The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[A_Stoat]

Back at Skirmish Budby yesterday, testing my mid-00s RusFor kit (okay, making sure I still fit in my Gorka and my new E&L Krink runs nicely).

Kinda a weird player group, a lot of the marshals and what I'd call 'permanent features' of the site were playing as it was someone's birthday - and that meant a lot of seriously tasty HPA setups. Sorting for the first game literally ended up as HPA vs AEG and... yeah, that went down exactly how you'd expect it to. Ended up despawning and chilling out about halfway through as BBs started to clean up the area immediately outside our spawn - guys were literally taking one step and getting hit, nothing we could do to try and counter. Fair play to the marshals, they rebalanced the teams straight after and that sorted the gameplay balance out, but a tough first round to start the day!

Rest of the day was a pretty solid one - the site recently got some light beacons, so those were getting some heavy use in a bunch of domination-style games. Played the absolute classic attack and defend with medics on the Village map, which I always enjoy, and the last game we got in before I had to leave at about 3.30 as I was going out in the evening was a variation on the three-stage pushback, utilising a lot more of the site and with more respawns for defenders. Enjoyed the defending round, but was a bit sad we had to go before getting to attack.

Gun ran fine all day, apart from some issues with the mag springs in some new CYMA midcaps. Had it hopping .28s without much issue, and considering it's completely stock internal it felt pretty nice. Definitely a far cry performance wise from my usual PDW, but definitely gameable - and hey, it's an E&L, it's all about the external look and feel, which of course rocked.

Even with the proliferation of HPA gats, I didn't really see any aggro or stupidity. Got absolutely BELTED in the last game at long range - right on the cheekbone, instant welt, big ol' lump and broken skin - and immediately thought "that felt a bit spicy out of an HPA'd AR" but he was probably just running .32s right on the line, and I didn't feel like I needed to complain. Vibes generally quite chilled out and excellent.

Overall 7/10, it was a fun day of airsoft without anything exceptionally good or bad. A nice baseline.

 

[Colin Allen]

As is often the case on a Sunday, this morning saw me at Airsoft Plantation, along with approximately 100 other airsoft aficionados.

Having secured my usual place, my first task was to set up and chrono the Lad’s AK47M that I have been upgrading. No, you did not read that incorrectly; it is a weird hybrid between an AK47 and an AKM, for which I have developed that designation. With the hop set for a lovely long flight with a little skip at the end, it was producing 1.06J, which was very pleasing as I really did not want to open it up again. I was also able to catch up with various people who I had not seen for a while. I was wearing my Swedish kit, complete with its Swedish Chef “Vert Der Ferk?” patch, and was surprised to find another player wearing the same rather unusual camo.

The first game of day the required the attackers, the vile and evil Blues, starting from the far end of the village woods, to collect an ammo tin containing two bombs from the comms shack in the village suburbs and transport it to the Cock Inn and the town hall, which both had to be blown up. We, the noble and virtuous Reds, had to delay them for as long as possible; we had two lives and they had infinite buddy regens after a 30m fallback. A group of us started by defending the area around the Jurassic Park jeep as it seemed likely that some at least of them would come that way, which they did. We held them up for a considerable time; eventually, I was hit and fell back to a building across the Main Street from the Cock Inn, from where I took out many more attackers before being hit, which led to me trudging back through the extremely glutinous mud to the safe zone.

Once they had blown up both objectives, the game was turned around. I was with a group who fought our way up the left hand side of the woods towards the town hall, while the rest of the team went to get the ammo tin and attack the Cock Inn. We had a long and difficult fight against enemies defending the town hall and the various buildings and structures around it. I would like to thank the enemy player who had a flash simulator on his rifle; it made identifying his position and aiming at him so much easier. We eventually grabbed the town hall and waited and waited; it seemed quite a while before we heard the boom as the Cock Inn was destroyed. A few minutes later the second bomb arrived at the town hall, which was promptly blown to pieces yet again in a time that was eight minutes faster than the enemy had managed! Hurrah!

After a break to reload and drink coffee, we set off into the woods for a fallback game. Starting at the wobbly bridge, the enemy had to fight their way through the woods, gather two detonators from the casino on the edge of the village and transport them to the Bedford in the mortar pits, where they would be attached to a missile which then had to be taken to the plane at the DEA base. They had infinite regens on either of two marshals, while we had one life in each of the woods, the village, the mortar pits and the DEA base. Taking up a favourite location on the left, I was able to ambush various groups of attackers until it became a bit too hot and I fell back behind the kill house, where the T-91 dealt out more plastic death on its enemies until I was eventually hit. We put up an epic fight to prevent the blues getting the detonators and transporting them out of the village, during which I was was eventually hit and made my way back to the mortar pits, where we again fought hard to prevent them getting to the missile. A very bold flanking attack almost got through to the Bedford, but was repulsed as we were able to use our interior lines to transfer people to stop them. I was hit during this and moved back to the DEA base, where I was immediately hit by a number of BBs from enemy players who had concealed themselves in the woods around it. That ended my involvement and I went back to the safe zone for lunch. The missile eventually made its way to the plane.

