CPPS Round 2: 26-27th April '14

Saturday

So on Friday night I had gone to see an old favorite band of mine; Alkaline Trio. As I wasn't driving I had a couple ciders and as I make poor decisions when I'm properly cydrated I ended up attending my local pub and not getting to sleep until stupid o'clock in the morning.

My alarm clock went off at stupid o'clock+3 hours and after I had spend the latter part of the evening drinking water I decydrated and rehydrated and set off to Parkey & Kayleigh's place to pick up the 20 cases of training paint we bought from #TheCribb. Joined by Shayne and Dave we then met the rest at The Cribb so that we could share car space yadda yadda drive to the venue bla bla same old long car journeys that every paintballer has to endure. I've found there's only two ways to keep myself awake on a paintball car journey - the first is to have someone to chat with and engage my brain. The second is to sing music loudly.

Unfortunately for Harry he is of a chatty disposition and so he had to put up with my conversation as opposed to my stunning set of vocal chords.

Anyway.. back to the paintball.

We rock up at CPPS juuuuust in time for our 10-12 slot for training. We were mainly playing against London Fearless and we were trying to work out how was best to play the field. We did start over-complicating our game plans and devoting players to defensive roles to try and stop the other teams attackers - however this led to me struggling to get past the first teabag without any edging support. Our standard break was to have me go to teabag 1, Apple & Orange crossed up to prevent the snake / teabag pushes and 2 players to push the snake side. Every now and then we would commit the 5th player to switch to teabag side instead, but what we found was that whenever we were trying to attack we were getting shot making the moves and we would either lose the point or the last 2-3 players would win the point down bodies out of skill alone. Individual skills win points but well executed game plans and team play win games and therefore tournaments.

Fearless to be fair gave us quite a wake up call. We were turning up to this event expecting to get back into the Elite division with the ease that we had during the prelims/semis last event, yet here we were getting served by the team that just got relegated from where we wanted to be. So we had two different game plans that both included crossing the Apple and Orange - both of those players were shooting a ton of paint and not always getting their containing job done, the only difference in the plans was to move that 5th player snake or teabag side. After our slot was over we moved onto the free-for-all training field.

Again we lost more points than we would want to and whilst we won a fair few of the points, again, down to individual skills and not good team play. We left the field pretty beat up and weren't sure how to adjust the game plans. We went back to the hotel rooms, showered up and did what any team lacking inspiration would do. We went to Nando's.

Full of chicken and with spicy bellies after playing some wing roulette, we sat down in one of the rooms and decided to break down the field again. My argument towards playing this field was that without any width on the teabag side, it was a struggle to move past Orange's crossfield lockdown in order to start getting some G's and real estate. I would often have two guns on me. Therefore I suggested keep everything the same, however put someone out into the corner and then move the Apple player into teabag 1, that way we had the option to bully Orange to get some movement up the field. I still felt that Orange should stay locking the bags and we should keep 2 players on the snake side. Liam going to snake 1 (or god if getting shot on the break) and Shayne backing him up either in God, Soho or the corner. 

Shayne however had a different plan, he felt that we weren't getting the job done with the Orange locking down the bags and we would be better off using that player to attack. Shayne's plan was to stack 3 players Teabag side, with me breaking out to the corner (or teabag one before moving out to the corner if I was getting shot on the break), Andy getting into Apple and shooting teabag side before looking to move into the teabag 1 after I made my move, a 2nd Apple player would then shoot a snake side lane then switch to lock down the bags once Andy had moved out. The snake side was still the same, Shayne delaying behind Orange to shoot a lane before moving to Soho or the back corner to mirror the other team.

We decided to roll out with Shayne's plan and see what happened - we called it "The Shayne Plan".

Me and Dave stayed in a room with a double bed and two extra single beds. We shared the double.

Sunday

So after a good 8 hour sleep I felt fresh as a daisy after making up for the lack of sleep the night before. We got to the site and found our pits, got some paint and got ready for..

