Just got home from a day of airsofting at Driver Wood (first time at the site) and I've definitely got a bit of a write up for my experience. Day started early with my alarm going off at 6:30am, but I was ready to go get stuck in. I planned on using the MWS set up as a DMR to make the most of their 1.88J with 25m MED DMR rules, since Worthing Airsoft's DMR rules are just not worth bothering with. Had to dial the hop all the way on to lift the .4s, but on green gas it was sailing them out nicely at about 1.8 - 1.85J, so once I got the gun chronoed and saw how it was performing I was set. I joked with my friend as we headed out, saying "ah, we're a DMR and a bolt action sniper, so I'm sure we won't be the front line." This joke is important for our story here...
First game was a three base domination and was a good game to get started. As I had no idea where anything was, I took myself into a central position with my friend who was running his VSR and we got entrenched in some bushes and started picking people off. It didn't take long before we were the front line, with the rest of our team all dead and not pushing back up. He eventually got taken out, leaving me by myself as I was slotting people on the flank just one after the other (seriously, I loved running a DMR as it allowed me to engage multiple enemies one after the other). I eventually got taken out too when a player on the other team was basically on top of me trying to work out where I was, despite me using an MWS with its clack-clack GBBR mechanism. He said he would never have found me if I was running something quiet. We headed back to respawn and then found that our team was basically being spawn-camped. This was a sign of things to come and something I was wary of going into the day after what I heard at the brief.
Second game we had to escort a pair of VIPs to various spots across the site, having to hold it for 5 minutes. I'll be honest with you, we got absolutely folded again, barely getting out of our spawn. I managed to hold one of the flanks with another guy, just doing Viet Cong tactics hitting them and then disappearing into the foliage all game; Namsoft taught me well! I also lost count of how many grenades they threw in our direction, both a combination of green smokes (count as toxic, so can't be in it without a gas mask) and bangs. They must've spent a small fortune trying to uproot us, but every time they threw grenades, we simply weren't there. I was surprised to hear we managed to do a whole 1 of the objectives, which was 1 more than I thought with how the game was going. We swapped sides and it was much the same; I took a central position and my friend got into a really good spot for sniping, but while we managed to totally lock down part of the site, the other team was running rampant elsewhere. Then we got teamkilled by a mortar that wiped out about 7 or 8 of us and we totally lost control of that too. That was probably the most frustrating part of the day as it was the one part of the site where it felt like we had traction and then we got mass teamkilled.
Third game involved a bunch of oversized playing cards. Numbers were 5 points, pictures were 10 points, ace was 15 points and the joker was -20 points for the enemy team. No prizes for guessing how it went. We actually got a decent start, but then with only a few of us defending the base the other team eventually rolled in and stole all of the cards. I was the last man standing having to cover behind me with the pistol as well as the front with the MWS and it was just a bit too much for me alone. Regardless after I got hit I stood there waiting for a medic, knowing full-well that nobody was around to do so. It did exactly what I wanted it to, as I had 4 of them distracted by me and slowing them down in their endeavours as they watched me with paranoia. However, my team didn't come back in and all of our cards got stolen. I went back to spawn and... we were basically spawn-camped. Again. I still managed to break off and take out a bunch of them from a flank they weren't watching much, but by this point most of our team had given up. I'm not the type and I don't mind being on the losing team, but I could see why morale was low; we had spent all day getting kicked around the site.
Anyway, I did have fun and do enjoy a bit of an uphill battle, especially considering I was against so many regulars while I've never been to the site so I don't know any of the strong positions or even where half of the objectives were. The MWS performed exactly as I wanted it to, but outside of 1.88J I will continue to run it at 1.14J elsewhere; I noticed a little more effective range with 1.88J, but it was borderline. So, my overall thoughts:
Good:
+ The site itself is lovely. It's huge and they clearly put a lot of effort into making it a very fun site to play at.
+ DMR rules are great. 1.88J with a 25m MED is where I'll use one and I thoroughly enjoyed doing so
+ Games were well put together and worked well with the site
+ Early start. Briefing at 9am and it's not a massively long one, so we were out to play nice and early.
+ Very nice safe zone and actual toilets! Shame airsofters are a disgusting lot and the male toilets were rather splashed from bad aim
Bad:
- Horrendous team imbalance confirmed my suspicions I had going into it. Even heard one of the marshalls speaking to a regular who was on our team saying "you know all the regulars go on green and we always do that side as green" after they split us down the middle
- That team imbalance was never addressed. At lunch time, despite orange team getting hammered and basically pushed back to spawn every game the marshalls did nothing to balance it. When there were more greens than oranges, it was more newbies and kids who were moved onto orange rather than a group of regulars.
- Hit taking was laughably bad. I had many shots that I watched to completion through my scope, with people recoiling from the hits and then just continuing on. And I know these are being felt as they're .4s at 1.88J that they're recoiling from
- It's very businesslike. Whereas Worthing, Southdown and Gunman all feel like a community, Driver Wood very much feels like a business first and I feel it lacked the character of other sites. I felt very detached.
Meh:
~ I don't think I've ever been at a skirmish weekend with that much pyro being hurled at me. Green smokes and bangs were raining down like someone on green won the lottery
~ People were proving my point when I say "full auto is a crutch for people who can't aim" with the amount of high ROF full auto spray that was being peppered everywhere
~ Gun sock. My gun literally can't fire if the mag is out, but gun sock needed. I kinda understand this one since they have such a wide customer base and people are dumb
~ They never checked if my DMR was semi-locked. I could've rocked up with a Section 5 firearm and nobody would've known. Fortunately, I'm not a jackass and had already modified my fire selector to only shoot on semi (such an easy mod on the MWS...)
- "Outside food is not allowed" combined with "don't worry, we have relatively expensive food on sale". I didn't eat anything on principle!
- Going back to the safe zone after every game. Those safe zone breaks need to be shorter!
I did enjoy myself and will likely go back again, but there are definitely issues and I can see that a lot of what I heard about Driver Wood was well-founded. Good thing is that the site is good and the games are good, so I can largely make my own fun, but there are a lot of very easily solvable issues that do impact it.
