The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Impulse]

6 minutes ago, The_Lord_Poncho said:

Dogtag is adequate, Driver Wood is pretty good in my view. But then i haven't been to Worthing or Southdowns, so i can't form a comparison for you I'm afraid. My slight whinge in my post above aside, I'd be interested to hear what other negatives that you've heard for Driver Wood.

 

I can't in good faith recommend Worthing Airsoft at the moment and Southdown Airsoft can't run through the winter due to the local wildlife, so I'm more than willing to give Driver Wood a try. Honestly, seeing that they're experimenting with longer games at Driver Wood only encourages me to try it more as I like longer games. What I've heard about Driver Wood is:

- Marshalls that don't really care and don't enforce rules

- Rampant cheating

- An example of someone using metal BBs and shattering someone's eyepro and blinding him

- Long pauses between games

- Imbalanced teams to help regulars

 

Honestly, I'm critical enough to not believe it all and the truth is usually in the middle of the positive and negative viewpoints. I reckon there is some cheating as you'll always have non-hit takers anywhere you go unfortunately, but especially after going to Southdown despite hearing similar negatives and having most of them being pure fiction I reckon there's definitely some tribalism affecting what I've heard about other sites.

[The_Lord_Poncho]

11 minutes ago, Impulse said:

 

I can't in good faith recommend Worthing Airsoft at the moment and Southdown Airsoft can't run through the winter due to the local wildlife, so I'm more than willing to give Driver Wood a try. Honestly, seeing that they're experimenting with longer games at Driver Wood only encourages me to try it more as I like longer games. What I've heard about Driver Wood is:

- Marshalls that don't really care and don't enforce rules

- Rampant cheating

- An example of someone using metal BBs and shattering someone's eyepro and blinding him

- Long pauses between games

- Imbalanced teams to help regulars

 

Honestly, I'm critical enough to not believe it all and the truth is usually in the middle of the positive and negative viewpoints. I reckon there is some cheating as you'll always have non-hit takers anywhere you go unfortunately, but especially after going to Southdown despite hearing similar negatives and having most of them being pure fiction I reckon there's definitely some tribalism affecting what I've heard about other sites.

That's really interesting. I have a fairly positive view of the marshalls there - there is usually 4 or 5 per game, and 2 or 3 are usually older, more mature, and happy to get stuck in to sort issues out. The younger ones, much less so. I've been rather a lot, and only have seen one proper incident of aggression between players that left a bad taste. To be fair, the marshalls were right on it that time. Cheating, I've not really much of a barometer, but generally not something that I feel happens enough to spoil a game.

 

The teams are never deliberately imbalanced in my strong view, but I can see where that accusation might come from - briefing takes place from a stage, and then the players are divided down the middle, counted, and the requisite number of people asked to volunteer to swap to the other side. BUT - it is always the case that significantly more young kids and rental players always stand on the left hand side (when facing the stage) - not really sure why this is - but probably because there is more space, and its less intimidating to be a little further away from the regulars/more seasoned players. This does therefore mean that there are usually more rentals on one side than the other - definitely something that the site ought to sort out!

 

Re. pauses - I only play mornings - yesterday's 2.5 hour game aside, usually you get two games in a morning - 09:30'ish to 10:30, 30min break then 11:00 - 12:00. I presume the same pattern for the afternoons, but I wouldn't know! I'd definitely like a shorter (or no) break - 10 mins to grab a quick drink and bomb up the mags would be plenty.

[Cannonfodder]

24 minutes ago, Impulse said:

Marshalls that don't really care and don't enforce rules

I've only been there once for an evening game and that was the impression I got. After arriving late due to trains being cancelled the guy running the place seemed more interested in moaning about covid (it was just after lockdown) than actually answering any questions. For example when I asked about pyro rules the answer I got was "I wouldn't bother, nobody takes them". 

12 minutes ago, The_Lord_Poncho said:

I'd definitely like a shorter (or no) break - 10 mins to grab a quick drink and bomb up the mags would be plenty.

