Impulse

Another weekend, another dissertation to write about how the game went. I went to Worthing as usual and bumped into @Hatchet there this week, which was nice! I decided to bring my HPA VSR, even though it's not perfect at the moment since I am waiting on a 300mm inner barrel and a bunch of foam to arrive so that I can internally suppress it further. At the moment, it's a 430mm widebore in a 470mm bull barrel, so 40mm is foam, but with a 300mm inner barrel it'll be 170mm of foam and should make it nice and quiet. It was still a little bit chilly for the m700 and I was picking up my AEG m14, so I decided the VSR was the best to bring. Set it up, got it shooting 2.28J and hopping .45s nicely, so I was good to go. Picked up the m14 and decided I'd zero the LPVO and set the hop after lunch as the morning was going to be a big, multi-objective game until lunch and that's my preferred way of playing. Sidearm choice today was my HK45, as it was definitely warm enough for GBB pistols and I way prefer them to mk23s, so I was keen to use it. After the safety brief I got a bit annoyed though. The marshalls made a point to split me and my friend up (again) and also split another regular from his two friends. This is the 2nd week in a row they've picked me and my friend out and made a point to separate us onto different teams, so I wasn't that impressed heading out for the first game. We got the far spawn, so a long walk out at first, and I had no idea what the objectives were so I decided to just follow and support my team as best I could. The start of the game had the rentals all around the Tower area and neither team could spawn until their team's rentals recovered an ammo box and brought it back to the spawn. An interesting idea in theory, as I'm always interested in seeing people try new things, but it didn't really work and after 15 mins they just released both teams. I took a conservative position, crawling under a holly bush and setting up a position overlooking the checkpoint on the path. Didn't take long for the yellows to push up to it and I got a lot of kills from that spot without getting detected at all. I kept waiting to make sure I got a good shot off, lulling the other team into a false sense of security at times by making them think I had moved, before taking another one of them out. It was good fun and this allowed my team to push up and take the checkpoint after I picked off enough players to dissuade the remnants from peeking or people from reinforcing. At this time I saw our team (blues) had found an objective (a dummy on a stretcher) that we needed to get to the stables building in the Tower area; they had pushed it out onto the path, but got hit in the process and had to drop the stretcher, so it was now heavily contested. So with checkpoint under our control I got myself out from under the holly bush and pushed into the heavily wooded area to the left of the path to come up on the corner of it to try and establish some forward control. I linked up with a friend who had also pushed up there with his AEG and we basically played sniper and spotter for a while, him picking off targets on the flank and me holding a line on the chapel, quite a popular spot to fight from. Blues kept pushing and managed to get the stretcher into the stables building, so now we had to hold it for 20 mins. I crawled further up as I saw blues pushing well into the Tower area, finding my way to a spot next to a tree that overlooked the path, but from the other side of the Tower area, so I took position there and started to cut off reinforcements, forcing them to take harder routes into the area. It worked really well, much to one marshall's amusement as he watched me get into position and take care of business. However, blues were doing a bit too well and our guys who had now taken the chapel were asked to give it up, and another marshall dropped a green smoke next to me. Green smoke counts as toxic, but fortunately the wind carried it the other way, however with its proximity it was only a matter of time before it expanded to where I was, so I quickly uprooted and fell back to the corner spot I was in before. We managed to hold for the 20 mins and shortly after that the game was over. Something that really worked well for me was I used camo paint for my face along with my ghillie instead of a balaclava or lower face mask today and it worked really, really well. Lower face masks make my glasses fog up (as it routes breath up into my glasses) and I can't get away from that as I have prescription inserts and can't use contact lenses. My balaclava, especially on warm days, makes me sweat buckets which also fogs up my glasses, but camo paint keeps a nice air flow and it worked really, really well. £4 and it'll last me a while, so I think I'm going to continue using camo paint. Big success! I had a LOT of fun in this game and the VSR was performing flawlessly as it tends to (I also took the advice of @Badgerlicious and ran my gunbilical cord around my left side instead of my right and it worked really, really well, stopping it getting caught as much and never getting caught on my own kit (my line loves catching on my pistol suppressor!)). However, I had a massive criticism of how the game was run. It didn't affect me because I didn't get hit once, but the respawns were on clocks. This meant that you had a 5 minute window to respawn followed by 5 mins of not being able to respawn. What I heard from the friend I was split from, as well as another friend who was on the other team, is that they would spawn in, go out and try to play aggressive, get hit and then have to wait 5 mins again because it worked out that they would get back to spawn after about 5 mins, so they'd get back just in time for respawns to be closed. They said they spent 40 mins just sitting in spawn and it was incredibly frustrating. They played less than they were waiting in respawn. For a large, multi-objective game I don't think the clock spawns worked very well and made people very frustrated. A lot went home at lunch time because of it. I didn't play the afternoon as I wanted to set up my m14 and then hang out with one of my friends who wasn't playing today; plus the sun was out and it was (almost) warm, so it was a nice day to just chill out. The m14 was performing stupidly well on the range, which was nice, and the LPVO was basically already zeroed. Don't know how the afternoon games went, but I really enjoyed my day. I think the fact that the sun was out and it wasn't freezing cold or wet definitely helped, though it was a bit breezy at times for sniping, but even that wasn't too bad. All in all it was a really fun morning of airsoft and I'm looking forward to the next months as it hopefully gets a bit warmer. I do better in warm weather, as I used to airsoft in Spain, and my guns do better in warm weather because I like my gas guns, so I'm glad to be this side of winter.

