CPPS Rd 3: The return to Elite 21st-22nd June

Well this one is a bit easier to write than my last tournament write-up. For those of you that haven't been keeping up with your reading (entity), we competed in the Elite division of CPPS in 2013 after rebuilding during the latter months of 2012. We placed no higher than 6th (6th, 8th, 6th, 6th, 8th). At that point we knew we wanted to compete in Europe and were looking into buying a spot into what is now SPL2 and so figured we might not be able to financially commit a team to the Elite division again this year. Then we decided we could - but it was too late so we've been fighting to get back into Elite since then.

Saturday Training

This time we booked a slot with Disruption, Tigers 2 & Nexus 2 where we started to work out the field. We realized it was a relatively balanced field however the teabags were a little more dangerous than the snake. Our laning appeared to be pretty bad however we were shooting rock hard paint so it's too be expected that we didn't see much production. I was playing Apple (the mini M on the teabag side) and shooting a lane either at my mirror or cross field at anyone running to the snake / corner / insert bunker.. it was quite a good lane.. before returning back to control the bags whilst Andy or A-man (Adam) worked up the bags. Sometimes however when they were taking heat I was bumping out to the corner and then over taking them to get some progression. Shayne was shooting for any centre runners going to xbox (the Maya temple) whilst backing up Liam in the snake and we learned throughout the day that the Back Center HAD to stay on the teabags to stop them hitting the 50 in seconds. 

Saturday's 1v1 tournament

Ainsley came up to us whilst we were in the pits during the day and alerted us to the opening of the 1v1 registration. Me, A-man and Liam from the team signed up for it. I was desperate to redeem myself from getting smashed out of my first round (#lukeoutfirst) in Belgium. 

My chance came quicker than I thought as I was to play the very first point. My match was James Granville from London Nexus. Andy started the obligatory Horse Puncher chant, spreading further, the rumor that I once punched a horse to death. This time it was straight up elimination - one shot and you're out of the game entirely. If it was a draw after 2 minutes the player deemed 'most aggressive' by the head ref would be named the winner After a bit of mincing around at the back I moved my way up the bags as Gran was using the bunkers around the start of the snake. I got onto his side of the field and was gunfighting with him relatively defensively - using all heights and sides of the teabag. It felt like a good 30-40 seconds had gone past behind that teabag, I would guess 1:20 had run off the clock and then bam - clipped on the side of my lense. #lukeoutfirst trended worldwide and I shook hands with my opponent and left the field. The other guys ripped into me that I'm shit at 1v1's and should stop wasting my money, I got changed and watched Liam and A-man's attempts. Gran did say if it was any consolation I did hit him with a bouncer - how frustrating! Liam lost to a guy from care bears and A-man lost to a guy from celtic druids, both in their first rounds, which made me feel a lot better about myself. Besides I didn't even bounce the Vision guy so I'm evidently improving - next time I might actually manage to fucking shoot someone.

Saturday evening

We got to the hotel and got showered etc etc and had fun with the refoofies..

.. before going to Nandos for munch. 

When we got back we spoke about the game plan and the importance of their positions - what lanes we know we can shoot and what options we had on the break. One thing Shayne and I had discussed on the car journey up was our tendency to panic whenever we lose a point and try to change too many things with the game plan to make up for it. There's a cliché about paintball game plans and it is this: "A poor game plan, well executed, is better than a good game plan, poorly executed." It certainly rings true and with this in mind Shayne brought it up with the rest of the team on Saturday night as something we need to focus on. Sometimes we can lose a game and it's just down to individual error, or someone getting bounced by your lane, or any number of variables, 2 teams can play 2 consecutive points with the same game plan and end up with 2 very different outcomes. Basically we need to keep our composure and only alter small details instead of turning the whole thing up on it's head at the first sign of trouble. 

