Yet again, nothing but good things. Good to see the MWB beat down the Bob Long team
Hey thanks Wolv...it was nice getting to meet you guys in person too. I'm talking with the boys about Texas, so we might see you in September.
As for the number of teams at DDay/UWL, I'm not sure, maybe 6? Scheduling with DDay activities was tough so we never saw all of the teams, just heard about them and scores. One thing is for certain, Tom is a class act. I have yet to see a promoter go out of his way to help accomodate team schedules in conjunction with an event such as DDay. In the past, SPPL was do or die, you will show up at this time or else you're out. Tom took a different approach, he understood that DDay asks a lot from the players, especially those involved in leadership positions down there and he worked around their schedules. This enabled more teams/players to participate in the UWL and really struck a chord with us. It showed us that Tom is a guy who really wants to get more people involved in woodsball competition. Obviously more teams is good for business, but his approach to picking up those teams is quality. He spends times with the teams, stops by their camps, hangs out....great guy. Geez...sounds like I'm trying to pick him for a date or something.
As for the tournie itself, each game was 30 minutes of all of action. There weren't firefights for 30 minutes straight, but each team would be moving, crawling, setting up ambushes, looking for choke points, radio comms, setting up defenses, moving towards flags, engaging fireteams, one on one battles, snipers, racing for the canister, etc. From our understanding, this was the largest field Tom and his staff had constructed for UWL play thus far. Our response: we loved it. With a larger field it truly allows your mech/more stealth oriented teams to manuever and take up positions, thus enabling them to hold their own against the heavier shooting teams. On smaller fields everyone is pushed closer together, less room to hide or set up ambushes, flank, etc. More or less it causes shooting galleries, obviously your mech teams will have a harder time with that. The larger setup provided an equal playing field. For future events Tom, as we stated at the tournie....keep the fields large. We only played three games at this event due to the DDay schedule and rain, the combination of the two created scheduling issues. Here is my takedown (my scores are not official, I am trying to remember them off of the top of my head):
Game 1-- Muddy vs. Socom (Loss)We started off decent, some of the guys hadn't read the rules enough to get a good feel for things, questions that needed to be answered were done last minute, we were rushed a little because of this lack of attention on our part. It caused us to be a little sloppy. We got it together though. By the end of the game we had dominated most of the field and felt like we had the game won. Once it was over and scores were totalled though, we found out that the canister on the field was worth 10 points. Socom had found this canister, giving them the edge to beat us. Right at the end, we had three guys at their home base within feet of pulling the flag, but none of our guys had watches so they were unaware of the clock winding down. They were creeping towards it instead of racing for it, looking for the sniper. Another key example of why having a watch on the field can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Be prepared. In the end it worked out, perhaps this opening loss was the jump start we needed. Final Score--- Muddy 64---Socom 65
Game 2-- Muddy vs. 12 Monkeys (Win)Right off the bat we set an aggressive tone. Now that we knew the canister was worth points we sent Dingle to retrieve it as the Scout off of the break. He was successful in finding it and collecting the points. From there we pushed hard and dominated the field, pulling their flag twice. This was an exciting game to play, and even those in the dead box were going nuts listening to our success on the field through radio chatter throughout the game. Final---Muddy 113---Monkeys 50
Game 3--- Muddy vs. Bob Long's Assassins (Win)INTENSE. It began downpouring right before game on. We are used to playing in crappy conditions because we do it all the time at our field. As a result, we felt that we would have that advantage due to the weather conditions. Even though these guys are woodsball legends, we were in our element. They came out hard but we used the brush and the mud to setup ambushes and lock down areas of the field. Patience paid off. Throw in a little craziness by Taylor who ran through the middle of their lines to pull their home base flag, an amazing last second defense for our home flag by Robert, Brent and Curt, and everyone doing their job from start to finish...we took out the Assassins with a solid victory. Final--- Muddy 100---Bob Long 52
In my understanding, because of our success and high scores in the final two games, we not only won the Skills Division, but we also won (technically) the Open Division? Not sure on this, Tom would have to clarify. Once the Bob Long game was over, Tom asked which division we would prefer to "win" and receive a trophy for. Without hesitation we chose to represent the Skills Division. We played with the Skills restrictions, therefore we wanted to stick to that mold. Just as important, it shows other mech teams out there that even a Skills squad can run with the big dawgs. To close this out....all I have to say is that if you are considering playing in the UWL but you're on the fence about it...jump off and get in the action. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. This is some of the best money we have ever spent. True woodsball competition, how it was meant to be played. We can't thank Tom and UWL enough for putting this little shin dig together. Hopefully we can find our way down to Texas and keep the ball rolling. Thanks guys!
I know I keep saying it, but I really hope you guys can put a team on the field for this. Or even a partial team, there are more than enough solo registrants that will be autofilled into your roster if you can only field a partial team. I think you'd love it - it's nto a typical tourny. Iused to be a tourny player adn I HATED the attitudes and the cheating, etc.. I can say firsthand after reffing an entire 2 day events and from all of the feedback I've read - this is awesome. Hell its even including a spot for just pump players! Oh, and it's BYOP