Similar results and I'm using a 50 degree MR hop and an omega nub in the stock hop unit. I'd say 60m is easy to get accurately at 1.88J on a .4 with mine, and I can fairly reliably hit 75m without having to angle the gun. It's not as consistently good as my HPA DMR, but it's more fun! I get the same thing though where the odd BB just seems to have a will of its own, but it's not TOO often. At 1.1J on a .32 I would say 50m accurately, 60m consistently.

Another game day at Worthing and it was a mix for me, a lot of good mixed in with some bad. I took my spring VSR, which is set to be right on the limit at 1.14J on a .32 (I think the lowest shot at chrono was 1.12J and the highest was 1.14J). This meant I had no MED and could blast people up close, which is definitely an advantage at Worthing with how many coppices there are all over the site; lots of twiggy bits to get in the way of long shots! I also brought my SR-25 too as my friend wanted to have a go with it, so that was in the bag too. Got through chrono, set up my kit, realised I need another solution for carrying my rubber knife and headed to the safety brief. They didn't do the spiel about bolt actions and DMRs having a 30m MED, so I couldn't do the meme response to "bolties and DMRs, what's your MED?" "0m!". However, this is where the first bad happened; all of the regulars apart from myself, my friend, @Badgerlicious and his friend were on the same team. About 8 - 10 people who all knew how to work together, while there were low numbers at about 26 total on each side, vs 4 of us who knew how to work together. But it doesn't end there! Clearly the four of us were too powerful, so the marshall pointed at us and said "I can't allow you 4 on the same team" and so he split us up. @Badgerlicious and his friend were moved onto the other team while me and my friend remained on the same team. So now it was 2 regulars vs 10 - 12 regulars. As I said, clearly we're just too good at airsoft and the rest of the regulars aren't 😎 Anyway, first game underway and from an objectives point of view, it was a really great game. There were a whole load of objective items scattered around the site and both teams had to get as many as possible. We also didn't have a base to start with and had to choose our base. We took the Tower area as ours, which is a good, easy to defend area, while I think the enemy team took the outpost base or Dell End down the hill as the game started. With a good push from us blues going on in the upper area, me and my friend went down to the bottom of the site as there was one of the marshalls playing the role of a banker who was there to give out objectives to players. However, he was also armed with a minigun and didn't like people loitering or camping the area around him, which meant that neither team could dominate the area and farm all his objectives. In theory. In practice, none of the other blues came down to the bottom of the site, so it was a pair of ghillie snipers trying to hold off the tide of yellows and I must say my friend did a really good job of that. He did such a good job that my position became useless as nobody got to me, so I didn't do much that game. Found out afterwards that our team basically lost everything, including our base so I don't think we had any objectives at the end. The game was insanely one-sided, as we said it would be, and so the marshalls grabbed 6 regulars from yellow team and swapped them with some blue players to even it up. Next two games were a 3 flip can base around the Tower area and the swap over of the regulars caused the games to flip in the other direction. From both sides our team dominated the area. First game I set up in my favourite spot overlooking the path and sod's law came into effect. The one day I bring a 1.1J replica and I get a whole load of yellows just standing in the middle of the path about 70m away from my position, in full view. If I had a 2.3J bolt action, I'd have had a field day, but alas I had to wait for them to get a bit closer and even then I found a use for running a DMR instead of a 1.1J for those 50 - 60m engagements. Yes, you can tune a 1.1J gun to hit out to 50 - 60m fairly accurately, but there were a lot of people not taking the hits I was dishing out at that distance and I'm going to assume that they just weren't feeling them as they weren't really reacting to the hits at all. I could see the BBs impacting through my scope, but with a bolt action I only have one shot, and one shot at 1.1J when you're pushing towards that 60m range just wasn't being felt. I don't blame them for it, but it has tempted me to try running a DMR next game day since it's still a bit chilly for my gas bolt actions (will run those as soon as it hits about 15 celcius). We swapped sides and I played super aggressively in the next one, crawling up into a very forward position where nobody really spotted me in my ghillie. I was constantly worried as my VSR was "old school" ghillied, simply wrapped in scrim net with no other camo attached to it, but I was putting the fact I had no MED to good