The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Colin Allen]

Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.

Today I did something that I once swore never to do again.

I went back to Red 1 at Chislehurst.

The lad and I used to play there reasonably regularly at one point, but stopped going due to the very poor marshalling and the inadequate and contradictory game briefs.

So, why did I go back, Father? I did so simply because I wanted to play today and my usual sites were not open. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Red 1 had lost the use of the site but have access to it again one Sunday each month for the moment, pending a decision from the council as to whether they can stay there. This causes minor complications as the safe zone is temporary and limited and part of the site is used by the local Cubs on Saturday, so players have to be careful not to damage their work.

Anyway, on with the tale of the day.

Around 40 players were present, which is a decent number given the scale of the site. It is semi only except for LMGs.

Chronoing was efficient and straightforward, although I was somewhat alarmed when a player that I was chatting with told me that his gun was hot but he had been allowed to use it!

The first game was a simple and short warm up, using the CQB village and some of the adjoining wood, with both teams having infinite lives. This was actually quite good fun; the group that I was with fought our way into the wood, capturing some of the structures and having a good stiff fight with the enemy. This was then turned around and we had a similar experience, but with the advantage of being able to grab most of the structures as they were nearer the start point/respawn at that end.

Following a quick break to reload, we set off to play a game in the trench system, which is one of the best features of the site; this was aborted before it started as the footballers and supporters in the sports club next door were too close and there was a real risk of them getting shot as the netting along that part of the side of the site is not in good repair.

Instead, we played a game which involved our team having to get three fuel cans as close as we could do the rearmost structure in the village at the far end of the site; again, both teams had infinite lives. One quirk was that a defender could try to grab an abandoned can, shout "Kamikaze!" and run with it as far as they could towards the attacker's regen before they were shot. I was hit a lot and shot a lot of enemy players. There were lots of accusations of non-hit taking and overshooting and the rules were not entirely clear. However, it was fun.

This was then turned around and we defended the village gallantly; I was mostly on our left flank, from where we held off the enemy attack in that area. One of our players managed to Kamikaze a dropped can, using this to deposit it in a position where no enemy player could get near it without being shot. Another of our players did the same with another can and was able to get it all the way to the attackers' regen. At the end of the game, the attackers had managed to get three cans into the edge of the village on the far side; this was somewhat baffling as we still had one can pinned down in our area! They had been using four cans rather three.

After the lunch break, which was thankfully far shorter than it used to be, the sides were rearranged as 35-40% of players had left. We then went to play in the trenches as the footballers and their parents had all gone home. The attackers had two fuel cans; their aim was to get one onto each bridge in the trench system and then clear the village at the far end of the field. They had to get a can to the first bridge before they could attack the second one and had to get a can to that one before they could attack the village. We had two lives in the trench system and one in the village. Their attack was slow, being held up by good teamwork and coordination by our defenders. They eventually got a can to the first bridge, but I then shot several enemy players who were attempting to get the second can to its bridge before one of them made it.

When this game was turned around, we pushed through the trench system, clearing it and getting the cans to the two bridges far more rapidly than they had managed. We then stormed into the village and cleared it.

There was to be one more game after this, but I and several others decided that we had had enough and packed up our gear.

Overall, not much had changed since the last time I was there. The briefings were still vague and incomplete, but the marshalling was marginally better, although one briefing did include 'fuck' or 'fucking' in every sentence, which was unnecessary.

The actual game play was pretty good, though.

Would I go back? Possibly, but only if I hadn't played for a while and really, really wanted to play, and nowhere else that I play was open. So, probably not.

Somehow, I forgot to add this bit yesterday: on two occasions, I had to point out to players that they still had mags in their rifles in the safe zone; nobody was checking at the entrance to the safe zone. The site owner also grabbed a couple of people for the same thing.

Weapons Used

Classic Army HK33 "No, it isn't a G3!"
Classic Army HK53 "No, it isn't an MP5!"
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2) "No, it isn't a Glock"

 

[tside]

Last outdoor game of my year at dirty dog today. Packed my pp19 and ak 105, both from the classifieds here, they worked absolutely flawlessly. What I should have packed were swimming armbands as there wasn't a much puddles as lakes on the field. After realising there was no avoiding an absolute drenching I threw myself fully into enjoying the chance to get absolutely filthy playing army man as an adult.