Sunday

We got on-site with plenty of time and warmed up. Our pits were next to Nexus which was good as it was a short walk to the trade village / car park - but I also had a couple opportunities to quietly observe their demeanor in-between points. They would always come in and straight up say who shot them and how, asking each other either why they didn't do their job or what stopped them from doing it. We had started to do the same throughout the day, echoing what we spoke of the previous night. I had also started pushing for tidier pits - Liam has been a big advocate of a tidy pit and I figured we should try and make it a ritual to tidy up after each game in prep for the next. 

Game 1: Lucky 15's

I've touched on the grudge between us and 15's before - it feels much healthier between us now but of course we still wanted to put one up on them. I imagine for as long as both teams are competing there will be some rivalry between us, but it's the stories of rivalry that make for the best tales to tell in any competitive sport. Especially one as adversarial as paintball. We came out pretty flat and lost the first point pretty poorly! I was shooting for my mirror and trying to control the bags as I had in training yesterday. The next point we came out and slowed them down after I had shot their teabag player soon into the game, and we won it to tie up 1-1. We switched ends and this time they came at us from the snake side. They were steady in the bags but made it to snake 2 / snake 50 quickly winning two consecutive points to make it 3-1. They had the momentum and we got into the pits and calmly (for a change), called a time-out and made some game plan decisions. Andy was to take A-man's spot in the bags, Harry was shooting a teabag lane from Back Centre and instead of mincing around trying to shoot my mirror I switched up to shoot the cross-field snake lane. Next point we went out - I shot the lane and then ducked into Apple to get more guns on the bag side so we could push it. Me and Andy worked together to push up the bags and after the point Dave shouted that I hit the snake runner with my lane. I was quite chuffed as although I've been pretty good with lanes in training I've never had many confirmed OTB kills in tournaments! We carried on with the same plan to tie it up 3-3 and then in the final point we had just over a minute on the clock. I was in the corner and Andy was up in the bags and I heard Dave shout "20 SECONDS LEFT!!" so I took off down the field causing some chaos - just as everyone else had the same idea, I got eliminated trading with the snake player cross-field and Andy felt a hit from their snake player, hesitating to ask for a check pointing at his head, he hit the buzzer and Liam also followed him up and hit the buzzer not knowing exactly what was going on. It was damn close and the refs had to talk it out but gave us the point in the end. 

It could have been anyone's game but we definitely took the momentum back towards the end, everyone's confidence had boosted with the result - it was easy to forget that this was not only A-man's first Elite tournament but also Liam's! 

Out of respect for the 15's I must mention that it appeared they were missing a couple of their core players - a post on their facebook confirms that they didn't have two of their snake players "due to holidays and illness". Therefore I look forward to our next match up to see what they can hit us with!

Peter Bourne - www.fullboreimages.com

Game 2: DV8

We took the confidence and momentum from our first game straight into the next against DV8. Last time we played these guys back in 2013 they beat us, but we scored a quick 3 points, shooting good lanes on the break and following them up making it 3-0. Backs to the wall however DV8 didn't want to go down, just as we didn't against 15's. They brought back 2 points, winning them very convincingly as well! We called a timeout to take the momentum back off them and took to the field - they then took a time out too before coming out to play the next point with 1:20 on the clock. We aren't typically great at our defensive play so we went out there looking to score another point. We got a G on the break and had 5 alive, we pushed the teabags a little and they tried to push back towards the end however with the body advantage we stayed alive and the time ran out with 5 of us on field and the score 3-2. They did have us worried, however we didn't crumble as we have been known to when things aren't going out way.