use. Most of my shots into the Tower area from such a forward position were about 20m tops. As our team then pushed up and took control of the area, I shifted to the other side of the tree I was on and started shooting at the reinforcements coming down the path and along the fence line. Got a lot of hits in this game. We then broke for lunch. After lunch, my other friend and his grandson came out for the afternoon games and I felt a bit victimised here. My friend and his grandson put on blue armbands as we like to play together as it's good practice for when we go to Vietnam games, especially since a lot of blue players had gone home, but then the marshalls split us up AGAIN. They never put this much effort into splitting up any other groups than the ones that we make and I was getting a bit pissed off with it. Anyway, we then played a 3 base domination across the whole site, though the spawns were a bit close together and very close to one of the bases. This meant we weren't allowed to attack around one side, as it would take us to their spawn very quickly, which ruined my plan. My plan was to sneak around their spawn, head up to the fence line and take the base that was up there in the final moments of the game, but I had to change my tactic as I couldn't go that way. I took the long way around the site, sticking to the boundary and avoiding any engagements as I did not want anyone to know I was there. Spent the entire game sneaking past yellow players, not firing a single shot to get into position and right as I was getting into position, another ghillie on our team came up as well. Great, now two of us can do this tactic. All we'll need to do is clear the skeleton crew at that base, since nobody on our team got anywhere near attacking it and-... wait, what's the other ghillie doing? Like a bull in a china shop he starts shooting people left and right with his pistol. This meant that when we got up to that base, instead of there being 2 defenders that I could've easily taken out by myself, one being my friend with my SR-25 who knew I was going to be trying something like that and stuck to the base like glue towards the end, there were now about 8 players defending the base and more coming up behind us. Thanks, other ghillie, you ruined my entire gameplan and made all of my efforts to go undetected go to waste (yes I'm salty about it because it was incredibly frustrating!). Moreover, the other ghillie got himself shot by making a rush into the base area before we had even managed to take anyone out. Suffice to say I couldn't push that base in the last minute of the game and we lost in the end, two bases to one. Didn't play the last game of the day because I was pretty tired from the last game and I think I tore a muscle in my right hand when I was crawling through a particularly nasty spot of brambles. That still hurts today and it feels like a torn or at least strained muscle; the route I took to make sure I was undetected was not a nice easy one. Lots of hills and battling through brambles and crawling over stinging nettles which also still hurt this morning! Also, my friends were packing up too, so I headed back with them. Showed my friend who was on the other team the route I was going to use to take him out in the church structure without exposing myself to his position and we had a chat about the different style of play running a long gun gives. He enjoyed it and said he got a lot of kills at the Sandbag Bunker base (which was the base that was very close to both our spawns), so I'm happy about that. He's probably going to go with a Cyma m14 for himself, which as someone who owns two of them I will obviously say it's a good choice! Then on the walk back my friend's grandson shot me in the finger point blank, right on the side where it's really painful too, as they were all shooting each other on the walk back as airsofters do and he wasn't looking where he shot and it really hurt. Being 12 won't save him from taking a shot to the back of the head next game day as his debt must be paid! Also it didn't rain all day, despite the forecast saying that we were going to have a wet afternoon. The rain started very light as we were packing away and really started after we left, so it was good that we packed up a little bit early. I think next game day I will run a DMR, even though I think the rules at Worthing are craptastic for them. Just need to pester the co-owner of the site to either up the power to 1.88J or drop the MED to 20m and keep the 1.64J. We've made some progress on that front, but I don't think he's ready to change anything yet because he hates DMRs as he had bad experiences with people spamming the trigger. All in all, it was a pretty good day. Still waiting for the weather to warm up so I can use my favourite guns, but it wasn't too chilly and the games were generally good. There was no laughably bad hit-taking as the non-hit-taking that I experienced seemed to be more of an honest error where they weren't feeling the shots. Every hit I got where the person had a visible reaction to it, they took it.

