Scrimming with ECI Veterans 25th May

ECI Veterans are a rebuilding team, just as we were last year, coming back from disbanding for a couple years. We hadn't really seen them at the CPPS so far this year or anywhere else they've been, however they did head to the EPBF French Open in March where they placed first in Division 2, knocking on the door of the pro teams such as Ton Tons & Outrage in Division 1.

I personally didn't know what to expect from them, never seen them play, wasn't sure how many were veterans and how many would be new blood. They had asked us before Sunday if we wanted to do the open training session on the Thursday in Belgium before the CPS and I wasn't too sure as I didn't know how these guys would challenge us compared to another team from the Semi Pro division. Turns out they challenged us pretty fucking well.

We were there to scrim and build on our team play, we didn't necessarily want to win all the points so long as when we were losing we were going down as a team, communicating well. To boost this communication we decided not to use coaching for the entire session. We also wanted to give as many reps as possible to Adam on the snake side, as we are looking at losing Liam at the end of the season when he gets back to his university studies. We had already played the field a lot on the lead up to and including the CPPS round 2 so we didn't need to work out breakouts or anything like that. The session was also good for getting our less-committed players some reps playing with the team, with Harry, Malone & Parkey getting some reps in as well as a guest appearance from Kayleigh who played a few points with us.

We came out with our relatively conservative breakout - knowing it's a lockdown field, however ECI were pushing it pretty hard. We were using training paint and not walking on bounces - amongst ourselves we always walk on bounces but when scrimming against another team it's best to only walk on breaks unless your doing breakout drills, as it can cause more unnecessary "I shot you!" arguments. This meant our lock down approach wasn't really working as well as it had in the tournaments, giving ECI the edge with their aggressive snake play.

ECI also threw in some practice of winning 30 second points, making some super aggressive moves down the middle and cutting us up. Whilst I do see the importance of practicing winning points in 30 seconds, in a tournament situation your opponent is also going to be aware that you only have 30 seconds to score the point and so will be breaking out to counter that. As opposed to ourselves who were under the assumption we were playing normal points and so breaking out accordingly.

Training at Bricketwood is a bit different with the astro turf. The sun was out however there was still a puddle behind one of the teabag corners which I had a run in with. I decided I would avoid it by running wide but when people are shooting at you you tend to throw that out the window and I dived (flopped) chest first into the puddle that consisted of stagnant water and rotting paint. 

Pictured: Sun and good times. Not pictured: Asswater and copious spitting until I felt safe from disease.

I personally used the scrimming session to be played out of position, instead of always playing the teabag attack I played a few points in the snake, playing the insert (not my favorite role) and sometimes the back player / middle attacker.

Playing the snake was fun, I got a few G's from it the few points I was in there, however the importance of relying on your teammates to communicate with you was massive. I got 2 G's shooting guys on my side of the field from Snake 1 in my point in there, before I started to wrap thinking my side was clear, however their snake corner got a blind shot on me - I had no idea anyone was in there! It's a lot more heads down than playing the teabag attack, I'm used to personally having a good field awareness from the taller bunkers which isn't gained as easily from a non-coached snake side.

Playing the insert was hard. Instead of trying to contain their attack I was also then wrapping to see if I could get shots on my mirror, trying to do too much cost me where I would get shot by the teabag 1 when pushing the wrap. I should have just kept on him and carried on doing my job. I feel that playing predominantly the teabag attacker has given me an instinct for looking for the kills which I haven't yet conditioned myself to switch off when playing the insert.

Being the 3rd player however is a lot more fun. Shooting lanes off the break is something I've come to enjoy as it's only recently come natural for me to be able to put my paint almost exactly where I want it to go off the break; choosing which lane to shoot is still a dice game when you're looking at multiple options however. From this position I was able to watch for their middle moves, either shooting them out or making them have to stop somewhere they didn't want to, but also it gave me opportunities to mirror their moves through the center of the field or to run through and eliminate the threat with a counter-punch. It's fun getting to make these moves from these positions, you get an extra level of field awareness in the tall back center bunkers making it easier to break the games open.