Game 3: London Tigers 2

Not really playing this squad before I didn't know what to expect. After learning the field as the day went on and after a long break for us we took to the field and both teams played smart, slow playing it and not giving much away until the end game. The first point we lost was a slow point after we lost Andy off the break. It wound up being a 3v2 with them in Teabag corner and Apple. I was up in the bags halfway up the field and we lost Liam on the snakeside. Harry filled the snake and I was well aware that from where he was he wouldn't be able to stop me from being run down. I let them shoot either side of my bunker and posted whenever I was given an opening. At one point Apple had stopped shooting at me so I tried to snap him out - I thought I had hit him for a moment however he remained in. Turns out I had bounced him in the head! Damn bouncers! I moved up another bag and tried to snap him out again however this time I took one in the face. They closed Harry down and won the 2v1 making it 1-0. Next point we came out and won, another slow game but with a bit more conviction on our side we tied it up 1-1. This next point Tigers 2 pushed the snake pretty hard, Shayne was in Xbox so I just had to trust he would shoot him the moment he did anything, Harry switched off the bags to help Shayne, however this tiny lapse of judgement meant that they attacked the Teabag 50. Whilst Shayne managed to bag their snake player, they made good work of us from the bags and it was only me left in the teabag corner. I shot one of their players moving up the snake side and was trying desperately to make something happen, frantically trying to scrap any kill I could get. I believed I could win the 3v1 but eventually I got shot as you'd expect. This brought it to a 2-1 game and left us with less than a couple minutes on the clock. The game played out and we got a couple G's but again I ended up as the last guy in the corner after crossing up with Harry in Back Centre for a long period of time. I tried to make something happen and mugged their bag player on my side of the field, however it wasn't enough as I got shot cross field. Not enough time had passed for them to score another point however. 

There were 3 pivotal factors which could have swung a point that I noticed during this game. That bounce during that 2v2 point would have made it a 2v1 in our favor if only it broke. Just after, if my snapshot was on point or a bit quicker and I didn't get shot when I did, Harry could have got some more real estate and we could have pinched them out. In the later point we lost, Harry staying on his teabag lane could have bought us more time to push that snake side by containing their bag player. Fortunately, other than the paint being a little bouncy, these are things we can work on to make the difference next time. I am going to work more on my snap shooting and I'm sure it will be a long time before Harry switches off his job again.

Game 4: Tigers 1

I don't have much to say about this game, I got shot off the break shooting for their delay/ghosters in the first point and they went on to beat us out of 3 consecutive points. Some were closer than others. We did pull back a point though where me and one of the guys closed down their corner. I brought my snapshooting game back to hit him in the bottle to win the point, but they came back to close out 4-1 win in the next point. 

At the end of the last point I heard, not just from Andy, but from the spectators that one of them had laced Andy up the side as he left the field with his barrel sock on, those that I spoke to who knew Andy's temperament expected him to kick off - but he kept it together which I'm proud of. I didn't see the incident so I can't comment but if it was how it was described, I'm glad Andy was the bigger man - even if he was tamping in the pits after. 

That point we won against Tigers 1 was enough to push us just in front of London Samurai MV (AKA: Paris Camp Carnage - Samurai couldn't make the event due to a wedding so got them to fill in!) and give us 5th place overall! This was our best ever result in the Elite division and so I am pretty stoked about it! The best part is that we know what to work on for next time too. The games were close and the Elite division is cutthroat. Each point matters - if we lost another point then we would have placed 6th again. If we won another point against Tigers 2 we might have managed to qualify for the 3rd/4th playoffs. We have been a hairs breadth from beating Disruption in the past so it's a shame we didn't get a chance to try. But that's the Elite division for you - tight!!

There's a chance I may be playing Campaign with the Firm, in which case I will be making every effort to switch a shift at work so I can train with them on Saturday coming at CPPS - which will also be the day of the Ladies cup where the "Entity Wags" Kayleigh, Gabby and Chloe will be waving our banner! 

This weekend however the team shot 14 cases in training and 22 cases during the tournament. As I played every point and shot my fair share of paint I must have gotten through 7 cases, or 14,000 balls. Bringing my total to 121,500! Heading quickly towards that next milestone of 200,000! However only 2 CPPS remain and 2, maybe 3 major tournaments lie ahead.. We shall see!!