I have a 510mm in my mk12 build. Needs an NPAS to keep it under 1.14J, though I have also semi-locked it and run it as a DMR if I like the site's DMR rules (tends to be if it's 1.88J limit). During the summer I still need the NPAS to keep it under 1.88J though as I think it goes to about 2.4J with the NPAS fully open on a warm summer's day on a .4

bEcaUSe HPA iS tHe dEViL reeEEeEeEEeeEEEeEEEeeeEe I was also going to write more about what I've seen here, but... there's no point as I don't think I'd get any logical answers, so I'll just sit here with my popcorn instead 😂

He was originally a youtuber who made sniper videos (not ghillie sniper videos, more "run in with a pistol" sniper videos), but then founded his own company when he released his first sniper rifle (the SSG24), which was meant to be a bolt action rifle you could just buy, take out of the box and play straight away without upgrading. I don't like his RIFs, but I have to respect the entrepreneurship; Novritsch stuff is everywhere now! Also, his ghillie stuff is actually pretty good and I use some of his stuff for my suits (not the leaves though, they fall apart!) And it's definitely a marketing event. Money has definitely changed hands between Patrol Base and Novritsch for sure. I don't think I'd avoid this because Novritsch is going to be there, I think I'd avoid it because Novritsch's fans are going to be there 😂

I'm stealing this for every time someone asks me why I don't like HPA (though I do love HPA stocks on guns because of the lack of this item!)

Yeah, but 250mm won't go all the way through on the regular M4A1. TM don't put barrels longer than 250mm in their GBBRs because Japanese laws and joule creep. Not sure how long you'd need to go all the way through the outer barrel on a M4A1 carbine as I don't have one to measure. In the CQBR the 250mm goes almost to the end of the outer barrel.

Pretty much my answer as well. GBBRs are fun, but they're... frustrating when it's chilly

Ok, so this is shipping a lot sooner than expected. It looks like these will ship late May/early June and are already up for pre-order. Also it looks like it'll be compatible with A&K SR-25 magazines, which means that Cyma SR-25 mags should also fit (good for me as I have 5). Also looks like you can have the outer barrel either 14.5" or 16" as it has a screw on extension at 1.5". Interestingly, out of the box it looks like the HPA line connects by the stock. Seems to be built like the Billet series, not the Forged series. Starting to pop up for pre-order here too. Price seems to be around the £800 mark https://www.highpressureairsoft.co.uk/wolverine-mtw-308 https://shop.super5ives.com/shop/item/133460/wolverine-airsoft-mtw-308-tactical-14-dmr.html

When I played in Spain I found them to be very similar to how we played over here in the UK. As a caveat, this was in 2008 - 2010ish, which was a time when airsoft was incredibly niche to the point that there were no "sites", it was just a bunch of us on a forum who showed up to an abandoned urbanisation to play BB wars. No marshalls, no briefing, and often no chrono were the main differences, though I'm pretty sure it's not like that any more. However there were very few instances of cheating as the community was self-regulating; if you were known to be a cheater or a dickhead, nobody would invite you to play. The main changes to get used to were simply language-based ("muerto" instead of "hit", for example). Apart from the language, the gameplay was basically identical to the UK. One hit and you're out, bolt action snipers and DMRs had MEDs etc. It was just a good few years behind the UK in terms of development, but the underlying culture was the same.

CQBR? Good choice. CQBRs don't have to be tacticool modern either Also, adding a carry handle is a LOT easier. Changing outer barrels on the MWS is a faff

Laylax make a multi-part outer barrel for the MWS, but generally the MWS only uses one-part outer barrels. No idea if the Laylax outer is any good https://wolfarmouries.co.uk/laylax-8-way-outer-barrel-for-tokyo-marui-airsoft-gas-blowback-gbb-m4a1-mws.html

That was something I was curious about, if that email address actually worked. There's a bunch of 8fields stuff on TG and a load of midcaps for various guns I have that would be nice to get at some point, but I never put much stock in the whole "email patrol base to get it in for you" after I did the same for a bunch of m700 parts from airsoftzone.com (who also name Patrol Base as a UK retailer who can get stuff from them) and Patrol Base told me "no we can't order anything in, sorry."

