Down at a very sunny Skirmish Budby on Sunday. I'd told myself I wasn't going to play this month (saving the pennies before a quick trip over to Europe next weekend), but the weather was gorgeous and I couldn't resist. Ran my summer RusFor kit to test the KLMK suit, with the trusty E&L AKS-74U.
Advertised as a sell-out day, although the car park looked suspiciously quiet when we arrived. The safe zone was packed out though, and it seemed like a solid group with quite a few regulars, fewer than ten rentals (including a really chill family who we ended up sharing a bay with), and plenty of new faces. Not too much HPA, a decent spread of bushwookies, couple of LMGs, and of course a million ARs.
Game 1 was the standard domination on the tanks field, to allow the marshals to gauge team balance. We had the pick of ends to attack from, and unfortunately the consensus was 'attack downhill', which meant I had to play against my absolute favourite bunker on the entire site. Predictably, the other team locked it down, and I ended up pinned down opposite it. For some reason I was playing massively conservatively, and that meant I ended game 1 with less than a mag used, and no hits scored or taken. Literally just vibing in cover. It wasn't conscious, and I didn't realise until I went to bomb up and realised I didn't need to. I always like to get my first kill and get hit myself as early as possible to get me into the flow of the game - maybe it was the sun making me sleepy, or just cobwebs from not having played in a few weeks.
We then went up to the Fort for some back-and-forth CQB. We started off defending, and a whole bunch of us decided to strongpoint one of the 'fatal funnel' entrances to try and delay their assaulters. Predictably, after about 30 seconds the world's largest thunderflash landed at my feet. No point running, and six of us were wiped with one of the most effective 'nades I've seen in a long time. Back to the deadzone, still no BB hits made or taken. I actually don't remember the run-back as an attacker very much, and I don't think I saw a single live enemy all game as I was mostly no. 3 or 4 in a very effective stack. Just a weird first few games, and I was beginning to become aware that I couldn't get my game on. We then went to an attacker-defender on one of the compound maps, and with defenders being allowed outside the compound I set up in some bushes and finally got some good battles in (and got properly, honestly shot) which made me feel a lot better.
The next game was attacker-defender in the village, which is a great map. We attacked first, and played it from a totally different angle than usual, which changed all the geometry in a really fun way. Theoretically, we couldn't open fire (due to a risk of imagined civilians) until we were either fired upon, or we saw a clearly armed enemy. This was supposed to let the defenders spring some sort of ambush, but for some reason they just... set up pointing weapons out of windows, so we called 'contact front' as soon as we heard 'game-on' and merrily blazed away from the start. We pushed one flank aggressively while applying suppressing fire from the centre, and cleaned up reasonably handily. I thought I played pretty well, which was nice, and definitely a step up from the rest of the morning.
After lunch, we went out onto Berlin Wall, my absolute least favourite map. I resolved to do what I always do - post up in one of the tunnels, and see if I could get a few good gunfights, rather than trying to particularly play the objectives. This turned out to be one of my better ideas, and after a couple of false starts I managed to get a commanding position where I was able to mow down players trying to push up to the wall itself. Post-lunch departures also turned into a string of team re-balances which saw me and a couple others move teams multiple times as numbers dipped during the day. I was extremely flattered to hear the head marshal say 'given the players we've moved, I think the difference in numbers will be fine'. Of course, he could well have meant that I was a dead weight equivalent to negative players, and just offsetting the other guys!
During the afternoon we ran back the games from the morning that we hadn't already flipped. The compound attack was reasonably decent, but the village defence was really excellent. We had a little team chat and decided to actually try and use the 'ambush' rules and hit the attackers as they stacked up to clear the first buildings. This went well, and myself and another player had a really good angle on the centre, letting us clean up until they finally managed to get enough shots into our position that a couple found their way to us. We then dropped onto the hyperball/paintball field and ran a 'pyramid' game, where each team started with two players active. Whenever a player was hit, they went back to respawn and tagged another player to join them, until the whole team was on the field, at which point it became one-life TDM. We were possibly a little cruel in putting a site regular and paintball player out alongside my buddy H with his Krytac LMG. H proceeded to demonstrate exactly what a machine gun is for, mowing down the opposition with comical abandon. At one point it was about 7 or 8 vs our 2. Absolute highlight has to be watching H drain his battery to many groans and boos from the peanut gallery behind him, then flip out a spare from his kit and do a battery change under fire to raucous applause. I got a nice little run down the snake and got a good few flanking kills towards the end, but that was mostly because H was suppressing the entire team. Bless him, he kept apologising afterwards and worrying he'd spoiled people's afternoon! Sadly, the absolute muppet had had his GoPro on all day, and this was the round he'd not turned it on for, so you'll just have to take my word for how well he did.
We finished with a couple of rounds of Infected, which is probably my least favourite game type. They didn't go too badly, and the banter was excellent as it had been all day long. I took the only chunky hit of the day, with a BB from a sniper shattering on my eyepro (cue an immediate trip to the marshal to get the lenses checked while doing a passable pirate impression - the Bolles stood up fine, but I don't think I'm a fan of watching a BB shatter a centimetre from my eyeball, and I've got a bit of a bruise from where the lens bottom dug into my cheek). Still, better than last time out where my face was apparently an HVT.
The day absolutely flew by, and I couldn't believe the time when we came in after the last game. A cracking crowd, perfect weather, some really good gameplay, and Skirmish's usual high standards of marshalling made for a grand day out, and I was glad I could play myself into the day after a slow start. The E&L ran flawlessly as ever - never anything special, but always more than good enough to get the job done - and the kit held up well. 9/10 just a really honest, fun day of airsoft, the kind you wish you could have every weekend.
The only drama I even heard about all day was someone with an HPA + binary trigger setup apparently being aggy about perceived non-hit-taking, and threatening to just turn his regulator up if people weren't taking. Happily, I was able to avoid getting involved, and it was dealt with by a quick word to all from the head marshal, and the instatement of random chrono checks for the next few rounds to keep people honest. I thought hit-taking was generally really good, and the overall atmosphere was friendly, with plenty of banter flying and a generally good vibe!
Roll on the next one after the hols!