The filling of the tournament sandwich: 15th June

Belgium was last weekend and from a paintball perspective it blowed! But you only learn when you're losing and I am aware of the things I need to work on. One thing I have been working on over the past year is my composure. In the Elite division of CPPS last year I was quite erratic, not really paying attention to what's going on around me, just getting tunnel vision on what I need to do. How I've found myself combating that is by getting to my primary, taking some moments to compose, rolling my gun at gaps whilst working out what's going on. Once I've taken stock that's when I then work out what I need to do. That's great, it's really helped me with my field awareness and all, but it's still not feeling right, I'm a long way from the finished article.

I headed up to Cribbs this weekend, shooting some leftover paint from Belgium with Andy, Shayne, A-man and some of the REC guys. Also up on site was a bunch of Going Postal & Bad Moji guys and girls, plus Kayleigh and some of the ladies were looking to get some practice in before the women's 3 man tournament coming up in the next few weeks.

To start off with we just worked on our snapshooting skills as we hadn't really worked on skills since.. umm.. the off-season? Damn..

I had noticed some bad habits had reformed with the lack of self-awareness you get consistently drilling e.g. that stupid foot leaving the ground when snapping. After a good pack's worth of ironing out the creases we did a few situation-games (starting in predetermined bunkers playing 3v4's / 2v3's) and we got chatting to each other on the field, business as usual. I have noticed that Andy has started to really get used to my play style - he always knows when I'm coming for him and how I'm doing it. I often leave my wide bunker to run in field to make the move so that if he comes out to battle on the tape he wont see me coming, but he caught me out a couple times - time to pick up the dictionary and add some new words to my put-down vocabulary it seems!

The good people at Cribbs had set up the Campaign Cup layout:

It seems pretty interesting, quite fun to play the bags so I'm hoping to be getting stuck in at CPPS. We did play a few scrims both as a team and split up. Going back to what I was saying in the opening paragraph; my play-style has been lacking something. Maybe being a bit too relaxed to get some composure has reduced my intensity. Instead of picking my gunfights I've just been avoiding them, instead of pushing the issue I've been letting it go. I thought about that halfway through this Sunday and so I set out to be a bit more dog. I went out to the teabag 1 shooting heads up towards their bag 1 and I hit their corner runner, I slid into the bag and came right out onto my mirror and just kept shooting until I could see they decided to switch infield - I too went infield to put in their back centre who started to shoot back at me - giving me a window to hop to bag 2, I posted on the teabag and when he heard the teabag 2 call he came out, from there it was an easy wrap up and yeah whilst I probably lost a bit of cross field awareness, I made sure I kept my comms going and had one hell of a methodical yet aggressive game. That is how I want to play in tournaments and that is what I'm hoping you're going to see at the CPPS next round.

Talking of the CPPS for those living under a rock we are back into the Elite division and so I am very excited to be playing with the big dogs again!!

Refining the way you play the game is a balancing act and something you can see from the very start of a baller's 'career' if you can call it that. Some people start too aggressive whereas others start to hesitant. I was one of those that was too hesitant, then I tried to tune up my aggression and ended up suffering too much tunnel vision, so then I started trying to compose myself more and then switch on the aggression when appropriate, however I feel that now I'm being a bit too relaxed and need to start pushing the issue a little more as default - play with some heart and start being proactive instead of reactive. If you don't already follow Paul Richard's blog - viewfromthedeadbox - I seriously recommend you follow that previous link and learn yourself some real knowledge from someone who genuinely knows what he is talking about.

Talking about other paintball media - specifically other written formats - I got my hands on a copy of the paintball magazine. The production is very high quality and unlike other magazines I have seen (including the e-mags) is actually well written. I would really recommend taking a look if you haven't already.

Anyway down to brass tax. I shot about a case of leftover paint (not counted in the figures) and bought another case on top making the total 107,500. We're at about the halfway mark so we should expect to see a 200,000 by the end of the year. That means it might take another 4 years to hit 1,000,000. Daunting right?

