Airsoft GB site review

[TheBoy]

So the past Saturday I visited a site near Colchester called Airsoft GB. The staff first of all upon arrival, signing in, chronoing etc were all very good and helpful and there was quite a bit in the way of food and drink to offer as well as a shop with a nice range of stuff inside. The playing field itself in my opinion is a relatively small (compared to other outdoor sites) yet very good and enjoyable site to play on with a mix of a couple different sort of areas which all added to creating different methods of play depending on where you were. However, throughout the day whilst playing some things became apparent which has made me think differently of the site.

However, Throughout the day it became very obvious that there was some dirty tactics going on. I'm not talking about the other team and in fairness apart from the usual minor hit taking issues and one or two other things, they were a great group to play against and I don't hold anything against the majority of the opposing team. The actual problem I had with the site is the marshals. During the day, game rules were being changed etc whenever we were the team who had more specific rules to follow in order to give the other team the advantage or games were stopped when they shouldn't have been.

One of the games which we played on the day was a long game which would typically last around an hour and the objective was for one team to attack the other team in order to transport a tank from one side of the site to the other and therefore ending the game. Another point about the game was that it would not end until the attacking team had completed the objective and the winning team would be the team who did it in the quickest time. First time round my team defended and after a certain amount of time the opposing team succeeded I getting the tank to the objective point. When it came round to us attacking with the tank, our team never got the tank to the final point. This is because one of the marshals had decided to end the game early although we were pretty much on the last push to the objective point and it was nothing to do with us being held down and unable to move the tank forward.

Another game in which a similar issue occurred was one in which a team had to defend 3 points from the attacking team and the attacking team had to reach one of them in order to win. The attacking team had unlimited lives whilst the defending team had 2 lives as well as what were called donkey lives which both teams had been told about and were given to players if they happened to maybe be eliminated early on which was fair enough. Just like the first game I mentioned, we attacked first and eventually reached one of the 3 points. The game was then turned around and so therefore we were now defending. Just before the game started however, the marshals turned round to us and stated that we only had one life and we were out of the game. This was the last game of the day however I do not see that as any reason to give a team such a significant disadvantage compared to the actual rules and besides, airsoft sites don't have set game day finishes for the reason that games have the possibility of running slightly longer. 

These are only a couple of the issues I had at the site as well as one in which a few players overheard the main marshal whos name I don't know and don't really care about basically say that although Dave ( the site owner) owns the place, he hasn't got a clue of what happens with how the games are run and how the rules are set which seemed to be true in my opinion as the site owner himself seemed like a perfectly nice person especially compared to the marshals on site.

I probably wouldn't go back to the site mainly due to the marshals attitudes which is ashame as other than that the site itself is very good in terms of what is there and its not like the other team needed the help as well as they were quite challenging to play against.

[clumpyedge]

8 hours ago, TheBoy said:

So the past Saturday I visited a site near Colchester called Airsoft GB. The staff first of all upon arrival, signing in, chronoing etc were all very good and helpful and there was quite a bit in the way of food and drink to offer as well as a shop with a nice range of stuff inside. The playing field itself in my opinion is a relatively small (compared to other outdoor sites) yet very good and enjoyable site to play on with a mix of a couple different sort of areas which all added to creating different methods of play depending on where you were. However, throughout the day whilst playing some things became apparent which has made me think differently of the site.

However, Throughout the day it became very obvious that there was some dirty tactics going on. I'm not talking about the other team and in fairness apart from the usual minor hit taking issues and one or two other things, they were a great group to play against and I don't hold anything against the majority of the opposing team. The actual problem I had with the site is the marshals. During the day, game rules were being changed etc whenever we were the team who had more specific rules to follow in order to give the other team the advantage or games were stopped when they shouldn't have been.

One of the games which we played on the day was a long game which would typically last around an hour and the objective was for one team to attack the other team in order to transport a tank from one side of the site to the other and therefore ending the game. Another point about the game was that it would not end until the attacking team had completed the objective and the winning team would be the team who did it in the quickest time. First time round my team defended and after a certain amount of time the opposing team succeeded I getting the tank to the objective point. When it came round to us attacking with the tank, our team never got the tank to the final point. This is because one of the marshals had decided to end the game early although we were pretty much on the last push to the objective point and it was nothing to do with us being held down and unable to move the tank forward.

