Despite being very tired this morning after a few days away that involved a lot of walking in Dorset, I set off bright and early (well, at 07:00) for Airsoft Plantation.
After meeting up with the usual suspects, I took the LCT PP-19-01 out to test it properly with my new improved mags. For those who do not know, the midcaps for this gun have huge feeding issues and, as everything that I had tried to improve them had failed, I was on the point of selling it when I decided to have one last try at sorting it out. I ordered a couple of the Arcturus mags; unsurprisingly, they were completely the wrong shape for the LCT magwell. However, after a bit of minor surgery to the internals and to a a couple of the LCT magazine shells, they fed perfectly. Another seven were purchased and converted, all of which fed perfectly; success!.
The first game involved us, as the Red team, having to attack the village from the border and set off pyros in three named structures in sequence. We had infinite regens on a marshal, while the defenders had two lives. I started off on the left flank of our attack; the defenders put up a very strong resistance, which held us up for ages. Having been hit, I moved over to our right flank, where we began to make progress as we wore the defenders down. Pushing along the flank, we cleared the area around the Land Rovers and the fuel dump as our colleagues did the same down the other side and through the centre. All three pyros were delivered to their targets, after which we went back to the safe zone to take on fluids and reload.
With everyone refreshed, the game was reversed. I took up a position on our right, covering the routes that I had tried to use at the beginning of the previous game. In a target rich environment, I got lots of kills; inevitably, I was eventually hit and fell back to the comms shack where a group of us put up a stiff fight until we were overrun. The game ended with the Blue team achieving the objective four minutes more rapidly than we had managed.
After taking on more fluids, we set off for a slightly different game. Eight of us were each given a very large bank note (about 30cm x 15cm); setting up in the mortar pits, where we had one life each, we had to prevent the attackers from obtaining the bank notes for as long as possible. Once they had them all, they had to deliver them to the plane at the DEA base; the catch was that, in order to travel from the far end of the of the site to the mortar pits and then to travel from there to the DEA base, they had to take the double decker bus. As many players as there were seats had to travel on it, singing "The wheels on the bus", while everyone who could not fit on walked behind it. Nobody could fire and the walking attackers could not spread out until the bus had stopped. We had one life at each of the mortar pits and the DEA base, while the attackers had infinite regens on the bus. Crawling under the Bedford, I attempted to hide myself in the rather limited area between the bottom of the wooden deck and the cross members below it; if I had been somewhat smaller, this might have been more successful! However, it worked reasonably well, as it took the attackers a while to find me and, when they did, I shot a fair few of them. Having been well and truly peppered with BBs, I eventually managed to extricate myself from my hiding place and handed over my bank note. Joining my colleagues and taking up a position in the bushes at the DEA base, we awaited the arrival of the big grey bus. Once it stopped on the edge of the DEA base, it was greeted with a hail of fire, but the enemy who had followed the bus on foot engaged us and, eventually, they managed to get the money to the plane.
It was now lunch time and, as I was enjoying using the PP-19-01 so much with mags that actually fed, I decided to use it in the afternoon; therefore, I put the battery on charge. AP has a few basic chargers for players to use.
As it was the second Sunday of the month, the regular raffle was drawn; the proceeds from this are used to pay the waste disposal costs for the site rather than putting the price up. As usual, I did not win.
After lunch, we went back to the village; we were attacking from the fire break with infinite regens on our start point and our aim was to get as many players as possible into the town hall by the end of the game. The defenders had two lives each. As we could attack from anywhere along the firebreak, I joined a group who were pursuing my favourite approach of sweeping around the far end of the village and attacking it from the rear. We got held up by a fierce resistance in the woods, but fought our way to the sniper tower and the blue barrels, where we were again pinned down. Pushing out slightly, I moved into the suburbs, where I was promptly shot by my own side who assumed that I was a defender. Some of our team were getting into the town hall and, just before the game ended, more of us made a run for it. A few were hit along the way but the rest of us piled in, with me being the 31st and last.
When the game was reversed, I occupied the first floor of a structure on the main road across the front of the village, from where I could pick off attackers over a 90 degree arc and also call out enemy movements to my colleagues. They pushed hard and we held them back, but it was apparent that the bulk of them were advancing through the suburbs, so some of our group moved to help resist them there; when the game ended they had managed to get 30 players in the town hall, so I am claiming that as a personal win
.
The plan for the final game was to reverse the bus one. We set off from the far end of the site, with the players on the bus singing the annoying song; having sung it so many times to my boys when they were little, there was no way I was going to sing it again, so I walked behind the bus. As soon as the bus halted, a cease fire was called as a pyro had caused a fire; this was put out and the game resumed, only to be halted again almost immediately as one of our team had managed to injure himself.
While he was attended to, the rest of us moved to the village for a game of capture the cow. We started by the safari car, while the blue team started at the border; the cow was positioned by the well in the village. When the game started, a group of us moved towards the direction the enemy were coming from in an attempt to prevent them getting into the village or at least delay them until our colleagues could grab the cow and get it back to the safari car. This plan worked well apart from the bits about us stopping or delaying the enemy and our colleagues grabbing the cow. After a good, hard fight, the enemy managed to grab Ermintrude and get her back to their start point.
As usual, it was an excellent, if very hot and sweaty, day of challenging airsoft played in a really good spirit, which seemed to be enjoyed by everyone, with the possible exception of the chap who injured himself at the end. Hopefully, it isn't too bad and he will soon be back out on the field.
Weapons used:
LCT PP-19-01
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)
Weapon not used:
APS UAR
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