Agreed. I've paid to play not sit around in the safezone chatting 

[Rogerborg]

3 hours ago, The_Lord_Poncho said:

then the players are divided down the middle

 

One of the many great things about the Depot 1.0 site (really must try 2.0) is that the direction of their "down the middle" slice changed from day to day: horizontal, vertical, or one time along a diagonal.  It's a small thing, but it demonstrates that they weren't just doing things by rote over and over.

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Had another good day as Spec Ops MK on Sunday.  Despite being the only field we've ever played at, we never seem to get bored of its compact woodland map and if anything familiarity is starting to create some new gameplay options (beyond running like a headless chicken into or away from fire).

 

Game two was a good case in point, being a flag based bridge building game. The assault team are tasked with placing three flags in three corresponding barrels spaced equidistant along a line dividing their half of the map from the defenders, only once all the flags are in can they advance across the imaginary bridge.  

 

As soon as the start whistle went me and the boy knew precisely the point we wanted to get to; a defensive barricade in a metal shack village named PingPing City that provides overwatch on one of the barrels, attackers either have to cross our line of fire at 90 degrees or skirt some buildings and come at us head on.  This little set up allowed us to keep the barrel flag free and rack up the kills for what felt like an age.  In the end an enthusiastic rental youngster ignored a hail of BBs pinging off his body and placed the flag.  I mentioned it to the marshals, but let it go as by that point we'd been overrun anyway.

 

After lunch the boy decided to swap sides so he could play with some of his mates who were on the arm-bands team.  First time we've played opfor aside from the usual Zombie games.  I got the first kill on him, basically trading BBs at 40 or so meters until one of us got hit.  After that though he racked up his tally, killing me three times during an attempt to clear his team out of a defence.  Then later delivering one of the most painful shots of the day, shooting me right on the tip of my nose.  

 

Bit of drama on the day, caught the tail end of an angry exchange after some chap's tooth had been shot out at close quarters by some other guy.  Not sure if he'd been wearing face protection or not but it all ended quietly if not peacefully.

 

Food was excellent as ever.

 

Double Eagle was reliable as ever.

 

Might start thinking about some winter gear as we head into the October games.

[Dan Robinson]

As a fellow Spec Ops player this weekend I am feeling all the runs on the lower back and knees still.  A fun day was had of course.  Baby Specna is not firing consistently, but then that's why we have backups and backups to the backups, then the friendly pew to keep them company.  So The Double Eagle, L85, and Rando Long Specna we bought from here for £120 were guns of choice with the latter being possibly the most fun due to its fancy scope and laser like firing - marred by a few lockups.

 

The bridge building game seems to be the marshalls new baby and it is a great game as there are three distinct phases for both sides to attack and defend through.  My only wish to change is the respawn point for the defenders when they are holding the tents during the second phase needs to be a bit further away (not often you'll hear me saying that).  At the moment the attackers have very little chance of breaking through unless you have a very speedy and or stealthy boi to get in and out - I think @Gunboat Diplomatwas the closest to achieve this.  As the dead players are back in hte game too quickly.

 

When we were attacking I was one of the bridge builders and did a pistol only juggernaut charge through the trees and planted the flag somewhat amazed that I wasn't shot.  Out of breath, I promptly tripped over a root and knocked what little wind I had out of me.  Even after slowly picking myself up and looking around (think of the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan looking around shell shocked) I realised I still wasn't dead, and the marshall looked at me with the "why are you not shooting people" look, so I spun around with the pistol and promptly shot someone less than 15 feet away.  He half challenged me thinking I was dead to which i replied "well you should have shot me then".

 

The rest of the games seemed to flow pretty well, and I thought the hit taking was pretty good on all sides, with the exception @RostokMcSpoonsmentioned where some of the newcomers considered being shot through slots to not count.  I know at least two on the blue team will have a nice collection of welts.  One was the father of the "player of the day" who was hiding behind a barrel.  I was pinging him with my pistol (BB's flying so slowly there was no doubt where they were going) with no call - so out came Mrs AEG and her high cap of 0.28s 😁.

 

His punishment was also that his daughter was nominated beast player of the day winning a free game day - and she was pretty handy for a first timer at the age of 12.  So now for her to have the prize he has to come back and pay for his day - and by default I am sure, the younger brother will insist on coming because talking to him - he had a blast of a day too.  He took great delight in coming up to me laughing at how he got me from under the sniper tower.

