The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Shamal]

5 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

Crikey!  I felt that taking three was too much of a faff!

It sounds like a stripped piston or a stripped gear.  Hopefully, the former if it was a plastic racked piston.  What brand is it?

It's an Ares amoeba.

It's always been my go to gun and done a lot of work so I guess it's inevitable ☹️

[Colin Allen]

1 minute ago, Shamal said:

It's an Ares amoeba.

It's always been my go to gun and done a lot of work so I guess it's inevitable ☹️

Almost certainly the back of the piston breaking off then:(.  If you are lucky, it won't have damaged the sector gear.

Edited March 10 by Colin Allen

[Tackle]

11 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

Almost certainly the back of the piston breaking off then:(.  If you are lucky, it won't have damaged the sector gear.

Agree, never stripped a sector gear, pistons tend be the weakest part of the "chain" & goes first. 

[Colin Allen]

3 minutes ago, Tackle said:

Agree, never stripped a sector gear, pistons tend be the weakest part of the "chain" & goes first. 

Ares pistons have a habit of breaking at the back; they are poorly designed.

[DanBow]

On 13/02/2024 at 21:44, DanBow said:

 

 

 

That's my eldest daughter. Another proud father moment.

 

 

She has just joined the site, @sofieb Everyone say hi. 😁

[gavinkempsell]

Hi.

 

Where the hell did my post go???

 

Played pews

gas too cold

aeg's worked

had fun

left early coz work

the end.

Edited March 15 by gavinkempsell

[Impulse]

Another game day at Worthing and it was a mix for me, a lot of good mixed in with some bad. I took my spring VSR, which is set to be right on the limit at 1.14J on a .32 (I think the lowest shot at chrono was 1.12J and the highest was 1.14J). This meant I had no MED and could blast people up close, which is definitely an advantage at Worthing with how many coppices there are all over the site; lots of twiggy bits to get in the way of long shots! I also brought my SR-25 too as my friend wanted to have a go with it, so that was in the bag too. Got through chrono, set up my kit, realised I need another solution for carrying my rubber knife and headed to the safety brief. They didn't do the spiel about bolt actions and DMRs having a 30m MED, so I couldn't do the meme response to "bolties and DMRs, what's your MED?" "0m!". However, this is where the first bad happened; all of the regulars apart from myself, my friend, @Badgerlicious and his friend were on the same team. About 8 - 10 people who all knew how to work together, while there were low numbers at about 26 total on each side, vs 4 of us who knew how to work together. But it doesn't end there! Clearly the four of us were too powerful, so the marshall pointed at us and said "I can't allow you 4 on the same team" and so he split us up. @Badgerlicious and his friend were moved onto the other team while me and my friend remained on the same team. So now it was 2 regulars vs 10 - 12 regulars. As I said, clearly we're just too good at airsoft and the rest of the regulars aren't 😎

 

Anyway, first game underway and from an objectives point of view, it was a really great game. There were a whole load of objective items scattered around the site and both teams had to get as many as possible. We also didn't have a base to start with and had to choose our base. We took the Tower area as ours, which is a good, easy to defend area, while I think the enemy team took the outpost base or Dell End down the hill as the game started. With a good push from us blues going on in the upper area, me and my friend went down to the bottom of the site as there was one of the marshalls playing the role of a banker who was there to give out objectives to players. However, he was also armed with a minigun and didn't like people loitering or camping the area around him, which meant that neither team could dominate the area and farm all his objectives. In theory. In practice, none of the other blues came down to the bottom of the site, so it was a pair of ghillie snipers trying to hold off the tide of yellows and I must say my friend did a really good job of that. He did such a good job that my position became useless as nobody got to me, so I didn't do much that game. Found out afterwards that our team basically lost everything, including our base so I don't think we had any objectives at the end. The game was insanely one-sided, as we said it would be, and so the marshalls grabbed 6 regulars from yellow team and swapped them with some blue players to even it up.

 

Next two games were a 3 flip can base around the Tower area and the swap over of the regulars caused the games to flip in the other direction. From both sides our team dominated the area. First game I set up in my favourite spot overlooking the path and sod's law came into effect. The one day I bring a 1.1J replica and I get a whole load of yellows just standing in the middle of the path about 70m away from my position, in full view. If I had a 2.3J bolt action, I'd have had a field day, but alas I had to wait for them to get a bit closer and even then I found a use for running a DMR instead of a 1.1J for those 50 - 60m engagements. Yes, you can tune a 1.1J gun to hit out to 50 - 60m fairly accurately, but there were a lot of people not taking the hits I was dishing out at that distance and I'm going to assume that they just weren't feeling them as they weren't really reacting to the hits at all. I could see the BBs impacting through my scope, but with a bolt action I only have one shot, and one shot at 1.1J when you're pushing towards that 60m range just wasn't being felt. I don't blame them for it, but it has tempted me to try running a DMR next game day since it's still a bit chilly for my gas bolt actions (will run those as soon as it hits about 15 celcius). We swapped sides and I played super aggressively in the next one, crawling up into a very forward position where nobody really spotted me in my ghillie. I was constantly worried as my VSR was "old school" ghillied, simply wrapped in scrim net with no other camo attached to it, but I was putting the fact I had no MED to good use. Most of my shots into the Tower area from such a forward position were about 20m tops. As our team then pushed up and took control of the area, I shifted to the other side of the tree I was on and started shooting at the reinforcements coming down the path and along the fence line. Got a lot of hits in this game.