Another game in which a similar issue occurred was one in which a team had to defend 3 points from the attacking team and the attacking team had to reach one of them in order to win. The attacking team had unlimited lives whilst the defending team had 2 lives as well as what were called donkey lives which both teams had been told about and were given to players if they happened to maybe be eliminated early on which was fair enough. Just like the first game I mentioned, we attacked first and eventually reached one of the 3 points. The game was then turned around and so therefore we were now defending. Just before the game started however, the marshals turned round to us and stated that we only had one life and we were out of the game. This was the last game of the day however I do not see that as any reason to give a team such a significant disadvantage compared to the actual rules and besides, airsoft sites don't have set game day finishes for the reason that games have the possibility of running slightly longer. 

These are only a couple of the issues I had at the site as well as one in which a few players overheard the main marshal whos name I don't know and don't really care about basically say that although Dave ( the site owner) owns the place, he hasn't got a clue of what happens with how the games are run and how the rules are set which seemed to be true in my opinion as the site owner himself seemed like a perfectly nice person especially compared to the marshals on site.

I probably wouldn't go back to the site mainly due to the marshals attitudes which is ashame as other than that the site itself is very good in terms of what is there and its not like the other team needed the help as well as they were quite challenging to play against.

 

 

Wrong section bud, this needs to be in the site review section rather than general.

 

I will say one thing though, your point on your team getting the tank to the final point is totally wrong as your team did get to the final point and let off the smoke as I was standing next to it as it did! cant comment on your final game as I decided to call it a day rather than play the final game. Not sure if you know but Dave was also out in the game zone the majority of the time (from what I saw of him) especially on the tank games.

 

see video below.. tank gets to the objective and white smoke gets released

 

 

[Jedi_Master]

Moved.

[Adolf Hamster]

paragraphs man, please use them!

 

so if i'm reading this right the main objection is games being changed to fit a time schedule, either by changing game rules like the number of lives or by cutting off time?

 

i'll be honest, it doesn't feel like a big deal to me, who wins or loses a game isn't really that important it's all about putting up a half decent fight and as long as there's movement in either direction it'll keep interesting.

 

and it could be worse, last skirmish we had a push style game (defenders 1 life per zone) and we were told at the start we could shoot at the attackers regardless of which zone we were in (music to the ears of everyone with decent range as it wasn't a massive site), however about 3/4 of the way through they told the attackers to ignore hits from our guys in the next zone while they rooted out the final bushlurkers in the current zone, of course they failed to tell us this (we'd been slaughtering them mercilessly), then eventually they told us to stop shooting but if we were hit we still had to fall back again (yes you heard that right, we couldn't shoot but we could get shot).

 

 

[Asomodai]

I've heard of worse things happening. But to be honest much of this can be explained by lack of time or not having full possession of the facts. The Marshals should have conveyed the reasons they made the decisions in a clearer way though. 

I think instances of Marshals favouring one team over the other are very rare.

[Robert James]

8 minutes ago, Asomodai said:

I think instances of Marshals favouring one team over the other are very rare.

Someone posted the same thing earlier, saying that the marshalls favoured the "Home team" for this specific site

[clumpyedge]

6 minutes ago, Robert James said:

Someone posted the same thing earlier, saying that the marshalls favoured the "Home team" for this specific site

 

Yeah was in the general section "Airsoft GB Rant"

[Adolf Hamster]

16 minutes ago, Asomodai said:

I think instances of Marshals favouring one team over the other are very rare.

 

i think if it's just a timing thing for game design (ie we're not talking about singling out a particular side for things like hit taking etc) then it doesn't really matter, although maybe i'm the odd one given i rarely can be bothered to even find out which team won let alone care about the result.

 

regular occurrence at a lot of the sites i've been to having one-sided games that have the swap over cancelled if they run too long, not really a bit deal imo.

[clumpyedge]

7 minutes ago, Adolf Hamster said:

 

i think if it's just a timing thing for game design (ie we're not talking about singling out a particular side for things like hit taking etc) then it doesn't really matter, although maybe i'm the odd one given i rarely can be bothered to even find out which team won let alone care about the result.

 

regular occurrence at a lot of the sites i've been to having one-sided games that have the swap over cancelled if they run too long, not really a bit deal imo.

 

 

Lots of places dont even turn games around to allow the attacking/defending team a go at the same thing but the other way round, not a huge issue imo

[Adolf Hamster]

3 minutes ago, clumpyedge said:

 

 

Lots of places dont even turn games around to allow the attacking/defending team a go at the same thing but the other way round, not a huge issue imo

 

yeah, normally i've seen it happens if you get a good defending team and the match runs well over time, as you say not a huge issue as long as over the course of the day it kind of averages out.