 

 

The rolling retreat game was also a lot of fun - the defenders (a lot of whom were young kids) were well set up in the tented city; to the point where we were struggling to break through.  I managed to clear two particularly troublesome tents by again dropping the rifle and going in with my pistol.  It was good to see the younglings having fun and taking part - although a few on our team did want to have a chat at respawn instead of charging back in.  One tent had a disgruntled man in there who, when he was finally shot out, complained that one of us wasn't taking his hits - well the marshall who was playing on our side in the afternoon was thinking the same thing about you - good job I got to you with my pistol before he did with his LMG 🤣🤣🤣🤣, because he was the next player coming up behind me.

 

Had an interesting chat with some South Africans who played the game there but with the added bonus of having choppers flying players around the game zone - makes RIFT's Snatch Land Rovers seem a little meh by comparison LOL.

 

Next game day already booked for two weeks time - hopefully my aching bones will be ready for more punishment by then.  Once the leaves start dropping I will be taking my SVU so I can try some sneaky peaky roles instead of my typical Juggernaut Tree Felling charge style.

[gavinkempsell]

Well I had a blast at Players of War near Falkirk, it's my local site & I'm finally getting used to the layout, not a huge turnout but more than enough to be a good day, My L85 Carbine performed well. (last time the motor screw unscrewed mid game(locktite FTW)) but I deffo felt the extra weight. My Polymer Scar-L was as reliable as ever. Took my P90 too as I've finally got enough mags to field it properly but it stayed in my gun bag all day (truth be known it's only been re-racked in the past hour or so).

Tried a rotation of mid caps in one game, then hi caps in the next & pretty sure I prefer the hi caps, not so much spray & pray as in earlier game days but certainly used plenty of BB's.

I'm a big unfit chap so usually prefer to creap forward until I'm in range of actually hitting some 'enemy' but noticed a lot more forward progress in my last attacking game... (must try harder in future).

I have noticed I seem to lose my motivation in the 4th game in the past few game days so I'm going to focus on staying hydrated & getting shot less as the walk to & from the spawn point is doing my head in.

[Dan Robinson]

2 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

the walk to & from the spawn point is doing my head in.

 

I hear you there brother.

 

I think dispensation should be allowed for bigger/older players to get well out of contact with the fight, but wait the requisite amount of time before going back in.  As long as they are offsetting the walk by the effort they put into the game. 😁

 

Just seems a waste of game time and energy sometimes traipsing up a dirty great hill LOL.

[gavinkempsell]

Aye, but where does it stop?

 

I'm not dissabled, just fat lol.

 

&

 

'Older'

 

mainly fat tho.

[Dan Robinson]

7 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

Aye, but where does it stop?

 

Yep - I wrote that half in jest, half seriously - you'd need a marshall at the back of every game just to make sure people didn't take the piss.

 

I'm 45 years old, 6'7" and 130kg usually wearing a full plate carrier and camelbak.  That's a lot of gravity to drag around all day at full clack. 🤣

 

 

On 25/09/2023 at 10:37, Impulse said:

 

I can't in good faith recommend Worthing Airsoft at the moment and Southdown Airsoft can't run through the winter due to the local wildlife, so I'm more than willing to give Driver Wood a try. Honestly, seeing that they're experimenting with longer games at Driver Wood only encourages me to try it more as I like longer games. What I've heard about Driver Wood is:

- Marshalls that don't really care and don't enforce rules

- Rampant cheating

- An example of someone using metal BBs and shattering someone's eyepro and blinding him

- Long pauses between games

- Imbalanced teams to help regulars

 

Honestly, I'm critical enough to not believe it all and the truth is usually in the middle of the positive and negative viewpoints. I reckon there is some cheating as you'll always have non-hit takers anywhere you go unfortunately, but especially after going to Southdown despite hearing similar negatives and having most of them being pure fiction I reckon there's definitely some tribalism affecting what I've heard about other sites.