First game involved stopping the non band team from delivering their dummy hostage to the fort. Volunteered as medic and hardly fired a shot while getting a metric ton of cardio. After we cleared the enemies faster members from the fort we dug in and set up a fantastic defence. Spent all my time keeping our defenders in the fight and we nearly ran the clock out till an enemy carrying the dummy literally came in through a window with just 4 mins left on the clock.

Game two we changed into a village game preventing non bands from setting off a very large bomb. Lots of great teamwork from the various gangs of regulars on each side made it a very tense game but we managed to push back each attack giving a small bit of ground each time as they took closer and closer spawns over the game. We very nearly were overrun but just managed to hold them off and run out the clock.

After a well needed bite to eat (the new grub on offer was a top notch chicken curry for £4.50) it was our turn as the attacking team. Game 3 was a flip of the morning game and our turn to try and beat non bands time to get the dummy to the fort. After a bloody stalemate trying to push up one of the hills under lmg support 5 of us launched a flanking manoeuvre to try and hit the fort from the rear. After quietly moving up through the village we managed to suprise attack and clear the fort itself only for the time to run out before the dummy was brought up.

At this point I was caked in mud, water and foliage and home and a pint were calling. Playing in such filthy conditions was definitely fun but the sludgy ground and my heavy grunt kit and gorka definitely made running take the steam out of me quicker.

 

[Impulse]

Finally got back to Worthing Airsoft this weekend. Been a rough few months as the one guy in our group who can drive has been having car issues and I am... a week and a half from my test (confident in my driving, but so many weird instant-fail things on the test. Fingers crossed I pass...). But we got down this weekend, which was good because while the weather has been shite, today was sunny but a bit cold.

Day started a bit rough though. My mk12 is still having issues with mags, not just the short mags, but the normal mags too. I think it might be the Maxx hop unit, so I'll swap that back out for a regular MWS hop unit, because when I put the same mag with the same BBs and even the same gas load into my URGI, that cycled flawlessly and that's the only difference between the two. The URGI also worked flawlessly with the short mags as well, so it's the gun, not the mags. Anyway, that means for the first time in AGES I was running something that wasn't a bolt action or a DMR, using my URGI MWS with an LPVO instead. With how cold it was today, the red gas came out to play, and fortunately it meant the URGI worked all day without any issues.

I was put onto blue team and I missed the first game since it took time for me to get the URGI set up after having issues with the mk12, but I got out for the 2nd game which was basically just the first game but with teams swapped around. There was a box with two switches, and each team had to hold down their team's button. The box was in the open, so you had to properly control the entire area. When I got out, the yellow team had pushed up pretty far and had total control of the area. It normally takes time for me to get into a "I wish I had a bolt action or DMR" situation, but... I got into that immediately. Took position behind a coppice, shooting through the gaps in the trees, but they were just out of my range, even with elevating my shots. I had perfect vision on the box and all the enemy players crowded around it, and if I had a bolt action or DMR I could've taken them all down, but I just couldn't reach! It was so frustrating! Suffice to say, we lost that game...

Next game was really interesting. It was a massive domination game with all 7 bases in play, but they also started both teams around all the bases. They split us all up and put us at different bases so the action would start straight away. However, I was the only blue who was sent to one of the bases that had 6 yellows there, so I spawned a bit further out to avoid getting immediately rinsed. I originally planned on hitting them from a different angle than they saw me leave from, but as I was trying it I realised I would be pushing into the sun, and I couldn't see at all. So I scrapped that idea and went back into the wilds. I then spent the entire game creeping closer and closer to the base along a fairly unknown, but elevated path. I crawled along parts where I'd silhouette too much and made no sound and then I just... sat there. I got to just outside the base and then just sat idle and waited. I waited until the "60 seconds left" call was made. When this call was made, I saw some yellow players leaving the base, so I waited for them to leave before I crept up. I didn't fire a single shot as I didn't want to give away my position, but there was nobody in the base itself, so I crept into the base and just lay on against a wall on my back with my rifle pointed at the door as the countdown came in. Game ended and I managed to capture the base without firing a single shot. Found out that was... the only base the blue team managed to get as when I got to where they were giving the results I found out that the rest of the blue team were having issues even pushing too far out of spawn. Marshalls were ensuring there was no spawn camping, but the blue team just had no momentum and couldn't break through to any of the bases. I did have the widest grin when the marshalls said that "yellow team controlled every base... apart from Wonky Watch, because of this person" while gesturing at me. No ghillie, no problem

