The starting tournament for the 2008 Centurio was made in Istanbul, over the Asian site of the city. The stadium located in a campus of Marmara University had excellent turf, ideal for paintball. However grass was the only positive aspect of the site setup, the organization lacked of things like trade-show, player stands for the EPL and a good working air compressor that could fill tanks up to 4500 psi and not 3000 psi in a timely manner.

The team arrived on Thursday evening and Friday morning, unfortunately due to a last minute unexpected problem, Michael Lorusso was unable to make it to the tournament, so we were only left 5 of us.

The draw didn’t seem easy, we had to face SKmoscow and 2easy from Poland who had finished 2nd over the past weekend in the Millennium in the SPL and division 2 respectively, the third team we had to face was with Ro-Maniacs from Romania.

The first game was with 2easy, and proved to be not that easy :D, due to our game plan we lost 2 quick points in the start, we had to readjust our strategy by placing Dimitris behind Alex in the tombstone zone, and Kostas in the snake, we went on and won the 3rd game, having the score to 2-1. The fourth game was fought in similar style to the previous one, but was lost to details and our opportunity to get the game to a draw was gone, with few minutes left on the stopwatch and a two points lead, we had no change, and the fourth point was a quick one losing with 4-1 score.

Our goal to make it to the 8 seemed a bit difficult now, as we had to face a very strong team, and things weren’t easy. On the break of our second match, we were again losing by 2-0 but this time, things changed... the third point was played hard, and teo ended winning a one on one situation, bringing the match to 2-1. The fourth game was again fought hard leaving a situation of 2 vs 2, Dimitris and Alex handled it perfectly, with alex, opening the angles wide and bunkering the last guy. The score now was tied 2-2 and had 1:43 in the stopwatch.

We decided to play defensively to take the match to overtime and try to win the final game. At 1:00 to go of the normal time, we were 5 of us against 3 of them, and still decided to take it to overtime since the team was playing perfectly.

In the extra time, we won the game with 4 live players, a fantastic win, that not only boosted our morale, but kept our hopes alive for qualifying.

The third game was on Sunday with Ro-Maniacs, we won the first point and they got to win the 2nd point, their game plan was smart and had us restrained, it was hard to crack, but managed to get a 2 point lead. The 5th was won by Ro-Maniacs but time was over, and so we won the game 3-2.

We came 2nd in our group behind, 2easy. On the quarterfinals we faced HPG factory team from London, UK. The team had some top name players including Tony Perez and Brandon Short. The 1st point was lost quickly but we went back to fight for the rest, on the second game we brought the game to a 4 vs 2 situation, but unfortunately the HPG players had locked the field and with the support they had from the sidelines, it was nearly impossible to break it. The third point was a repeat, we fought hard but unfortunately lost it in details, The fourth point went to us, and made the score 3-1, the fifth point came to 2 v 1 with Alex and Dimitris posted on Bshort, Alex was out of paint, and got a 1v1 for trying to switch off the eyes from his marker.. what a shame!!

That was it, perfect games on a not so perfect tournament site, we’d like to give big thanks to team JOKER from Turkey for helping us with the pit crew, coaching and everything else, your presence and support was crucial to our games.

Next stop will be Lviv, Ukraine.