SE Tour Review: Bunker 51 (London)

[Asomodai]

Site Name: Bunker 51

Contact details: 02072840001

Website Address: https://wolfarmouries.co.uk/game-days/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Bunker51/

Site Address: 3 Herringham Rd, London SE7 8NJ

 

Hello all. 

 

The only site that is genuinely in the London area. Take the underground to North Greenwich and a bus to the Thames barrier. 

 

Previous reviewers have rated this site mostly negative for the play area and average for the Marshaling. 

 

This is a very very small Urban site, Short range engagement distance only and with little elevation. 

 

Good:

 

Location: The overwhelming positive is it's location, whilst not easy to get to by London standards (Not on underground and not exactly situated in the safest area) it is the closest site. It fills a niche that no other site fills. 

 

Beginner Friendly: The site is usually peoples first taste of airsoft (It was for me). It's tough but friendly. If you can survive a night being shot at all angles at bunker, you have pretty much gone through the worst pain airsoft has to offer. You could think of that as a negative, but it does give the full airsoft experience from that perspective. Plenty of new players come through the doors but everyone is friendly to them and accept that they were once new themselves. 

 

Marshal Jokes: Its a bit of a laugh. The marshals are mostly friendly and funny guys. They can give good advice and patient with new players. They don't suffer fools lightly which is a positive. 

 

UKARA Spam: This is one of the easiest places to get a UKARA number. 3 3 hour sessions and you have it. Bunker 51 run something akin to a hire to buy scheme. Buy whatever you want from Wolf Armories even without a UKARA number and they take it to Bunker 51 for you so you can use for that session, they will take it back to the shop and hold onto it until you complete your three skirmishes. 

 

Average:

 

CQB setup: The actual site has plenty of features for it's size, barrels, bunkers, jail, clapped out pickup truck and the dirty smelly alleyway. Bunker 51 gets ridiculed for it's size quite often, but it genuinely does the best it can with that space. 

 

Bad:

 

Size: Look, it's small and everyone comments on that, though in its defense no one is under any illusions as to what the venue is. Even the Marshals take the mick out of it! Despite the best efforts for changing up the game modes, it can be quite limiting as to what can be played. Could do with more safe zone space as well, don't bring much gear. 

 

Expense: As its London, I imagine the lease rate is quite high. But £30 for walk on fee is incredibly high considering you only get at most 3 hours of battle on a Saturday night. As Bunker 51 has a monopoly in London, they can charge quite a bit and be pretty much full every Saturday night supply and demand dictates the price here. 

 

Shop: There is none, no food either. Not surprised though given its location. 

 

Dark, wet and smelly: Running joke, but it really is wet and smelly. It is incredibly dark in places and hard to work out if you have hit anyone or even if you have fired a BB. Bring a tracer unit and you can have plenty of fun though! 

 

Chrono: I have never seen anyone have their rifle be Chronoed. It just doesn't happen. Its dangerous, especially considering the extremely short engagement distances. 

 

Conclusion: 

 

It is what it is. It has a monopolized position in London. It cannot be any better then it already is because of its location and size. But... it is fun, you can make friends there, its a good starting point for the sport and with a tracer unit can be quite rewarding. I feel that Bunker is a site you get out what you put into it.

 

People are allowed to ridicule it. But we are incredibly grateful that it exists. My only advice would be that the site owners need to start chronoing regularly. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Albiscuit]

Pistols are great, trouble is when I played there (almost three years ago) it was full auto and there were support guns floating around. So whilst in theory a pistol is all you need, its bloody hard to get anywhere near anyone when theres sooo much plastic getting thrown at you. 

Some games were pointless as the layout was such that you couldnt move anywhere if the other team took up certain positions.

 

In my last visit I spent most of the game sessions sitting on a barrel in my spawn talking to a marshal and playing with his weapons (ooh eer missus)

[Asomodai]

17 minutes ago, Albiscuit said:

Pistols are great, trouble is when I played there (almost three years ago) it was full auto and there were support guns floating around. So whilst in theory a pistol is all you need, its bloody hard to get anywhere near anyone when theres sooo much plastic getting thrown at you. 