 

We then broke for lunch. After lunch, my other friend and his grandson came out for the afternoon games and I felt a bit victimised here. My friend and his grandson put on blue armbands as we like to play together as it's good practice for when we go to Vietnam games, especially since a lot of blue players had gone home, but then the marshalls split us up AGAIN. They never put this much effort into splitting up any other groups than the ones that we make and I was getting a bit pissed off with it. Anyway, we then played a 3 base domination across the whole site, though the spawns were a bit close together and very close to one of the bases. This meant we weren't allowed to attack around one side, as it would take us to their spawn very quickly, which ruined my plan. My plan was to sneak around their spawn, head up to the fence line and take the base that was up there in the final moments of the game, but I had to change my tactic as I couldn't go that way. I took the long way around the site, sticking to the boundary and avoiding any engagements as I did not want anyone to know I was there. Spent the entire game sneaking past yellow players, not firing a single shot to get into position and right as I was getting into position, another ghillie on our team came up as well. Great, now two of us can do this tactic. All we'll need to do is clear the skeleton crew at that base, since nobody on our team got anywhere near attacking it and-... wait, what's the other ghillie doing? Like a bull in a china shop he starts shooting people left and right with his pistol. This meant that when we got up to that base, instead of there being 2 defenders that I could've easily taken out by myself, one being my friend with my SR-25 who knew I was going to be trying something like that and stuck to the base like glue towards the end, there were now about 8 players defending the base and more coming up behind us. Thanks, other ghillie, you ruined my entire gameplan and made all of my efforts to go undetected go to waste (yes I'm salty about it because it was incredibly frustrating!). Moreover, the other ghillie got himself shot by making a rush into the base area before we had even managed to take anyone out. Suffice to say I couldn't push that base in the last minute of the game and we lost in the end, two bases to one.

 

Didn't play the last game of the day because I was pretty tired from the last game and I think I tore a muscle in my right hand when I was crawling through a particularly nasty spot of brambles. That still hurts today and it feels like a torn or at least strained muscle; the route I took to make sure I was undetected was not a nice easy one. Lots of hills and battling through brambles and crawling over stinging nettles which also still hurt this morning! Also, my friends were packing up too, so I headed back with them. Showed my friend who was on the other team the route I was going to use to take him out in the church structure without exposing myself to his position and we had a chat about the different style of play running a long gun gives. He enjoyed it and said he got a lot of kills at the Sandbag Bunker base (which was the base that was very close to both our spawns), so I'm happy about that. He's probably going to go with a Cyma m14 for himself, which as someone who owns two of them I will obviously say it's a good choice!

 

Then on the walk back my friend's grandson shot me in the finger point blank, right on the side where it's really painful too, as they were all shooting each other on the walk back as airsofters do and he wasn't looking where he shot and it really hurt. Being 12 won't save him from taking a shot to the back of the head next game day as his debt must be paid!  

 

Also it didn't rain all day, despite the forecast saying that we were going to have a wet afternoon. The rain started very light as we were packing away and really started after we left, so it was good that we packed up a little bit early. I think next game day I will run a DMR, even though I think the rules at Worthing are craptastic for them. Just need to pester the co-owner of the site to either up the power to 1.88J or drop the MED to 20m and keep the 1.64J. We've made some progress on that front, but I don't think he's ready to change anything yet because he hates DMRs as he had bad experiences with people spamming the trigger.

 

All in all, it was a pretty good day. Still waiting for the weather to warm up so I can use my favourite guns, but it wasn't too chilly and the games were generally good. There was no laughably bad hit-taking as the non-hit-taking that I experienced seemed to be more of an honest error where they weren't feeling the shots. Every hit I got where the person had a visible reaction to it, they took it.

[RostokMcSpoons]

 Special Ops' big first day of the year: the new CQB site opened!
Saturday was a 'test game' with, we heard, ~7-a-side.   Sunday was the first official game with 16-a-side.

Well, a picture paints a thousand words, so this'll save me a metric shit-ton of typing then, won't it?
https://www.facebook.com/SpecialOpsSeniors/?locale=en_GB

Lots of pics and videos to peruse - I'll let you guys be the judge of how good it is a new CQB site, because this was my first ever CQB experience (outside of laser-tag!) so I have absolutely no idea if it's good. It has been very well put together, there's a big 'club room' and reception area upstairs, a decent safe zone that was a bit tricky to navigate through due to the desks and people and gear filling it up - and the benches are a bit narrow (which Carlos admitted), but it's all impressive to my untutored eye.   Carlos and his volunteers have obviously worked very hard and I hope it's a success.

I've had a long day at work, so rather than writing out a War And Peace on all the stuff, I'll give you the bullet points (if you'll pardon the pun)

 

• I got lost on the way there - Google maps took exception to the location from the web site and kept trying to steer me back to a random location in the middle of nowhere.  I had to stop the instructions and just eyeball the map as I drove.  There's no signage at the entrance either, so easy to drive past it.     It's really not very far at all from the woodland site.
  (There's a '3 Words' location that other people used successfully - I'll try to find it)
   
• Usual rules - 350fps/0.20g, max BB weight of 0.25g.  Bangs (upto and including my new grenade with 0.209 primers) allowed (but not much evident)
   
• Reasonable car park, close to the entrance, so even though I took all my short guns, and masses of kit with me, it wasn't too onerous to get into the building.   I still managed to leave my toolbox at home - which proved really annoying as I had my Allen keys, speedloader, and my 'nade primers in there.  That proved enough to stop me using my grenade until a test shot at the end of the day, and stopped me using my GBBR (without the speedloader) or my Tippmann (couldn't get the FPS and hop quite dialled in, thanks to having to borrow allen keys and running out of time)
   
• CQB.   Damn, it hurts getting pinged so often at short range.   The BB's always seemed to find a bit of uncovered or thinly covered skin to hit
   
• Fog Of War.   Between my goggles fogging up and the variable lighting, half the time I had no idea where my BBs were flying - and thanks to Carlos not having 0.25's in stock, I had to buy and use 0.20s with little idea where they were going.    Time to invest in a tracer unit, methinks!
   
• I tried a Dye full-face mask I got dirt-cheap, and didn't like it - couldn't get my eye in line with the sights.  Back to the goggles + mesh lower mask
   
• I also found none of my face protection works very well with my new headset, so bang protection will probably have to be ear plugs for the near future, but luckily the only guys throwing BFG 'nades around were not having much luck getting them to go off.  I begged a primer off one of them for a test throw at the end - and 'bang' went my OhShiBoom.  That'll be fun to use for real.
   