If they're any good, this will be an absolute winner for us who need prescription lenses. At the moment I use inserts for my Sawflys and my Heroshark goggles, but the inserts can fog sometimes, even with the air flow of the herosharks. Very interested to see how the Trittech glasses perform with the prescription lenses. From what I can see they're not offering them at the moment outside of USA and Canada though? At least that's what it says on their website.

Since the regular MTW is so good, I'm actually hoping that internally they're almost identical. I still won't get the gen1 as soon as this releases though; even with something like an MTW, I'd rather wait and see if any problems arise and then if they do I can get the gen2 where all the problems are fixed And yeah, if other MTWs are anything to go by, these will be pretty expensive. Since I also want to do one with a HPA stock like a Wraith X or something, I reckon the build will easily go over £1000 for what I want to do, so it's good that I have time to put money aside for it

So coming out of IWA this week we had a tasty little preview of what looked to be a .308 variant of the MTW. A lot of people consider MTWs to be the best HPA platforms, since they're built for it and tend to come out at pretty high quality, so another variant that isn't just an AR-15 will be welcome (even if it's only an AR-10). I'll be interested to see where this goes, as I do like my .308 guns and I'd like to do a build with a tank in the stock, but will see how things develop as we know very little at the moment.

I have one on my Vietnam belt kit, but it doesn't feel like the most secure pouch. I've used it to carry an HPA tank one time, but when I use it I just stick extra scrim net in there for VC sneaky shenanigans. I mostly use it as a central attachment point for the harness. If I was to use this kit for normal skirmish, I'd probably need to use the butt pack more for BBs, gas etc, but I'd be constantly worried that it's going to fall out. Not an issue for Vietnam games due to ammo limits, so I have to go back to respawn to re-ammo anyway, but at a skirmish game or other event without ammo limits (or with higher ammo limits), this could be a concern...

Got snapped last game day (which was a narrative storyline event), which is a rarity! I'm really liking the kit setup at the moment, the belt kit has enough space for me to carry 4 spare rifle mags, 4 spare pistol mags, spare gas and BBs too, and I way prefer cape ghillies to these over-engineered bush suits. It was not a good day to run the gas m700 on green gas and I'll have co2 mags for next winter for sure! Seeing these makes me remember I still have a lot of weight to lose (though I'm about 8kg down so far this year!). Photos by M. Matthews Photography Also, our resident youtuber was playing the role of press at the event and said he was looking for me to interview during the game and couldn't find me. He pointed the camera straight at me while interviewing another lad and had no idea, even though I move my leg during the shot. Full video is here and I recommend checking it out as it's a good laugh from a great event

