit bouncy - spectators told us our paint was bouncing on the break. They were using the same paint but they were coming at us! They had a guy run to the teabag corner and as we were trying to shoot him on the overslide it seemed they had a guy make it into teabag 2! They smashed us up real bad and outplayed us at every aspect of the game.

It hurt pretty bad. 1st was taken from us just like that. Our dreams of winning the event were gone. It was heartbreaking at first, but whilst we had that opportunity taken away from us, we still had a shot at the podium and the ability to end the tournament on a high. We decided that in the next game, to make up for our break shooting, we were going to have to do what Phoenix did to us and shove our guns into them.

Finals (3rd-4th playoffs): Black Legion, again.

So Blast beat Black Legion and went on to play Phoenix. Who smashed them 4-1, making it feel better for us - losing to the team that had won the tournament! This meant we had to face Black Legion who beat us 4-3 on Friday with their aggressive snake play. We learnt from that and we had realized from watching other teams play that almost every team was dedicating the player in House to the snake side. We figured it can't really stop the snake from getting to the 50, but once there it can contain it by constantly raining on the snake player. Not ideal circumstances so we tried to beat them with our break shooting, along with matching their aggression. I was sat for this game, which was a call I agreed with as I didn't perform in the Phoenix game at all - I was prevented from doing my job and I wasn't sure how to deal with it! Clarkey also happened to be on the bench for the first point. Andy had taken my role as the teabag player and they carried on with House looking teabag side.
We lost the first point after they got into that snake 50 and shot Andy soon after, they then came down the teabags. Clarkey went on and played the teabag corner, making an aggressive move down the bags soon into the game and smashing the teabag side, however their snake player had done the same and we drew a penalty, leaving one of their players to hang the flag. We had lost 6 points in a row at this point.
I was put back into position and we decided to put Andy into house and play Clarkey in the teabag corner again. I was making the bump into teabag 1 as soon as Clarkey got into his bunker as he was drawing the guns out - the same move Phoenix had made against us. We got the real estate quick and Andy shot a load of pods just keeping the snake player from doing damage. We won the point nice and slow.
Next point I got to Cali and realized my gun wasn't shooting consistently for some reason. Only 2-3 shots would fire up to pressure each second and the rest would drop out. I made the decision to try and trade out with the guy in teabag 2 so charged down the teabags. I got to him and shot him in the back as he was infield, but somehow no-one had shot at me yet, so I decided to shoot at the guy in house who was looking at snake, still no-one was shooting at me, next up I shot at Cali, I watched a ball leave my gun with barely any force but it broke on his pack! Last in was Orange who had switched up and realized I was in their teabag 1 at this point! I snapped out the inside and shot Orange out too. The point was so quick that there were still 2 guns rolling from our snake side. We had equalized the game and made them look stupid after I had managed to run down the tape and shoot 4 guys without being challenged whatsoever!

We had faith now, the energy was up, we got the next point to a 3v2. I made a mental error by coming out of my bunker into someone's paint and our other player had traded out soon after making it a 1v1 with Clarkey on the teabag side and their guy on the snake side of the field. This gave them the advantage with the coach being able to talk to their player. Dave decided to stand next to their coach and just scream over him, which worked pretty well as Clarkey got the kill and made it a 3-2 game. The next point we got it down to a 3v1 decisively as a team.. Andy shot the last guy out from house as I shot the other side of his bunker and Clarkey was about to run him down, 3rd place was ours!

It's not first, but we'll take it!

Aftermath

We picked up our trophy and drank some champagne and each took a medal home! We were elated to reach Sunday club and whilst we thought we could win it all, finishing on a high and taking 3rd place was good enough. We packed up all the bags and drove back to camp before touring the city on Sunday night and throughout Monday. Unfortunately with all the bags in the car it got a bit cramped:

Pictured: The entire team sat in the car

The weekend was great, we had a fun time sampling the pizza and pasta that Italy had to offer (because they didn't really do much else in the way of food), saw some sights, had a laugh and most importantly made our first podium in a Semi Pro division. We have high hopes and expectations of the year to come for Reading Entity. We're capable of a good performance and we know that now. We just have the CPPS to look forward to in the meantime!

Over the 3 days we shot 20 cases of paint (plus some left over paint the Fearless guys left to us) so I would say about 21 cases overall. I would say that although I played a lot of points, I didn't load more than 1 pod in most of them as the front player, compared to the guys laying down the lanes. I'm going to estimate it at about 3 cases overall. Plus the one from Thursday training makes 4 cases over the weekend. Running total: 32,000.

Final anecdote:

On the way through passport control, the border staff asked to see the trophy and read it saying "paint ball??". Clarkey said "Yeah like shooting people" and did gun signs with his hands.

Fucking Clarkey. 

Pre-event Training 02/03/2014

Yesterday most of the team got together for 1 last training session before we head to Rome early Thursday morning. Other than the 1 hour we have against Helsinki Cyclone on-site on Thursday between 1pm-2pm this was the last chance we had to train before our first tournament of the year for the team.

The Firm obviously had a good time training with us last weekend as they decided to come back, and in greater numbers. With them at the field we mainly scrimmed again all day and the points were to and fro which is a good sign. Although both teams had a few different players mixing in compared to last week. Our communication sounded twice as good as it was last year and we're starting to come together ready for our first event.

I'm still coming out the tail end of some man flu so my head wasn't completely in it most of the day, but I was still getting some G's so it wasn't all bad. I made a few mental errors, the main one I found was trying to bump out to my secondary on the teabag side after only checking off one of the guys who can stop me, forgetting that my mirror / someone else could still shoot me on the bump across. I'm glad I made those mistakes and realized as it will now be on the forefront of my mind when in Rome.

I've found it hard to get excited for the event as my mind has been all over the place thinking about what needs to be done before we leave etc etc. But now it's all coming together and we know what we're doing, I'm getting pretty pumped up to play my first event abroad.. ever!

I will make sure the Reading Entity page is updated as we go along with the scores and if possible I'll post a write up after every day - assuming I can get online!

Yesterday I used 2 cases of paint, making the running total 24,000