• A bit too easy to get spawn trapped, even with two spawn exits.  Apparently the site has been designed (or allowed) to have an uneven balance in difficulty.   My team seemed to spend almost the entire session at the difficult side and consequently we got murdered.   Might need some extra cover or another door... or just more swapping of spawns.
   
• Some of the guys had a whale of a time running around with their rubber knives.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the core gameplay.   Me, well CQB is a very different style.   It wasn't speedy-boi stuff, but still I think I'm naturally more in to the long sneaky flank rather than the bullet-hail around the spawns.   I guess I'll get used to it, if I can afford to play very much. 
   
• My only real criticism is the pricing.  I have no idea if it's competitive to what the rest of you guys are paying now, though.   
  
  When I was going to Spec Ops' woodland site a couple of years back, it was £25 for a (daylight allowing) 09:30 - 16:30 day.  It got bumped to £30 recently.
  The CQB is priced at £35 for a 10:00 - 14:30 / 15:00 - 19:30 session, or £45 for the full day (which I couldn't do, so I took the morning slot)
  I feel that's a bit much for the half-day slots, but then again I suppose the safe zone is right there, and so are the spawns, so actual pewing time is probably much greater.  And much less ammo used too.  

So yeah, a decently fun intro to CQB, though I didn't totally fall in love with it - I got zapped way too much, zapped others way too little, and thanks to some technical hitches I spent too long meddling with kit in the safe zone.  Next time might go better.
 

Guns taken:
Double Eagle M906C (Old Faithful)
TM AUG HC (always fun to run, but chrono'd very low at 230fps on 0.20's - time for a service, maybe a new spring)
Tippmann M4 HPA (slightly too hot, just missed out on chrono due to fps variance)
VFC HK416 GBBR (no speedloader, left in the case)
G&G G36 (gearbox locked up a few times on semi)

TM D.O.R Hi Capa (used a bit, great as always)

JG SIG 552 (didn't use it, but should have)

 

Edited March 12 by RostokMcSpoons

[Dan Robinson]

58 minutes ago, RostokMcSpoons said:

 Special Ops' big first day of the year: the new CQB site opened!
Saturday was a 'test game' with, we heard, ~7-a-side.   Sunday was the first official game with 16-a-side.

Well, a picture paints a thousand words, so this'll save me a metric shit-ton of typing then, won't it?
https://www.facebook.com/SpecialOpsSeniors/?locale=en_GB

Lots of pics and videos to peruse - I'll let you guys be the judge of how good it is a new CQB site, because this was my first ever CQB experience (outside of laser-tag!) so I have absolutely no idea if it's good. It has been very well put together, there's a big 'club room' and reception area upstairs, a decent safe zone that was a bit tricky to navigate through due to the desks and people and gear filling it up - and the benches are a bit narrow (which Carlos admitted), but it's all impressive to my untutored eye.   Carlos and his volunteers have obviously worked very hard and I hope it's a success.

I've had a long day at work, so rather than writing out a War And Peace on all the stuff, I'll give you the bullet points (if you'll pardon the pun)

 

• I got lost on the way there - Google maps took exception to the location from the web site and kept trying to steer me back to a random location in the middle of nowhere.  I had to stop the instructions and just eyeball the map as I drove.  There's no signage at the entrance either, so easy to drive past it.     It's really not very far at all from the woodland site.
  (There's a '3 Words' location that other people used successfully - I'll try to find it)
   
• Usual rules - 350fps/0.20g, max BB weight of 0.25g.  Bangs (upto and including my new grenade with 0.209 primers) allowed (but not much evident)
   
• Reasonable car park, close to the entrance, so even though I took all my short guns, and masses of kit with me, it wasn't too onerous to get into the building.   I still managed to leave my toolbox behind which proved to really annoying as I had my Allen keys, speedloader, and my 'nade primers in there.  That proved enough to stop me using my nade until a test shot at the end of the day, and stopped me using my GBBR (without the speedloader) or my Tippmann (couldn't get the FPS and hop quite dialled in, thanks to having to borrow allen keys and running out of time)
   
• CQB.   Damn, it hurts getting pinged so often at short range.   The BB's always seemed to find a bit of uncovered or thinly covered skin to hit
   
• Fog Of War.   Between my goggles fogging up and the variable lighting, half the time I had no idea where my BBs were flying - and thanks to Carlos not having 0.25's in stock, I had to buy and use 0.20s with little idea where they were going.    Time to invest in a tracer unit, methinks!
   
• I tried a Dye full-face mask I got dirt-cheap, and didn't like it - couldn't get my eye in line with the sights.  Back to the goggles + mesh lower mask
   
• I also found none of my face protection works very well with my new headset, so bang protection will probably have to be ear plugs for the near future, but luckily the only guys throwing BFG 'nades around were not having much luck getting them to go off.  I begged a primer off one of them for a test throw at the end - and 'bang' went my OhShiBoom.  That'll be fun to use for real.
   
• A bit too easy to get spawn trapped, even with two spawn exits.  Apparently the site has been designed (or allowed) to have an uneven balance in difficulty.   My team seemed to spend almost the entire session at the difficult side and consequently we got murdered.   Might need some extra cover or another door... or just more swapping of spawns.
   
• Some of the guys had a whale of a time running around with their rubber knives.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the core gameplay.   Me, well CQB is a very different style.   It wasn't speedy-boi stuff, but still I think I'm naturally more in to the long sneaky flank rather than the bullet-hail around the spawns.   I guess I'll get used to it, if I can afford to play very much. 
   
• My only real criticism is the pricing.  I have no idea if it's competitive to what the rest of you guys are paying now, though.   
  
  When I was going to Spec Ops' woodland site a couple of years back, it was £25 for a (daylight allowing) 09:30 - 16:30 day.  It got bumped to £30 recently.
  The CQB is priced at £35 for a 10:00 - 14:30 / 15:00 - 19:30 session, or £45 for the full day (which I couldn't do, so I took the morning slot)
  I feel that's a bit much for the half-day slots, but then again I suppose the safe zone is right there, and so are the spawns, so actual pewing time is probably much greater.  And much less ammo used too.  

