I went to Worthing Airsoft today for a hot and humid one after deciding yesterday that I would return to the gym after 3 months of not going with a 3hr full body workout followed by my usual 2km swim. I woke up this morning and I was aching literally everywhere, but I was determined! I thought I'd only play half the day and go home at lunch time, but I managed to make it to the last game (but I didn't play that one...). I was also going to do my 2km swim afterwards too, but I was finding it painful to even just manipulate the peddles in my car towards the end of the drive home, and when I got out of my car I realised I was almost immobile, so I... didn't.
As for gun choice for the day... I don't have much green gas left (1x ASG brown, 1x Coleman's propane tank), and it's a bit warm for orange or red gas (which I also only have 3 of each), so I'm currently using my most efficient gas setup. The pre-ban Tanaka m24 with the short mags as I've done the full suite of upgrades to my short mags which has made them ludicrously good, with my TM p226 as a sidearm. Both could run on 144a, which I have 2.5 bottles of, so my plan is to run through my 144a while the summer holds, then switch to my DMRs again when it gets colder and use orange and then red gas. Green gas will be saved for pistols and the bolt actions when it gets a bit colder. Once I am out, I'm fully switching to propane and mapp gas. Cheaper, and all I use are gas guns, but I also don't want to buy any cylinders until I move in a month or two.
I was also trialling the repro Spiritus Systems 34 Alpha chest rig that I picked up, and I must say I like it a lot; it will probably become my main rig for sniping and recce setups, as it can hold a lot of gear and is a split rig, so if I need to go prone, I can just undo the front buckles and push it aside to stay low and comfortable when firing from prone. I think it'll be my go-to, with the D3CRM as my go-to micro rig. Next year I might treat myself to the real deals...
All of the morning games were at the bottom of the site. First two games were a simple flip can (blue needed blue side up, yellow needed yellow side up) as a warm up game that we switched sides after the first game. Third game went until lunch and was a multi-objective game with objectives all over the bottom part of the site that we needed to find, collect, and take back to our base, along with 3 flip cans and 2 larger objectives that needed 2 people to carry (and those 2 couldn't use any guns while carrying them). The reason I'm putting all this together is because I found out the hard way that the bottom of the site, after the past two weeks of both wet and intense sunshine, is borderline unplayable again with an MED. There are so many bushes, coppices, ferns, just... foliage EVERYWHERE. First two games I tried to be smart and didn't get any kills; first game I could've if I was a bit faster and less achey, as my prediction worked wonders and three enemy patrols passed right by me, though I wasn't in a good spot to shoot them each time and wasn't fast enough to get into one, but the 2nd game was a wash and nobody came my way. In the big third game I got a grand total of... 2 kills. 1 with the rifle (it was a lovely shot where I got into a spot, lined it up on the area I thought the enemy player was, then as he popped up to shoot a team mate, I shot once, threaded through a bunch of foliage, and hit the guy. 2nd kill was pistol on a sneaky player who snuck around and was going for one of the flip cans in the final minutes of the game.
The morning games themselves were good; the first two served as good warmup games, while the third was really nice to have loads of things to do. But trying to play with an MED at the bottom of the site right now is just borderline impossible.
After lunch I got team-balanced, which wasn't too bad since there was a group of my friends on both teams, so I just went and hung out with the others in the afternoon. The first two games after lunch were the same games, but flipped. One team had to take a stretcher with a dummy from one side of the top of the site, to the saloon on the other side of the top of the site. We all started dug in around the first base, and... the other team were surprisingly quick to take it. I was hammering shots from this disgusting spot that only I know about, where you can post shots through a tiny gap between a barricade and a tree, but with a well-tuned bolt action you can hit the enemy team as they're making their way up the main path. It's a VERY unexpected position to shoot from and I always rack up a lot of kills from there, and this was no exception. However, they eventually took that base, so that base now served as their respawn to push onto the final base. With me still there, I simply decided to disengage and fell back. Didn't feel like getting absolutely rinsed when they inevitably found me, and it would've been spawncamping, which is a dick move. I fell back to the final base, but pushed up beyond it and got into a position with good sight lines. Again, I got a good number of kills from here, but they eventually pushed up and were all around me. I went through 2 pistol mags fending people off, but I managed to get one of those heroic last stand moments where it takes them absolutely loads of players, coming in from all angles to finally kill me. Shoutout to the girl who was doing her best to cover me from about 20m back, as she was really making my survival a lot more possible with what she was doing. I did get a cracker of a shot though, where I lined it up while behind the tree, poked out for a fraction of a second to shoot, then ducked back in; one pistol shot, a burst of full auto hitting the tree as I got back in, followed by the guy calling the hit and one of the marshalls giving me a nod. I did eventually get taken out though, as I was completely surrounded, so I then went to respawn and then came back to a fallen tree that I like using. I sat there until the end of the game, getting a bunch more kills by threading shots through barricades, foliage, or just some nice clear long sight lines in the rare occasion. After 45 mins, we managed to hold them back.
Second game we swapped sides with a... very different approach. Instead of pushing through them, we opted to go around them. Most of our team would hit them at the first base to keep them busy and focused on us, while a small team of about 5 players went on the longest flank around the edge of the site. I followed the main group to keep pressure on the main base, though I didn't do too much. Pinged a few people off the defence, but remained fairly passive. Then, after just over 11 minutes, the marshalls call game over. Our group of 5 had made it around the enemy team and into the base.
That's where I called it. Final game of the day was a 3 base domination, but by this point I was so broken I just couldn't go on any further. All in all it was a really good day, though after lunch there were quite a few... dehydrated airsofters around. Apparently there was verbal abuse (the player was warned and if he did it again was going to get kicked off the site), and there were some people intentionally headshotting at point blank range, which I think was due to some people not taking their hits, which again was sorted. It's classic dehydrated airsofter behaviour. Hot and humid day of airsoft and tempers start to fray in the afternoon because people haven't drunk enough water.
All in all, a fantastic day of shooting. The games were well thought out and played well, and the only issues that cropped up were player-driven and dealt with by the marshalls. Honestly, if you're in the Sussex area, it's probably the best site down here. Like all sites, it has its ups and downs, but I think the ups far outweigh the downs; the only real down is that the site geography is difficult as it's very thick woodland and the site itself is a big U shape around a farmer's field which makes it feel smaller than it really is, but the ups are that the gameplay is good, vibes are good, and the marshalls are on point.