 

 

Driver Wood is a great site - my criticism would fall in line with the above about the respawns being a long way from the action fro no real reason.  Certainly in high summer where the line of sight can be pretty short. Ic an see a reason in the winter when there is less coverage from the trees.

 

The safe zone is one of the best, I've been to possibly along with High Wycombe.

 

Having only been the once, and having a "personal down day" I can't really fairly comment on the way teams are put together and the marshalling, but I didn't notice anything too bad.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Dan Robinson

[Impulse]

22 minutes ago, Dan Robinson said:

Driver Wood is a great site - my criticism would fall in line with the above about the respawns being a long way from the action fro no real reason.  Certainly in high summer where the line of sight can be pretty short. Ic an see a reason in the winter when there is less coverage from the trees.

 

The safe zone is one of the best, I've been to possibly along with High Wycombe.

 

Having only been the once, and having a "personal down day" I can't really fairly comment on the way teams are put together and the marshalling, but I didn't notice anything too bad.

 

Guess I'll find out myself as a few of us are planning on going to Driver Wood this weekend. I see their DMR rules are 1.88J and a 25m MED so the MWS is going to be set up for that for sure!

[The_Lord_Poncho]

18 hours ago, Impulse said:

 

Guess I'll find out myself as a few of us are planning on going to Driver Wood this weekend. I see their DMR rules are 1.88J and a 25m MED so the MWS is going to be set up for that for sure!

which day? I might try and nip along myself if i can one morning.

[Impulse]

1 hour ago, The_Lord_Poncho said:

which day? I might try and nip along myself if i can one morning.

 

We'll be there on Sunday

[The_Lord_Poncho]

2 hours ago, Impulse said:

 

We'll be there on Sunday

I'll explore whether i can get a pass....!

[son of dan]

On 09/09/2023 at 21:14, Dan Robinson said:

Hope the boy doesn't read this....but it was a real banger of a day at Special Ops.

 

About 50 - 60 turned up, but a lot were new players and  younglngs.  One of the Marshalls had their kid's 15th birthday there so a lot of teenagers rocked up which was a little worrying at first sight, only for them all to be really great kid's who made the most of their time. 

 

A lot of regulars were missing, which was shame, but not a surprise given the heat.

 

Games were the usual fair....zombies to warm up, then some attack and defend.  We on the skins side had the most familiarity with the site, so the day was a total wipe out, with one game won in 90 seconds, which on turnaround  I think we timed them out....  the objective being to run through the church entrance, get the bomb and then get it to the tent.

 

Had a few awkward moments, one being during Team Deathmatch,  where I snuck round a tarpaulin barricade only to find a poor solitary teenager.  I decided to switch to my pistol to be kind, only to find it wasn't cocked....but poor lass didn't see me until I put my RIF down and cocked my Glock and ....well...🤣🙊.

 

The next was almost a carbon copy but with said teenager's friend....all I could see was a face mask....so face mask was what was shot, again though, I could tell it was a youngling, so switched to the Glock because the L85 was right in the limit again.

 

Baby Specna and Double Eagle didn't get a run today as I was using the boy's Longer Specna we picked up secondhand from here.  A very good £120.  Thing is as we bought it, plus a good LVPO and bipod and was shooting like a laser.  Only problem being a little mag fussy.

 

L85 was a little temperamental, but that was due to overspin because I put an 11.1v in it.  Switched to 7.4v and it was a dream until the riser came lose without my noticing - apart from having to aim into the next county to hit anything.

 

Lunch as always was free, tasty and plentiful.  Water was guzzled by the gallon (11 litres by my count) but I'm still thirsty as anything and peeing treacle.

 

 

Fan powered antifog Once again was flawless,  although the battery died about halfway through the afternoon. 

 

Looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks. 

one cheeky bastard using my specna.  break it and ill find away to whoop your arse from 6000 miles away. 

[Dan Robinson]

11 hours ago, son of dan said:

one cheeky bastard using my specna.  break it and ill find away to whoop your arse from 6000 miles away. 

 

Child, you have more pressing concerns.  I can see your school grades online remember....better keep them where they are. Or the L85A1 will find its way here....