Game 1: Lethal Bizzle

So we got out on the field and executed the Shayne plan. I went straight out to the corner and Andy moved out to the teabag 1 quite quickly. They kept running a guy to Soho, the snake side can, which can easily be eliminated from teabag 2. With the two of us on that side we were able to get an early G on the teabag side, move up the field and win our first 2 points quite convincingly. The next point we changed ends and I don't know what was going on in our pits because I was straight out to the start gate and only had 2 guys come out and join me. We lost the point because we're not consistently great at winning 3v5's. I was pretty pissed off because I don't understand how the rest of the guys dropped the ball so hard. I was told to calm down and we refreshed ourselves for the next point. We won it making it 3-1 however they then came up to make it 3-2, I was shot off the break (unlucky) and shot soon after getting into my primary (like a helmet) in those points however we then wrapped it up to win 4-2. It was a tough game, they didn't give it over easily, but thanks to the scheduling gods we had no time to break it down and reassess what was going on as our next game was literally the very next set!

Game 2: Reloaded Naughty Bullets

We played these guys a couple times in training and they gave us some good points - again we haven't played them before so I was wondering how we would fare. I was shot on the break trying the corner and Andy thought he saw an opportunity to make a middle move after shooting my mirror, however I watched Apple catch him on the pack which he didn't notice and he got a 1-4-1 penalty which we couldn't fight back from.
I can't recall if it was due to a penalty but I know that for some reason we played the second point with 4 players. It turns out we can win 4v5's as we put an equalizer on the board. I had stopped breaking to corner as I was getting shot and started moving to the first teabag before either moving up the bags and letting Andy follow, or bumping into the corner to get some width.
The 3rd game we won playing our game making it 2-1.
We then won another point, where I had moved up the bags and got a lot of cross-field kills before mugging out the back corner. I still have no idea why he did it but Andy was following me and also decided to shoot the corner guy after I had already eliminated him, I think he must have decided he was going to get the kill and couldn't handle being second to the mark so decided to do it anyway. He was running so fast that he nearly ran out of bounds so I grabbed him by the jersey and pulled him back infield.
The score was 3-1 so we had changed ends. I moved out to the teabag 1 before shortly making a bump into teabag 2 as no guns were on me. I heard "OUUUUUUT!" and the nearby ref running towards me, then "OUUUUUT!" as he ran to Andy and eliminated him.. and then again to another player, and then another! Our snake player was already shot out so the field was empty and I believe Andy asked the ref what the hell was going on - where he then gave us another penalty, meaning we started the next point with 4 players again. I had no idea what was going on - I didn't feel any paint coming at me at any point in the game hence bumping to the secondary so early, however Dave spoke to the head ref who said the 3 for 1 was called on the teabag player for wiping. I have 2 theories on this; either I had a hit on me somewhere that I didn't notice and the ref perceived me sliding into the bunker as an attempt to wipe - or the ref wasn't too keen on the double mugging in the last point and so wanted to teach us a lesson. I heard a couple people in the division making jokes about the towel-head ref 'striking again' so I guess he had been pretty harsh on his calls.
Everyone on the team was pissed at me and I don't know whether or not they believed me at the time but I claimed innocence. The ironic thing was the past few points I was taking bounces and having to ask for paint checks. I would have held my hands up if I was trying to lose a hit. One of the guys (Dave or Andy I can't remember) told me to sit the next point but then they made the call that Me, Andy, Shayne and Dave would play the penalty point. I was giving the ref no excuses this time and I had a chip on my shoulder. I got to teabag 1, we lost a body and they made it into their teabag 2, Orange was on me most of the game and so I was soaking up paint and posted waiting on this other guy. It became G2 and I heard the call "Teabag 2, Apple, Orange has moved to snake corner" and with that I moved to take out their player in the bags and give us back some real estate. Instead of running past I got into the same teabag and shot him over the top, before shooting left to catch their corner player out and then we pinched Apple out of the bunker to wrap it up 4-2. 

2 very scrappy games but we had won them. Certainly not the 4-0's we had been dishing out last round - the field layout being a patient one and the penalties were really hurting us.