See you all at CPPS - come say hi and see how we're getting on / give me a back rub I'll probably need it with all that tension I'll have playing with all that intensity I'm planning on bringing!

CPS Belgium: Breaking down at Breakout. 5th-8th June:

Wednesday evening. I finished work, packed my bags (about time) and set out to pick Liam up from Bristol airport. As we were getting back, Andy was repeatedly circling the same roundabout as he felt lost nearby so we sent a search party. I had some of Dave's kit in my bag as well as (Andy) Leach's kit that he couldn't take in hand luggage and some spare markers in case we ran into problems. We condensed the kit into as few bags as possible and got about 2 hours kip before our 2:45am alarm went off. We bundled everything in the car, picked up Shayne and set off for Dover.

I did the first stint of the driving and we got to the ferry in time. I've never driven onto a ferry before so it was an exciting experience, for a few minutes at least. Pete of Full Bore Images posted on facebook that he's on the same ferry and for us to come find him at the front. That we did!

#letmetakeaselfie

Anyway we got over to Dunkirk and followed Pete to the venue - we were running a bit later than planned so I had to call the accommodation to say we won't be there until 7.30pm.

Thursday

We rocked up at the venue after about 11 hours of travel and stretched out the cramp before training against ECI. They gave us some good game and luckily enough for us they had 6 guys. As Leach wasn't flying in until that evening we only had 4 players to use so we took their spare player, Harry. To be fair he was a good player and I didn't see him get loads of spins on Friday, but he fit in pretty well with us during the scrim. Unfortunately it was indoors in what we called 'The Thunderdome' or 'field 2' on the timetable. We worked out our lanes and were consistently getting G's off the break shooting cross-field at teabag 1 as we were in training last weekend. However their snake player is pretty damn fast and he was often beating our lanes. We usually matched their aggression though and we won a fair few points and by the end of the scrim we felt we had learnt the field quite well. Shayne played in front of me on the teabag side as I played the Apple which I was comfortable doing at Cribbs. I was also shooting back up the gut on the break to hit anyone delaying or making center moves. I felt pretty confident on the field and was looking forward to Friday. We finished up and headed off to the chalet.

The digs were alright, although there were only a few chalets being used - there was a bunch of derelict ones surrounded by unkempt grass which made it look almost post-apocalyptic. It was just outside a small town/village called Malmedy (I just googled it to check the spelling.. turns out there was a big massacre nearby during the Battle of the Bulge, don't know how to feel about that) and it was a little better than the usual campsite accommodation I'm used to when playing abroad. Shayne and I shortly had to go and pick up Leach and Rogan from the airport which was 90 minutes away, so we went and found the only place that looked open and got us some pizza. It was surprisingly good for a place that looked like we were the only customers there all day! I had salmon and creme fraiche, in case you were wondering. We picked up the queer Northern folk and spent another 90 minutes driving back. Yippee! We got in real late so just crashed straight to bed.

Friday

Fortunately we had some time for a lie in as our games weren't until 15:30 and 16:40. We headed to site a bit earlier to help the other UK teams and watch a few games.

Warsaw United: 

As we have never played Warsaw United we didn't know what to expect, I did know that in Rome they didn't get through to Sunday but that was a different layout at a different time.

We managed to net ourselves some penalties to lose our first 2 points. I got a hit on my pack in the first point as I delayed and moved to Apple - I didn't know about it until a ref was running over to me with the yellow flag in hand. The cross-field lanes that were there in training on Thursday and at Cribbs the previous week simply weren't there on this field and we weren't adjusting well enough to shooting our own side to get many G's on the break if any. We came back after being 2 points down to tie it up 2-2, however the next point was a long one that unfortunately we conceded. 3-2 down and with little time on the clock, we had to try and make something happen. I made a center move going to the tall temple next to the A, not getting a G on my way there but getting shot out shortly after, I lived in the temple for a good 5-6 seconds, but in retrospect I should have carried on going all the way to take as many as I could. Lesson learnt for next time. As we threw some bodies trying to score the quick point, Warsaw had enough time to mop up the last couple of players and make it 4-2.

