The time has arrived for the final tournament of the 2021 season. Ahhh man! Jason Trojan and the NXL didn’t disappoint with this one. All year long, the NXL has come through with spicy layouts that have led to great matches and awesome experiences. As we all know, the NXL had quite the theme this year by making layouts that were an in-your-face style of Paintball. This upcoming layout follows that same mantra.
From first glance, this layout looks to be a Snake and Center oriented field that is going to allow for a lot of different routes to be taken off the break. However, it is also one of the few layouts this year where the Dorito side is taking a more traditional feel and isn’t utilizing any of the new 2021 bunkers on them. This layout looks to be a fast paced one where it will be essential to get to the 50 Snake as quickly as possible and refill it when you lose a player out of there. In order to prepare for the tournament, we have created some breakout plans for you and your team to play around with at this weekend's practice.
The concept behind a pocket play is to sacrifice some ground out wide on the field to help get a key elimination early from a particular side. On this break out, I oriented the players to really key up on the snake side to be able to either eliminate the Snake one player or to at least eliminate his secondary support player, thus causing him to be isolated. The drawback of this type of strategy is that if you do not get that key elimination, you will be trapped in the center of the field, consequently making it easier for your opponents to eliminate you.
If your team does not feel comfortable playing from the pocket, you can opt for the strategy of playing the wide game as a team. As stated above, playing wide can be used to your advantage against a team that ran a pocket play. This will allow you to get out to the widest bunkers and be able to trap players on the inside. This will allow your team to assert dominance without having to worry about some on the tape fighting with you. Unfortunately, with every play comes a drawback. If a team decides to play pocket, and your team goes wide, you run the risk of quickly losing some players while trying to reach further spots.
Alternatively, playing the center on some fields can be quite rewarding and yield a great amount of success. This next breakout focuses on being able to push the center of the field to either get an elimination or to get into key bunkers without taking a more traditional route. The concept behind this play is to get your Snake One player or even possibly your Home Player to play the wing on the snake side with the goal to get to the snake side brick to be able to dominate the 50 snake structure. While also doing this, send a player out wide to the Snake Corner to help control the opposing team’s Snake player from beating you to the 50 Snake structure first.
The kinds of plays mentioned above will not be used too often in the beginning stages of a tournament, let alone a single match. Typically, coaches will pull out these plays in the late stages of a tournament in order to score key victories. Often, this style of a breakout is high risk, high reward. The team that runs a high-variance play like this does so if they worry that they may lose the majority of their players off the break regardless. However, if players survive and can properly execute the play, it will yield great rewards and perhaps a victory.
