Two steps forward, three steps back

But still – one more trophy!

The second leg of the Norwegian Paintball League is finished and it was a rollercoaster ride, full of ups and downs. The tournament was held in Hokksund in the southern part of Norway. The weather was shifting from rain to sun to rain again during the course of the day, mirroring our own performance.

After a very early start we arrived at the site still tired but starting to feel that familiar sensation in the pit of your stomach. That little tightness that slowly builds as game on approaches and doesn’t disappear until the buzzer signals the start of your first match.

For a while a few years back I lost that feeling, only in the most crucial games in the Millennium-series did I get that tingling feeling. A sure sign that paintball was slowly eating me and my team up. And sure enough the team disbanded soon afterwards.

It wasn’t until I started playing with some of my old friends and we created the Slagen Bandits that I truly enjoyed all the aspects of paintball again. Every game together with this great group of guys and girls feels important now. Therefore it was a great feeling to win the first leg of the NPL a month ago. And therefore it was also somewhat painful and frustrating to watch the team’s performance this event. The keyword for our performance this event seemed to be inconsistency.



In the prelims we started off with a 3-1 loss to Drammen Sabotage. It was really cold for a summer morning and we had major issues with our super fragile paint even though we tried to keep it heated. It didn’t help that we managed to throw away a 3 vs. 1 situation when we had the chance to tie the match up.

Next up we faced Stavanger Mayhem, a new team this season. By this time we had fixed part of our paint problems but were handed a clear 3-0 loss. While we were not too worried by our first loss this was something else and we had no clear understanding of what we did wrong.

Our next match was against Oslo Paintball kids, which played very well and handed us our third loss in a row, 3-2.


By this time we were obviously very frustrated with ourselves. While none of us expected to just breeze through the tournament just because we won the last one, I don’t think any of us expected to be 0-3 after the first three matches. The mood in the pit was somber but collected. We had a short team meeting before our last games and we reminded each other that the team has proved in the past the we can come back and finish strong despite a poor start and that is just what we did.

We won our next match against Vendetta 3-1 and also against Ratpack 3-1. It felt like we might turn the day around after all, simply by sticking together and just executing our game plans better. As it turned out we just made it in to the semi-finals as the fourth seed and faced off against Mayhem once more.

Eager for revenge we had adjusted our tactics for this re-match and things seemed to be going well in the first point as we were up on bodies and with better field positions. A couple of 1-4-1 later and Mayhem won the first point. We then had to start the next two points with four players due to racking up even more unnecessary penalties. This really hurt us as we obviously couldn’t use our revised gameplan and ended up with another 3-0 loss.

Angry at ourselves we regrouped and got ready for the bronze-final against Sabotage who was the first seed after the prelims, but they lost against Oslo Paintball kids in the other semi-final. By this time the temperature had returned to normal and our paint was shooting great and we managed to end the tournament with a 3-1 victory in a close fought match.

At the end of the day we were a little bit relived that we managed to secure a podium finish after all the early set-backs, but we were still disappointed in our prelim performance.
But after all it’s always good to end the day on the podium, looks like it’s going to be very competitive in the Elite division this year. And we welcome the challenge :-)

Luckily the next event is only weeks away on our own home field, so it’s time to get back to the grind…

We would like to thank our sponsors: Planet Eclipse,Hybrid Foto, Dark Sports, Game-on,Spine/Gloube Souldiers, Goldhammer, Slagen Paintball, snøservice.no, KM Straps and Tanked. Thanks for helping us out guys and girls!


by: Tor Anders Gunnerød, Slagen Bandits Captain

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