Helsinki Cyclone:

These guys we trained against in Rome and throughout the training session we had the stronger hand, winning most of the points with some quick kills off the break being taken advantage of. However this wasn't a particularly good shooters field like Rome was, and again it was a different layout on a different date. To start with I went up the middle again as we figured it might work as no-one picked me up on that last point. I got a single G on my way but I was shot just as I made it into one of the center temples. We lost another soon after and Cyclone took the first point, before taking another as we suffered some individual errors. Again we scrapped and the score became 3-1 without loads of time left. We were down a body and so were they and I went from the teabag corner (which I had filled to get some width as Shayne was stuck in teabag 1) to run down the highway and shoot their teabag 1 and corner player, my boys got the next point after the chaos and again we were in a 3-2 situation without much time on the clock. We made another push but lost G's and got stuck in our bunkers as time ran out, making it a 3-2 loss.

By the end of the Cyclone game I was exhausted. We didn't have enough water and so were getting dehydrated in the heat under all the kit. We didn't quite know what to take away from the day. There didn't seem to be a major hole in our game plan, just personal errors and penalties made us suffer.We didn't have much time to talk about the games as we had to split up - some had to stay on site and wait for Dave to arrive after his long drive as we only had a few seats in my car. By the time Leach, Rogan and Dave got back to the chalet, I had gotten to sleep. Which was lucky as we were about to get an early wake up.

Saturday:
On site for our early games at 9:10 and 10:20 am.

Bandits: 

In Rome, Bandits were one of our best games, we 4-0'd them. But paintball is about how you're playing now, not how you've played in the past. This time we were one of the Bandit's top games as they took as 4-1. Their snake player was something to contend with, in the 50 pretty much straight away and stopping us from moving on the teabag side. We weren't matching him in the snake and we were still suffering a couple penalties. We were struggling to adjust to beat it, in hindsight I feel we should have used the teabag 1 to contain the snake and start pushing from the corner.

We helped the ECI and the fearless guys in the pits to keep warmed up before our final prelim game. We were pretty certain we were out of Sunday now so we just wanted to settle the score with Phoenix.

Phoenix: 

The final game. These guys 4-0'd us in Rome, the only team to beat us convincingly all tournament and we didn't have an answer to it. To be fair in all the previous games I didn't feel like we played well as a team, it felt as though we were all playing an individual game and getting shot out making individual errors and losing that way. We were gelling more and the points we won were more convincing, the points we lost were close, but not close enough as they closed us out 4-2.

At this point we knew we were skunked 0 wins to 4 losses and I just wanted to forget about paintball. Then I remembered I had signed up for the 1v1 tournament..

1v1 tournament

I was quite excited on the run up to the event about playing this. It was a race-2 format where you just had to eliminate the opponent. I was up against Jeremy Azoulay of Vision Marseille and it was a knockout tournament. Once you're out you're out!

Burridge decided to try and instill fear into my opponent, as we were waiting in the pits for our turn to play, Andy stood on the other side of the fencing and shouted towards the rest of the team "HEY, DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT LUKE WILLIAMS GUY?! TURNS OUT HE PUNCHED A HORSE TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS! I WOULDN'T WANT TO MESS WITH THAT GUY - I MEAN HE KILLED IT WITH FISTS!"

