Apologies for the slower than anticipated response... busy weekend!
Milsim in the UK is very much a sliding scale;
you've got your 'milsim' on one end which is midcaps only, slightly longer games with a vague military scenario or back story... As far as I'm concerned these are sunday skirmishes without hi caps, not worth the bother.
In the middle (it's a pretty big middle) you've got guys like ambush adventures and brit-tac airsoft who do games with uniform colour requirements rather than armbands, mid caps only, better venues (normally MoD training areas, copehill, longmoor etc) but that's pretty much where the difference between that and a skirmish ends, there'll still be lunchbreaks and they very rarely run for more than a day. As with the other one-dayers you're unlikely to be put into any kind of 'squad'.
At the other extreme end of the scale you've got tier 1 and stirling, the games run non-stop from game on to game end, usually 24-36 hours sometimes longer. Sleeping, eating, reloading etc is all done in-game. Ammo limits / kit requirements are rather more stringently applied. Typically you'll be put in with a group of players (unless you go as a group) and you'll be expected to remain with them and move around/complete objectives etc as a unit, your unit will be given a callsign and a command radio to enable you to keep in contact with your team commander and vehicle assets/other units.
These games are pretty much the antithesis of the sunday skirmish, last one I went to was at the Sandpit in kent, I fired at most 600 BBs all weekend, spent 2 hours on stag at midnight (sort of, we chinned off sitting in sangars waiting and did some patrols around the compound instead) then went straight into briefing for a hostage rescue op; boat insertion under NVG to the other side of the lake, hour or so of recce/target observation before we grabbed the hostage (which was actually a 16st rescue dummy, FML), carried him about a mile to our pre-arranged RV for the boat to pick us up and get back across the lake, got back just in time for sunrise. 3 hours sleep and the baddies started chucking grenades over the compound walls... it was a pretty relentless but extremely fun weekend.
Obviously you can tell where my interests lie on the 'scale of milsim', I prefer a long, rolling scenario with realistic tasking and a difference between the two teams greater than the colour of their arm bands!
If you do fancy coming over to the UK for a more 'serious' (the people that play are often far from serious!) milsim game give me a shout, if we (Cobalt) are going along to the game it'd be great to have you along