We had a huuuge ass break before game 3 so we watched some Elite games - it was good to see London Samurai were holding their own, they weren't winning games but they got a draw and didn't get 4-0'd by any of the teams - which when breaking into the elite division is hard enough in itself as we found out last year!

Game 3: Stoke Quest AD 

I played the first 2 points and we won them quite easily, after that I sat the last two points for Adam to get some spins. I can't remember too much of this game as I believe it was just quite a methodical paintball game where we moved up the field on them, then I started helping out in the pits - it didn't seem as difficult as the others. 

We won it 4-0. We figured we would have a big break before our semi's as we did last round so we were all mooching around.. until one of the guys from Snatch came up to me telling me we were on field and panic set in.. I got back to the pits to see Parkey (coach for the day) was in his paintball gear ready to jump on with the guys who hung around by the pits! But everyone got back in time and we put our starting 5 out for our Semi final game. As we ranked 1st in the prelims we were against the 4th seed who just so happened to be:

Semi finals: Lethal Bizzle; back with a vengeance

We went out to play our first point against the team we beat 4-2 earlier. Andy did say no matter what we did before, that game means nothing and it's all about this next game. We went out there and we lost the first point.. I got shot on the break testing to see if I could make the corner - their shooters had evidently dialed in their lanes as the day had gone on!
2nd point and I got into the teabag 1 and got shot straight out of my bunker by my mirror like a helmet. The game tied up though with a double elimination so it was a no-point - we played it again.
2nd point mk II and we tied it up 1-1.
3rd point and we took another win to make it 2-1. It was getting close to time with only a minute or so left on the clock, we knew they were going to come at us so I planned to get to teabag 1 then look infield to shoot anyone making any midfield moves, by the time I got into my bunker I saw the THREE MIDDLE players on my team walking off!! I was in disbelief and there was just me and whoever was left out near the snake, they came down the teabags and the centre of the field and I was the last guy left. Their bag player went to mug me down the tape so I started shooting to try and catch him first, he switched and ran round the inside of the bunker just as someone else was moving down the snake side and just as another player came round the tape side of my bunker. I was covered in paint in my face and my back and my gun. I believe they got a penalty for over-aggressive shooting but it didn't matter as they had 4 guys on the field. They tied the game up 2-2 and there was about 45 seconds left on the clock. The next game was explosive, I can't even tell you what happened but I know I got to teabag 1, shot at my mirror after checking for infield runners and whilst I hit my mirror, teabag 3 had come out and blasted me in the face. It was carnage and panned out to be a 1v1, however both Andy and the Lethal Bizzle player ran for the buzzer. Andy got to their buzzer just before the Lethal player, but he went over the top of the buzzer as he did it with so much momentum. There was an argument but I thought it was over. I went over to see Dave chatting to the head ref who said - if the game time was over, it's an overtime point. I had to run back and put my pack back on and sort my shit out. As I was airing my gun I realized I was bleeding on my sleeve from my mouth. We took to the field. I looked at my guys and I could see that we all wanted it. As far as we were concerned, we thought we had lost the game and therefore were walking home. However we had been given another chance. I was pretty dazed after the last point but somehow I entered a bit of a zen-mode and was calmer than I had been all day. I got to teabag 1, Andy got a G off the break and I bumped out to the corner and shot Orange out before moving up and shooting Apple. The last player was left in the snake 1 and I kept my gun on him whilst our other 3 guys were moving up on him. We won the point that we thought we had lost.

I felt bad for Lethal Bizzle in a way, they had definitely come out with high hopes and they had really upped their game against us! I suppose the paintball gods were with us and gave us some karma back from last event. Fair play to them too for being good sports, I was being a bit of a retard at the fill station as my head was no longer with me, I was exhausted and feeling pretty beat up, one of the guys came up and helped me detach my gun and bleed the bottle out. It takes real character to be a gent to the team that just beat you out of the tournament and I wont forget that. If any of those guys are reading this, particularly the guy who came round and mugged me out, I want to apologize as when you said sorry for the overshooting, I straight up blanked you intentionally. I'm sure you can understand why I didn't want to hear it, but I do understand it's all in good sport.

