Going to be a long one, because...
I am finally back from the AI500 weekender this year, which was at Anzio Camp near Leek, and I am absolutely knackered. The weekend was great and I thoroughly enjoyed spending the weekend half way up the country with around 20 friends from Worthing Airsoft. Glad to be back now and showered and fed and I will probably head to bed fairly soon after writing this. It was also my first game in a few months after having (minor) heart surgery just over 7 weeks ago and being on blood thinners until next Friday, so it was definitely tough and there were definitely things with my kit that I didn't quite get along with. The guns performed well and I was really happy with the my 16" SRS performance, though my big bugbear with that was the bolt pull. I use gas powered bolt actions for most of the year, so moving to an SRS which is both a spring powered sniper rifle and also one of the worst bolt pulls because it's a bullpup was a bit of a shock. In terms of shooting it was fantastic and I was relieved as I've been trying to troubleshoot issues for about a month, so the fact that it all shot super nicely for the whole weekend was really good. My sidearms of choice were my Hi-capa on the Saturday, which performed flawlessly and felt great, and the AAP-01 on the Sunday, which while it did what I needed it to do, I was actually underwhelmed with it as I was expecting it to be more efficient with the ultra lightweight blowback unit, but it was actually no better than the hi-capa which has a metal slide (and admittedly a lightweight blowback unit too). I think it may be the Action Army magazines, but further testing over winter will be needed.
We got there on Friday and they chronoed every gun. I took all of my guns to chrono to get it out of the way and get tagged up as I didn't want to have to find a marshall mid-game if a gun went down and I still needed to have my backup gun chronoed. Everything passed, with both the SRS and backup gun of a co2 powered VSR at bang on 2.3J, and my three pistols (hi-capa, AAP and mk23) all coming in at just over 1J. Perfect. They've definitely learned from previous mistakes here and it went smoothly from what I could see. Had to get a takeaway that night though because the local Wetherspoons was absolutely rammed and our whole team couldn't fit (which was definitely a better one and not like the city centre one where I live in Brighton which is awful!)
So, one burger and chips, a hot shower and a wonderful night's sleep later (I was in a hotel because I like my luxuries!) and we headed up to the site for Saturday. Briefing was short and probably could've been a bit longer to clarify a few things, however everyone was given the rules well ahead of time and seemed to understand what was going on. I've been at AI500s in the past where it's been a horrible mess and nobody knows what's going on, but this wasn't one of those AIs. We had a bit of confusion on our team just because we're all used to playing at Worthing Airsoft with Worthing Airsoft rules, so we were taking gun hits like normal, but at this event gun hits didn't count; that was the sort of things that got confusing, but it was really minor and not due to any particular fault of the organisers, just us operating on muscle memory. One criticism I do have though is... it was cold and wet! We had rain through the morning, a patch of sun around lunch time and then more rain as the game was coming to a close. How dare Mother Nature give us rain on an airsoft day! ?
All jokes aside, the one criticism I had at this point was actually around numbers. Green team came out strong and had around 70-80ish players, but tan team only had 30-40ish. The organisers did lock the green team tickets so that only tan tickets were available a few weeks before the event, but it didn't even the numbers enough and so the tan team were outnumbered 2:1. This led to an uneven weekend and I have massive respect for the tans who stuck around, as a bunch went home after the Saturday because they didn't like being outnumbered (and it was cold and wet!), which led to the remaining tan team to being very undermanned. Fortunately a bunch of greens also did the same because they weren't getting the trigger time (and it was cold and wet!) so the numbers remained at roughly the same ratio of tans being outnumbered 2:1 through Sunday. I actually wish it was the other way around, as I quite enjoy being the underdog. At most Vietnam filmsim games I've played at, the NVA side have been outnumbered 1.5:1 or 2:1 and I really enjoy it, but it was also interesting to finally be on the outnumbering team, rather than the outnumbered. I still prefer being on the latter, but you have to try everything at least once!
Anyway, on the Saturday I found myself with the Authentic Ghillie Experience(tm) of sitting still in the rain and watching a path that snaked along the edge of the site to make sure none of the tan team could sneak around that flank. I shot not a single shot all morning outside of briefly moving to help snipe a few people out of a building so that our team had an easier time pushing in. I then went back to the fence and continued to sit in the rain while watching the flank. 10/10, would sit in a soggy bush again.
The afternoon picked up though and we had more activity on that side of the site, and I swapped out my earmors for an earpiece as my M32s were really annoying me trying to aim through my scope and they were getting in the way. I wasn't going into the buildings anyway and I wasn't being grenaded at all, so I ditched them in favour of a simpler earpiece and it made life a lot easier. Me and my friend set up watching a three way fork in a road that was just down from a base they were spawning at and denied that avenue of exit. We weren't spawncamping, as it was very easy to leave along the top of the hill, but some of the tan players just kept coming down that path and kept getting sniped by the two of us. They eventually worked it out and pushed through the thick foliage next to us which caused us to fall back and call in some help over the radio. We then pushed with more of our team after we heard another ghillie on our team radioing in that he had single-handedly crept into that base they were spawning from and flipped it to green team, so we pushed up to reinforce him. A few of us stayed to defend and the tans eventually counter attacked in force. We held them for a while, but eventually one of their players crept in behind and took out all the green defenders... apart from me. I was hiding right near the fence, holding the route into the base from the hillside so I went quiet. After I heard the player yelling that tans had captured it and the rest of the tans yelling to push up and running in, I leaned out and took out the entire attacking wave with my hi-capa and then popped over the top and shot the player who had crept in as well, retaining it for green team. A classic "this is why I love GBB pistols over mk23s as a sniper" moment, as if I was using my mk23 I doubt I would've been able to take out all of the tan players who were charging in.
