Feb. 27th German Indoor Masters

Amsterdam Xistence takes the trip down to Helmsted again for the much anticipated German Indoor Masters. After a 4 hour drive and some antics, we arrived at the huge indoor paintball hall.. already full of cheery Germans downing a great quantity of of alcoholic beverages. We walked the field and greeted our friends before driving to the hotel and hitting the sack. The Xistence curse was still in full effect as we had the second day of the game. So we had to get up early in the morning again, gearing up like it was Monday and we were heading to work. But as soon as we rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and the excitement of our approaching match started to kick in, the adrenaline started flowing and we were ready for action.

Our first prelim match started off on the wrong foot. After a sloppy breakout and some confusion about the game plan, we quickly found ourselves 1 down. We got together in the pit, slapped each other around and made sure everybody knew what had to be done. We finished the match scoring 3 unanswered points. From here on in it took a while before anybody scored a point against us at all, as the next 3 games also finished in quick 3-0 shutouts. Our last Sunday game however brought us up against our favorite opponents.. recent SPL champions Rammstein Instinct. After the controversy and our eventual win over them at the XPSL, we looked forward to another messy, dirty and most of all hard match with the Instinct boys. After starting the match off with the advantage, we dropped the ball and let the Germans take points that were in our favor. We lost our first and only match for the day.

Sunday started it off sloppy again, we failed to realize we had to change our game plan for too long and lost disappointingly from a much lesser team. We still got through to the finals though. The long wait until the finals didn't do much for our spirits, we were anxious to get back in the action. We had to win at least two out of three to get a spot in the finals. However we were tied to Headrush in points, which made seeding a little tricky. So the officials asked us whether we wanted to play a one on one to decide the ranking. We agreed and sent our big guy in versus their best player. Everybody loves a one on one, so the field was quickly surrounded with chanting Germans and excited onlookers. Game on.... game over. After shooting a barrage of paint at the Johanator, the Headrush guy found his head in the path of a rushing paintball. The crowd went loud and the seeding was set for the finals.

This didn't go as smoothly as we'd like, we lost the first match... losing our shot at first and second place. So we had to battle it out with two other teams to get that spot in the 3rd and 4h match. We rolled over Headrush with ease, we were confident we had the last match in the bag as it was the lowest performing team so far in the finals. We started off way too confident, losing 2 points in a row... it was all up to the last point. We needed exactly 1 point to get through to the finals. Do or die time. Long story short. We won that point... and then some. Winning the match 3-2.

The match for 3rd and 4th place had everything going wrong, we dropped points we should've won. Got penalties for playing on (thanks to the highly motivated refs, who were really showing some hustle there... not) and lost a controversial point that should have been awarded to us. We ended up in 4th place... lower than we deserved.. but still a step up from last year. Expect another big step up next year.