Played at Worthing Airsoft's annual Halloween night game last night and had a lot of fun. Night vision equipment is banned at Worthing's night games, so you didn't have the milsim brigade turning up with night vision equipment worth more than some people's entire airsoft collections and allowing a level playing field. The forecast for the night was absolutely awful, with a yellow warning for rain and thunderstorms through the evening. It was fine when we got there, but it quickly started to absolutely tip it down. Despite this, we had a good turnout with 36 players; it was almost fully booked with its 40 spaces! We arrived earlier than everyone else, getting there at about 4pm so that me and my friend could set up our rifles and then have a wander into the gameplay area to still try and work out how to attack the Tower base from the crappy respawn side that I still haven't seen anyone win from
during the day (there's a bit of a spoiler for you for the games to come
)
I originally wanted to bring the SR-25, however with a relatively exposed mosfet I didn't want to risk it with the torrential downpours that were forecast, so I opted to go with my KJW m40a5, set to 1.05J on a .32, and my STTI mk23 as a sidearm. Maximum sneak for playing around in the dark! However, this was where I had my first issue. While my m40a5 was doing decently on a .32 (overhopping a little bit, but nothing too egregious), my mk23 was clipping the end of the suppressor meaning I had to run it without it. What was a nice quiet sidearm became a very snappy, noisy pistol! Oh, I also put a red dot sight on my m40a5, so it looked like some sort of Call of Duty abomination gun build, but no way was I using a magnified optic without an illuminated crosshair for this game. I did toy with the idea of bringing out my illuminated scope, however I don't like 40mm scopes at the best of times, so I decided against it; I really need to buy those budget-but-pricey Visionking and Vector Optics scopes that I have my eye on...
Anyway, as it got dark we headed back to the safe zone. We decided to pack all of our kit away preemptively as the weather was still relatively clear, but we knew what was going to come later. We both made sure that our kit was packed in such a way where what we were using for the games was also very easy to pack away; for me it was the rifle and belt kit both going into the rifle bag and my pistol going in its case. We then hung about and chatted with everyone else and... the rain started, and oh boy did it start. It was absolutely pouring, but there was some cover that we could stand beneath. I was suddenly glad I brought my waterproof! However, we were blessed by mother nature, as by 7pm when we were heading out to play, the rain had eased off massively. It was still raining a little, but it was absolutely fine!
First game had 4 small disk-shaped light markers around the Tower base area (they're small, not the type to really illuminate anything). One was in Tower itself, one in the church, one in the stables and I believe one was a cross, a small criss-cross barricade structure just outside of the Tower base. We started from the bad side in the first game and had to turn the lights off, while the other team had to keep them on. I decided to take advantage of the fact that nobody would want to use the lower part of the site and headed down into Clearing so that I could come up on the corner and get some shots in the flank. Worthing Airsoft has some thick tree canopy, so it was very dark and I was just shooting at silhouettes and torch lights. However, what I learned is that my friend and another of the regulars had done the same as me but over the other side of the site and were taking everyone out from behind. The streak had been broken as we absolutely dominated this game from the bad side, however I wasn't too surprised as night games, especially with how dark it gets at Worthing Airsoft, are a very different beast and a lot of what makes the other side strong was negated by the lack of sight lines due to the dark.
We swapped ends afterwards, with our team now spawning on the good side and needing to keep the lights turned on. I decided to stand away from the rest of my team as people were shining torches all over the place so I put some distance between myself and them and kept my eyes closed. I was trying to operate on natural night vision, and having torches shone in your face every few seconds wasn't a great way to maintain natural night vision. I waited until game was called on and people started heading off before I headed towards the fence line on the edge of the site. I knew I could get into a good position to once again get some shots into the flank of the enemy team as they came in to try and turn the lights off, but I had to be careful not to silhouette myself against the open field on the other side of the fence. This led to me crawling along the ground, stopping every time a light came anywhere near me. There were multiple times I had a torch shone directly at me, but keeping still I managed to go undetected and get into position. We managed to hold them back well and managed to win this game too, as they only managed to turn off the lights in the stables at the end of the game.
Next game had a marshall in the top of Tower handing out objectives that we had to take back to our respawn. I decided to take the same route as I did the game before, heading for the fence line and crawling along the ground to set up a good ambush position with my m40a5. However, this game was pretty uneventful for me as our team managed to pin the enemy team back so nobody even crossed my ambush position, which was well in-front of the objective, so the enemy team never got close!
We stopped for some food at 9pm and the heavens opened up again, so we all stood beneath the cover. Some people called it there, not wishing to play in the cold and the wet, but it wasn't a huge number. I think we lost about 10 players, bringing us down to 26 for the last two games which were the sands of pain. It was exactly the same game as last game day, with the box in the same place and everything. I had a bit of an annoying encounter and was the only time I got hit all evening, though I'm not counting it as a hit and will stick with the "I didn't get hit at all" line. I saw a guy moving up, lined up my red dot with his silhouette, pulled the trigger and got that satisfying thwack as my .32 made contact with plate carrier. However, he then just turned his light on, lit me up and shot me in the head then continued on. I wasn't about to argue it, but that was really annoying as I had spent time getting into position undetected only to have someone blatantly cheat in front of me and lace me up. There's a lot less certainty on whether you're hitting people during a night game as you can't hear your BBs, but when the shot is about 10m and you hear a very noticeable thwack of the BB impacting with fabric... yeah, I was annoyed. Anyway, I headed back to respawn and went down low again, heading for the bottom of the site and popping up near the enemy respawn. Not wanting to be a dirty spawn camper, I crawled up a bit as if I was on their team, getting to the checkpoint on the path where I set up my ambush position, waiting for players to pass me before shooting them in the back. It worked flawlessly and people had no idea where they were getting shot from, since the m40a5 is such a quiet gun.
We swapped sides again for the final game and I, once again, used the bottom of the site to pop up near-ish their spawn again. However, once again, I didn't want to be a dirty spawn camper, so I moved up and got into a position to ambush people from behind a decent ways away from the enemy spawn. While my ambush position wasn't that far from where I'd set up an ambush if I was coming at it from our spawn's side, the important thing was the positioning, as the enemy team never had any clue where I was shooting them from and were very confused as to why they were getting shot in the back!
Anyway, all in all it was a very fun
day evening. Didn't get the most kills, as I was running a bolt action at night, but I had a great time seeing just how much sneaky antics I could get away with (a lot!). Got home last night, unpacked absolutely everything, partially disassembled my m40a5 and put the gun wrap, my waterproof jacket and belt kit out to dry so that it wouldn't stew in its muddy sogginess in my bags. Now today I will do a full clean on both the m40a5 and mk23 as they probably need it after all that.