Was back at Worthing for a cold one this weekend. We had to leave very early because the guy who gives us a lift was asked to help sort the car park, which is usually pandemonium, as it was going to be a very busy, very fully booked day today. He says it's the last time as they really need to get a marshall to sort it out, as he used to do it when he was a marshall, but stepped away from it a year or so ago so that he can play more as he's getting older. Anyway, I wasn't sure if he was bringing his grandson along, but knew he was bringing the wet weather kit, so I only took one rifle bag today (well, two, but one was going to a tech), as I didn't want to take up too much space in the car. This meant that the m700 came along, as it's my favourite gun and I was still riding off the high of last weekend when the weather was nice. This was potentially a mistake, but I'm undecided on it. Also, the reason it was fully booked was because it was one of the ongoing narrative game days, which is a bit like a blend of skirmish and filmsim. There were two teams, traditional cartel and another not-cartel who work with the government, but there was also a third element out today which was a press crew; two guys in press gear with two guys and a ghillie sniper as protection. They only fired if fired upon, or if the marshalls told them to shoot at one team that was doing too well, and when hit they would go down to a knee for 30 seconds before getting back in the game. After standing around the safe zone for a long time because we arrived at 7:30am (left my house at 6:45am, and the other two were closer to 6:30am), we went out into the game. The first issue of the day was here, as with this game everyone who was wearing a loud, Hawaiian style shirt were put on the cartel team. The issue here is that a LOT of the regulars came in costume and so the teams weren't very well balanced. Me and my friend were on the not-cartel team and it was going decently for about 30 mins. Our team pushed forward and were doing well. However, then when people got hit and respawned back in, they stopped pushing up. I very quickly found myself as the front line, which with a bolt action sniper rifle wasn't the best. Manged to stay hidden and pick people off, including the leader of the enemy cartel, but eventually I had to fall back because the pressure was getting high and I was starting to get surrounded. Moved back to another position and dug in, but again I quickly found myself being the front line again. One guy on the other team ran up and killed off about 6 of my team who were just huddled behind a building doing nothing and while I took him and another who pushed up out with my mk23, I was eventually overrun by more players as I was alone again. It felt a bit like I was pushing a stone up a hill as none of my team seemed to be doing much. Headed back to respawn and even though by this point there was only a few mins left, I went back to try and cause some havoc. Crawled up behind a low layer of foliage, using it to screen my advance along a flank and taking out the enemy player watching that flank (I love how quiet the m700 is...) and managed to get into a position where I managed to take three more players out with the mk23. However, at this point the morning was over and it was lunch time. Our team had zero objectives and the enemy team had crushed just about all of their ones. The game continued after lunch, but I can't comment too much on that as I decided to not play the afternoon. The forecast was wet and running a gas m700 in this temperature is already enough of a challenge, so I packed up. Was definitely the correct choice to get my wet kit off and put my warm kit and waterproof jacket on, as the wind picked up and it started to rain, getting heavier over time. Definitely did not want to play in that today. I heard that the not-cartel team continued to get their asses kicked through the afternoon. However, that was generally my only criticism with how the game was run; the team balance was horribly off. Outside of this, the game was well thought out and was fun to play and while frustrating at times, I still had fun. The multi-objective, full-site gameplay was good and I way prefer these sorts of games to the simple attack and defend type games that are prevalent at skirmish days across the country. Hit calling, from what I saw, was generally pretty good and I only had one instance of a guy very obviously not taking his hits, because I hit him in the face (that was all that was showing!) and watched him recoil back from the shot, but then he just retreated back behind cover. Every other player I shot took their hits and I didn't observe anyone near me not taking theirs, so the sportsmanship was top notch! The issue with players not playing and sitting about 90m away from the other team and trying to shoot at them is just an inevitable part of airsoft, but they were almost all on one team today and that team got royally thrashed The other issue was my gun. When the weather is this cold, the gas bolt actions just... drop in power. With every shot. Which throws your hop up setting off. It was a pain in the backside trying to adjust for it and was one of the contributing factors why I didn't play in the afternoon; I just couldn't be bothered to deal with it any longer. I love my gas m700, but for it to be consistent it needs about 15 celcius. 10 - 12 celcius is okay, but 6 - 7 celcius like today is too low. If it's cold next game day I'm just going to take my SR-25 and run that. Anyway, I'll leave it there. Amazing day that was only marred by poor team balance. Everything else was great!

Calling out 90% of airsofters right here 😂

In short - yes, I still use bipods. A lot. In long... Yes. I still use bipods, though I have removed them from certain guns and keep them on others (none are sitting idle, all my bipods are on a gun). I found that they were pointless for my VSRs, which are very lightweight rifles so it's no problem for me to hold them up for prolonged periods of time. Worst case I rest them against the ground and then slowly (so I don't get spotted) raise them if I need to shoot something. I don't run a bipod on my faux wood m14, since that's for Vietnam games and Harris bipods don't look the part, and I don't have one on my m14 socom, since that's designed around the idea of a recce rifle, which you want to be as light as possible while still being a longer distance rifle, as it's a rifle you're supposed to be doing recce with, which is a lot of movement over a lot of distance, and carrying unnecessary weight for that is bad; I know these things aren't important to airsoft, but muh immersion! Bipods aren't great for recce builds! However, I still run a bipod on both of my gas bolt actions (KJW m700s, one of which is in an m40a5 stock) as they're heavier anyway and if I'm lying in a spot, which happens a lot, I don't want to have to support the weight of that for long periods of time. I also run a bipod on my HPA m14, SR-25 and my MWS (the one set up as a mk12) for similar reasons. I use them all like sniper rifles and tend to find myself set up lying prone for long periods of time playing this way, since it's a great way to remain undetected. Also, my m249 has a bipod built in and I use that to deploy the gun to rain BBs on a position. It is heavy and will always be heavy, because LMG... Basically, anything I run like a sniper rifle, with the VSR and faux wood m14 as exceptions, I run a bipod on since I find myself going prone a lot and having to hold lines for long periods of time. I don't always deploy it as sometimes I can rest it on something else, like a log, stone or the ground if I'm cresting over the top of an incline. Considering most of the guns I use are already pretty heavy, in part because a lot of them are gas guns, a bipod isn't that much more added weight and is very useful for how I play.

