Today was just one of those days for me. Played half the day at Worthing and then me and my friend left at lunch due to gun issues. The day itself was mostly good, with good hit taking, though the marshalls did have to collect everyone together to go over a few issues that happened (full auto up close and people removing eye-pro in the gameplay area) and the only real issue outside of these that were dealt with was some pretty rampant spawn-camping in the long game before lunch. Temperature was perfect too, a bit colder than it has been, but still probably between 18 - 20 celcius.
We were dropped off today, as the guy we usually go with has had his car break down and I'm still a few months off from my test, so I packed light. Went with the hawaiian shirt today as the flannel was too invisible last game day and I needed to up the ante, so a bright hawaiian shirt was the pick, with my usual not-jeans and Aliexpress belt kit and chest rig. Only brought the one gun and one pistol, as I didn't want to leave any of my rare stuff lying about the safe zone; I have never heard of anyone having stuff nicked at Worthing as the community is pretty great there, but I don't want to take the chance with pre-ban Tanakas and other not-so-common gas rifles, so pretty much everything I had with me could come out into the gameplay area. The one gun was one of my MWSs, the mk12 mod1 that I ran last game day and was flawless all day, alongside my TM p226 as a sidearm. Since then, I haven't done anything to it, so it should be fine, right?
Well, it was not fine. My MWS for whatever reason wasn't pushing the bolt all the way forward. I tested it on all 7 short mags I had with me and when I put the mag in, pulled the charging handle back and released it, it went almost all the way forward, but stopped short, not feeding a BB into the hop unit and therefore venting the whole mag when I pulled the trigger. A very kind bloke offered me his regular length MWS mags and while I could get a shot or two off with those, by the 2nd or 3rd shot it did the same thing, bolt not going all the way forward and then venting all the gas. So that was that, my MWS wasn't working at all. This meant that me and my very obvious hawaiian shirt had to go out in the morning with just my pistol; on the plus side, I definitely looked the part of "some CIA guy about to go shoot up a drug den in Cuba" as one of my mates put it, and I do love looking the part as a filmsim enjoyer, even at skirmish games. Fortunately, my p226 was functioning flawlessly, but I wasn't looking forward to how I was going to have to play. Especially when I saw that there were about 10 ghillies on site today.
Anyway, first game was a king of the hill style game around the tower base. Rather than post up where I normally do with my sniper rifles and DMRs, I went full-send. First game I managed to get all the way up the side, taking cover in a spot where I could pick people off on a flank. Spent most of the game bouncing around there until I was finally taken out, but got some great kills with the pistol. Then we swapped ends and I went full-send again, running up to the same spot to stop the enemy team from doing what I did in the last one. One of the enemy ghillies went all the way around the other side of the site to come in behind us, shooting my friend and one other of our team until I burst out, running across and shooting at him. I don't think I hit him, but I caused him to have to move enough and caused enough commotion to where some of the rentals turned and hosed the area with full auto and someone got him. I then medic'd my friend back in, so I'll call that a win.
Second game was... difficult. Because we had won the first game on both sides, we had the challenge of taking a stretcher to 6 different areas of the site, having to hold the areas for 10 mins with the stretcher before moving onto the next. We started at the bottom of the site and got to our first objective quite quickly. Had some of the ghillies try and harass us, but we just pushed through quickly and got to the base, then moved off before they could really do anything. Second objective was difficult, at the top of the hill that we were at the bottom of. This was challenging, as their spawn wasn't too far away and wasn't down a hill like ours was, so when they identified where we were with the stretcher, it became very difficult to push it. However, we managed it with some great aggressive play by half of our team; a group of regulars and a family of rentals. Dad, mum, and either both their kids or their kid and his friend, but there were 4 of them and they absolutely got stuck in, helped us with the stretcher and played their absolute hearts out, so massive respect to them. Once we had that objective, the next base we had to get to was... right outside the enemy spawn and this is where the gameplay completely broke apart. We were still having to respawn at the bottom of the hill and the enemy team had a very, very short walk from their respawn to the objective so it just became impossible to push. After I got hit carrying the stretcher, I pushed up aggressively after I respawned in, running around and making the dug in people have to worry about multiple angles which helped get them taken out. We almost got the objective, despite it being right next to the enemy respawn... until we got shot in the back. What we found after this was that the enemy team were sending a lot of people into the very dense part of the site and using that to basically spawn camp us on the hill. I saw at this point a lot of people had given up, because they were going down the hill, spawning, going up a tiny bit and just getting shot. I don't know if anyone reported it to the marshalls, but with only a few minutes left I made one last hurrah along one of the flanks, taking out two people with my pistol before the game ended.
It was a real shame for me today, as I really needed a good day of airsoft after work has been a pain in the ass the past few weeks (on a project that is like pulling teeth at the moment...), but with the MWS not working and having to run around a very dense woodland site, against an enemy team with at least 6 ghillies, in a bright hawaiian shirt with just a pistol was... not ideal and got very frustrating. Even with just a regular 1J rifle things would've been a lot easier, but accurate pistol shooting out to 40m+ is very difficult, even with real ones that have way better ballistics than our toy guns, so I was struggling today. On the plus side, my Earmor m31s were really good. Haven't worn them in a while, but figured I'd give them a run as I always use a headset in games like Tarkov or Gray Zone Warfare, so I figured I should use them in airsoft, and the difference was noticeable. Not so much with footsteps (a little bit, but not *that* much), but what it was amazing for was helping me pinpoint where people were shooting from which was a massive benefit.
Oh well. Two weeks to wait until the next one, and depending on how it goes with my friend's car will dictate whether I need to start running my Vietnam kit, as I want to make sure that works before the September 'Nam game if we even make it there. I know he'll be gutted if he has to miss the September 'Nam game as he's an older gentleman and doesn't know how many more years he has to play, but with his car acting up and that only being a month away, we might not make that either. I won't have a car until about October (test is in December), so I can't even lend him mine as it'll be a month too late