 

https://airsoft-forums.uk/classifieds/category/1-electric/

 

 

🤗

Edited September 30, 2023 by Dan Robinson

[gavinkempsell]

8 hours ago, Dan Robinson said:

Or the L85A1 will find its way here....

A tenner & a pack of jelly babies is my offer.

[Dan Robinson]

8 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

A tenner & a pack of jelly babies is my offer.

I'll need the trigger mechanism for spares for my A3 though.

[gavinkempsell]

are they compatible?

 

[Dan Robinson]

Both ICSs 👍😎

[gavinkempsell]

Just now, Dan Robinson said:

Both ICSs 👍😎

I don't mind haggling... £10 & a mackerel, family sized jelly babies.

 

On another note... I'm gutted the L85 with UGL in the classifieds is sold already

[Dan Robinson]

Swap the mackerel for a bag of Cough Candy and you're there....

 

Trying not to think about UGLs.... could have done with one last gameday.

[gavinkempsell]

10 minutes ago, Dan Robinson said:

Swap the mackerel for a bag of Cough Candy and you're there....

 

Trying not to think about UGLs.... could have done with one last gameday.

You could buy your own with a mackerel...

 

Like 90% of my collection my UGL's are purely ornamental.

 

[Impulse]

Just got home from a day of airsofting at Driver Wood (first time at the site) and I've definitely got a bit of a write up for my experience. Day started early with my alarm going off at 6:30am, but I was ready to go get stuck in. I planned on using the MWS set up as a DMR to make the most of their 1.88J with 25m MED DMR rules, since Worthing Airsoft's DMR rules are just not worth bothering with. Had to dial the hop all the way on to lift the .4s, but on green gas it was sailing them out nicely at about 1.8 - 1.85J, so once I got the gun chronoed and saw how it was performing I was set. I joked with my friend as we headed out, saying "ah, we're a DMR and a bolt action sniper, so I'm sure we won't be the front line." This joke is important for our story here...

 

First game was a three base domination and was a good game to get started. As I had no idea where anything was, I took myself into a central position with my friend who was running his VSR and we got entrenched in some bushes and started picking people off. It didn't take long before we were the front line, with the rest of our team all dead and not pushing back up. He eventually got taken out, leaving me by myself as I was slotting people on the flank just one after the other (seriously, I loved running a DMR as it allowed me to engage multiple enemies one after the other). I eventually got taken out too when a player on the other team was basically on top of me trying to work out where I was, despite me using an MWS with its clack-clack GBBR mechanism. He said he would never have found me if I was running something quiet. We headed back to respawn and then found that our team was basically being spawn-camped. This was a sign of things to come and something I was wary of going into the day after what I heard at the brief.

 

Second game we had to escort a pair of VIPs to various spots across the site, having to hold it for 5 minutes. I'll be honest with you, we got absolutely folded again, barely getting out of our spawn. I managed to hold one of the flanks with another guy, just doing Viet Cong tactics hitting them and then disappearing into the foliage all game; Namsoft taught me well! I also lost count of how many grenades they threw in our direction, both a combination of green smokes (count as toxic, so can't be in it without a gas mask) and bangs. They must've spent a small fortune trying to uproot us, but every time they threw grenades, we simply weren't there. I was surprised to hear we managed to do a whole 1 of the objectives, which was 1 more than I thought with how the game was going. We swapped sides and it was much the same; I took a central position and my friend got into a really good spot for sniping, but while we managed to totally lock down part of the site, the other team was running rampant elsewhere. Then we got teamkilled by a mortar that wiped out about 7 or 8 of us and we totally lost control of that too. That was probably the most frustrating part of the day as it was the one part of the site where it felt like we had traction and then we got mass teamkilled.

 

Third game involved a bunch of oversized playing cards. Numbers were 5 points, pictures were 10 points, ace was 15 points and the joker was -20 points for the enemy team. No prizes for guessing how it went. We actually got a decent start, but then with only a few of us defending the base the other team eventually rolled in and stole all of the cards. I was the last man standing having to cover behind me with the pistol as well as the front with the MWS and it was just a bit too much for me alone. Regardless after I got hit I stood there waiting for a medic, knowing full-well that nobody was around to do so. It did exactly what I wanted it to, as I had 4 of them distracted by me and slowing them down in their endeavours as they watched me with paranoia. However, my team didn't come back in and all of our cards got stolen. I went back to spawn and... we were basically spawn-camped. Again. I still managed to break off and take out a bunch of them from a flank they weren't watching much, but by this point most of our team had given up. I'm not the type and I don't mind being on the losing team, but I could see why morale was low; we had spent all day getting kicked around the site.