In one point from this position they had made it to the teabag side of the M and were preventing us from moving so I made the move to run through and trade out with him. After coming through their side of the M and shooting him, I switched hands as I saw someone making a move on the other side of me, I thought I had shot him out as I had caught him by suprise and he fumbled mid move to shoot back at me.. however I must have bounced and/or missed as he shot back at me. Thinking I was in the right and in the heat of the moment I went to carry on going, causing a bit of a fallout with him but we talked it out on the way off the field. If you're reading - sorry pal!

There was another heated moment involving myself where we had shot most of their players out and I was about to make a move to shoot out the last guy in the teabags as I heard people shout to end the game. The guy I was about to shoot was arguing that he was still in - little did I know that he was arguing with Parkey who thought he had already hit him, so as he was shouting "I haven't been hit, I'm clean!" I thought he was shouting it at whoever decided to stop the game and so I went to 1-ball his hopper to stop the fussing. A combination of my bad aim and a greasy barrel meant I shot him in the arm (sorry!), however he shot me in the back as I walked away so I feel we're square in the eyes of the paintball gods.

Paintball is a very adversarial game and even though there was nothing on the line and it was a friendly scrimmage, it's easy to lose your cool when you're trying to shoot guys who are trying to shoot you and your boys. Fortunately though that was the extent of the bad blood and to top the day off, Dave Simpson went to his car and brought out a bunch of beers for us all to share, which was a very kind gesture and really brought the session to an end on a high note. Overall it was a great day, very productive for all and it was good to get some spins playing out of position. However I honestly can't tell you how or why this happened

After ECI had finished I did some 1v1's against Andy and Adam in preparation for the 1v1 tournament in Belgium. I'm looking forward to it and won most of the games I played although as I started to fatigue Adam got a few shots on me towards the end. Time to work on some cardio!

After today's games I was confident that ECI will give us a good challenge in future and so I confirmed them in to train against us on the Thursday of Belgium. This will hopefully make it more productive than the last pre-event training session against Helsinki Cyclone where we just rinsed them most points.

I'm looking forward to watching these guys play and seeing how they get on in Belgium and beyond.

This coming weekend we are scrimming at Cribbs on the new layout with our REC boys, Reflex & Snatch. Andy Leach from Disruption, not unfamiliar to wearing an Entity jersey, is guesting for us in Belgium and so will be coming to join us next weekend at Cribbs.

Last but not least we shot 24 cases between the 7 Entity players, so we're looking at 3.4 cases each of which I probably shot a bit more due to the 1v1's so I'm going to round up to 7000, making it a total of 87,500 for the year.

P.S check out this picture by Amy of "Stroodle Paintball" from CPPS Round 2. I mean I'm not vain but.. wow.. look at me.. such majesty.

1v1's and a bit of punter ball! 18th May '14

With Planet Eclipse holding one at the CPPS last year, the millennium series introducing theirs in St Tropez and expanding it for Bitburg and the CPS also introducing their first to be held at their next event in Belgium (which I've signed up for), it appears 1v1 tournaments are becoming a popular side dish to the main course of big tournaments.

Personally I found these tournaments very interesting to watch, there's no cookie-cutter way of winning every 1v1. Sometimes they are won by superior gunskills yet other times the underdog on paper comes out on top - take St Tropez's spectacle for example. An OD2 player that was refusing to use his left hand the entire time he was on the field, got into the finals after shooting out 3 CPL players, including stateside pro, Greg Siewers!

What do you think of these mini-tournaments? Interesting to watch? A good judge of skill or too dependent on luck?

What do you think is the most important attribute to have in winning a 1v1? Gunskills? Creativity? Aggression / Patience?

I posted the above question on p8ntballer so discuss away there and if it warrants another post then I will summarize it later on.

I will of course update you after I've gone and played my first 1v1 tournament in Belgium. I'm not sure how to feel about the tournament. Since I've been playing with Entity I've not lost a 1v1 in a tournament that I can recall, however I've only been in 3 or 4 overall. Without the chaos and uncertainty that comes with being the last player on the field in a game, but keeping the pressure of your peers, the people back home watching and your own self-belief, I wonder how I will fare. I have only played 1v1's from the start gate at training, where I am very relaxed with no pressure, so it will be an interesting experience when I'm first called up to a start gate in the 1v1 tournament.

I will certainly be putting in some extra hours into my gunskills, hopefully midweek, on the build up to the event and hopefully on the 31st/1st June at Cribbs I can get some challengers to give me some more 1v1 experience.