Some games were pointless as the layout was such that you couldnt move anywhere if the other team took up certain positions.

 

In my last visit I spent most of the game sessions sitting on a barrel in my spawn talking to a marshal and playing with his weapons (ooh eer missus)

 

 

I have only been playing a year. I have been to Bunker 4 times, first two times it was full auto for half the night. Third time was semi all night and the 4th there was just one round full auto.

[Albiscuit]

Makes sense, it was just a bb spam when I used to go, not very fun at all.

For the price and size I wouldnt go back though. The Mall is 100% more fun and for the same price I get a whole day

[DummyThicc]

Hey guys. Having recently played at Bunker 51, I thought I'd share my experience of the site with everyone. It was my first ever airsoft skirmish so I didn't know what to expect. Around 30 players turned up on the day and around 12 of them were renters. I actually expected that number to be lower for some reason. The first thing we did was have a briefing. We then went into the arena and every non-rental gun was chrono'd. Good thing too because at least two pistols were shooting at 500FPS. After that everyone got ready in the safe zone.

 

In terms of games, everything was pretty straight forward. Some people did misunderstand the rules but the rules were clarified for them. The marshals from my experience were helpful and nice enough. As previously stated by someone else here, the arena was pretty small. I think I could walk through the whole arena in about two minutes. They did their best with the space they have though. In terms of appearance, I thought the arena looked really good. There were plenty of things to hide behind. I expected it to smell but it didn't. The floor was wet though and at times it was slippery. I fell over once as I was going to crouch behind a crate. It was dark as people here have said. But I got used to it pretty quickly and so I didn't find it to be an issue. I suppose if your eyesight isn't too shabby, it could present a bit of a problem.

 

I didn't actually think that 30 people was too many considering the space. While it was a little crowded, the number of people meant I didn't have to always be the one pushing forward. I could observe people and then move to a better position to take advantage. Of course, the other team could do the same and they did. Guns were locked to semi in all games except for right at the end of the skirmish. There was one game where a team death-match turned into a free-for-all. Of course people could opt out and so I did. Getting shot in the head was painful enough for one day. Overall, I had an amazing time and I intend to go back. The players themselves were nice enough. Nobody took the games too seriously. Nobody argued over calling hits. Nobody had any accidents. All in all I had a great time.

 

While three hours may seem a little short in the world of airsoft, I was glad that it wasn't longer. By the end of the skirmish, I was very tired and very hungry. My legs are still killing me now. The highlight of the day for me was when we were playing a game called intelligence. One team had to defend the intelligence at the prison while the other team attacked and tried to steal it. As defenders, if we were shot at the prison, we had to re-spawn somewhere else so that the attackers had a chance to actually come into the prison and move the intelligence. I ended up being the last guy on our team there because I decided to hide behind a large crate. In doing so I had the element of surprise. I was able to shoot four people in about five seconds before I was shot. It's my proudest moment in airsoft so far, haha!

 

I ended up going to the game with my AEG, four magazines (two hi-caps and two mid-caps), face protection, hand protection and around 3000 BB's. Now while eye protection is a must-have, lower face protection isn't. However I would very strongly advise anyone intending to play at Bunker 51 to wear lower face protection. Even the marshals strongly recommend it because you can very easily be shot at close range (within one meter). There was no "bang" rule mentioned when I was there. I wore trainers on the day and while they were mostly fine, if you have something with a lot of grip, I'd suggest wearing that instead. Black clothing will give you an advantage because it's quite dark in the arena. In terms of magazines, I'd say you only need either one hi-cap or two mid-caps. I didn't even get through one mid-cap each game personally. You only need one battery too. I barely used 50% of my LiPo. Because of how close you're engaging people most of the time, I would strongly suggest wearing a helmet. I will be getting one before I go back there. As I said before, getting shot in the head hurts. Especially when it's from just four or five meters away.

