Guest PT247 Posted July 12, 2017 Share Posted July 12, 2017 This is my video review from the opening game at Storm Tactical. I will do a follow up review once they have had a chance to find their feet and iron out some bugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Moderator Jedi_Master Posted July 13, 2017 Head Moderator Share Posted July 13, 2017 I went to Storm Tactical's opening event at their Copthorne site on Sunday 09 July, which cost £25 for walk-on. This woodland site is only a few minutes' drive from M23 Junction 10, with immediate access off Old Hollow. No need to drive off road to access the site. It would only be a 12 minute taxi ride from Gatwick, Crawley or Three Bridges railway stations. There is a good sized car park with a short walk through some trees to the main entrance and safe zone. Paintball is also played at this site, in fact the small white markers prior to arriving are signed "Paintball" and the currently the site only refers to Driver Wood Paintball (shown on Google maps). Although sharing a site with paintball is not ideal, I did not have any issues with my kit getting covered in paint. And we all know that airsoft allows paintball players to have heroes. The safe zone is a large rectangular compound with purpose made buildings around the sides. The players have a comfortable open fronted shelter with overhead cover to keep sun/rain off, with plenty of picnic bench tables to put their kit on and sit down. There were about 36-40 players on the day. Next to the player shelter are the most impressive airsoft toilets that I have seen: a large block (3 stalls and 3 urinals), clean, well lit, toilet paper, door locks, working hot and cold water, and soap. They score 10 out of 10. Assume that the female and disabled toilets are the same high standard. The on-site catering was good, mouth watering smells all morning serving hot food for breakfast and lunch at reasonable prices. I enjoyed a decent sized cheese burger washed down with a cold Coke. There was free tea and coffee all day. Platoon Stores set up their stall in the morning and they had a range of various products. I had a quick browse and ended up buying a cheap single point sling. On exiting the safe zone was chronograph and a short range. The staff put their own BBs into the player's magazine to ensure everyone fired the same weight. However, there was no marking of what guns had passed testing which needs addressing because with more players attending they need to ensure that no one slips through with a hot gun. The small range was useful for a quick check of gun functions and basic hop-up. It would be great if they could extend it and the distances marked. @RussAFOand the Storm Marshals were all friendly and approachable. I liked their corporate uniform use of grey clothing, it looked professional and smart, and made them stand out from all the players in camouflage/black/civvies. Because they did not wear hi-visibility vests in the woods there were times when they were accidently targeted. They were generous on the use of pyro and smokes, which added to the fun. The initial safety brief was short but covered the main points. There was time wasted between games waiting for players to attend the game briefing (yes, I know that getting an airsofter to be on time is like herding kittens) and the marshals do need to be more forceful to get everyone there on time. I pay to play, not hang around. Some large scale maps would be very helpful to give players and idea of the site layout with key features, and they could be used for team briefings. The site is all woodland and fairly flat. Because it is used for paintball there are tall mesh nets everywhere, zoning off some of the site. Had an issue with the boundary net not being clearly marked (passed through so many nets prior to going out of bounds), so some signs and maybe white mine-tape would help make it more obvious. The amount of netting was a pain, and not conducive to good airsoft skirmish and made a small site feel more restrictive to play. Also you thought you were shooting directly at players only to find they were stood behind netting and all BBs had bounced off. It gave cover which was exploited by some players just poking guns through small holes or shooting under it, akin to blind firing. I really liked the area of trenches, it gave some great cover and made defending and attacking much more fun. Personally I would like to see the 5 small wooden huts (the village) clearly numbered which would help with orientation and make it easier for players to find objectives and respawn. Did not get to use the Fort area for any defence or attack, would be good for some short skirmish games. All sites have pros and cons; overall I had a good day and if some of the minus points are addressed then it has potential to be a great site to play. I will no doubt return there, not frequently because it is a 180 mile round trip, to see how it has improved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Samurai Posted July 13, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 13, 2017 This site is quickly becoming "The site with awesome toilets". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 Battle Lakes has toilets that compare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albiscuit Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 Surprising how much difference decent toilets and amenities make!. Free tea and flushing toilets with a basic play area over squatting behind a car with baby wipes and a great battlefield any day! hell even a tap in the loo is not too much to ask for Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 From a convo I've just had with the landlord it sounds as if Storm Tactical won't be returning. It also seems they chose to limit the gameplay in the tiny portion rather than letting us use the 30+ acres on the other side of the fire track which is madness, woodland airsoft needs a large area, boxing us in to a broken field was just setting it up to fail! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 13, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 13, 2017 2 hours ago, PT247 said: From a convo I've just had with the landlord it sounds as if Storm Tactical won't be returning. It also seems they chose to limit the gameplay in the tiny portion rather than letting us use the 30+ acres on the other side of the fire track which is madness, woodland airsoft needs a large area, boxing us in to a broken field was just setting it up to fail! Now this surprises me, if you look at Storm Tactical's Fb page, they already have 2 more dates for people to book... Unless this is an 11th hour thing that hasn't been shared by them yet, do storm tactical know they are not going back? I do agree about the site, but with 40 people, do you really think it's worth playing over 30+ acres, game play would be long and boring... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Samurai Posted July 13, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 13, 2017 3 hours ago, Prisce said: I do agree about the site, but with 40 people, do you really think it's worth playing over 30+ acres, game play would be long and boring... I played at gunman eversley once where there were 8 of us altogether. It was a good game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 large areas and small teams can get very tense! :-) Try Battle Lakes, cracking site and much larger than the whole of this site! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 14, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 14, 2017 I'll take your word for it. To me I like the intensity of the firefight going on and then me sneaking around and popping a few shots off getting those unsuspecting sole players. Ill have to try battle lakes when I get a chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 14, 2017 Share Posted July 14, 2017 Toilets were spacious and clean enough that you can change clothes there too, which is what I did after game day, food was good, though I think they may need to stock up on more drinks, seemed they were running low on Coke The nettings were indeed somewhat annoying at times, but as it's primarily a paintball field I didn't take too much issue of it (there's only so much you can do between games of different types, also depending how much staff there is to rearrange stuff). Battle Lakes is indeed larger. I've been there only once, but as an established site obviously there were lots more people there that day I went and therefore made good use of the large space. The thing I found a bit off putting with Battle Lakes is that everyone and their mum with a non-sniper rifle seemed to be quite trigger happy on full auto that day, even in very close range. Jedi_Master, which team were you on? I know Hippo/PT247 was blue, same team as me (if you remember, Hippo, you asked me if the cam on my boonie hat will wobble around or not. Turns out it doesn't or just a little bit when running. Did have it a bit side ways though for the first game, not centred unfortunately). Finishing up video of the first game some point today or tomorrow, and will link it here too. May just use voice over as well, not done that yet before Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Moderator Jedi_Master Posted July 14, 2017 Head Moderator Share Posted July 14, 2017 On 14/07/2017 at 6:34 PM, rsciw said: Jedi_Master, which team were you on? I know Hippo/PT247 was blue, same team as me (if you remember, Hippo, you asked me if the cam on my boonie hat will wobble around or not. I was also on the Blue team wearing a Fast helmet. We did briefly speak near the briefing stage when you were asking us to guess your accent. So another forum member that I did not know was playing there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 14, 2017 Share Posted July 14, 2017 Ah, also blue Was anyone from here on the red side? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Samurai Posted July 15, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 15, 2017 Prisce was red Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 Ah, neat. Prisce, happen to have video from that day? Would love to see the view from the opposing side Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 15, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 15, 2017 Unfortunately not, the only guys on our side filming were the ones that left Mid game. It's pretty easy to imagine our side of the day though. Imagine sitting there waiting patiently.... Then being told they are coming from the opposite side of the map to you. Then just as you let your guard down, bam, the whole of blue team storm on your position and you get peppered to hell, you go to respawn and there are blue within range of your respawn, so your stuck. Thats pretty much how I remember most of the games.. It was fun, but I think we had the disadvantage on positions across the map. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 I thought the start positions were swapped around pretty much so both sides had the same start areas at various points in the day? (not that the area was big enough to do any different lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 15, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 15, 2017 I don't think so, I may be wrong, I know in the first game we started with the spawn zone being behind us, but it ended up about 20m from yours on the right hand side, moved about 120m from the start. The last game our spawn was about 15m from the objective, so as soon as we died, it was game over as we couldn't get back to fight you off. We we only had the fort and the pentagon as our spawns/start points, we didn't start anywhere else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 I didn't do the last game but that was effectively all we had for start points as well although the first game we started outside the fence on the trail next to the trenches Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 Yeah, the spawn points moved during the games, but not in such a way that they were swapped around completely. The red spawn in first game being moved close to ours was indeed a case of coming out of our spawn and finding ourselves under fire, if going the regular way through the openings in the netting right there. Of course there were ways around it but wasn't ideal. Also, I believe the red spawn in the first game moved quite close to the objective blue team had to get to, not? In the VIP escort game the red spawn also moved further up, and the group escorting the VIP wasn't aware of it and happily continued fighting their way forward. If we hadn't stopped them and told to move around while pointing their spawn out, they would've been annihilated Depending on the game it's good if the spawn point moves, but may need some additional thought put into which spawn goes where to prevent both being on top of each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 15, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 15, 2017 Yeah in the first game the spawn was very close to the target. I guess that's why we were all there though, to help them improve the site and get it up to its potential. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 1 hour ago, Prisce said: I guess that's why we were all there though, to help them improve the site and get it up to its potential. Indeed, and I'm looking forward to future games to see how things improve Anywho, finished my vid, here goes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporters Prisce Posted July 15, 2017 Supporters Share Posted July 15, 2017 I think that was very fair and explained it perfectly, I have to admit I don't think I saw you on the day. If it's on again, on a weekend, you'll have to say hello. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsciw Posted July 15, 2017 Share Posted July 15, 2017 4 hours ago, Prisce said: I think that was very fair and explained it perfectly, I have to admit I don't think I saw you on the day. If it's on again, on a weekend, you'll have to say hello. Just means my camo worked well then Will do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PT247 Posted July 16, 2017 Share Posted July 16, 2017 nice video dude :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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