Punter ball

As we have 2 big training sessions coming up on the lead up to Belgium (scrimming at BWood with ECI this coming Sunday followed by a skills Saturday and scrim Sunday the next weekend at Cribbs) and Parkey & Kayleigh were at Bitburg there was no training at Cribbs. Therefore I decided to go and see my old man for the first time this year (oops!) and he suggested we go play some paintball for a laugh. Never one to turn paintball down I was keen so we went for an afternoon session at bricketwood's rec-ball site.

At first we were split onto separate teams, so I got somewhere near the middle of the field and played pretty safe, waiting to recognize the old man so I could go hunt him down. First game I didn't find him but second round I spotted him behind a tree and almost fell into a river trying to get somewhere I could shoot him. I managed to land a couple hits before time was called so I was quite happy with that.

Afterwards the teams were uneven so I switched back over and we played in co-op mode as we had to attack a fort. I was hoping to show off my mad skills but he was more eager for it than I was, and whilst I was playing cautiously as I do in tournaments, he was up at the front moving about, winning the games. So naturally I was just following him about shooting kids in the face as they popped up to try and shoot him.

I shot 500 paintballs in that afternoon session (cheers Dad) and it was good fun going 'back to my roots' so to speak. I did have to keep going into the shop however to watch the Bitburg stream to see what was going on - however most of our teams were out by then anyway. (boohoo).

As I wasn't at Bitburg I won't be writing up my thoughts on it - to be fair as I've been moving I've barely seen any of the games, just that players were taking out a metric fuckton of pots with them on the field and I've heard most people say it was a boring field to watch and play. There's some drama about confiscated guns due to F stamps or lack thereof but whether it was reasonable confiscation or warranted I'm kinda glad I wasn't at the event. Not only would I have barely afforded it (see: moving house) but I wasn't a fan of the stale layout and I kinda like having my gun not in the hands of German police whenever I can help it.

Of course, 500 balls onto the total makes it 80,500. Next weekend and Saturday 31st are my last chances to add to the tally - got a lot of making up to do this month! I have a feeling I wont be shooting 10 cases in 2 training sessions unfortunately so no 100k by June unfortunately!

Game plans: Dealing with key targets

Okay so this is my first attempt at picking apart a very particular concept regarding game plans. I should probably do a basic game planning post (maybe I'll come back to it later - maybe I wont, I do what I want!) but this is a concept that I have been aware of for a while but only recently have we started implementing it into our game plans. I've felt our breaking down of field layouts was pretty lackluster in the 2013 season, we just worked out 'Who's going where and which runner are they shooting?' and then played the games from there. However the past couple events I have seen an improvement in our attitude towards field layouts and our individual roles within the team.

The aspect that I want to talk about is identifying a key player on the other team and preventing them from doing their role. Now pretty much every game plan conceived will have an attacker on the D-Side and an attacker on the Snake side and at least one person shooting for each of those attackers on the break. That's all well and good but what I am talking about here is what happens in the mid-game, once you've rolled the breakout dice and (hopefully) made it into your bunkers. You still want to stop those attackers of course, but the problem we're facing here is; how do we make progress in the mid-game? There is often a key bunker preventing you from attacking the side you want to push hardest (the side where you'll be stacking 3 of your 5 guys usually) and in the main this is the bunker you need to deal with. When you have identified this bunker it's time to work out the most effective way you're going to deal with him to work your way up the field. This can be done in different ways:

Method 1: Hit em off the break.

If there's a big enough lane to catch this player out before he can get to his bunker then it may be worth putting an extra gun on him to make that early G. You may have to look around for the best way to hit him - with the no-back-centre layouts it may mean stopping at the start gate or finding a blind spot where you can delay and put some early paint in without getting hit - if this player is also delaying and you can find a good blind spot where you can sit for a bit longer, you can keep putting the paint down to either hit them as they make the move after they have delayed, or to make them go to a different position. Be aware though that even if you hit him, there may be another body going there if they double up, or they may fill it again soon after, especially if that team knows it's importance - so don't forget to keep an eye on it. This may not work however if there are no suitable lanes or your shooter keeps getting shot trying to hit him. Don't forget that this player may also be delaying to shoot a lane and so might not be filling this spot on the break. In any of the above cases you may need to move onto..