After lunch, the game was reversed; a group of us crossed the wobbly bridge ditch, which had turned into quite a stream, on the right and pushed down that flank in the woods, eventually overcoming a very determined enemy defence of the border and pushing into the village, where we worked really well as a team to grab the detonators and clear the enemy out. Once this was done, another player and I decided to go on a long flank march in order to sneak up on the DEA base from the rear, eliminate any blues who had been hit in the mortar pits and had fallen back to there, and then harass any others who tried to fall back there. Sneaking up on the group of them who were there, a grenade was lobbed over some bushes, landing next to them and, in our opinion, wiping them out; however, they refused to take the hit as they believed that we could not attack them as they “had not regened yet” and we had not completed the mortar pits phase of our attack. We approached them for a discussion, during which I pointed out that we were only doing what some of their players had done before lunch. Eventually, one of them fetched the site owner, claiming that we were camping on the objective, which we were not; when the grenade was thrown, we were further away from it than their players had been before lunch. He decided that, as there were now around 25-30 enemy players there, the situation could not be reset to where it was when we lobbed the grenade. Eventually, we agreed to move away unmolested in order to keep the game going. After a long fight, the missile and its attached detonators were shoved into the plane in a time that was a mere two minutes faster than the enemy had managed, which was remarkably close for a game that lasted for an hour. Hurrah!

When we returned to the safe zone, the site owner confirmed to the two of us that our actions had been correct and appropriate and explained why he had taken the decision that he had. He also thanked us for how we dealt with the situation.

As the light was beginning to fade, a fair number of people left after this game, but there was just time for one last adventure; our now outnumbered team and the enemy set out for the mortar pits. With us starting at the far end and the enemy at the near end, the aim was to get five players to the other team’s start point; as everyone only had two lives, this could become impossible, so if a team was down to fewer than five players, they had to get all of them to the other team’s start point to win. With massive amounts of smoke swirling around and blowing straight towards us, this was a confusing fight; eventually, we were whittled down and the remaining enemy players made it to our start point.

Despite the issue in the penultimate game, it was another good, fun day at AP, with some great play from both sides.

Weapons used:
G&G T-91
Double Bell Colt 607
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

 

[Impulse]

Because I am terminally single, and with the weather tomorrow looking rough, I went to Driver Wood today for a sunny, but chilly Saturday game. It was sunny all day, but the temperatures maxed out at 5 celcius, so I ended up leaving the m14 at home (5 celcius is just asking too much of it...), taking my mk12 MWS and Tanaka m24, with my TM p226 and AAP-01 as sidearms. I chronoed everything, but the MWS was struggling a bit. With the NPAS all the way open it was capping out at 1.7J and the shots weren't as consistent as I would've liked, so I ended up using the Tanaka m24 instead as that wasn't skipping a beat. Went with the AAP for pistol because the p226 was only 0.7J even on red gas, while the AAP was a bit snappier and closer to 1J.

Numbers were pretty low today, so games tended to be smaller and localised. First game the green team had to capture and hold for 10 mins a few areas in succession, pushing our respawn back with each area captured. I took a spot in one of the shipping containers with a cheeky angle down the path and got a lot of kills from my spot. They eventually got a grenade in, so I quickly scurried out and then held the door with a pistol. My team were really confused and asked me what I was aiming at... as I shot an enemy player coming through that very door. There was some really questionable hit taking, one instance where I hit someone on the goggles, they recoiled from the hit and then simply ducked back behind cover. Hit another guy as he was crossing the road and he just kept shooting. Hit a third guy as he peeked out from another shipping container and he just ducked back inside. Heard other people moaning about poor hit taking too.

Second game was a king of the hill near the centre of the gameplay area, with spawns fairly close in. I pushed in with a group to take one of the bases that overlooked the area and started to snipe from upstairs, which went pretty well until someone threw a green smoke (count as toxic) right in front of the building and we had to get out. Spent the rest of the game calling out flankers, and even taking a bunch of them out as they tried to push around behind us. Though another instance of a player just... not taking their hits. Hit him twice in the plate carrier as he sprayed at a bunch of players who were in our spawn, and it took about 5 seconds of the marshall shouting at him to stop for him to finally stop and go back to respawn.

After lunch, numbers took a nose dive. We went down to about 10 per side, so more small games were played. First was a warm up team deathmatch along the street we played in the first game and I took the exact same position with the exact same effect, though this time they didn't push up to me so I was ok to just plink away. Second game was the same king of the hill as we played in the morning, but only 30 mins. This time I flanked all the way around and got into a spot where I could shoot them in the back as they tried to approach the objective.

And final game of the day was on one of the smaller fields. We started on defense and the enemy team had to get into a church structure and hold it for 20 mins. I took up a position on a flank and went to town; nobody could even get close to me and I was picking them off with impunity. This game really showed me that only having 5x 10rd magazines is... a limiting factor, as I did almost get taken out while reloading magazines. We then flipped ends and... got spawncamped for a bit as the enemy team decided to push way past the base and start shooting us at our spawn. Marshalls did move them off, and once they did that we actually managed to capture the church. I don't think we held it for 20 mins, but we held it for a good 10 - 15 mins, and again I got onto a flank and was picking people off without them having a clue where it was coming from. Even without a suppressor on it, people don't hear the snap.

All in all, I'm glad I went today rather than tomorrow. I hate playing in the rain, especially at Driver Wood which turns into a bit of a swamp in places. Hit taking in the morning was awful, but the afternoon games were really good. Also, today must've been the day of the dead car; someone's engine blew a few cars in front of me coming back into town, then later down that same road was another car with hazards on on the side of the road. Then this evening, a bus broke down just across the street from my house and needed to be towed in a massive tow truck.

Also, can winter go away already? I'm kinda sick of playing in the wet and the cold...