So yeah, a decently fun intro to CQB, though I didn't totally fall in love with it - I got zapped way too much, zapped others way too little, and thanks to some technical hitches I spent too long meddling with kit in the safe zone.  Next time might go better.
 

Guns taken:
Double Eagle M906C (Old Faithful)
TM AUG HC (always fun to run, but chrono'd very low at 230fps on 0.20's - time for a service, maybe a new spring)
Tippmann M4 HPA (slightly too hot, just missed out on chrono due to fps variance)
VFC HK416 GBBR (no speedloader, left in the case)
G&G G36 (gearbox locked up a few times on semi)

TM D.O.R Hi Capa (used a bit, great as always)

JG SIG 552 (didn't use it, but should have)
 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I'm still considering the pricing, but to be fair, he's invested big bucks on that place and also trying to recoup cash from the fuckeries with the council.

 

I have a day in hand, so will probably try the cqb next gameday, but having played at Sentinel (hybrid cqb/outdoors), I think I'm an outdoor player.  Partly because I need the space for stopping and turning distances.

 

Have they moved they gee gees a bit further away from the building? 

 

Couldn't work out if they're doing lunches there too.

 

For those looking at the pictures and videos....a lot of those walls are made out of scaffolding boards, pasloaded onto both sides of pallets.  They're not going anywhere

 

[Cannonfodder]

In my experience most cqb sites charge £35 for a whole day but tend to be from 10:00 till about 16:00 so if games run till 19:30 then that's actually not bad. I agree the half day prices are a bit high though

[RostokMcSpoons]

9 hours ago, Dan Robinson said:

Couldn't work out if they're doing lunches there too.

 

I think he said lunches are going to happen but he's still building his kitchen area.

 

Extra toilet facilities getting installed too.

 

1 hour ago, Cannonfodder said:

In my experience most cqb sites charge £35 for a whole day but tend to be from 10:00 till about 16:00 so if games run till 19:30 then that's actually not bad. I agree the half day prices are a bit high though

 

I think I'll suggest £25, that makes a half day or evening session more of an impulse purchase.. if he wants to keep the games running regulatory mid-week with plenty of visitors it can't be priced as a once or twice a month "special event" thing, which is what feels like now. 

Or maybe he could throw in a bottle of ammo with the price, it might not hit his profit so much, and would still reduce the cost to the player.

 

I don't know, maybe I'm mentally framing this from my personal currently skint "can't afford to go very often at that price" viewpoint

[Nick G]

My game day on Sunday was fun, only 28 players , so nice and tactical. I believe we lost most games, but fair play to the other tem who played very well.

 

I Managed a couple of long sneaky flanking trips to get behind them though which was satisfying, In the last game I played I worked my way round and took out 2 players who were holding our team back, then just as I settled down in a bush to cover if they came back, the heavens opened. There I am sitting in a bush , absoluty soaked , thinking ' remind me why I love doing this' 😂

[Skullchewer]

Bumped into a random guy yesterday, who recognised me from here. Sorry dude, didn't catch your name. 

Thought I'd pop back and say "HI I'M STILL ALIVE".

 

I marshal more than I play these days.

Yesterday was a fun day at Red Alert, with 111 players.

Surprisingly, with that number,  I got no reports of hit calling or the like, though in the afternoon we did have to deal with an issue of a kid being bullied by a group of other kids. 

 

I was, of course, wearing my Irish camo yesterday, or lepretarn. Just the shirt. 

 

And apparently I'm now the authority on tag rounds, as I was referred to as the tag grenade guy by two different people yesterday.

What can I say, I enjoy blowing people up at range. 

Edited March 18 by Skullchewer

[Smiling-Dutchman]

9 hours ago, Skullchewer said:

Bumped into a random guy yesterday, who recognised me from here. Sorry dude, didn't catch your name. 

Thought I'd pop back and say "HI I'M STILL ALIVE".

 

I marshal more than I play these days.

Yesterday was a fun day at Red Alert, with 111 players.

Surprisingly, with that number,  I got no reports of hit calling or the like, though in the afternoon we did have to deal with an issue of a kid being bullied by a group of other kids. 

 

I was, of course, wearing my Irish camo yesterday, or lepretarn. Just the shirt. 

 

And apparently I'm now the authority on tag rounds, as I was referred to as the tag grenade guy by two different people yesterday.

What can I say, I enjoy blowing people up at range. 

 

There was bullying going on, for real?
Wish you had pointed them out so I could hunt them down.

Was a good day for players as well, although my team lost all games, quite badly. Even tho I tried real hard to actually get my team to attack and advance.

One of those days I guess 🤷‍♂️. Still had fun tho.

Quite like these days where there are so many players. It gets a bit hectic at times but for me that adds to the fun 😅

[Skullchewer]

13 hours ago, Smiling-Dutchman said:

There was bullying going on, for real?
Wish you had pointed them out so I could hunt them down.

As tempting as that is, it has to be dealt with professionally. 

 

And yes I could see how hard you were trying to turn things around for yellow.

Yellow is always cursed 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

 

 

Edited March 19 by Skullchewer

[Impulse]

Another weekend, another dissertation to write about how the game went. I went to Worthing as usual and bumped into @Hatchet there this week, which was nice! I decided to bring my HPA VSR, even though it's not perfect at the moment since I am waiting on a 300mm inner barrel and a bunch of foam to arrive so that I can internally suppress it further. At the moment, it's a 430mm widebore in a 470mm bull barrel, so 40mm is foam, but with a 300mm inner barrel it'll be 170mm of foam and should make it nice and quiet. It was still a little bit chilly for the m700 and I was picking up my AEG m14, so I decided the VSR was the best to bring. Set it up, got it shooting 2.28J and hopping .45s nicely, so I was good to go. Picked up the m14 and decided I'd zero the LPVO and set the hop after lunch as the morning was going to be a big, multi-objective game until lunch and that's my preferred way of playing. Sidearm choice today was my HK45, as it was definitely warm enough for GBB pistols and I way prefer them to mk23s, so I was keen to use it.

