So I
thought I’d write the blog for this event this time and I’ll start by saying we
came into this event feeling particularly good about our chances of winning
again. We had just come off of our win at PSP Dallas and we had some really
solid practices leading up the event. The only issue we really had going into
this event was the field layout.
Now before I go any further I wanna say
this was probably the first time in the history of RC (or at least I felt) that
we genuinely had a bulls eye on the back of our heads. After our win at Dallas,
we had opposing teams, players and even another team’s sponsor making comments
about coming to get us and beating us. Now this is pump and this is normally
the “fun” division but with all this “talk” going on we felt the need to really
step-up and be ready for this event. Even if that meant bringing the ranch
dressing! (Yes this is directed at someone or some team in particular).
The PSP MAO layout for this year was
particularly difficult in my opinion and I’ve been playing for around 13yrs.
This layout on paper looked really good and when we first got a chance trying
our hands on it we felt pretty confident since we were making our spots against
machine gun teams and winning at that. But the d-side of this field is what
troubled us the most. We figured out the cross field shots from both and it was
obvious the snakeside was going to be where the action was but we struggled (in
practice and at the event) to move up the d-side without allowing the snakeside
to be left wide open.
Regardless of how we felt, we were ready
and we got to the venue Saturday and did the normal, walk around, watch games,
test paint and look over the fields. Saturday night we learned we’d be playing
the Truballers in game 1 and the games following would have us battling
Subzero, CP Factory and West Point Black Knights. Now this event we had Amish,
Cmcd, Nengi, PigPen, Scottie Don’t, Left Ear and The Hebrew Hammer all rostered
to play, however the Hammer’s other team made Sunday so he wasn’t able to play
until the semis.
I mentioned previously that the first
preliminary game was against the Trueballers and RC was pumped up and ready to
defend their East Coast turf. We went
with an aggressive breakout to take the real estate early and try to get the
good angles. To our surprise the
Trueballers also went aggressive and had two people at the xbox and A. We shot one of the center players out, but
the other one caught our guys moving up the D-side. This left left ear in snake 3, Nengi in snake
2 and PigPen in snake corner. The snake
side battled it out with the Trueballers snake and tried to hold off the D-side,
but eventually they worked their way up the D-side and shot us out.
This loss didn’t faze us too much because
we knew we were just holding to the RC tradition by losing the first game of
the day. Unfortunately CP Factory had
the pleasure of matching up with us after a loss and in RC fashion we got a few
K’s and started running it down on them.
They only had D1 and D-side temple left and the three-pronged snake
attack pushed up and shot the last two players out.
Our next game was against Subzero and
turned out this was one of our fastest wins of the day. We broke out with a D-side attack. Scottie Don’t, Amish, and Cmcd lead that
attack while Nengi and Pigpen held down the snake. Well that was the plan, but Subzero’s snake
crumbled and Nengi and Pigpen were up the field taking care of business.
The next matchup was against the West Point
Black Knights. We really didn’t have too
much recon on these guys coming into the event, but we knew they had a former
RC Rev and from watching their first few games they liked to push the
center. We went with the snake side
heavy breakout with Left Ear going into S3 off break, Nengi in S2 and Pigpen in
the corner. Like we expected they broke
out to the center, but drew a penalty getting there, so we quickly capitalized
and with 3:32 seconds left on the clock we hung the flag.
This finished us up with 3-1 in the first
round of the prelims and now it was time to win a game against the Trueballers
and close out the rest of the teams. The
next breakout against Asylum Trueballers was more normal for both teams. Pigpen got a K off the break, but got clipped
from the D-side temple while snapping with him. Cmcd moved quickly up to the “50-D” and had their 50 snake pinned in. Things looked like they were going well, but
it was about to all unfold. Nengi got
shot and Amish tried filling over to the snake side temple. He got to the temple and smoked the snake,
but unfortunately he got caught on the squeegee going there and got a minor
penalty. They pulled Scottie Don’t from
the D-corner and this left Cmcd all alone to get ran down by their D-side.
CP factory was next on the list and after
that loss to the Trueballers I think we were down a little and we ended up
loosing to CP Factory with 1 second left on the clock. Cmcd found himself in
the 50 Dorito again poring paint on their 50 snake, He only had two balls left
and went and ran down the D1. I guess he
missed and that player put one on Cmcd and moved down the field. Unfortunately I am unclear what actual went
down after that in the match, but we did find out the PSP now does not consider
the hopper as equipment, because their D1 player who shot Cmcd left his hopper
in D1 and hung the flag with 1 second left on the clock.
With two losses in the second round we knew
we needed to get the train back on track, so we went out and smacked Subzero
for the fastest win in the prelims and the Black Nights also fell quickly as we
moved up the center of the field and finish them off. The only matchup we had in the third round
was against CP-factory. The games were
ran at a very quick pace, so we were unclear how some of the other teams were
doing. This made this third round game
very important and we broke out heavy snake and finished CP-factory off.
Coming out of the prelims we were tied for
2nd with Onslaught (aka Pump Cru) which had us playing each other to
see who would play the Trueballers in the finals for 1st. Game 1 of
the semis was rough, Scottie got a penalty and a few seconds later that game
was over. Game 2 we went strong sending Left Ear to S3 off the break, however
again the D-side would plague us and despite Left Ear making his bunker we lost
both d-side players almost simultaneously and a few minutes later Game 2 was
over. RC had officially gotten 3rd Place at PSP MAO and now is
(should be) ranked 2nd overall in the division behind the
Truballers.
After the event was over we packed up,
claimed our plague and medals and headed home. Regardless of how we placed we
have still placed in the top 3 in 4 out of the 5 PSP events we’ve played in (2X
1st Place, 1X 2nd Place and this 3rd Place
finish and the only event we didn’t medal in we got 5th after a 3 way
tie for 3rd to move on). Either way we’ll regroup, put this behind
us like we do the NPPL DC events, practice harder and be ready the next time!
We want to thank all the other teams that came out and of course all our
sponsors/supporters (Exalt, St!ffi, GI
Sportz, Aztek Photography, CCM, KPS Paintball, Pev’s Paintball and
MCarterBrown).