The ruse was obviously a success, the French pro must have been shaken up, as instead of taking me lightly, my opponent brought his A-game and smashed me out 2-0. The first point was a longer one where I tried to lose him by bumping out to the corner and waiting for him to try and come find me. As I thought he had stepped out I tried to shoot him on the move out of my bunker towards the snake - he shot me on the move to the snake. It didn't work. I probably shouldn't have chosen to go to the small corner bunker and tried to move a bit more around the middle. In the second point we both moved out to the first can shooting at each other, as I thought I was in cover I got shot on my peak. Like, where the fuck did that come from? Even the refs look confused for a second. And that my friends is how you throw €35 down the drain and look a bit of a mug doing it. In my defense I was deflated as hell after losing the 4 prelim games.. I wasn't in the mood to be playing. Dave said I didn't look like I was playing how I'd normally play 1v1's and I suppose that's true - but then I suppose usually I'm very confident that I'm going to win, whereas this time I was against a pro and was playing as though I had something to lose.

Pictured: Not knowing what you're doing

Mentally this event was pretty taxing. There was a dark stage after I knew we had come last when I considered quitting paintball altogether. I mean all that money spent, the £5-600 for the event, travel, accommodation, paint and spends and the time I spent organising the above. Not to mention the hours and the money spent on training on the lead up to the event, just to come last?! Staying in a job that I don't particularly enjoy that gives me no room for development - purely because it pays well enough so that I can afford to train and play as much as I do. Those times I had to say no to my friends when they wanted to go do something fun on a Saturday evening / Sunday - all just so I can go to a tournament and fail not only as a part of a team but also as an individual, to beat anyone. Early wake ups to set up fields or travel to play, the tens of thousands of miles I've clocked on my car in a couple short years. Is it all worth it?! It's easy to doubt. But then you remember what it felt like last time, when it was different. When you didn't feel you were going to do it but you and your brothers pulled it back. That buzz when you realise that final point is yours and you're closing down the last player. That pause in momentum when you've hung the flag or pressed the buzzer and you're being checked out by the ref, before that feeling of ecstasy when it hits you that you beat that team you didn't think you could beat, or won that tournament you needed to win, or made the podium on your first international tournament. That is worth all the money. Yeah you could probably just buy the same damn chemical reaction from some guy down a side alley for a fraction of the price. But earning that high from grit and determination is what makes you carry on, and why I will be pushing myself for next time.

This weekend we shot 26 cases of paint + 1 each at training meaning I shot 6 cases (rounding down slightly as I must have dropped about 5-6 fucking pods worth on the floor). Total: 105,500 WE HIT 100,000!! TIME TO CELEBRATE... WITH BEER!

Oh yeah sorry we aren't finished here yet are we?

Saturday Afternoon:

Needless to say, no-one particularly wanted to hang around and watch other people play anymore..Selfish smug bastards not getting knocked out and hogging all the paintball. We decided to go and get a few key ingredients to have a good commiseration barbecue.

We couldn't work out whether it was cheaper per beer to get a few crates of smaller beers which were on offer, or 2 crates of larger beers, so we got 2 crates of each to make sure.

Nailed it.

We had some good times from about 3pm onwards, playing drinking games, eating meat, doing shots out of each other's belly buttons, playing drinking games.. until this happened.

I got so drunk that I stole someone's belly.

Fortunately though the next day we made up for it. We headed into Malmedy for le petit dejeuner (I learnt French) before eventually finding the community swimming pool! We were denied entry as our shorts didn't have that netting in that stops your poo from floating about the pool as one massive turd and instead allows it to be grated into many mini-poos. At least I think that's what it's for. We thought we were out of luck as Belgium appears to be closed on Sundays. As luck would have it, we went into a petrol station as a last resort and lo and behold, they had a promotion on where buying two 6-packs of beer netted you some netted shorts - suitable for Belgian pools! Real men would have bought the beer, however we had no way of carrying it or consuming it between the non-drivers so we asked nicely and the lady let us take them off her hands for just €5. Leach and Rogan were blessed with shorts that had the poo-netting attached. But naturally they wanted to be a part of the Belgian swim team too so handed over their notes.

The boys were firmly back in town

CPS warm-up scrim 1st June

The last weekend before the CPS round 2 in Belgium and the layout for PSP Chicago had only just been released. The good people at Cribbs Pro Paintball Center set up the layout for us as best they could with the Mills layout we have. Fortunately the sideways centre A with 2 tall temples either side isn't a million miles away from the full M + M legs, however I'm sure we will have to change up our lanes slightly when we arrive on Thursday for training.