We packed up our shit and moved on to the Elite field where we watched the Tigers v Nexus final.

Finals: Lucky 15s Mustangs

So we made it to the most important game of the tournament: The promotion game. It had been a brawl to get to this stage and I was still unsure about this next one. Yeah we 4-0'd this team last time, but that was in the semi's where they seeded 4th in the prelims. These guys convincingly topped their group and looked pretty good on the field when I saw them in the prelims. Parkey had been watching their games and said they had been consistently hitting the teabag corner runner on the break, so I decided just to play safe into bag 1 for this game.

They were more aggressive down the bags than us and also took the snake. It went down to a 2v3 in their favour however Andy managed to G their bag player and also traded out with the snake player after I had bumped into the teabag corner. I didn't know the snake was out though so I started shooting towards the snake and asked Dave who was coaching what I had. Dave just said snake's a G, it's a 1v1, he's in the snake corner. I just stayed still for a moment looking over the top of my bunker in case he was moving about. Dave reconfirmed he was still in the corner and I edged out slowly towards the bags until I could see the top of the corner can rising above the God bunker. I was low and I shot some paint over God to see if I could get a cheap kill. "OUUUUTT!!" I hear as a ref ran towards him pointing. I was ecstatic with that blind shot, I honestly had no idea if it would hit him or not so I rolled the dice and it turned out to become the easiest 1v1 I've ever had to win in a tournament situation. Even so, that was a scrappy game and could have gone either way. We shouldn't be relying on those individual skills to win these points!

They came back and won a slow point against us. I got sloppy as I shot at my mirror in Teabag 1, putting him in before wrapping to try and dominate Orange and move, however my mirror just came straight back out and hit me. The rest of the game was slow but they wittled us down. They got the dominance on the bags and beat us methodically.

1-1 we then came out, got some G's off the break, one of their players came down the tape to mug me however Dave just happened to switch from the snake side to catch him out and I had tucked right into my bunker just about surviving. We made it a quick point to make it 2-1. The next game I moved out to teabag 1 and then bumped out to the corner, it was a slow point and Andy had fucked up his bump to the teabag 1 by tripping, dropping his hopper in the mud, scrambling into the bunker, diving out to grab his hopper and then spent a long time trying to clean it out and sort his shooter. They had bumped into the teabag 2 but fortunately our Apple player was shooting at him so he dived quite wide and I put my paint on his pack before getting some real estate. There were 3 of us left and they just had 1 guy in the snake corner. I said "G4, lock it down, run the time" and I just shot to the left of his bunker so that he couldn't bump but so that I wasn't going to hit him. Eventually though he was either shot or they threw the towel in making it 3-1 with 35 seconds on the clock. 

We knew they were going to come for us and so we decided to lock it down, I didn't even bother going to teabag 1, we doubled up both the back bunkers and I was shooting for the wide teabag player, after seeing him walk off (me and Dave were both rolling on that lane) I saw a ref crouched down in front of the M and it looked like he was checking a player out so I launched to try and shoot him, just as Andy also left the same bunker to make moves down the middle. I got past the M and found the ref was actually looking at a guy in the Meduza on the snake side, so I shot him just as I got shot by their snake player. My boys made short work of him as he was shooting me off the field and we scored the last point to make it 4-1.

After hugging the appropriate teammates, then their girlfriends, then calling my mum, I took a selfie. Some would say the selfie should have come first. They are correct. But we all do stupid things when we're emotional.

It was a tough game - the 4-1 score didn't give the 15's credit for how hard they made it for us. But we did it. After the game was called I was elated and I'm pretty sure I did a girly jump in joy. But no-one saw that.

The 15's guys whilst understandably not happy with the result were good enough to congratulate us and shake hands on a good game. Parkey who was watching and coaching the game said the 15's did look really good on the field and to be honest it was only small mistakes which we took advantage of. Had I missed that 1v1 shot and had the fast 35 second point not gone in our favor but theirs, we could have been looking at a completely different result. 