Method 2: Bully em

Someone holding a lane in these key bunkers can be hard to gunfight with and to be honest I never really recommend gunfighting unless you're the last guy out there or time is against you and you need to make something happen. On the bitburg layout (contrary to how it looks on paper) we found that the player sat in Orange was often locking down the teabag 1 player, preventing him from making the big move to teabag 2 where he can start shooting people crossfield. There wasn't a particularly easy shot to try and hit Orange on the break unless your first ball through the M was right on target. Therefore what we decided was to try and stack the teabag side with 3 guys, 2 in Apple and myself in Teabag 1. From there either myself or one of the Apple players were to move to the corner (it was too risky to send one there off the break) so that we had a player in the teabag 1 and the teabag corner. From there we had 2 guns which we could shoot Orange with and therefore between us both shooting infield we could gain dominance / bully him out of his bunker if our snake player had eyes on him. The remaining apple player was containing the teabags and we were using our Orange to support our snake player. With all of our players aware that Orange was our bully target, we were able to either eliminate or disable him quite quickly, allowing us to play our aggressive teabag side game-plan. Once Orange was eliminated it meant that we could start to bully out their teabag attackers from our corner and Apple players, whilst our own teabag attack was free to make moves and cross-field shots.

Bullying: Teabag 1 & Corner working together to get dominance

Method 3: Make their job pointless

If there's a strong bunker stopping us from pushing up the teabags then the alternative to putting multiple guns on that side to dominate and bully - is to push harder on the snake side and just let him control that lane whilst our teabag player just soaks up paint and keeps tabs on their mirror where possible. Stacking players on the snake side will hopefully mean more G's and more field progression on that side that will, eventually, cause that Orange to have to switch lanes (or be pinched out) at some point. This game plan may not always be effective, especially if they're stacking the snake side too, as it does mean Orange is being allowed to control the teabags during the early game as they had planned and you're letting them dictate the game.. but if you're not hitting them off the break and you're not able to bully them with 2 guns, give them their inch but try to take a mile on the other side as a counter-punch.

Method 4: Gunfight

You're pretty much rolling the dice here, these holding bunkers are normally going to have paint on your bunker before you're even there and so getting into a gunfight is mostly a bad idea and essentially just rolling the dice. However if you are confident at reading their paint and you see a gap, you can always try to get dominance yourself and hope for a kill. I did shoot the orange bunker on this layout from the teabag 1 but only once, but I also got shot out of my bunker on more than one occasion so really it doesn't pay off. When you're down on points and against the clock then maybe you should push the issue.

Windy training 10th/11th May

So this weekend was pretty adverse when it came to the weather. It was raining sideways on Friday night and on my walk home I decided I wanted to get out of it as quickly as possible so I ran home. On the final stretch I managed to open my metal garden gate with my face. I simultaneously managed to open my face with my metal garden gate.

Then it was Saturday and a few of us went up to train as Liam had made the trip from Glasgow for the team training we had scheduled. The conditions were not good for paintball as the wind was so strong it was ripping bunkers out of the ground! All we could do is some running and gunning drills and some break out shooting drills when the wind wasn't blustery.

On Sunday it was the same story, apart from some of the guys from Angels and UWE had come up. The powers that be behind Cribbs decided as we couldn't set up a field we would only charge for paint and no entry.

I set up 4 cones so that we could run between them shooting at a stationary target (read: Barrel) that wasn't too far away so that the wind became such a large factor.

I mainly did two different runs, the red run worked on running and gunning whilst moving forwards (which is surprisingly quite hard compared to moving laterally!) and only one switch of the hands at the 3rd cone. Whereas the blue run required two hand-switches. To even it up I would switch which cone I started with after a few runs so that both hands were exercised evenly.

It was a surprisingly tiring drill after you've dumped a whole pack running it as quick as possible, so I decided it was time for some smaller runs and some break out shooting.

I set up 2 barrels. as primary and secondary lanes, only shooting 2-3 balls at the first target before switching to the 2nd target for the rest of the run. I set out a cone on the left and on the right to simulate the 'apple and orange' bunkers on most fields and to stop the drill going stale I also changed the type of run I did - the red run was to move straight to the bunker (quite common if you're sharing that bunker or if there's 3 of you stacked on that side of the start gate) and the blue run was to simulate edging out or trying to get out of the lane as soon as possible. 