There aren't massive lanes on the break and the snake seems to be playing a little faster than the teabag side, nonetheless we have come up with some different game plans that I will discuss after the event (spies everywhere!). Even so we are usually quite strong at hitting people off the break with some tourney paint in our guns and the aggressive tapes will hopefully tailor to a strong showing from us at the event.

We had invited Snatch & Reflex (and any other teams up for it) to come scrim with us and also got the REC team there too. At first we were pretty shaky - Snatch beat us up for a few points in the morning as we lost some players early after the break and I was trying to push the teabag side too hard and getting chopped up trying too hard to make stuff happen. However once we had found our groove and figured out our game plan we barely lost another point all day.

Personally I was looking for too many kills and trying to attack the Doritos when playing the 1 to start with, so I swapped with Harry who's a lot more comfortable shooting paint to lock down the field whilst playing the bags slowly, than I am. Which worked out just fine as my shooting off the break was on point so I was getting a G quite consistently before holding down the Teabag side as the insert player and allowing the game to play out before making game-finishing moves.

This is the first time I've felt really comfortable playing behind someone else, as usually I am just hunting for kills - maybe I had learnt my lessons from last week's scrim or maybe I just preferred the layout to the Bitburg one for playing the '2' position. Towards the end of the day I moved back to playing the teabag attack just so I had a good grasp of the shots and the moves that can be made. Don't be surprised if in Belgium you see me playing Apple, Teabags or maybe even Orange at some point.

Talking about watching in Belgium - the link is up and the timetable is here:

(UK time)

Fri 4:30pm Warsaw United
Fri 5:40pm Helsinki Cyclone
Sat 10:10am Bandits
Sat 11:20am Phoenx

And if we make it through:..
Sun 2:50pm Semi Finals
Sun 5:10pm Finals

My thoughts on the prelim teams:

Warsaw United - didn't see them play last event and so I have no idea how they looked. All I know is that they weren't in the final four in Rome. 

Helsinki Cyclone - we trained well against them on the Thursday before Rome, but how a team performs in training and on game day are two very different things - besides a new layout can mean a new story.

Bandits - we played these guys in Rome and won 4-0. We did have a scrappy point against them which came down to a 2v1 which we did pull back so these guys are capable of challenging us.

Phoenix - Rome semi-finals and these Russians knocked us into the 3rd-4th playoffs before going on to win the tournament. They 4-0'd us and seriously outplayed us so I am a bit worried about how we are going to deal with them. I do have faith in our team though as we have been getting better and better as the season goes on at dealing with being on the back foot. Should make an interesting game to watch!

The other team to watch at this event is Black Legion who beat us 4-3 (before we beat them in the 3rd-4th playoffs: 4-2) in Rome. If we match them in the playoffs it will be another close game I'm sure.

Other UK teams to watch (UK times):

London Shock
Friday: 9.30am & 11.00am

London Impact:
Friday: 10.00am & 11.00am

London Fearless:
Friday: 1.10pm & 5.05pm
Saturday: 10:45am

ECI Veterans:
Friday: 1.45pm & 5.05pm
Saturday: 10:45am

I'm expecting to see a strong showing from ECI after the intense game they brought with them to our scrim session last weekend at Bricketwood. We will be training against them on Thursday, however with Leach (our guest from Disruption who has always looked better in an Entity jersey) not flying in until Thursday night, we will be having to borrow an ECI player for some of the points during training - which isn't ideal but at least it maximizes their training time too without people sitting.

Follow the action here: http://new.livestream.com/epbn1/ArenaParty

At the Cribbs scrim day I shot 3 cases of paint so an extra 6,000 onto the total makes it 93,500 so far this year. Looks like I'll finally break the 100k in Belgium!