We did the whole podium thing and I had no idea what I was talking about and gave a speech that was basically just drivel that I thought I should say off the top of my head. It was like the Smart Parts Ion of podium speeches. You could argue that it got the job done but in reality it was pretty shit and you would take any other gun over it. But nevermind.. we were happy.

We let Liam use the Scottish flag, but didn't let him have the champagne.. Scot's need incentives to keep them from alcoholism. Thanks to Peter Bourne of Full Bore Images for letting me steal this photo from his facebook page without his permission, cheers Pete.

To wrap it up / the extra bits

We're back to where we want to be and we do need to thank Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre for helping us get to the level we're at with their awesome training field. Do come and see us sometime and if you have been there before, you should see how much it's improved in recent months - air station in the pits next to the field, good grass, brand new 2014 mills field and as always, decent toilets and hot food / drinks available. 

A big shout out to Ainsley and the crew who have been putting in the hard work and putting up with us. The ref's seemed to be making the right calls and were being reasonable (except that guy that 3-4-1'd me.. but psh whatever, benefit of the doubt..). Everyone appeared to be having fun and the scheduling seemed to run like clockwork.. nothing to complain about here! 

Good work to my friend Kayleigh and her Ultraviolets who placed 6th in their division and a big thanks to everyone that helped us in the pits as well as those that came up to ask how we were getting on throughout the day. 

So at training I played pretty much every point and the team of 6 shot 16 boxes. I'm going to say I shot 3 of them adding an extra 6,000 to the tally.. The team played 30 points on Sunday in total including no-points and I played 28 of those.. as we opened 27 cases in total (a couple boxes are in pots and bags waiting to be used next training session) It would work out about 5 cases, however playing at the front, shooting less and getting shot on the break some points I would I'm going to say I shot about 3.5 cases making it
6,000 + 7,000 = 13,000 all weekend so the running total is 80,000 at the end of April. Will I hit 100k in May? Who knows?.. Who cares?

April Training & The Start of REC

First of all sorry for the slow update - I know people out there are constantly refreshing this page waiting for the next bite of my life.. probably. I've been helping my buddy and teammate, Parkey, by tidying up some of the copy on his website: http://www.cuttingedgecarbon.co.uk/ - check it out, there's some pretty flash stuff on there and he's not even paying me to plug it for him.. Upon saying that I do want to point out that unlike some so-called 'credible' outlets, I am actually open to bribery and will endorse your product for cash, even if I don't believe in it. Man's gotta eat.

April 12-13th

Most teams would have been taking a breather after the first leg of the millennium-series, but Reading Entity were up at Cribbs for a 2-days of skills this weekend. We had also openly invited players to join us for the weekend so they can look to practice with us as part of our new project: REC (Reading Entity Cribbs). 

We are creating this team as we do know that as time goes on we will lose players as real life catches up with people, we know we wont have Liam next year who has been a great pick up for us on the snake side of the field and university is catching up with some of the other guys. A lot of teams seem to acquire players from other teams, however the South-West isn't (yet) a hotbed of up and coming talent for us to pick players of the caliber we desire. Therefore we have decided to create this team as a training squad that will train with the main team as often as they can. This year we have told players looking to join that they should stay with their current teams (if they're playing elsewhere) for tournament experience, however train with us as often as they can. Next year we intend for REC to be a competitive team in it's own right, with the most dedicated players earning spins with the first team at CPPS / Major tournaments when they are ready.

It was good to see some eager faces turn up and we practiced mainly gunskills - snapshooting, holding/aggression drills and 2v2s up the teabags.

We did play a couple points amongst ourselves too!

It was a refreshing change to work on some technical skills as for the past 5-6 weekends straight I was either with Entity scrimming against the Firm, playing in Rome and the CPPS as well as scrimming with the Firm and playing St Tropez with them. Whilst I do feel that game experience is the one element I need the most, it is still important to stay fresh with your skills.

For some reason I was shaved. That wasn't in the schedule.

2 cases shot each day so that makes 4 for the weekend!