 

After the safety brief I got a bit annoyed though. The marshalls made a point to split me and my friend up (again) and also split another regular from his two friends. This is the 2nd week in a row they've picked me and my friend out and made a point to separate us onto different teams, so I wasn't that impressed heading out for the first game. We got the far spawn, so a long walk out at first, and I had no idea what the objectives were so I decided to just follow and support my team as best I could. The start of the game had the rentals all around the Tower area and neither team could spawn until their team's rentals recovered an ammo box and brought it back to the spawn. An interesting idea in theory, as I'm always interested in seeing people try new things, but it didn't really work and after 15 mins they just released both teams. I took a conservative position, crawling under a holly bush and setting up a position overlooking the checkpoint on the path. Didn't take long for the yellows to push up to it and I got a lot of kills from that spot without getting detected at all. I kept waiting to make sure I got a good shot off, lulling the other team into a false sense of security at times by making them think I had moved, before taking another one of them out. It was good fun and this allowed my team to push up and take the checkpoint after I picked off enough players to dissuade the remnants from peeking or people from reinforcing. At this time I saw our team (blues) had found an objective (a dummy on a stretcher) that we needed to get to the stables building in the Tower area; they had pushed it out onto the path, but got hit in the process and had to drop the stretcher, so it was now heavily contested. So with checkpoint under our control I got myself out from under the holly bush and pushed into the heavily wooded area to the left of the path to come up on the corner of it to try and establish some forward control. I linked up with a friend who had also pushed up there with his AEG and we basically played sniper and spotter for a while, him picking off targets on  the flank and me holding a line on the chapel, quite a popular spot to fight from. Blues kept pushing and managed to get the stretcher into the stables building, so now we had to hold it for 20 mins. I crawled further up as I saw blues pushing well into the Tower area, finding my way to a spot next to a tree that overlooked the path, but from the other side of the Tower area, so I took position there and started to cut off reinforcements, forcing them to take harder routes into the area. It worked really well, much to one marshall's amusement as he watched me get into position and take care of business. However, blues were doing a bit too well and our guys who had now taken the chapel were asked to give it up, and another marshall dropped a green smoke next to me. Green smoke counts as toxic, but fortunately the wind carried it the other way, however with its proximity it was only a matter of time before it expanded to where I was, so I quickly uprooted and fell back to the corner spot I was in before. We managed to hold for the 20 mins and shortly after that the game was over.

Something that really worked well for me was I used camo paint for my face along with my ghillie instead of a balaclava or lower face mask today and it worked really, really well. Lower face masks make my glasses fog up (as it routes breath up into my glasses) and I can't get away from that as I have prescription inserts and can't use contact lenses. My balaclava, especially on warm days, makes me sweat buckets which also fogs up my glasses, but camo paint keeps a nice air flow and it worked really, really well. £4 and it'll last me a while, so I think I'm going to continue using camo paint. Big success!

 

I had a LOT of fun in this game and the VSR was performing flawlessly as it tends to (I also took the advice of @Badgerlicious and ran my gunbilical cord around my left side instead of my right and it worked really, really well, stopping it getting caught as much and never getting caught on my own kit (my line loves catching on my pistol suppressor!)). However, I had a massive criticism of how the game was run. It didn't affect me because I didn't get hit once, but the respawns were on clocks. This meant that you had a 5 minute window to respawn followed by 5 mins of not being able to respawn. What I heard from the friend I was split from, as well as another friend who was on the other team, is that they would spawn in, go out and try to play aggressive, get hit and then have to wait 5 mins again because it worked out that they would get back to spawn after about 5 mins, so they'd get back just in time for respawns to be closed. They said they spent 40 mins just sitting in spawn and it was incredibly frustrating. They played less than they were waiting in respawn. For a large, multi-objective game I don't think the clock spawns worked very well and made people very frustrated. A lot went home at lunch time because of it.

 

I didn't play the afternoon as I wanted to set up my m14 and then hang out with one of my friends who wasn't playing today; plus the sun was out and it was (almost) warm, so it was a nice day to just chill out. The m14 was performing stupidly well on the range, which was nice, and the LPVO was basically already zeroed. Don't know how the afternoon games went, but I really enjoyed my day. I think the fact that the sun was out and it wasn't freezing cold or wet definitely helped, though it was a bit breezy at times for sniping, but even that wasn't too bad. All in all it was a really fun morning of airsoft and I'm looking forward to the next months as it hopefully gets a bit warmer. I do better in warm weather, as I used to airsoft in Spain, and my guns do better in warm weather because I like my gas guns, so I'm glad to be this side of winter.

Edited March 24 by Impulse

[gavinkempsell]

They'll never see you coming... oo-er

[Badgerlicious]

12 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

They'll never see you coming... oo-er

Damn, didn't see on sight taking pics 🤣

[Hatchet]

My Worthing review is probably going to be *fractionally* shorter than @Impulse's.

 

Got to Worthing, car park vaguely swamp like, but passable. Some hilarious sliding on mud/parking attempts observed. Chronoed and tested weapons. Glock 17 Gen 5 is a beast and hitting 50m on the range without issues. Had done some tweaking, building and improvement to P* engine'd M4 so needless to say that decided it wasn't going to work and I ran the NGRS MP5 instead. Considering throwing all HPA kit in the sea at this point (where ironically it would probably be more useful). Glorious sunshine for pretty much the whole day, without being too hot. Perfect airsoft weather really.

 

First game much as described earlier. Standing waiting for rentals to accomplish something before charging off to do... something. There were 2 objective props somewhere out in the game field and they had instructions on what to do with them on them. I say this, because I heard it, but I never saw any sign of them or knew what the brief was. Through I don't mind the clock concept because it can allow for waves of attackers/reinforcements, I think it would be better with some whiteboards with the objectives written on them once known. Yes, you can potentially wander off and try and find a marshall (who will probably be standing in the middle of a firefight) to find out what's going on, but large objective games lead to all the players being scattered without any cohesion. I got into some good shootouts and snuck around a bit, but I didn't really know where I was going other than all the usual spots that people fight over. This game lasted basically the whole morning. The other suggestion around clocks is to have multiple spawn locations, because it makes it more of a 360 battle when you know you could have someone spawning in behind you in 10 mins, as well as give you the opportunity to respawn somewhere else if things are not working where you are. Can work, might be situational though.