I think I've covered everything. Being my first game, I don't have anything to compare the experience too, yet. Overall, I would recommend this to both "n00bs" and to anyone who like me, isn't able to travel too far for whatever reason. I hope it's okay to bump this thread 🙂

[hunter511]

I've never heard good things about Bunker 51, tho TBH I used to play at the Elektrowerkz a lot but that was well marshalled and run. Its worth mentioning that the gamefee was £20 for an evening however that was fast turnaround, intense and generally about 4 hours, also in Central London (Angel, Islington). I suspect B51's ongoing popularity is due to the lack of other options given the demise of the Boat, and the 'Werkz.

That aside, remind me how exactly you "accidently" take a 500fps pistol to a CQB site?

[Tackle]

51 minutes ago, hunter511 said:

I've never heard good things about Bunker 51, tho TBH I used to play at the Elektrowerkz a lot but that was well marshalled and run. Its worth mentioning that the gamefee was £20 for an evening however that was fast turnaround, intense and generally about 4 hours, also in Central London (Angel, Islington). I suspect B51's ongoing popularity is due to the lack of other options given the demise of the Boat, and the 'Werkz.

That aside, remind me how exactly you "accidently" take a 500fps pistol to a CQB site?

jeez hunter, you must be pretty damn old lol, elektrowerkz was first site I played ALMOST TWENTY YEARS AGO, & it closed shortly afterwards.

where've you been getting your fix since then ?.

[hunter511]

@Tackle

Courtesy of work I'm in Portsmouth a lot so its mainly UCAP and Badlands with occasional trips elsewhere. FCS did resurface briefly and run a few games at Longmoor and the Depot which were ace but the quality died off.

[Tackle]

1 minute ago, hunter511 said:

@Tackle

Courtesy of work I'm in Portsmouth a lot so its mainly UCAP and Badlands with occasional trips elsewhere. FCS did resurface briefly and run a few games at Longmoor and the Depot which were ace but the quality died off.

Dunno badlands but ucap tunnels were pretty awesome.

FCS, was that Andy Janno ?, he had a site in lewisham for a while, but it was small to say the least, saw Andy get a fingernail pretty much shot off with a point blank pistol shot.

never played longmoor with him, only played there once with another mob, great site but the mob running it was shite which spoiled it for us, & it's quite a long haul from me so it makes it worse if it turns out crap.

[hunter511]

Yeah Andy Janno. 

It started off quite small, limited ammo and mission based and were amongst the best days I've played, sadly the news then got around and the bellends started attending. The kind of people who ask "what do you mean we're only allowed 300rds on us" when they scrolled past that statement multiple times to book or fail to understand that booking on "green team" means don't wear all tan with a green t-shirt......

Yeah my non-FCS Longmoor experiences have varied.... doesn't help the last couple of times have featured "YouTube Celebrities" who feel that a certain number of subscriptions means you can ignore any rules you consider inconenient (not a dig at Kicking Mustang btw). 

[Tackle]

30 minutes ago, hunter511 said:

Yeah Andy Janno. 

It started off quite small, limited ammo and mission based and were amongst the best days I've played, sadly the news then got around and the bellends started attending. The kind of people who ask "what do you mean we're only allowed 300rds on us" when they scrolled past that statement multiple times to book or fail to understand that booking on "green team" means don't wear all tan with a green t-shirt......

Yeah my non-FCS Longmoor experiences have varied.... doesn't help the last couple of times have featured "YouTube Celebrities" who feel that a certain number of subscriptions means you can ignore any rules you consider inconenient (not a dig at Kicking Mustang btw). 

Lol, always the way, quality sites suffering because of their popularity.

the game we attended at longmoor was billed as lo-caps only, I think we were the only players using them, everybody else seemed to be hosing the shit out of everything.

while the mags weren't an issue for us, it was just another black mark in a disappointing day.

No such thing as an airsoft/YouTube celebrity, they're just cnuts who appeal to, & exploit the mindless sheep within the sport, of which there are many 😏