April 20-21st

This bank holiday weekend I was going to attempt doing a 4-dayer, however there were some big developments that came up. First off our lovely hosts at Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre had gotten themselves a brand new Mills field! The ladies GB team had booked the Saturday as a private day so unfortunately I couldn't go and play, but also we celebrated the inaugural 2014 Apple Tree Cottage barbecue at my place on Friday which couldn't really be missed.

Like seriously, it couldn't be missed as I posted pictures all over facebook. I'm not sorry, I got naked and had a lot of fun.

Too much fun! Note: I am not endorsed by Henniker *cough* yet, I just like the hat.

So Sunday we went up and there was a good crowd of people to train with. Some of the new members of the Nexus family were up and so we gave them a few scrims on the new field on the Bitburg layout that we will be playing at CPPS this weekend coming. 

Might have been better to take the picture before pushing the Medusas over..

The layout seems fun, I didn't get challenged much moving up the teabag side but I'm sure the scrim session next Saturday before the tournament will set me straight. The snake is almost in a straight line, should be some interesting battles on the wire.. I'm excited to see how it pans out this round as it will be the first time seeing the snake side looking relatively normal and without any coaching!

Anyway Sunday was used for a bit of scrimming and I used 2 cases, the weather was a bit windy however which was a shame.

Monday we focused more on skills and breaking down the field. Starting off with some snap practice and then moving onto some 1v1 / 2v2 snake dominance drills as well as some 2v2s on the teabag side to get a grasp of each side of the field. I then finished the day with what we call a gauntlet. I'm going to come back with some more articles regarding training ideas after the CPPS this weekend and it's write up.

I shot 1.5 boxes on Monday so that means 3.5 cases for this weekend and 4 cases last weekend, so 13,000 which boosts my running total to 67,000! Getting closer to that 100k. CPPS is coming up so hopefully we'll be a lot closer!

CPPS

Before I go, a quick collection of my thoughts for CPPS coming up: Our group is:

Lethal Bizzle
Reloaded Naughty Bullets
& Stoke Quest AD

To be fair we haven't played any of these teams but as we have learnt over the past couple of years, we aren't going to underestimate anyone we play. When you do that the paintball gods don't smile upon you!

I'm 'modestly confident' though, everyone seems up for winning the event and we haven't taken our foot off the throttle. 

Sunny..ish St Tropez..ish 3-6th April

This weekend was a weekend of a few firsts for me. Not only hadn't I played a Millennium abroad, only Campaign last year, but I hadn't really guested a Major or even a 'serious' tournament before. Yeah I started out guesting back in 2011 when I was coming back, but that was just with throw-together teams struggling for players at CPPS. It's a bit different when you're looking at one of the most competitive teams in the UK playing internationally.

The Manchester Firm only had 5 players going to the event before they asked me if I could come along, I was asked just after the CPPS two weeks ago. I had to sort some things out with work and by Wednesday/Thursday that week I confirmed I could do it. I spoke to Andy before I made any decisions, although I told him I really wanted to do it, he didn't seem happy about it. His concern is that if people start guesting for other teams, it not only opens doors for players to leave the team for 'greener pastures' but it also takes away from the development of our team if players start putting tournaments elsewhere above training and tournaments with Entity. I told him that guesting with the Firm wasn't going to get in the way as I have the time and money to do both and the dates have worked out pretty well so there's no need to clash. I also reassured him that I'm not looking to move, I believe in our team now that we have a solid core who are putting in the work.

I was asked if I could come to training last weekend (29-30th March) however it was our very own Harry Pitchers' wedding on the Saturday evening and so whilst going to train at Cribbs was feasible, I didn't feel up to travelling to Stafford after the celebrations - plus the cost factor came into it. Ideally I would have gone to train with them before the event to gel with the team a bit, but real life rears it's ugly head every now and then unfortunately!

Wednesday I made the trip to Clarkie's place in Stafford and we stayed up until 2am before setting off to Liverpool's John Lennon Airport.