Thank you @BreadyC for 3d printing the suppressor for me. Absolutely zero wobble and I'm confident it should work without clipping even on full auto where these tend to go a bit on the brrrrrrrrrrrt side. Last thing I need for it is a leather strap on the front and I'll probably just pay for a real-steel one. Unfortunately the front sight has snapped off at some point (no idea when this happened), but nobody uses the iron sights on these because both the sights and the retractable stock are absolute ass, which is at least consistent with the real-steel mac11 as they're ass on the real one as well!

Long mags will cause issues when lying prone. I've got an MWS set up as a mk12 and I have issues if I lie prone as I can't get the rifle close enough to the ground. Even with the bipod deployed, unless I extend the legs my magazine will stick into the ground. I plan on getting a bunch of stubby mags, but GBBR mags are expensive So yeah, if you can get them I'd go with short mags. They may have less ammo capacity, but with a DMR that largely doesn't really matter and I feel the benefit of being able to go prone easier outweighs the ammo capacity drawback.

I took a trip down to not-Worthing for once and headed to Dogtag today with a whole host of Worthing regulars (I know @Badgerlicious is on this forum and he was also there, but I don't think any of the others are); always good to get out to a new site with the boys, especially since due to team balance I usually put myself on the other team from them at Worthing so we're not all on one side and just stomp. Most of us had never been to Dogtag, so we were experiencing the site for the first time, myself included. Therefore I will give the most balanced overview as I can on how it went. We rolled up early to make sure we got a table under some cover, as the forecast was a bit confusing. Said it could've rained all morning, so we wanted to make sure our kit was under a roof. We got there pretty early, but some of our guys had got there earlier and we took some tables down the end of the safe zone. Pretty much as soon as we got there, the rain started easing off massively to the point where it flat out stopped raining as we were getting our stuff ready, which was really nice. However, first issue I had was the m14 wasn't feeding properly, so I'll have to give it back to the tech and ask him to fix that (hopefully he won't charge me too much because I haven't actually used it since I got it back from him). Good thing I brought the m700 as well, as I swapped over to that, the mac11 and the mk23; my go-to "I can sort of do everything" sniper setup. Ummed and aahh'd about whether I wanted to ghillie up and decided to, which proved to be the best decision I made all day, but more on that later. We got through chrono and eventually got out to our first game, a rolling assault from a fort type base all the way to the other side of the site. Apparently we were playing on the paintball site as the airsoft zones were being rented to a private paintball event, but this worked heavily in my favour as I had sight lines for days, and with the weather being warmer my m700 was performing flawlessly. So first game. I took a concealed position in a fallen tree and got some lovely long shots, but as I ran out of ammo in my first mag, by this point they had managed to push up close, so I... went to ground. This is why running the ghillie was the best decision I made all day, as I had enemy players taking cover on the other side of the fallen tree shooting over my head as my team mates were returning fire, a hail of BBs about 1 - 2m above my head. To be clear, my ghillies are capes, I don't like running the all-over bush suits because they snag when I'm crawling and I just don't like them, so while parts of me were ghillied, there was a lot of MARPAT visible with how I was sitting. I had turned around, facing the same way as the enemy team ready to shoot them in the back, but... this is where my first criticism of the day comes in. Hit taking was laughably bad. I shot 6 people in the back with the mk23 after they pushed just past me, all separate instances as I was only picking isolated people off so I wouldn't give away my position, but the longest shot was about 20m, shortest was about 5m. None of them took the hit, not even the 5m guy. Fortunately, none of them saw me either, not even the group having a conversation on the path with 2 of them looking in my direction. The adrenaline high from these moments is one of the reasons I do the whole sniper thing. Spent the rest of the game following the enemy team, but breaking off to the opposite flank to where their spawn was as I didn't want to spawn camp them, so I just made people who went on the other flank very, very confused by shooting them in the back. Towards the end of the game it pushed into a very thick bushy area and as I was planning on going in with the mk23 to continue harassing them, I realised one of my mac11 magazines was missing, so I retraced my steps and eventually found it, but the game was over before I did, so I headed back to the safe zone. This is where my 2nd annoyance comes in; going back to safe zone after each game, especially with how boggy that path was. One of the guys in our group aptly described it as "it's like the Somme" because of how wet and boggy and horrible that path was. Anyway, after a longer-than-it-needed-to-be trip back to the safe zone, we went back out and swapped over, so we were now attacking. We pushed pretty well, clearing the first few fields quite quickly, but then got bogged down in a large open field and the bushy bit after it so we didn't