 

Anyway, I did have fun and do enjoy a bit of an uphill battle, especially considering I was against so many regulars while I've never been to the site so I don't know any of the strong positions or even where half of the objectives were. The MWS performed exactly as I wanted it to, but outside of 1.88J I will continue to run it at 1.14J elsewhere; I noticed a little more effective range with 1.88J, but it was borderline. So, my overall thoughts:

 

Good:

+ The site itself is lovely. It's huge and they clearly put a lot of effort into making it a very fun site to play at.

+ DMR rules are great. 1.88J with a 25m MED is where I'll use one and I thoroughly enjoyed doing so

+ Games were well put together and worked well with the site

+ Early start. Briefing at 9am and it's not a massively long one, so we were out to play nice and early.

+ Very nice safe zone and actual toilets! Shame airsofters are a disgusting lot and the male toilets were rather splashed from bad aim

 

Bad:

- Horrendous team imbalance confirmed my suspicions I had going into it. Even heard one of the marshalls speaking to a regular who was on our team saying "you know all the regulars go on green and we always do that side as green" after they split us down the middle

- That team imbalance was never addressed. At lunch time, despite orange team getting hammered and basically pushed back to spawn every game the marshalls did nothing to balance it. When there were more greens than oranges, it was more newbies and kids who were moved onto orange rather than a group of regulars.

- Hit taking was laughably bad. I had many shots that I watched to completion through my scope, with people recoiling from the hits and then just continuing on. And I know these are being felt as they're .4s at 1.88J that they're recoiling from

- It's very businesslike. Whereas Worthing, Southdown and Gunman all feel like a community, Driver Wood very much feels like a business first and I feel it lacked the character of other sites. I felt very detached.

 

Meh:

~ I don't think I've ever been at a skirmish weekend with that much pyro being hurled at me. Green smokes and bangs were raining down like someone on green won the lottery

~ People were proving my point when I say "full auto is a crutch for people who can't aim" with the amount of high ROF full auto spray that was being peppered everywhere

~ Gun sock. My gun literally can't fire if the mag is out, but gun sock needed. I kinda understand this one since they have such a wide customer base and people are dumb

~ They never checked if my DMR was semi-locked. I could've rocked up with a Section 5 firearm and nobody would've known. Fortunately, I'm not a jackass and had already modified my fire selector to only shoot on semi (such an easy mod on the MWS...)

- "Outside food is not allowed" combined with "don't worry, we have relatively expensive food on sale". I didn't eat anything on principle!

- Going back to the safe zone after every game. Those safe zone breaks need to be shorter!

 

I did enjoy myself and will likely go back again, but there are definitely issues and I can see that a lot of what I heard about Driver Wood was well-founded. Good thing is that the site is good and the games are good, so I can largely make my own fun, but there are a lot of very easily solvable issues that do impact it.

[Dan Robinson]

I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and it's interesting to see the "bad" points line up with the "less good" ones I experienced and put down to me having a shitty day.

 

I didn't think the food was that expensive for what it was, btu equally I am used to Spec Ops which is largely homemade and included.  I did take my own water with me as i always do in warm weather, and no one said anything despite me filling my hydration kit openly in the safe zone.

 

We played the VIP and card games when I was there and they were very enjoyable, despite our team getting a pasting - I helped retake the tower for our team half way through reclaiming our cards in the nick of time.  Eventually we got taken out with extreme prejudice by what must have been, as you discovered regulars (we were on the Orange team).

 

Chrono seemed fairly well run I thought - they even, to my annoyance but understanding, cut off all my chrono tags from past games.  

 

Sort out team balance, and it would make a massive improvement.  As you said it is great well thought out site.  I'll definitely go back to give it another day.