South Australia has been competing in the Zone Laser Tag National Championships, today known as ZLTAC (Zone Laser Tag Australasian Championships) since 2003. Our first attendance saw South Australia send 2 teams into the Australian Nationals from the Zone 3 Adelaide site. These teams were Outta Control and In Control placing 8th and 13th of 16 respectively. Adelaide returned the next year with 3 teams with the addition of No Control. This time In Control finished 10th, No Control finished 16th and Outta Control placed 21st (out of 22). 2005 only saw Adelaide attend with a single team of players placing 7th out of 18 teams. South Australia skipped 2006 to return in 2007 placing 15th out of 21. This was the last time Zone 3 Adelaide officially sent a team to a nationals event.
Adelaide did not return to the nationals scene until 2012 in Launceston with a new team under the name Adelaide Respawn. A name chosen to symbolize the return of South Australia to the nationals scene. The team was comprised of one player from the original set of South Australian teams and 6 younger players who had all played at Zone 3 during the time of the original South Australian teams. As Zone 3 had only just closed a few months prior to to the 2012 tournament, Respawn was representing the newly opened site Laserzone. Respawn managed to place 17th out of 24 and took home a wealth of knowledge and experience to the players at the new site.
Wanting to improve and show everyone that South Australia meant business, half the team went on a road trip to experience other laser tag venues around Australia. These players visited Werribee, Sunshine, Box Hill, Geelong, Crown and Bendigo in Victoria, Albury in NSW and Zone 3 in Canberra learning a bit about how all these sites played. When South Australia returned to the tournament the next year with 2 teams in Canberra their efforts paid off with Respawn placing a very respectable 7th and the new team Shrike 22nd out of 24. South Australia also won it’s first trophy with a player managing to secure 3rd place in the Lord of the Rings event.
South Australia would not return with a full team until 2015 due to the 2014 Nationals taking place in Mt Wellington, New Zealand and many players not being able to afford to attend. That isn’t to say that SA didn’t send anyone to the 2014 event with a couple of SA players joining up with some Victorians to create the Assassins. This was a learning experience for those that attended having to work with players they had only a couple of days to practice with and that had a completely different play style to them. This experience resulted in the team managing to place 8th out of the 19 teams that were able to make it to New Zealand.
By now SA was hungry for a real trophy, having built up a strong player base at home with more experienced players joining the scene to train with and against meaning confidence was high. SA had managed to field a total of four teams for the 2015 tournament in Bendigo adding Elements and Triumph to the mix. Elements pulled in at 26th out of 30 with Triumph and Shrike finishing in 21st and 20th respectively. Respawn had a strong showing throughout the entire tournament managing to give some of the previously top tier teams a run for their money. Respawn managed to finish very high on the ladder entering finals in 4th position. This meant they had to come first in 2 games to enter the grand final with only 3 chances of losing and going up against the toughest games they had ever faced. Everyone was watching the team that had risen through the competition over the past 4 years and caused so many upsets with their unique style of play. The first game was a second place, once chance blown, 2 to go. The second game, Respawn managed to secure a first place, putting them into a golden game, this meant that they only needed one more win to make it into the grand final and still had 2 chances up their sleeve. The 3rd game they only just managed to scrape a second place leaving them with one last chance at making the grand final. This was it, their last chance for 2015 to get into the grand final, they had been so confident in the lead-up to this year’s event that they bought a 10XL team shirt to wave as a flag when they won. Respawn played harder than they ever had, having run dump strategies the past 4 games thinking other teams wouldn’t expect then to do it again. At the end of the game the teams were held in the kit up room which usually means that it was a close game and the scores need to be verified. After being given the all clear and exiting the kit up room the cheers from the rest of the SA squad and friends from other teams was incredible. Respawn had secured a position in the grand final, coming first by 2273 points. The grand final was a blur. It was laser tag like Respawn had never seen it played. The skill shown by the Brisbane Maroons and New Zealand Cobras in the grand final was beyond anything they had ever seen. The winner of the grand final was decided by the average score across 3 matches. Not knowing the scores until all matches had been played meant Respawn had no idea how they were doing until the end. Ultimately they placed 2nd, 3rd, 3rd in the grand final matches meaning they were to place 3rd overall regardless of scores. In the end it was enough for Respawn to have made it to the grand final and have won a main event trophy and to get to fly their shirt-flag held up on a broom they purchaced earlier that day.
2016 saw a shake up in the teams with Respawn splitting and players being spread across different teams with 2 going to High Voltage, 2 going to Fuse, one moving interstate and playing for another team and the other no longer playing laser tag. Adelaide had 3 teams this year, the 2 mentioned previously and Adelaide Phantom. A surplus of players meant that teams were a little unbalanced and did not perform as well as they were expected to. High Voltage placed 10th while Phantom finished 11th and Fuse finished 15th out of 30. SA didn’t go home empty handed however taking home first place in the newly introduced Juniors event.
South Australia hosted the 2017 ZLTAC which meant people were expecting big things from the unpredictable SA squad. With 4 teams for a home nationals there was plenty of opportunity for some serious upsets with the home team advantage. Unfortunately now with only 3 of the Bendigo 2015 Respawn players left in SA, there was no chance of the once 3rd place team coming back to win the home nats. The 4 teams that were fielded instead were Desolators, Apex, Vortex and Forgotten Realms taking out places 5th, 9th, 17th and 23rd out of 33 respectively. Desolators had a very strong showing throughout the entire competition holding 1st place on the ladder at the halfway point but the home team advantage slipped away from them in the later half of the tournament as the other teams were able to learn the maze and use it to their advantage. Apex were also nipping at their heels later in the competition and having to face each-other in their first finals match was ultimately both their downfall as any game with two SA teams in it typically does not end well for both teams. Again the South Australian squad did not walk away empty handed with last years Juniors winner taking out first place in the Womens event and two SA players on a triples team placed 2nd.
The biggest ZLTAC event ever also saw SA send their largest squad as we entered 5 teams into the 2018 competition. Our 5th team the Red Shirts however was a hybrid team consisting of a mix of SA and Victorian players, one of whom was an old SA player from the original squad in 2003. There were a lot of difficulties in the 2018 squad owing to a number of injuries and player issues. This resulted in the Immortals which originally consisted of the previous years Desolators falling from being South Australia’s A team to the B team. and Apex becoming the A team. Injuries then ironically completely crippled the Immortals team resulting in them having to pick up a substitute player from another state at the very start of the competition. Vortex from the previous year managed to pick up a couple of experienced players from the collapse of Immortals and the power player from Forgotten Realms almost bringing them in line with Apex, biting at their heels later in the competition. Aftershock comprised of a bunch of South Australia’s newer and younger players who showed a lot of promise and whilst hopeful were not expected to do exceptionally well, were there to gain knowledge and experience. At the end of the tournament, Apex and Vortex took out 11th and 13th with Immortals placing 17th and Aftershock and Red Shirts landing in 29th and 31st out of a total of 37 teams. Again SA did not walk away empty handed placing 2nd in both Juniors and Womens. And whilst it’s not technically a South Australian trophy, one of Respawn’s old players who moved interstate placed first in Solos and scored a 3rd place trophy on a team in Triples and tied for first in the first ZLTAC fantasy league.
South Australia has a very healthy competitive laser tag scene with multiple teams regularly putting forward to attend the main competition and other smaller competitions throughout the year. We have a healthy league scene with at least 5 teams per season for the past few years. For what has primarily been a single site state we have been able to develop into the state which many other teams regard as a difficult to predict and plan strategies against. We owe a lot of this to the fact that we were isolated from the competitive scene for so long that we developed our own style which is very unique from each other region.