I'm trying out a sim type game for the first time as well myself shortly, Sennybridge at the very end of October. Certainly interested to see what it's like overall, the types of people that go and maybe to try some other similar games by different companies afterwards just so I have an idea of why people play these sorts of events and the variety that's available (as discussed, there's clearly various 'levels' to the overall notion).
For some time I'd only go to sunday games by myself, then I started always going with my brother which was definitely good and I've never massively enjoyed going to any games alone if I'm honest. I've done a couple of the events that Arnies have put on which are around 40 hours long but purely made up of small fun games involving weird and wacky objectives with comparatively little shooting and lots of social with chilled out camping overnight. Ideally I'd quite like to go to that sort of thing a couple of times a year, but I don't think it has the 'cool' factor that most people seem to be looking for, which is a shame.
I played at UCAP Sandpit a couple of months back with my brother, another buddy and a ragtag bunch of uni students that I sort of knew-ish through said friend and FB and although the staff at the site were mostly shockingly sh*t with overall terrible games, I ended up having a really good day purely because the group of guys had a similar mindset to me in that they were very much interested in cool gear and guns etc and running around shooting but purely within the fun little delusional realm we create on the BBwrz battlefield. No shouting or getting worked up over the game itself at all, just getting in the action where we could and chilling out inbetween regens etc just generally talking and having a laugh. Overall I find (or at least think of) the whole gameplay aspect of using airsoft weapons to be a sort of watering-hole or binding glue to use for bringing people together and giving us all a common ground and subject to chat about. I'm fairly confident that any group of airsoters who've all been in the game at least a couple of months or more could talk pretty much indefinitely about guns and gear and game styles and sites etc etc etc; there's so many facets to the hobby and things to talk about.
So yeah, I'm hoping the sort of slightly enforced-teamwork and 'camping' aspects of a milsim style game vs the average day skirmish will generally lead to more opportunity to speak to people and have those times inbetween pew-pewing to make acquaintances and generally indulge in the aspect of the hobby I really like the most; which is the discussion and social slightly more than the actual shooting and running. I enjoyed boiling up a rat pack with my buddies during the down times on exercises and other similar stuff I've done so far in my work, but there aren't a huge amount of airsofters in the forces and while I like a lot of the people I work with that's more of a coincidence than anything, because often we don't have anything in common other than the job itself.
. You go first, I'll cover you.
