First Official Skirmish - Tips & Advice

[RabidNinja64]

So, as of tomorrow 9:00, I'll be heading up to the Fireball Squadron site, making it my first official woodland skirmish; My first CQB was a little tame considering it was ~15 people, but regardless......

70-100 people average
9:00 - 4:00



What can I expect in terms of quality overall, and is there anything ultimately needed? Slightly intimidated by the large numbers, and recently bounced up to 3 MP7 gas magazines (40 rounds each) but still feel that won't be enough :L

 

[Josh95]

120 bb's is defiantly not a lot if the rounds are rather long, usually around an hour.

Id recommend staying on semi and only shooting if you know you can hit someone lol.

 

I usually use about 300-400 sometimes 500 bb's in a round for reference, but im pretty trigger happy

[Sitting Duck]

Snipers would be one thing you will encounter

Tripping ar$e over tit as you navigate maybe the less direct route to objective

maybe more non-hit takers and people learn their guns aren't as long range as they thought

 

Become a tree hugger - nigh on your main cover

so peek left as well as right & high/low - they will be

learn to communicate - quietly/signals but if you do break silence remember:

"he's behind that tree" is not very informative but "behind tree @ 11o'clock" is better

(if I had a £1 for the above line I could pay for my walk on fees)

 

watch & learn from the regulars/pro's especially when you first arrive

if things are not working out by lunchtime then maybe suggest a change of plan

but the regs will maybe have an idea on what works & what don't

(a proper team or a few organised squads are much more effective than 25 lone wolfs)

 

Above all call ya hits, don't get stressed and just enjoy it

[Josh95]

also, Try and folow a group of guys that go there a lot. sometimes in woodland sites its easy to loose your direction

[Chock]

Draw a little sketch of the layout of the place, based on that aerial view picture which you posted, making sure you write in the names of the locations on your drawing. You can take the sketch with you in your pocket to assist you, but that's not the main reason I'm suggesting that you draw the layout (if it was, you might just as easily print it off), no, the reason for sketching it, is that the act of actually drawing it out and writing the names on your sketch will fix the layout in your head.

 

Doing that is a common recon technique among special forces, incidentally. But as far as you are concerned, it is worth doing because there is nothing worse than being at a skirmish with everyone who is a regular player at that site saying stuff like: 'okay, we'll head up through xxx, and cut round the back of yyy, because they're bound to be covering the Eastern approach to zzz', when you have no idea what those places are, nor where they are in relation to one another because you are not familiar with the layout.

 

120 rounds is a bit on the lean side for a skirmish, so be sure to stay on semi auto (semi-auto is best anyway most of the time). Take a speed loader, a small gas can and a small bag of ammo with you in addition to your main reload stuff. If that stuff is small enough to carry on person, you can reload a mag when in cover, however, if that stuff is too big to carry, you can cache it in your spawn point, so take some kind of bag that'll make it obvious it is yours and that is waterproof, and leave the necessary stuff in it, so that you can fall back and rearm if necessary, or simply re-arm if you get hit and have to go to your respawn point.

 

You will get covered in sh*t, especially if you hit the deck and crawl or roll to cover (don't be shy to crawl about and stuff by the way, it's all part of the fun, you'll be surprised how many people do not hit the deck incidentally, but they're the ones who get hit). If you are driving there, take either a change of pants or a plastic bag to put on your car seat for when you drive home, otherwise your car seat will get covered in sh*t too. Your knees will get especially wet from kneeling down, so if you have kneepads, take those (even one will do), otherwise, you can 'waterproof' the knees of your combat pants temporarily, by cutting out squares of a plastic bag and taping those to the inside knee area of your combat pants (might wanna do the ass area too). If you are gonna be there all day, you might also consider wearing either long johns or cycling leggings under your combat pants, because you will be out in the cold for hours, and it will probably help, after all, you can always take 'em off if you are too warm, but you can't put em on if you didn't bring 'em. Don't worry about keeping dry from rain though, in the woods it won't be hitting you much even if it is raining pretty hard, but the forest floor will almost certainly be muddy and wet, so you still need to ensure you don't end up piss wet through all day. If you are wearing leather combat boots, polish the living sh*t out of them, so that they are waterproofed, this will also mean that mud washes off them easier at the end of the day. Two pairs of socks is not a bad idea too, since they will keep your feet warmer when they are out in the cold wet mud all day. If you have gloves, take those too.

 

Wear lower face protection and neck protection, because you'll be getting sniper fire at 500 fps, and that fecking hurts, especially in the cold, and if it hits you in the mouth, it will smash your teeth in. At a push, a shemagh or other decent scarf will cover your face and neck if you have nothing else, but be aware that a typical black and white shemagh stands out a lot in woodland terrain, so if necessary, dirty it up with mud, or you will be a bullet magnet, similarly, you can stick twigs and leaves etc in your helmet (if you wear one) to break up your profile a bit. If you don't wear a helmet, then wear a cap, it will cover your forehead, and you will be glad of that if a sniper round hits you there. Camo it with mud if it is brightly coloured.

