Malaysia Open - PALS Round 2 2012

Last weekend we were in Malaysia for the 2nd leg of the PALS, the Malaysia Open. This was such a great all round trip. I feel like with the amount of time we've spent in Malaysia now over the years that we are starting to understand the culture and really appreciate the food.

The week started with me meeting up with my good friend SANDO to find some delicious Malaysian food. I went to Jalan Alor with her, and I had probably the best chicken wings I've ever had in my life from Wong Ah Wings, as well as 4 other dishes. The following night most of the team went to a Mamak store for dinner. We ordered at least 16 dishes and it cost 90RM, which is maybe $30 AUD.

We started playing on Friday. We had two games, the first against Infernal from Thailand and then the new Demonz team which consists of mostly players from last years championship team, Datis. It's a good test to come up against a powerhouse team first match. If you do well, you have a little extra confidence because there's not "the worst is yet to come" to worry about for the rest of the prelims.

We had a back on forth game against Infernal, and finished the game a tie at 3-3. It was really hot and quite punishing. We shot 8 boxes of paint and they shot 9. We felt pretty confident after the game despite the tie.

Next up we had Demonz. We were able to control the game and won 4 -0.

Saturday it was really hot. We had to play Demonz Red, Ronin and Blade. We slowed down a bit and made a few careless mistakes. It left us with a loss against Demonz Red and Blade. We weren't too disheartened though as we knew our game plans were OK, and that the team was good, it was just poor execution costing us and I think overall we were confident we could snap out of it for the top 8 games.

We made it through to Sunday in 5th position, and had to play Nemesis, Demonz and Raskal to progress to the top 4. Nemesis came out strong and got 2 points up on us quickly, but we were able to figure them out and come back with 4 unanswered points. We played Demonz again, and I really feel that their game plan just didn't match up with ours and we were able to beat them 4-0 or 4-1, I can't remember. And finally we played Raskal and had another win. We were playing well.

We entered the top 4 having to play Infernal to progress to the playoffs for 1st and 2nd. They were playing outstanding, and we also attracted a few penalties which made it even harder. Ultimately we lost the close points against them -- a 2 on 2 and a 1 on 1, which sent them through to the finals (which they won) and left us to playoff for 3rd and 4th against Datis.

This Datis game is one of the most memorable I have had in a while -- the game started with Datis going 3 - 0 on us in just a couple of minutes. With them only needing one more point to win the match, I remember being in the pits and telling the guys to just not go down like this. We came back to win 4 unanswered points, sprinting the buzzer in each time to preserve the clock. It was pretty exciting to live that.

And that left us with 3rd place. It was another top quality tournament by PALS. Our Dye DM12's shot ball on ball and our playing gear held up fine on the rough playing surface. Team Blade from Australia also helped us out coaching on the sidelines -- thanks!

The only thing left to do on our last day was eat, so Rambo and I went out with Sando and had another food adventure.

PALS Thailand 2012

Last weekend we were in Bangkok, Thailand for the first round of the PALS series. This was our third time to Thailand. We love going to Thailand -- the food, people and shopping are amazing, and the tournament is always excellent.

We arrived on Wednesday night and went out immediately to eat. We ate Tom Yum Goong everyday and it is now STK's official food of choice.

The tournament started rough, with us on Friday losing straight up 4-1 to both Datis and the newly revamped Demonz team. Ronin were playing strong and we lost in a close game to them as well. We started feeling more confident towards the end of Friday, but still had a hard road ahead with Infernal from Thailand (who have won PALS Thailand for the past two years) and Shockwave from Canada still to verse on Saturday.

Infernal destroyed us. It was hard to take this many losses. Sitting at the bottom of the bracket isn't really a position we were in at all in 2011. We managed to tie to Shockwave, and win our remaining games.

So we finished the preliminaries with 3.5 wins out of 8. We literally scraped into top 8. We were desperate, but hungry to make it work. We revised our game-plan endlessly until we had finally gotten a grasp of how the field was playing out.

We moved onto Sunday to play our quarter-finals game against Datis, last years WCA champs and series winners. It sounds weird and lame to say it now out of context, but in the huddle before the game we used a marathon runner's quote to sum up our experience at the tournament to this point:

At mile 20 - I thought I was dying. At mile 22 - I knew I was dying. At mile 25 - I thought I was dead. At mile 30, I'd become to tough to kill.

And with that mentality we went into the Datis game and beat them 4-0, securing our spot in the top 4.

Next up we had to play Shockwave from Canada in the semi-finals. We were finally playing good, but they were playing hot and their snake presence was too powerful, and we went down 4-2. They went onto win the tournament.

This left us to play against Demonz for 3rd and 4th. Again, I felt as though we were playing good, but penalties and some good plays by them saw the game slip away 4-2, leaving us with 4th.

It was a much harder road than Thailand last year, but we ultimately finished with the same result as 2011 for the season opener. Our new players Farran and Regan are both 17, but know how to play and party like champs!

Our new Dye gear is amazing; the DM12's shoot so great, and the C12 playing gear was so comfortable, light and cool in the hot conditions of Bangkok.

After the tournament we picked up our suits and analysed graphs and did some business.

Photos by Look Left Pictures.

TK Round 1 2012

Last month we played the first round of the TK. It was our first tournament with our new players, Farran and Regan. We were all really excited to have them playing with us, and this excitement translated into a win.

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)