went to apocalypse airsoft in Kent this Sunday. had a great day despite the weather.
day started off badly, as i had forgotten about the hill to access the site, so pulling a trolley full of my kit uphill it was reinforced just how out of shape I am. after getting my breath back and signing in I got my kit set up ready for the games.
this was my second time at apocalypse, and i had to laugh when one of the marshals approached me and said they recognised me as "the guy with the Tippmann and underslung grenade launcher firing TAG rounds" I expressed surprise and asked if he was sure as it was only my second time at the site. he replied that he was certain as I had left an impact... then he put me on red team because he wanted to "see you blow up blue team" I found out soon after from overhearing one of the other marshals chatting with some other players that one of their site marshals was playing on blue team, so im guessing that was the reason for my assignment to red team XD
got chatting to a few players and answered questions about my kit as I was getting ready, mainly from fairly new players. eventually it was time for the safety brief, which was held next to a bonfire so we could all keep warm in the rainy weather. the safety brief was fairly quick, but covered all the required points as was the subsequent game brief. apocalypse was on top of chrono, keeping track of how many people had chronoed relative to how many were booked in, and all guns were tagged to say they had been through chrono.
game 1 was destroy the pumpkin. each team had a pumpkin in their base which they had to defend, (red team in the Vietnamese village and blues in the stockade for anyone who has played the site before), they also had to head out into the land between the bases to locate the engineer, escort him into the enemy base, and after shooting the enemy out of their base, the engineer would place remote detonation pyro in the pumpkin to blow it up. i opted to play a defensive game to begin and quickly climbed a sniper tower to try and get a better view of the approaches to the village and was able to get a few kills before getting shot out and heading to respawn pole. after respawning I decided to play a more offensive role and discovered that red team had smashed the blues pumpkin quite quickly, but blues had moved into the village, so our objective changed to clear the village and hold it against enemy attack. there was great communication between players regardless of whether we had met before or not and we were able to organise a good defence of the village. eventually it appeared that blue team were starting to give up or run low on ammo, so the marshals called the game a little early... and just for a laugh, before we headed back to safe zone, the engineer blew up our pumpkin.
after a break to rearm, get food and warm up by the fire, it was back out for game 2, area defense. 4 locations across the land that had to be captured and held by teams at the end of the game. spawns were reversed this game, so reds started from the stockade. I was mainly focussed on the bunker and security cabin that were nearest our spawn, using the TAG rounds to good effect to clear out some entrenched defenders, but I also got shot several times by hidden reinforcements as I tried to move in to capture the objectives.
eventually red team had secured all objectives and held them for most of the game. at the security cabin, things got pretty static and eventually my team mates decided to make things more interesting by pulling back to let blues capture the cabin and have the marshal advise them to dig in well and, after 15 mins grace period, we would head back and try to capture the cabin again (we actually did this twice in the game, but on one occasion, blues did manage to capture the cabin on their own merits) towards the end of the game, blues did make a very good push, over running the cabin and bunker, pushing right up to our spawn before being asked to pull back slightly so they weren't spawn killing us.
at the end of the game I believe we had managed to recapture security cabin and had held the other 2 locations, but blues had captured the bunker (personally I didn't care too much about the score as I was mainly there to have fun)
back to safe zone, reload and back out to village for the final game of the day. bomb in the village
each team had a "bomb" and had to place it inside a tyre in the centre of the village. the interior of all buildings were out of bounds to make things fairer. lots of good pushes by both teams, and the bombs were switched over a couple of times as both teams made good pushes.
over the course of the day I got many admiring glances by other players when they saw the Bifrost in action, lighting up my regular, non-tracer Valkyrie .32g bbs out to approximately 40 to 50m, one player even mentioning that it was sold out everywhere and asked how the hell I managed to get one (simple answer.. I bought it direct from Acetech and had it shipped over) as well as when I fired off tag rounds (one player asked me "did you just fire an actual grenade?" and after I confirmed and showed him what I had fired as I reloaded the launch shell his response was "I think I just jizzed my pants" XD) and in the safe zone I had a few blue players enquiring about the tag rounds and recounting their encounters from the receiving end.. one player stating that after realising that I had a Bifrost as well as TAG rounds, if he saw the Bifrost flashes he knew it was me in that location and he would quickly run the other way.. so the TAGs certainly helped win some battles even when I wasn't using them.
of course there were the usual arguments/accusations of non-hit taking levelled against both teams, one incident a blue player managed to get close enough to shoot at several of my team mates in a position near to me, but their gun was audibly running dry, and after getting shot by two guns that were definitely NOT dry, they began accusing everyone of not taking their hits and wouldn't accept the fact that her gun was dry, despite a marshal and three players all saying that there was no bb coming from their gun.
personally, I try not to let these arguments ruin my day and try to ignore such accusations as most of the time they are in regard to alleged incidents that I didn't witness. and if I think someone I am shooting at isn't calling their hits, i either keep shooting them, or let a marshal deal with it.
only other bad things I experienced was the shit weather (beyond anyone's control) and the long drive for me to reach the site leaving early in the morning (im definitely NOT a morning person..) but aside from that and the aforementioned realisation of my poor fitness level, it was a great day out
