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!
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