Thursday

We touched down in Nice and got the rental car. When we got to the venue (we had on-site accommodation in the holiday village) they were obviously having their lunch / siesta / whatever celebration that means that the French don't work, so we played headers and volleys while we waited. It turns out I'm incredible at being bad at football. We eventually got to the static caravan and it was very reminiscent of the one we stayed in in Rome. I shotgunned a bed and we went to watch some teams training and checked in with the guys at the Empire booth.

The Firm are an 'All in' Empire factory team and so use Empire products exclusively from head to toe. From what I had seen elsewhere, I got the impression that most sponsorship deals tend to mean little more than a multi-pack discount for teams that can put a bunch of players together to provide more buying power, however in this case it seemed to be more than that. The people I met in the Empire tent seemed to be bending over backwards to help the guys in any way they could. Not only did they offer the usual tech services you now expect at a major event, but it's the little things like letting the team keep pods behind the tent that really help a team on a weekend like this one.

We went shopping for food and water and sorted ourselves some spaghetti for dinner at the chalet.

Friday

Our first game was at midday so we got a chance to watch some games before getting our pods and paint from Empire and kitting up.

Prelim 1: Hellys Montpellier

This was a close game. Of course being the guest to the team I wasn't going to be on the starting 5, however as the game was very close they kept rolling the same team each point so I didn't actually play any points. I understood why, the points were back and forth and they weren't sure how I would play or how to use me and so didn't want to risk losing the game by putting me in. Nevertheless the guys won it 4-3.

Prelim 2: Ipnoz Paris

Wozza apologized for me not getting to play the first game but I told him it's okay I understood, we moved on to the second prelim game just an hour or so later against Ipnoz Paris. I played in Clarkie's position running out to the snake corner and controlling the snake-side tape. It was noticed in the first game that Bishop, breaking to the first temple on the snake side, was shooting the teabag side and therefore not making moves into the snake when he could have been. I told him that as his support I'll look for the move for him and tell him when to go at which point he'd have to trust me he can make the move.

I got to the corner each game and easily dominated my side and got Bish into the snake quickly and easily. To be honest we were rolling these guys and it was an easy game. In the final point however, Wozza told me to take his spot attacking the teabags. Playing the bags is what I've done with Entity pretty much every tournament and so I was a lot more comfortable doing this. I broke out to the first teabag, purposefully oversliding it (I love good astro turf!) so that I could scramble into the 2nd teabag and get to work. Within seconds I was in the teabag 50 and made a bunch of crossfield shots and it was G4 (or '44' as the Firm call it) meaning there was one guy left. That one guy was just rinsing my bunker so I just kept calm, focused on the sound of his gun and the coaches in case he tried to make a move and I remember thinking to myself "shoot my bunker all you want buddy, I got at least 3 guys coming for you".

When it comes to closing out a game, it is very easy to get over aggressive and keep trying to farm as many kills as you can get for yourself. Whilst it's obviously beneficial to your team if you can, more often than not it's better that you just stay alive when the guns are on you so that your team are able to make the moves necessary to safely close it out.

That's exactly what they did and we won the game 4-0.

We went out for a steak and we were confident about the next day, we were pretty certain we were through to Sunday now but we still had to play London Tigers 2 the next morning.

Saturday

Prelim 3: London Tigers 2

We said before the game that we can try and be a bit experimental with the game plans. However Tigers came out hard and the guys played some pretty tight points that the Firm won only with individual skill and not as a team effort. One point was won where Clarkie jumped over the snake beam to run down the highway (infield of the tape-side bunkers) before jumping over their snake beams shooting their snake player out and tucking into the knuckle, waiting for their corner runner to run him down, making it a trade out. Off the back of that there was a 2v1 in favour of the firm, Bish was in the snake bunker and the other remaining firm player (Barlow?) was in the teabags. It was a low paint situation and the last Tigers player was in the teabag corner and Bish pulled off an incredible crossfield snapshot that blew up on the guys pack.