complete it. I heard a lot of people grumbling about hit taking here, but this wasn't the worst part. The worst part was there was a guy on defense who kept going out of bounds to retake ground and shoot everyone in the back. He did it on multiple occasions through this game and eventually got thrown off the site after it was caught on camera and shown to the marshalls, so good on the marshalls for actually sorting that out. Apparently the guy is a regular and well-known for doing this kind of stuff and has a youtube channel where he uploads videos of him doing it. Would've said good on him if he did what I did in the first game where nobody found him, but he got caught red-handed sneaking out of bounds and then coming back in, so yeah. Cheating, caught and called out, dealt with, done. Then we broke for lunch and I didn't want to pay £5 for a burger, so I just made sure my kit was all good. It was at this point I realised I had lost one of my m700 magazines, so that's a neat £50 down the drain. Going to need to get that replaced as I can't run 2 magazines really. 50 shots is just not enough (in total, they're about 25 each!). Bugger. I'm trying to not spend too much, but that's something I can't just ignore since I use my gas m40a5 and m700 all the time. We then went out after lunch and did an attack and defend at the fort area we started the rolling assaults from. Defenders had 3 lives (one in the first field, one in the 2nd field and one in the fort itself) and attackers had infinite. We started on the attacking team and I didn't really get too much done, partially because the sun was out (which was lovely) but since it's still February it was fairly low in the sky and I couldn't see anything with it glaring in my face. A few lovely shots, but the wind had picked up and I was noticing my shots curving hard. Shot in another direction to make sure it isn't my hop up coming loose and going to one side and it definitely wasn't, as the shot with where I thought the wind was going went incredibly straight. We then swapped sides immediately without going back to the safe zone, which made me rather happy. I elected to take a relatively far back position after refilling my mags and went through most of one mag with some lovely shots again. It's been a while since I played at a site with long sight lines (basically, last time I went to Driver Wood because Worthing isn't good for snipers with all the coppices around) and it was great to let my m700 do its thing. Eventually got hit by a spray where I don't think they knew exactly where I was, but shot enough in my direction where one hit my cheek, so I headed back behind my team and used my first respawn, lying prone behind a barricade watching a flank and an opening to the field. Went through my 2nd mag here with some long shots which made me happy and when the game was called, I stood up and waved at all the people who were trying to work out where I even was. Gas sniper rifles are deadly quiet and I love them for it! That's where I called it, as I was starting to feel very tired and needed to work out how I was going to pack all my stuff away, as well as change out of my very wet and very muddy kit so I didn't get back into my friend's car with muddy trousers on his seats. There were a few games after I stopped, a team deathmatch in the super open field, swapping sides, and then a zombies game at the end. I'm going to ache tomorrow with all the walking and crawling I've done, but I did enjoy myself a lot. Will I go back? Maybe. If the lads are going, I'll tag along, but I won't make an effort to get back. Worthing and Driver Wood (once I get a car, hopefully this year), will be my main sites for skirmish, as I enjoy myself at those two sites more and they seem to have less issues. I think my day would've been worse if we actually played in the airsoft fields, funnily enough, as some of those looked very questionable for me running my bolt action rifle; the paintball sites were really good for my bolt action, however! So, TL:DR pros and cons... Pros: + I had fun, and at the end of the day that's the main thing that matters + Marshalls were friendly and did act on a cheater. Could've done more on the hit calling, but with how few they were it's hard to police. They can't be everywhere + Even though we used the paintball sites, the games were good and they flowed well. Cons: - Laughable hit-calling that wasn't really addressed - Needed more marshalls for the number of players and size of the site - £5 burger (I know having a burger included with walk-on is a nicety at Worthing, but I'm willing to spend on a burger. Just not £5 for what it was...) Pros and cons that the site wasn't responsible for: + Weather was amazing. 14 - 15 celcius, low wind for the mostpart and sun was out. It was great! - Out-of-bounds clickbait youtube cheater (not the site's fault because they dealt with it and sent him home) - Lost a £50 gas rifle magazine 😢 - Almost lost another £50 gas SMG magazine 😌 - Goggles fogged a bunch because the site was incredibly wet and humid, while the temperature was pretty good - M14 didn't work 😠 Overall, it exceeded my expectations, but my expectations were very low as I'd heard a lot of bad things regarding Dogtag. Some of it is definitely justified, but I still had fun doing my thing. Now I'm going to ache tomorrow and my washing machine is going to have a task ahead of it once I muster up the willpower to unpack my bags Also, we had a team photo. I'm the tall bush on the left who isn't in a 360 degree bush suit (and showing way more forehead than I usually do as the balaclava wasn't done up properly at this point!)