Spent the rest of the Saturday game keeping an eye on that hillside, but eventually Saturday was done. Headed back to my hotel room and had another hot shower and then went to the Wetherspoons again as this time we had asked if we could reserve one of the little side rooms and they allowed us to, so our entire team crammed onto a few tables and had a very enjoyable team meal. Lots of alcohol was consumed, three of our guys joined up with 7 or 8 others from another team (within green team) and went clubbing, including our 1IC who was then not seen on the Sunday until the afternoon, but most of us headed back and crashed out to sleep. People often seem to wonder why I go back to AI500 every year, but this is a prime example as to why. Worthing Airsoft have been going to AI500 for as long as I can remember, and I started airsoft in 2005, and the social side of it is absolutely fantastic and a lot of the green team regulars are a wonderful bunch to hang out with. Maybe next year if the opportunity arises I will join the clubbing group, but crippling self-consciousness meant it was a no-go this year. I've only just been able to return to exercise, so let me shift this weight and feel good about myself before I go embarrass myself on a dance floor!
Sunday came around and it was colder than Saturday, but it was at least dry. The site itself was incredibly muddy and some of the paths were rather boggy, but it wasn't raining at least! I swapped to the AAP as my sidearm due to this, but as I eluded to earlier I probably should've just stuck with the hi-capa. I had a lot more action on Sunday than Saturday though, as I pushed up on that same flank as I played on the Saturday because it was fantastic for sniping, while the other side of the site was quite overgrown and my MED made it harder to play over there. We pushed to the same base that I held on Saturday and took control of it again, so I dug in at the bottom of the hill this time as I found a lovely little spot under some heavy foliage that gave me a clear line of sight over the path and we were told that up the hill was out of bounds for both teams (as pushing along it would've put us right outside their spawn). After waiting for a little, a large element of tans pushed from up the hill and took us all out since nobody was watching up there. I managed to take out 6 out of 8 of them with my AAP as they tried to push past me and only got hit because one of them ran across spraying full auto at the bush and only called the hit after I called one that happened to hit me. I had already hit him about 6 or 7 times before this with the AAP as he was running, but I wasn't going to start an argument. I said they weren't supposed to go up there, but they said that two marshalls told them they could. Then as I was walking away the head marshall told me that was not the case, but maybe 30 mins later the head marshall then said that the top of the hill was back in play as it was easier than keeping it out of bounds. Could've been miscommunication between the marshalls, but we'll never know. Tans needed the help at this point, so I just shrugged it off. We retook the base after this and I helped by sniping a few from the side as they tried pushing along the top, but this was where I was really starting to notice that hit taking was starting to take a tumble. I got hit from a building behind me, took it and headed to the captured base to respawn. When I came back, I set up watching the windows where I got hit from and scored two hits on two separate targets with that satisfying and very audible thwack of BB hitting fabric as there wasn't any other shooting nearby, but neither called it. Oh well...
As Sunday was coming to a close we had to find 4 objectives that were supposed to be bomb making equipment that were set up in the buildings with the tans in control (green team got reset and we had to wait in spawn for them to set this up as we controlled most of the site at this point). Once we had them we then had to bring a bag of red smoke grenades to each building and let one off inside to signify that the building was "destroyed". We managed to swarm through the buildings quite effectively, and I teamed up with two of the other ghillies to protect flanks and snipe people out of 1st floor windows and it was good fun and I got some cracking shots, including one on a guy who I could not see at all as looking into darkened rooms from a bright outdoors was incredibly difficult, but I could see the light from inside his tracer unit in the darkness and just shot at the illuminated ring! We eventually got all four items and our team was tasked with destroying the buildings. As we destroyed the first one we saw the tan team trying to flank around that building so we just rushed the remaining buildings and kept the tan team at bay so they couldn't stop it. They just happened to choose the wrong flanking route at the wrong time, as we took out the buildings they could threaten before they could even really threaten them and then we could simply hold them back as we snaked through the rest of the site, "destroying" each of the buildings as we did.
One thing I will say is that I have massive respect for the tans who stayed the course. I've been in their shoes before and it can suck, but the few tans that stuck it out played hard and certainly made their presence known. If they had the appropriate numbers and they all played like the ones who stayed, then tans would've probably won. After everyone came in, they gave out a few awards they had for the event, which were best green player, best tan player and best support gunner for the weekend, judged based on attitude, sportsmanship, how effective they were, and were nominated by their team. On green team, Team Beans (our Worthing Airsoft team) was nominated for the best green player award collectively. We're all used to playing against each other, but it all came together this weekend fantastically. Comms were good, and our team was very well rounded, with some real aggressive door-kickers who love CQB and were able to clear building after building, and then also hold them against counterattack, and also basically all of the ghillies at the event who were happy to work outside the buildings, scout out the enemy positions and generally cause havoc. We then had a group photo with the entire green team:
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And a sneaky little Team Beans photo
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And then a picture of a shrubbery (by this point, most of my camo paint had come off my face. It looked better in game, I swear!):
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All in all it was an absolutely amazing weekend and I had a lot of fun. This one was probably the best AI500 I have played at so far, as it was better than the last one at Ebbw Vale in Wales which was the previous best one (and was leagues better than the messy Rochdale shopping mall one!). Looking forward to the next one, but I think the next weekender I'll be at will probably be Shift Your RIFTs in 2025. I was really happy with how my £40 Aliexpress cobra hood build worked, but I do wish I brought my boonie + cape setup instead as I ended up not using my Earmors, and that was the main reason I went with the hood instead as M32s + ghillie boonie don't mix well.
Roll on next year! Actually, I'm about to roll onto my bed and collapse for the next 10 hours. See you in the morning! ?