I skipped the next game, as I had lost the protector on the RMR on top of my scope and didn't want it getting shot out, even if it's my worst RMR. My friend had his really nice Holy Warrior holo sight shot out earlier in the day, so I wasn't taking any chances. Headed back to the safe zone to take it off the scope mount and also take the opportunity to remove the LPVO entirely and zero my red dot + magnifier combo. Once they were zeroed, I took them back off and reinstalled the LPVO, as it works better for woodland, but now the gun is ready for CQB too.

After lunch, a load of players were swapped around and we had a large multi-objective game. A load of items were scattered around the site and both teams had to find them and take them back to their base. The marshall... admitted after this game that he may've gone overboard on the team balancing because blue team absolutely rinsed it. We had something like 20 objectives to the yellow team's 2 objectives. I spent most of the game at the back just watching for sneaky players; only got two kills, but those two kills stopped people shooting us all in the back, so it was worth it.

Then we had a really interesting game. Basically, there were a LOT of the local away team playing today (the team we all band together as when we go to things like Shift Your RIFT or AI500), and the suggestion of "us vs everyone" was floated as a funny idea. The head marshall accepted this and so we were separated out, 14 of us to hold out, Alamo style, in one of the bases for 20 mins against everyone else (probably outnumbered about 4 to 1; 3 to 1 at the very least). We always get split up on game days for team balance, as all of us know the site like the back of our hands, we all know each others strengths and work well as a team, and there are some really strong players in the group, so this was an interesting development and a bit of fun.

This game was... really intense. I took position sort of inside a fallen tree with good eyes on the flanks, but again I felt the sting of not using a bolt action or DMR as I saw a lot of people but they were just outside my range. It's a spot I normally take with a bolt action or DMR, so instead I just used my LPVO to call out movement to the rest of the team and covered our backs, as I had really good concealment in the spot. They almost managed to capture the base, with one ghillie pushing in with a pistol (though I'm sure I hit him...) but he got taken out by the last guy in there and then our respawn wave came in and resecured it, but we managed to hold the base from the onslaught. It was really tight, and I thought we'd lose it a few times, but we managed to hold on. It was one of the most fun games I've had the pleasure of being a part of in a long time. Good teamwork is truly the OP tactic in airsoft, as we weren't on radios with each other due to always being split up for balance, so it was just a lot of shouting to communicate and knowing what each person was good at. After this game we were put back on our respective teams, with some more players being moved around to try and get the balance right. Got a cheeky team photo in too! (I'm on the far left and was in the middle of reloading MWS mags, so I was not photo ready!)



After that I called it. There was only one game left, and I thought I'd end on a high. Overall it was a really fun game day, despite not using the gun I wanted to use. The games at Worthing are always great, even if the site itself can be a challenge to negotiate. Not having an MED today was definitely liberating, but I'm so used to it and have some really nasty pistol builds that the lack of MED wasn't anywhere near as useful as having that extra range I'm used to; I wouldn't have been as confident in my sneaky base taking shenanigans if I had a bolt action or DMR though as having the URGI was one of the things that gave me the confidence to try it as if they left a player or two in the base I could hit them hard and fast and take the base before they could get their bearings, which would've been harder (but not impossible) with a pistol. Picked up my friend's SVD (WE, steel version), so I'll probably try and get that set up and use that next game day. Need to find an MWS hop unit, as the stock one from my mk12 build is in my mk18 MWS build, and that will be a cock if I try and remove that barrel nut again, so the mk12 is out of action until I can source that, but the SVD and m24 can be my go-to guns for now, even if I only have 2x 20rd mags for the SVD for now...