 

After lunch, a couple of matches of capture and hold base, fighting over 3 different locations. I was pleased to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with 8 seconds to go at the end of one of them by charging into the position. Reran it with different spawns and we lost that one 2 -1, so overall 1 match each. Plenty of movement and shooting, and clear objectives so it flowed ok. To finish the day off, it was attack/defend the tower with 1 life only for defenders, semi only for all. I opted to go up into the tower and shoot from there and am pleased to report there was some serious murder going on. Red dot sight paired with the accuracy of the MP5 mean there was a lot of rapid semi only kills on the first shot. There was also a Marshal up top, so they got to witness it all. I think we held out for 11-13 mins. Then the reversal and we somehow smashed in a new course record of under 2:30mins I believe. 

 

Then home for tea and medals.

 

MP5 ran well all day. The low caps are consistently reliable feeders and .28's seem to work well in it. I did used to get feeding problems with the high caps, but the lows are good. Glock had its first outing and its first kills. Nice piece of kit. I am already suffering from everything hurting, but overall a good day out.

 

 

[Colin Allen]

The only time that the lad and I have been to Apocalypse Airsoft in Kent was in April 2019, when we had a less than satisfactory experience with poorly designed games and bizarre and contradictory rules.  It is a large wooded site of about 100 acres.

However, it is now under new management and a lot of people have told me that it is  much better.

So, with the lad not returning from Stoke(!) until this evening, Comrade Andy and I decided to meet at Apocalypse to try it out; Andy had never been before.

The first game of the day, starting at 10:30, was a relatively simple fallback across three sections: the Village, No Man's Land (NML) and the Stockade (or whatever it was called).  As defenders, we had cycles of three lives in each, with the first two being on buddy regens and the last one involving a trip back to the next location, from where players were released back into the game every five minutes, with the sequence then rebooting.  We were also told that the attackers could attack the Village from the front and flanks, but not from the rear.  The attackers had to attack each location in sequence, only moving on to the next one once the current target was captured.

The first stage started well but became a bit strange when we found ourselves under attack from the rear.  At this point, I took my third hit (from the rear) and walked back to NML, where I asked the marshal about it; she stated that the information that we could not be attacked from the rear had been a miscommunication.

When our five minutes had expired the marshal informed us that we could remain on our regen and shoot the enemy players from there and they would not be able to shoot back.  At this, my puzzled and confused face appeared as this just seemed wrong; I asked and the marshal confirmed that was ok.  We started shooting Blue players, who started shooting back, whereupon the marshal shouted that they could not.  I again questioned this and, after a radio conversation, she stated that they could shoot back but we could just tap in with her to regen when hit.  A few minutes later, she informed everyone that we were under normal rules, which we really should have been from the time we moved back from the Village.

The game became quite interesting for a while with the attackers sandwiched between our remaining gallant chaps in the Village, who were conducting their own version of Rorke's Drift, and us outside it, with both sides trying to outflank the other.  However, after 90 minutes, the Blues still had not captured the first objective and the game ended.  It was a game that the attackers could not hope to complete in the allotted time as we, as the defenders, had far too many lives.

 

After lunch, we started another game; we had to secure the Stockade, capture a Blue team High Value Person (HVP) at the Pit after wiping out his ten player escort, escort him to the Stockade and hold him there until the end of the game.  The Blue team had to extract him from the Pit and get him back to the Village.  We had a regen point near the Stockade while the Blue team regened where they started at the Safe Zone entrance.

The group Comrade Andy and I were with set off to the Stockade and secured it rather handily, before becoming engaged with enemy players moving around our left flank and trying to reach the HPV.  After a while we were informed that the HPV was now ensconced in the Village, so we set out to capture him; this became a rather dull affair that Comrade Andy aptly described as "hiking with guns, with the emphasis on the hiking".  To be blunt, it was boring.

After this game, which again lasted for 90 minutes, Comrade Andy and I, along with a fair few other players, decided to leave.

While it was better than when the lad and I went, it was still frustrating and disappointing.

Neither of us will be going back.

Guns used:
APS UAR (which stopped feeding on the last shot of the morning; the original crap hop rubber had finally failed.)
LCT PP-19-01
ASG Commander XP18 (CO2)

Edited March 27 by Colin Allen

[gavinkempsell]

15 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

Neither of us will not be going back.

eh?

[Colin Allen]

10 minutes ago, gavinkempsell said:

eh?

Typo!

[Dan Robinson]

Had a very long but enjoyable day at Special Ops' new CQB site.

 

Day started off a bit pooh though with me arriving without my battery bag.  So had to rag it home in the car to get back in time for the briefing.

 

I lost track of the number of  games we played, but numbers started off with around 20 players.  This dropped off significantly at lunch time; then again at 4pm there was only 9, then at 5 ish there were only 4 of us.

 

Game of the day fro me was the VIP games where teams took it in turns to get the drunk VIP from the pub to the car at the opposite end of the building.  Lots of close calls and last minute reprieves for both sides to be had.  Then we had various rolling retreats, TDMs and "Get to the Choppa" games.

 

Once the numbers were down to single figures we had the pyramid game where each player on a team was given a number; which resulted in said numbers being the rotation of the players in the game.  At the start player 1s would be 1v1, then when that player died, they'd get player two for their side and so on.  5th kill was the end.  This was a great game as the sides were very evenly balanced with a speedy boi softer on each side, a youngling/first timer, an experienced slower player and someone in the middle.  The twist was that the game was played 4 times and they rotated the numbers around so every player got a chance to be 1v1.

