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!