Although it wasn't the most thrilling training weekend, for the resources and the weather we had to deal with, it was still fairly productive.

Truth be told however I was just shooting left over training / tournament paint from the last CPPS so I'm afraid the shot count isn't going up this weekend as they would have been used in last months tally!

In my home life I have recently been a bit of a waster, skimping at the gym and putting in the hours at the pub (see top picture). I've started to notice the toll it's taking on me and so I'm going back with renewed determination this week to pack away less pints and pick up more heavy things.

Cribbs Cup 2: The Umpire Strikes Back 04/05/2014

Well yeah okay, a paintball ref isn't really an 'Umpire' but hey fuck you it works better than referee.

Anyway the return of the Cribbs Cup - the amateur M5 tournament held at my local field; Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre - was this Sunday just gone (May the 4th be with you) and it was also my debut actually refereeing a tournament. The first time round I pretended to look busy and kept the scores, but Kayleigh figured that looked easy enough so stole it from me. 

This time we had scrapped the 3-man division as we didn't see loads of interest for it last time, instead increasing the amount of 5-man teams to 14. We kept it as a standard 5-man format where you just play 1 point against a team and the victor of that point wins the game, none of that race-to stuff with the two timers and whatnot.. just some good old fashioned 1-shot-to-make-it-happen paintball. The difference was that we had a drop out and so ran with only 13 teams. We did plan to do 2 groups of 7 that played a round robin followed by a reseed at lunchtime, where the top 7 would play a round robin against each other and the bottom 7 would do the same in the afternoon. 

As we had two uneven groups, to ensure everyone got the same amount of game-time we made the group of 6 play an extra game (repeating their first match of the morning), which we then did in the afternoon too for the top division but instead of repeating their first match they matched up in pairs (1st v 2nd, 3rd v 4th) etc to make it a more interesting game. 

Anyway on the day I rocked up and wandered around doing odd jobs / pretending to do odd jobs and talking to my paintball friends (fweeeeends). 

In case you didn't know what love is.

We sorted out where we would all place ourselves on the field and my job was to watch the snake side on the far side of the field. On the break I would watch the snake runner to see if I see any paint sprays or even any paint in the air anywhere near them (surprisingly there wasn't always a lane on that entire snake side.. but we were host to some new teams). Whenever there could have been a hit I ran round the back of the snake and stood over the snake beam to have a good look on their pack / side. Usually they made it in. Same concept again with the corner runners. 

I did find however it was surprisingly difficult sometimes to tell a hit from spray or rub. There was an occasion where I wiped some paint off of a feedneck which I thought was just bunker rub, but it wasn't until after I had made that call that I thought to myself "How the fuck does anyone get bunker rub on a feedneck?!" Oh well, he got shot for definite soon after so not too much harm done, right? 

On another occasion someone had spray on their goggles in a weird curve shape, which seemed odd but it definitely wasn't a direct hit. I told them to play on, before finding a hit on their feedneck where the spray had obviously come from (feednecks, right?!). It's definitely a learning curve and I must say after experiencing the ambiguity and uncertainty first hand, I can see where bad calls come from and I should have a bit more respect for the ref's I deal with in future. 

The other strains of being a ref is standing up, on the field for hours at a time, in the heat, wearing goggles and usually some protective clothing. I started my day with a vest, armpads, my jersey and the ref t-shirt on, expecting to get shot a lot (which I did), however after running around in the heat for 3 hours straight I decided to lose the jersey. I was a lot more comfortable but when I got caught between 2 players running down the field towards each other I definitely noticed!

Field placement is hard to read also. Trying to find a position where you have optimal view of the players yet also not being in anyone's way for the sake of the game / your health. I will definitely keep my eye on the way ref's work in the future when watching games now that I have something to relate to.

So without further ado the results:

Division 1
1st - Birmingham Reflex
2nd - Norfolk and Chance
3rd - Snatch
4th - REC
5th - Evil Twin
6th - Ultraviolets
-----------------------------------
Division 2
1st - Bad Moji
2nd - Fallen
3rd - Cardinals
4th - Jedi Wannabees
5th - Outpost.
6th - UK Headhunters
7th - FNV

Division 1

1st - Reflex were unchallenged all day, I don't think they dropped a single game and they were very dominant, rolling their guns on the Bitburg field definitely secured the G's yet they were taking every opportunity to move up the field to close out the game. Solid play! 