 

Make sure everything is secure on your gear, you are far more likely to be diving about and crawling in woodland terrain than you are in cqb, and if anything is loose, you will lose it, so tape sh*t up, put stuff in secure pouches. Tighten all the screws and bolts on your weapons, because unlike with indoor CQB, if something drops off your weapon in a forest, you ain't gonna find it, it's gone for good. Leave car keys and phones and stuff like that back in the safe zone (I've seen more than one person get their fancy 500 quid smartphone shot to sh*t by a sniper BB when it was in the leg pocket of their combat pants lol), and looking for a set of car keys in an entire forest by torchlight when you are tired and cold and wet at the end of a day's skirmishing is not something you wanna be doing.

 

Take some basic repair sh*t with you, gaffer tape, electrical tape, a screwdriver, an unjamming rod, pliers, some silicone lubricant, etc. You can fix almost anything with gaffer tape.

 

Be a sneaky bastard, crawl through the sh*t that nobody else will crawl through, hide in the bush that everyone else thinks is too tight to hide in. And if you have a pistol, take it, you might think you won't use a pistol at the kind of ranges a woodland fight takes place at, but you'd be wrong, you'll be sneaking up to fortifications and will end up on literally the other side of a bit of plywood or a bush, from your enemies, I can guarantee it will happen, and in those circumstances, a pistol is worth its weight in gold. If you have a rifle sling, be sure to take that too, carrying even a light weapon all day gets tiring.

[Sitting Duck]

good bit of info there - some of it for me remember too

still don't know all the names of nooks & crannies & points at my local

 

Hopefully any snipers will know MED etc... hope he has a good time

coz I think we may have ended up scaring the crap out of him - but he did ask

[dex]

You're gonna need a lot more than 120 rounds. I dont consider myself trigger happy but I go through around 4-500 rounds per skirmish game depending on the length.

[Chock]

good bit of info there - some of it for me remember too

still don't know all the names of nooks & crannies & points at my local

 

Hopefully any snipers will know MED etc... hope he has a good time

coz I think we may have ended up scaring the crap out of him - but he did ask

 

MED (minimum engagement distance) is how I got a bunch of kills with my springer pistol last time I was at a woodland fight lol. There was a guy with an M249 on the other side of a bunker wall, and the marshall was telling him to go on semi because I had managed to make it right up to the other side of the wall, so while he was struggling to get set on semi auto, I was able to get my springer pistol out of the holster and zap him, then I got the guy who came to medic him, then I got a guy who came to medic that guy, and finally I got a guy who came out of the defences to try and engage me, but he hid behind a tree and didn't check his left view, where I was, so I got him too. I did finally get shot then, but four kills from a springer pistol in the space of about a minute is a bit legendary.

[RabidNinja64]

Essentially the morning after, and boy was it a blast numbers went up in the 60+, was hard to navigate at first and got lost a number of times and got seperated from my team, but other than that, made some new friends, know the site and map off by heart and know for a FACT that electric guns are a MUST; mp7 was shooting at a 175 on both propane and indoor gas, and my G18c didnt hold gas very long.

Regardless, first round lasted til 12, with about 35 of us hiking it up to Changi prison (See map) and then sneaking it down to border, with my mp7 out of commission, i borrowed my friends electric M14; didn't kill a single kill with it as im not accustomed to a long range role (and it occasionally didn't shoot, so i was pretty useless other than laying a supressive fire on the enemy time. which, by the way, snuck up behind us and took control of the border. eventually it ended up with about 10 of us holed up in block house, surrounded by reds nearly empty on all forms of ammo. we survived, but i thing reds won the round.

second round came along, and i borrowed another friends springer shotgun. Now this thing was a beast, though the cocking mechanism was tough to pull back, but had about as much range as the m14, and scored 5 kills over the course of the game, which essentially turned into a clusterfuck and half the team was missing, soon enough, the majority of the team regrouped outside the safe zone whilst the rest held batt house. circled around to area 51, cleared out a few reds and pushed through the woods to the point that reds were now flanked on both sides.

Overall, we won the game, i took a shot to the face (yay) and because my friend shot me in the back of the head, i've earned the new nickname Leadhead Might be buying my friend's electric M4 and M249 para for March's game

[Sitting Duck]

glad you made it back in one piece and had a blast

shame the gas stuff wasn't working properly but sounds like they were a great crowd

Think the first time at new site is the often most memorable & finding ya feet

 

AEG & hi-caps if you like sounding like the maraca's sounds

or 120-190 mid caps for quieter kills with less chance of dry-fire if you forget to wind

(oh yeah - got owned numerous times from dry fire - blame mag not me forgetting to wind it)

 

if you really get into it then maybe 2 similar mid range guns - guns WILL let you down

so spare and it being compatible with your usual mags makes sense.

But from sounds of it they are a great bunch and will help ya out if stuck.

(which really helps - no matter how good/bad site is, it is the people that really help make it worth returning to)