The score got to 3-1 in the Firm's favour and there was only a minute and 30 seconds on the clock. I had been sitting up until this point where Wozza asked me to switch out for him. He was getting shot when making the move into the teabags and they were obviously putting up a good lane there on the break, so he told me to break short to the tall cake on that side. However Barlow deduced that as they had to come at us to score two quick points, they probably wont be putting up strong lanes so told me to run straight to the first bag. I did as I was told and got shot on the break. Tigers scored the point and had about 40 seconds to spare to win another one. Markie told me to sit the next point and the guys went out and held out for the 40 seconds with 2 guys left on the field when the time ran out to win 3-2.

I was a bit annoyed that I was told to sit after getting shot on the break taking a risk I was told to take. I was also concerned that that was my weekend over - if I'm not getting many spins in a game that didn't necessarily matter, then how many points am I going to get on the important Sunday knock out games?

Sunday

Quarter Finals: Redball Paris

Sunday is when the real tournament starts. Not making it to Sunday is a bitter pill to swallow, but fortunately not one I have had to worry about in my major league experience so far. We set up and I didn't expect to be played so got busy in the pits potting up and wiping down the players. We were playing against Redball Paris and they scored the first point. The points were very close, the firm were getting G's off the break but weren't closing them out well. Before I knew it the game was 3-0 and I was playing in Clarkie's position, however instead of running straight to the corner I was going to the first bunker at the snake side, dominating my mirror and then moving out to the corner. I did okay in my first point and we won making it 3-1. The next point we changed ends and I was doing the same role, however we didn't get that early G on the snake side and there were two guys in my mirror. I was dominating both of them fortunately, but then I saw back centre's hopper sticking out of his bunker and tried to get a shot on it, unfortunately my first shots missed and he tucked in. I looked back towards my mirror and was dominating them again, however one of them had moved forward into the snake. I saw a couple guys walking off the field to my left and so switched to look that way in case someone was running through, as I did that their snake player ran down the highway and shot up bish before shooting me and then they closed out the game.

Tournament over.

I realized as soon as I was walking off the mistakes that I had made in that game. I shouldn't have been looking to get that G on the back centre, allowing my mirror to move up into the snake. I also should have stayed on the wire protecting Bish whilst he looked infield. If I hadn't of let that happen, there was a chance we could have worked up the field doing damage and played another point.

It's a shame I made those mistakes and I could tell that everyone was disappointed in the result and also with my performance in that last point. You kinda want to explain to everyone that you understand the mistake you made and reassure them that you won't make it again.. but it was too late. The tournament was over. Paintball is an unforgiving game.

Unfortunately being the guest I didn't get much pick of where I play. With Entity I can go to a tournament knowing I'm playing most, if not all, of the points and playing on the teabag side, usually as the attacker. However as the 6th team member in a 5-man game, you just don't know where you're going to be put. I could argue that I played really well in the 1 point against Ipnoz where I was playing in my usual position on the bags, however at the same time we were rolling them wherever I was playing on the field.

CPL Field

We watched the pro games and put some side bets on the winners / the final scores to make it more interesting to watch. The highlights of the day included:

- Some guy who's name sounded like En Garde! from some OD2 team that no-one knows coming 2nd in the 1v1 tournament, beating 3 CPL players including Dec from Nexus and Greg Siewers from Houston Heat!! Getting beat by Oliver Lang.

- Art Chaos getting a surprise beating from Outrage Valence. I think everyone had money on Chaos making it into the finals, but instead it was an all American matchup between heat and impact. I had drawn Heat out of the hat for the sweepstakes the team put together for the final 8, but Impact were playing solid all weekend so unfortunately I didn't win the megabucks!

I enjoyed my first time in France. Hopefully the Firm can make more use of me next time in Bitburg, I can understand a potential player looking to work his way onto a team is unlikely to see many points to start with, but as I was asked by them to come out and play, I was hoping to be used a bit more. But nontheless way a big thank you to everyone on the team for having me along and accommodating for me and also to the lovely people at Empire for supplying the goods!

Also cheers to Pete of Full Bore Images for the feedback and taking snaps.

Shot count, I can only estimate on this one but I would say I shot 1.5 cases overall, I was rolling my gun a lot.

Total: 54,000 so far