The Dye Asia Cup, Super 7’s round 2 started with an intense tempo, every team present had their eyes and hearts set on the top spots. The 12 weeks since round 1 had seen vigorous training from the pro teams all eager to close the gap or extend the lead on series points. My first Super 7’s event back from injury, I was hungry to get back on the field wearing a cherished Sydney SWAT jersey.

We had trained on the field leading up to the event, we knew it would play adaptive to team’s strengths and wanted to adapt a defensive style that suited our newly rebuilt team. The layout did not disappoint with both aggressive and defensive teams capitalizing. This was how the event was to play out, as long as you played to your strengths as a team then you would succeed and early on in the prelims the top podium contenders started to shine.

Despite the massive fluctuations in the temperature and humidity the Killer paintballs offered at event remained fantastic throughout the entire weekend and still remains my favorite paint to shoot. Combining this paint with the ever reliable Planet Eclipse LV1’s and Geos made the team all that more consistent on the field. Again we cannot thank the Legendary Ledz and the rest of the crew from our main team Sponsor Planet Eclipse! You guys are the best….. just like your guns!

With a newly built roster it’s always going to be a hard learning curve, but the lads all had the right mentality going into the event. Unfortunately we lost two of our core players and imports, the super Dorito speed machine player, Worakit from Thailand and veteran pro player Jono Clark from New Zealand at the last minute, but we did manage to pick up the awesome Dynasty player Blake Yarber (Big thanks to Josh from our wonderful Sponsors HK ARMY….HHH!) who was happy to come and help our team on their mission to win the 2014 Super 7s Series and grab those Gold rings. We managed to put away our first couple of games with shaky victories and we knew we would have to step it up if we wanted to go toe to toe with the likes of STK and NVS. We all worked through our plays and on field comms and started to get a steam roll effect on the field. Even in games where we dropped 2 points early we would pull it together, fix the gaps and then turn it around to a 4 point win.

Midway through the prelims and we were staring down the field at STK on the other start gate. This was to be my first ever game against the WA team and one that I have been looking forward to for a long time. It was an amazing game, STK put a 2 point lead on us early forcing us on the ropes, but we regrouped, changed the plan of attack and jumped back into the fray. By the end of regulation time the result was a draw, despite the result I could not have asked for a better game and look forward to playing them again soon.

Unfortunately this draw saw the start of a string of slow games with similar results. A Similar draw against Explicit started to stall our points climb in the prelims and put our chances at staying in top 2 on a knife edge. In typical fashion though the worst hurdle came at the latter stage of the prelims. We dropped a game against the NZ team Clown monkeys, smashing us clear out of the top 2. Knowing we were now out we tried some new plays against NVS which netted us another draw but secured us a fight for 3^rd and 4^th

3^rd and 4^th was another slow match against Explicit. Both teams played very methodical finals paintball and at the end of regulation time the score was a draw. The overtime point played even slower with bodies dropping from both sides in an orderly fashion. A kill from Dorito corner brought us a 3 on 2 advantage with both opposing players stuck on the snake side. My coach told me to trade out with the other snake player which I managed to do clean but got picked up by snake corner. This was all we needed though as now it was a 2 on 1 with 50 seconds of game time left. Rather than risk an unlucky kill both our live players locked it up and waited for the last player to make a move to try and break the game open. When he did move, some great hide and seek work from Alex got the last kill and scored us 3^rd place.

Would like to thank Planet Eclipse, HK Army, Killer Paintballs, Paintball Assassin, PaintballShop.com and Action Paintball for all their amazing support throughout this event and cannot wait to get back on the field at round 3.

Every round of the Super 7s just gets harder and better every time! If you and your team has not experienced Super 7s now is the time to do so.

Congratulations to nVs for their first ever win at Super 7s and to STK for coming over again from Western Australia to take their strong second place finish leaving them in first place overall in the 2014 Super 7s Series Pro rankings points. With only two more round and only 6 points separating the top three teams it is going to be a close finish for the podium this year.

I for one cannot wait… Bring on Round 3 of the Super 7s in August at Action Paintball Games Rouse Hill…. the 2014 Planet Eclipse Open.

Dave “Blacky” Black

Sydney SWAT