 

When it was just the 4 of us left; I was the more experienced, and physically much bigger player.  There was a 14 year kid who was tiny, but turned out to be a deadly shot with his Glock which he was using for most of the day.  There was an American teenager on his first time and an older teenager who is a regular at the outdoor site.  This American dude got a tooth shot out in the morning in a freak incident with his full face mask, but he got back in the game and seemed to enjoy himself.

 

We had a blast of "winner stays on", 2v2, and a fun game where I was a guard patrolling the centre of the game area on a fixed path whilst the remaining younglings had to sneaky sneaky around to get to the bank to retrieve the gold.  Little buggers were lucky that when they made a dash for it, one of the marshalls was in the way LOL.

 

Get to the Choppa was an unmitigated disaster for our team as the opposition had Thomas - the notorious Special Ops runner - and twice in a row they won the game in less than a minute with barely a shot fired.  In my defence, I nearly got them on their approach, but my pistol mag had decided (unbeknownst to me) vent itself and pulling the trigger resulted in sweet feck all.

 

Due to my size I tended to stick out past walls and couldn't always duck low enough for cover.  As a result, I was domed more times than I can remember.  I also managed to get a BB up my nose.  Which I didn't notice until talking to a player at respawn and it rolled out mid sentence, much to his humour and my surprise.  Comedy moment of the day also fell to me as I snuck up behind someone in the Bank and stood there with my pistol pointed at him for a good 20 seconds deciding where to shoot him - which in the end was the back of his helmet.  The overseeing marshall and I exchanged a knowing glance. 😎

 

 

Its a great venue.  I think 30 players is the practical limit before overcrowding and bottlenecking becomes an issue.  Ironically as the numbers dwindled the day got more fun.  Not because of the players, but Carlos and the marshals adapted the games to match the players.

 

I have never run pistols as much as I had today.  The Specna is still having troubles, so I needed up with my Double Eagle as rifle of choice, one of my WE glocks isn't cycling properly; but fortunately I had a spare (of course) and the Boy's TM Glock also served me very well.  I managed to get all my mags leak free so was well stocked with 6.  Also the Double Eagle was throwing out .2s bang on 349FPS, and won me a few lovely kills, one of which was the 14 year old whose eye level was the same as the partially opened window of the delivery van - I got him from the far end of the building under the tail of the Choppa.

 

 

The day was certainly better than I expected - as a Woodland player mainly - and getting game play from 10am to 6pm (including a lunch break) was great.  Now i am resisting the urge to buy a better pistol and a tracer unit. 

 

My face and legs however look like a dot to dot picture, and the guy behind the counter of my local shop wondered what had happened.   Hopefully they will go down before the big family Easter Dinner tomorrow LOL.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 1 by Dan Robinson

[Colin Allen]

This morning, the lad and I set out for Splatoon in Essex.  On this occasion, we were accompanied by the lad's girlfriend, Charlie, whose first taste of airsoft this was to be, although she has been shooting real guns since the age of eight.

The safe zone was a little less busy than usual, probably due to people having family commitments, with probably around 70 players in attendance.

After getting everything ready and showing Charlie how airsoft guns work, which involved her shooting the lad a few times, we set off for the first game, with me using the Ares VZ58.

This involved each team collecting as many as possible of a number of bombs that were spread across the site and transporting them to their helicopter; we had the grey helicopter and the yellow team had the black helicopter.  Teams could also raid their opponents' helicopter and steal their bombs.  Everyone had infinite regens on their start point.

Setting off into the middle field, I very quickly found a bomb, which I transported to the helicopter.  Returning to the middle field, I found another, while a visit to the lower field yielded yet another bomb!  

 

Round about this time, I encountered the lad and Charlie, who were heading back to the safe zone as the goggles he had bought for her were steaming up.  I offered my spare Bolle Tracker goggles, which proved to be much better, with even the prescription inserts being ok for her.

At this point, we had quite a few bombs, so I decided to join my colleagues in the container village between the two helicopters, who were attempting to both prevent the enemy stealing our bombs while, at the same time, attempting to steal theirs.  This turned into a really good fight between and in the buildings, with us eventually pushing the yellow players back to their helicopter, although a stout defence prevented us stealing any of their bombs.

When the whistle went, we had eleven bombs and the yellow team had a mighty...two.

After bombing up, we started a fallback game, in which we were the attackers, with rolling regens on a marshal, while the defenders had a single life in each of the four zones that we were playing through.  We cleared the first zone rather handily, but lost a bit of time checking for concealed yellow players (each defending player in the zone after the attackers calls it clear adds a 30 second time penalty).  The same thing happened in the second zone and we then pushed into the first half of the container village field, which is usually very hard to break into.  It proved to be so again, but a determined rush and some good suppressive fire saw us reach the black helicopter and begin to push into the structures.  We reached the mid point fairly quickly and called it clear, only for an opponent to pop up from the middle of a stack of tractor tyres.

Breaking through the final section proved to be rather tricky, until one of the UK Airsoft Ladies made a daring run for the grey helicopter, which she reached, ending the game.  At some point in this zone, I was shot in the back by my own team.

After taking luncheon (cold pizza; yum!) this game was reversed.  In the first zone, now using the Umarex/S&T ARX160, I took up an advanced defensive position on the right, from where I amassed a number of kills before again being shot in the back by one of my teammates.  Falling back to the second zone, I took up a slightly less advanced position in the hope that would prevent me being team killed again; it worked!  After taking out a number of enemy players, I was shot by an attacker who I am certain I hit as well; however, he did not seem to agree.

The final two zones were hard fought and my final position on the edge of the woods was lost when a grenade aimed at my colleagues behind the blue car went off within 5m of me.  

The yellow team reached the grey helicopter in a time that was about two minutes faster than our attempt.  Boo!

After bombing up, we played a game where the attackers (the yellow team) attacking from the far end of the site, initially had to get a bomb to one of the helicopters; they had infinite regens on a marshal.  As the defenders, we could deploy in the two zones of the container village and had three lives.  Once they had achieved this, the game reset, with everyone having one life and the attackers needing to transport the bomb to the other helicopter.

