WCA 2011

It's been a few weeks now since WCA. WCA is the biggest spectacle in Asia-Pacific. The Intercontinental Cup was on at the same time; we played WCA during the day and ICC at night. The ICC is a Millennium event with Ironmen from USA and TonTons from France competing in it too.

The work behind this year's WCA was so massive... on the Thursday we had to attend a captains meeting with the King of Malaysia?

On Friday, we decided to get to the field early to scout teams. In hindsight, this may have not been the greatest idea because we had the first round bye in the afternoon pool. So, we got to the field at 10am, and didn't play our first game till 5pm. It put us on edge and we weren't really fresh for our first game against the Reapers from South Africa, who were playing great. They beat us convincingly. It made us a bit angry at each other, but we were able to use it to figure out a better game plan and play with more intensity.

We were able to win our remaining preliminary games with no team scoring more than a point against us. This put us into the top 12.

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We had to face SWAT, Xtioneers and Datis in the top 12 to make it through to top 8. We started against SWAT. They are a strong team, but it just felt as though their paint wasn't in the right places, and we were able to keep control and contain them. We beat them 4 - 1.

Next up we had Datis. We couldn't figure out an answer to their snake side until it was too late, and they beat us pretty convincingly.

This left us to face Xtioneer to safely progress to the top 8. Xtioneer had Markus Nielsen from USA on their team. The first point came to a 1 on 1, but after that I felt we'd adapted to their game and we were able to beat them 4 - 0.



This secured our spot in the top 8. We had to face off against Nemesis from Malaysia to get through to top 4. Nemesis is a good team, I had seen them play in MPOC earlier in the year. Our game plan was working and we were shooting the right lanes... we beat them also 4 - 1.

Same as last year, we had to verse Datis to make it to the playoff for 1st and 2nd. They came out strong and got to 3 - 0 against us. We adjusted our game plan and started coming at them, and we were able to bring the score to 2 - 3. We went into the next point with 50 seconds on the clock to tie it up at 3 - 3. We pushed as hard as we could, it it was looking good with Luke on their side of the field, but we just didn't have enough time and went down to Datis.

This left us to playoff for 3rd and 4th against Infernal from Thailand. Infernal gave us a beating earlier in the year in Thailand, so we wanted to get it back from that. I think that counteracted being a little deflated with not playing off for the championship. So we were able to win 4 - 1.



That left us with 3rd for WCA again, and 2nd place for the PALS series.

We had so much support from our sponsor Dye at this event. All our gear was on point! And WASP gave us so much help.

We also placed 4th in the Intercontinental Cup; TonTon's won, then Ironmen, Datis, then us.

TK Round 5 2011

Today was the final round of the TK series for 2011. The day started with a freak storm? It rained and hailed heavily for 3 or 4 hours. And then the sun came out and we went back to bronzing like normal.

With WCA looming over us, the motivation to get a win in before the big event was there and I thought we were playing strong.

We went through the day dropping two preliminary games, putting us in the finals against Perth City Trauma. We were able to beat them outright in two games.

TK Round 4 & DASH 3-man Round 2 2011

Several weeks ago, we played the 4th round of the TK series at WASP Paintball in Canning Vale. Again, being a local tournament, we were disappointed with our performance and failed to bring the intensity that we normally play with. We finished 4th. It's the worst finish we've had in Australia for a long time. It's a little disconcerting after coming off our big win in the Philippines, but in some respects it's good as we're all keen to work harder and hopefully take the local tournaments more seriously. Admittedly we had some bad luck as well; there was only 5 prelim games, and small things like a gun going down -- or a penalty -- are compounded and have a huge effect on the final placings.

The following week we played the Dash 3man. Our team consisted of me, Rambo, Timmy and Griff. We really just wanted to have a good time and enjoy playing paintball; especially after having to drag ourselves to the paintball field and struggle to get motivated the week before.

We were greeted by another excellent Cage event, DASH does such a great job with these. It got us all in the mood to play. Also, it was at Langley Park, a prominent place in the Perth CBD. Playing here was really cool and our friends and family were able to come down and watch us play.

We managed to take first place and win $1000 cash. My dad even came down and watched the entire afternoon, it was really great to have him see us win!

PALS Philippines 2011

We had a great time last year at the PALS event in the Philippines, so we were really excited to be back. The event is excellent, and even better this time round with a few extras like getting flower necklaces and being rushed through customs/immigration as VIP's upon our arrival by the Philippines minister of tourism.

We went with just 5 players as money and time off work was a problem with the event pretty soon after Thailand.

Everything kind of went our way... the weather cooled off so we could play point after point without dying in the heat. And the event organiser helped us at every opportunity, even lending us pit crew...!

We finished 2nd in the preliminaries with 4 wins and 2 draws.

This sent us into the semifinals against Persian Legend. We were able to get 3 - 0 on them. The next point they got 2 g's on the break, so the remaining 3 of us played to burn the clock, leaving only 1 minute on game time as the score went to 3 - 1. They didn't have enough time to come back so we proceeded on to play the finals for 1st and 2nd against our friends Datis.

After two fairly long points the game sat at 1 - 1. We played a third drawn out point. It whittled down to a 3 on 2 in our favour. The game clock went to 30 seconds remaining, I creeped up the doritos and shot their dorito player, Luke then ran across the field and bunkered their corner guy and Stiffla sprinted in to the buzzer with 5 seconds left on the clock. And that was it, we won.

Our Dye gear was on point! And we'd like to thank Mary Ann for all her help. And all the teams and friends that helped us in the pits and sidelines, especially our friends on team Epic!

(pictures by Donald Baum)

TK Round 3 2011

Oh man. We played terrible. Came 3rd. We don't take it seriously after we've just come back from a big tournament like PALS and then get owned. Oops.

PALS Thailand 2011

We wanted to avoid coming 10th like last year so this time we didn't get sucked into Thailand and party for 3 days straight before the tournament. It worked better for us with us finishing in the top 4 this time lol.

This week has been really great, I've had a lot of fun with the team and Bangkok is a strange but cool place. We have eaten great food and squeezed a lot into the non-paintball time we've had.

The tournament itself was superb. Well run and a great turnout of teams.

We played this leg with only 6 of us -- no Griffin or Luke as they were stuck working. It was a little hard on us at times in the heat. Thankfully our Ronin and Datis friends, and other teams helped us a lot in the pits. And Sandie, our super coach.

We finished the prelims with 4 wins, 1 draw and a loss. This sent us into the quarter finals against Persian Legend. They are a strong team and it was a hard game but everyone played well and we were able to come out on top, putting us in the top 4.

It was a long and hard game, and there was only a 10 minute break between this game and our semi-final match against Infernal. Infernal was playing extremely well, and not really having time to recover from the previous match made it harder too. They beat us and that left us to play SWAT for 3rd and 4th.

SWAT had our number and beat us convincingly leaving us with 4th.

We're pretty much just happy it's not 10th again... Thailand isn't our achilles heel lol.

Our Dye gear was amazing and Steve at the Dye booth is a champ.

 

TK Round 2 2011

On Sunday we played the second round of the TK series. We had cut our roster down to just the 6 of us that are going to Thailand. It made a huge difference for a local 5-man tournament not having to rotate 8 guys. We were able to get into the STK groove easily and took 1st place.

 Our NT11's are shooting so sweet now that they have had a chance to break in.