Team SA had its first match against Finland on Sunday night 29 January 2012 @ 9pm for both teams.

The match was played on the map Grand Bazaar and Team SA have put a lot of time into getting a strategy setup for the map and to make sure all players knew what they had to do.

On game day myself (EasyKill as manager) and PeStil3nc3 (as captain) got together with Finland's captain to arrange what servers we are going to play on. It was decided to have one round played on a Finland server and one round on our MWEB sponsored South African server. Also it were decided that we will play on the Finland server first with Finland being US and us RUS. That meant that we would be US on our server and Finland RUS and was what we wanted when we play with the better pings on our server.

We also made use of all 11 players in the team as we had a team setup for playing on the servers with higher pings and players at home with the lower pings. The first round on the international server was very tough, as we could clearly notice the difference between international and national infrastructure regarding connection speeds and packet losses.   Finland managed to take 2/3 flags with ease, although we managed at some stages to recapture 2/3 flags, we just couldn't keep them at bay.  I must admit,  Finland's weapon  accuracy is out of this world, fantastic.  We really had a tough time on their server.

We had a 15min break so all players can connect on our server but this got a lot longer as they had problems with their 8th player. Eventually they got him to connect when we had problems with one of our own players that kept on getting disconnected and we decided to sub him out as we did want to have it happen in the game.

The second round got going and the tactics Assassin planned played out exactly as we expected, we managed to take out their infantry squad, but their amour came in as support, and our armor was taking their back flag to the south,  we expected the armor to have a face-off, but that didn't happen  as their armor played a supportive role rather than a aggressive role.  RSA managed to take all 3 flags within the first few minutes of the game.  Once we captured the 3 flags,  players was overjoyed and the tactics we planned didn't hold up as key players got excited and wanted to play the Hero moment!  Assassin said –" I think the moment was too big for some, as not all the members have professional competition experience.  There was no cover from back alleyway and the rear flag got exposed, Finland moved in, and then the match became a roller coaster of flag captures."  This round really went up and down as one moment we were in control and then they seemed to be in control, we could never really recover because it became a slog out match.   The end result we lost the round 49 – 0.  Even though Finland were playing with pings of 200 on our server, it never at one moment felt like they were experiencing latency issues, as their accuracy was astonishing.

Assassin said –" The tactics of international players is totally different to South African players.  I have personally competed in over 200 competitive clan matches, and never have I witnessed such unorthodox tactics, weapon skills and accuracy.  I will personally take the negative moments of the game and turn this into positive as I have witnessed and learned a lot."  After the match a 2 hour meeting was held, and moments and tactics was discussed and analyzed.

A big thanks to all the team players Assassin, Bloodslug, Chaotic, Crincler, Cromedome, Jalgorty, Lt-Matt, PeStil3nc3, Saberfox91o, Vermaak & Zaarehs for the time and hard work they put into the team and the game.

Our next match is on 2 February 2012 @ 9pm against Belgium on the map Operation Metro. Also a big thanks you to all the people and players that is behind us, again we will try and do our utmost best to keep South Africa's name high.

Report done by EasyKill BF3 Team SA manager