It has to be said that our defence was awesome!  We held the attackers away from both helicopters for the duration of the game, although they made several bold incursions into the container village, almost splitting our team apart a couple of times.  I went through five and a half magazines in this game, which is very unusual for me, and was dropping back to the regen to load up when the game timed out.

A fair number of yellow players left after this game, so the sides were rebalanced and we took our turn as the attackers.  It is very difficult to break into the container village from the middle field but, after what seemed like a rather long time, we managed to do so, whittling down the enemy and seizing the black helicopter.  However, our bomb carrier was nowhere to be found!  After about five minutes, we finally tracked him down and got the bomb to the black helicopter.  Unfortunately, only 14 seconds were left on the clock, so the game ended at that point as a win for us.

Overall, it was a very good day, with some excellent play by both sides and well designed games.

Charlie loved it and wants to get a pair of Revision Sawflys with prescription inserts so that she can play again; she has become an airsofter!

Weapons used:

Me:
Ares VZ58 (No! It isn't an AK!)
Umarex/S&T ARX160
ASG Commander XP18 (CO2)

The lad:
E&L AK74MN
CYMA AKS74U
ASG Commander XP18 (CO2)
Dynatex grenade (x2)

Charlie:
G&G GR4 G26 (Well, it used to be, but it has transitioned into something else)



 

Edited April 1 by Colin Allen

[Impulse]

Today was more of a testing day, but it turned out to be fantastic. Was at Worthing Airsoft for the first game of the year where I... actually felt like the weather was nice. Sun was out and it was about 15 celcius for most of the day, which was absolute bliss. Camo paint on my face again to avoid wearing too much and sweating and fogging up my glasses and it worked well as I didn't get all sweaty at all. The only downside was that it was pretty damn breezy with average wind speeds in the late 20s of mph, so every shot I took was curving pretty nastily. Ah well, it's all good practice. I took a small armoury to the site today with both of my MWSs, my HPA VSR and my KJW m700 as a "if nothing works, I have this" option. The plan was to use my AAP-01 (which hasn't been shot in about a year) and the HPA VSR, as I felt like sniping and I needed to make sure it was shooting well now that it has a 303mm inner barrel with the rest of the 510mm bull barrel filled with foam like a massive 200mm internal suppressor. Used some Silverback foam that fitted perfectly and came in two different internal diameters, so it was large, small, large, small etc. to get the best effect.

 

Oh boy did it work well. I played for the morning, which was one massive game with a LOT of objectives all over the site and that went on until lunch. Took a conservative position under a holly bush overlooking the path, the exact same one I took last game day, and the results were similar. I hit a lot of people and singlehandedly held back about 7 or 8 very determined players who kept coming back to the checkpoint to try and get me. Apparently they were getting rather irate at me and were saying "oh I'm hitting him and he's not taking it" as one of my friends was also there (on the other team) and laughing because he knew where I was and knew they wouldn't be hitting from where they were. Shooting into a holly bush is a pain in the arse, but shooting out of a holly bush is a lot easier. Anyway, I eventually got taken out as I was completely surrounded, couldn't relocate and eventually got shot from behind, so I went back to respawn and rejigged my mags. Empties in the belt kit pouch, full ones in the stock pouch for easy access (I'd gone through 2 of my 6 mags in that spot). I returned and everyone was huddling around our base as they suspected the other team were going to attack, so I decided to crawl into a very sneaky spot under a fallen tree as I wasn't about to push out with my bolt action while all the AEGs were playing passive. It worked out super well as I got a whole load of people from that spot too, including one of my friends who walked right past me and I shot him in the ankle with my pistol. It was amusing as I was taking people out while the enemy team were pretty much on top of me, but nobody could hear the VSR. I was pleasantly surprised that nobody heard the two GBB shots I took with the pistol either. The only frustrating part was that the enemy team did eventually take our base and stole our objectives, then didn't take the hits when I shot them in the back as they were running out with them. It's frustrating, but I'm not going to start going on a tirade about cheating because honestly they probably didn't feel it. Running in the same direction as my shots were coming in and a few of them were backpack hits, so while I don't blame them for it, it's still frustrating. Oh well. My friend eventually came up again and shot me in the back (flanked all the way around the site to get me ), so I headed back to respawn again. I'd gone through about 4 of my mags in total, but the game was basically over. Patrolled around a bit more but didn't shoot anyone else. Was a very fun game, but the spawns were a bit too close together as my only criticism.

 

After lunch I set up the two MWSs, the mk12 as a DMR and the retro build CQBR as a regular rifle. The mk12 needs a bit of work as it wasn't too happy, so I'm going to try a unicorn rubber and sixG nub next, but the retro CQBR build was absolutely phenomenal. Very happy with that and not touching it now. Also I finally zeroed the red dot on my AAP; it's going to take some getting used to as I've always shot with iron sights on pistols, but it's ridiculously easy to shoot accurately with a zeroed red dot on a pistol. I finally get what all those guntubers were talking about when it comes to red dots on pistols...

 

Also, I heard that there were some issues with hit taking through the day. There were some ghillies on the other team with HPA m4s who were laughable in their hit taking, one of them got lit up by an LMG in front of a marshall and didn't call it. We've had similar issues in the past, so what this has caused now is that at Worthing Airsoft they're going to change the rules for ghillies; now if you want to use a ghillie, you have to have a bolt action or DMR. Personally, I really like this rule and could talk for days on why I do, but that's for another time. I remember I had a chat with @Hatchet last game day at Worthing about this exact topic, so... there we go. Problem solved  

 

Really looking forward to the next few months of airsoft. The weather is getting better, it's lighter for longer, the sun is higher in the sky and the weight is still coming off. 11kg down from the start of the year and I'm really feeling it. Could've easily played all day today as I wasn't at all tired despite still being pretty overweight (about 35kg more to lose), but I had to set up my MWSs, partially because the short retro MWS build is coming with me to the 'Namsoft games coming up in a few months. Roll on next game day already!

Edited April 7 by Impulse