2nd - I had no idea what the hell kinda name 'Norfolk and Chance' was until the one-and-only James Watkins told me to "say it fast". Even so they showed some game as a scratch team - an old familiar face from my days playing with Brotherhood - Josh O'Callaghan had jumped in. I'm hoping he comes back to playing again as he's still got some game! 

3rd - My old buddies in Snatch did well in 3rd place, they may have placed higher if their own player, Wayne, didn't play with REC in the last game and shoot half of his own team out.. they made sure he got punished by some cheap shots on the way off the field though! 

4th - The REC team did alright, Entity veteran James Burridge had some stand out games from the snake. We didn't have most of the guys that we wanted to be there playing as they were either unable to make it up, or with other teams, but the guys that could did a good job! Snatch helped us out with players as well as Alex Carney of Shoreline Rangers (the two Rangers on site whored themselves out to anyone who would take them - fair play to them, I remember being a professional guest not so long ago myself!




5th - Evil Twin came along and showed they could play ball - they surprised me with their communication, for a predominantly scenario / walk-on based team these guys talked to eachother more than any other team. A bit of training to sharpen their skills and some more experience for the mid-game and they would definitely have been in contention for the podium. 

Ultraviolets played well getting into the top division but weren't able to keep the momentum in the afternoon. A lot of the time they got to their primaries fine but lost a couple important bodies from their bunkers, putting them on the back foot. Even so they had some newer players they were giving some spins to and so this wasn't a bad showing from them at all.

Division 2

1st Bad Moji looked good all day, a couple slips in the morning meant they missed out on entering the top division, but solid play made them the team to beat in the afternoon. Again the Bitburg layout played to their strengths as they were good at patiently getting to their primaries and rolling their guns, letting their opposition make the mistakes. 

2nd Fallen got skunked at the first Cribbs Cup with zero wins and so for them to come out and win some games, let alone come 2nd in their division, was a great improvement. I love this team as not only are they improving - I mean they have a way to go but they are looking better with each showing - but they know how to have a good time. Their morale boosting team shout at the start gate was predominantly "Who's house is this?!" "OUR HOUSE!" which was an improvement on "What do we want?" "BUKKAKE!" "Where do we want it?" "LUKE'S FACE". 

3rd Cardinals were the champions of the last Cribbs Cup and bagged themselves a 3rd place in Div 2 this time around. To be fair they did look good and aggressive, but this layout really hands itself to sitting back and rolling the guns, something I don't think of when I think Cardinals as they're usually trying to share your bunker with you!

4th Jedi Wannabees - not gonna lie I didn't know many of your players and as a result I didn't really look out for you.. But you didn't look too shabby out there, the snake player from UWE I was watching most of the day got to the snake 1 without fail!

5th Outpost I expected more from to be honest as they know how to roll their guns, but I don't think they had all their key players with them. I'm sure they will be coming to the next tournament with something to prove!

6th UK Headhunters - a team I haven't heard much of in the past but they did look good on the field. A bit more work and they will be contending for the podium I'm sure!

7th FNV were the new guys and fair play to them, whilst they didn't win any games they took G's off a lot of teams. I do hope they stick at it and get some more training and experience under their belts. It's always good to see new blood enter the game and so let's hope to see them again! 


The other team present this weekend was the beautiful reffing team. Made upof Entity + that Max guy from UWE that no-one likes.

I had a blast this weekend and whilst it was 11 hours in the same pair of football boots, I had a lot of fun, learnt a lot about 'the other side' of the player-referee relationship and most importantly got to catch up with a bunch of my favorite paintball people. Again the atmosphere was great, I didn't hear many complaints and it was good that everyone stuck around for the final presentation at the end - it's common to see everyone clear off when they've finished their games. I also liked the support that a lot of the teams gave to the new guys who came up.

I can't wait for the next one! Which is in August sometime - Keep an eye on the Cribbs facebook page (I've already linked it, scroll back up!) for the exact date and details on how to book!

Of course I didn't shoot any paintballs this weekend so the tally remains as whatever it was last entry - shut up if you care so much you can scroll down.

I should probably get less lazy with this..