Echelon Airsoft (Kent)

[PureSilver]

Format shamelessly stolen from @Asomodai.

EXTREMELY LENGTHY REVIEW.

 

THIS SITE IS NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED.

 

Site Name: Echelon Airsoft

Contact Details: [email protected]

Website Address: https://echelonairsoft.co.uk/

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

Site Address: 19-20 Thamesgate Shopping Centre, DA11 0AU

 

Hello all! Having now been to Echelon Airsoft's site twice, I figured it was time for this relatively new site (only open since 05/08/21) to have a review on AFUK. I'd heard mixed to negative things about the site in advance, mostly complaints about a lack of player enthusiasm in pushing up. @blobface and I played the Wednesday evening games on 18/08/21 and 29/09/21.

 

The Site:

 

Echelon is a medium-sized indoor CQB site, based in a defunct Debenhams in the presumably also defunct Thamesgate Shopping Centre, literally 30 feet from Gravesend train station. This is exceptionally convenient for London-based players and likely for others too; the station is 20 minutes from St. Pancras approximately twice an hour with off-peak day returns £19.30. There are a number of car parks (Gravesend station, Thamesgate Multistorey and Parrock Street) available for those travelling by car. Providing a size comparison to other CQB sites isn't that easy, but I roughly estimate it at about a third of the size of The Mall.

 

Echelon currently offer multiple games a week;

• Wednesday evening games, from 18:55-22:00 (safe zone opens at 18:00). These are lights on, but the lights can be turned off if all the players agree.
• Thursday evening games, also from 18:55-22:00 (safe zone opens at 18:00). These are night games with the lights turned off - expect to encounter some players (though not the majority) with NV.
• Saturday day games, from 11:00-17:00 (safe zone opens at 10:00).
• Sunday day games, from 09:30-15:00 (safe zone opens at 08:30).
• Private games. You'll have to ask about booking those.
• Pistol and shotgun games. These run less frequently.

The site is semi-auto only, with an energy limit of 350FPS (1.14J). It's not specified if that's actually in Joules if you're not using 0.20g BBs, but you should assume that it is; the maximum BB weight is 0.32g. No sniper rifles, DMRs, or box or drum magazines are permitted, except for drum magazines on pistols. Pyro use is limited to BFGs and Mk. Vs, and banned altogether on the ground floor because it trips the alarms of an adjacent bank. The site's in pretty good condition - clean, no rubbish or trip or hanging hazards - barring a few holes knocked in interior walls to improve gameplay. You'll probably want to bring a torch and maybe a tracer unit - there's no natural light and a few dark spaces even in the day games.

 

Good:

 

Location: You're not going to find a more convenient site for London players, or really anyone that can readily access a train. The site's front door is quite literally 30' from Gravesend station's exit.

 

Game Options: The option to play an evening game after work is a much under-appreciated option for players who don't want to sacrifice half their precious weekend. Bluntly, given how much more strenuous CQB is than woodsball you may well find four hours to be just right - my friends and I were definitely tired out by the end of the evening. Night games are rarer than you'd think; regular night games indoors are almost unheard of - these are an excellent opportunity to flex your £2,000 NV, or ruin NV players' investment with a 500,000lm torch you got off AliExpress for £20.

 

Site Layout: At present three floors of the site are largely open - the ground shop floor and warehouse second floor, which are more open with obstacles and cover breaking up the spaces, and the office third floor, which is a tight maze of small rooms and corridors. The floors were played concurrently the first time I played (half the players downstairs, half upstairs) and consecutively the second time; I imagine this depends on the number of players on the day. I don't know if Echelon plan to utilise the first floor in the future, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do, as in the six weeks between our two games smaller areas of the ground floor had already been opened up. Engagement distances are typical of CQB, ranging from bad-breath range on the third floor to up to 10-15m depending on angles elsewhere. There are obstacles to use as cover, the rooms can be accessed in multiple ways, there are little tunnels for sneaking around and the site has been carefully configured to avoid choke points (or at least I didn't experience any the second day) which means minimal time wasted stacked up on doorways. The respawn points are well placed - you won't spend more than a couple of minutes walking there and back. While the weekend games are apparently rammed the weekday ones are pleasantly lightly attended: I'd estimate maybe 30 players our second day, which was Goldilocks levels of just right. The site could easily accommodate 50-60 players if the two zones are played concurrently.

 

Safe Zone: Hosted in the old café, it's right inside the front door. Clean, well lit and opens straight into the ground floor - no hike to the safe zone like you had in the The Mall. Reasonably large (comfortable capacity about 50 players, I should think) with plug sockets, lots of chairs and plenty of horizontal surfaces. Actual plumbed toilets, clean (and seemingly repeatedly cleaned during the day) with soap and paper towels.

 

Safety: Solid without being over the top; the usual rules apply. The safety brief was brief, concise, covered all the salient points and was given in the safe zone where people can actually hear everything. No "humour" barring an off-colour "Allahu Akhbar" suggestion during a later bomb-objective game. All guns are chronographed at the beginning of the day and no loaded guns or dry-firing are permitted in the safe zone. I didn't see marshals doing random spot checks or checking regulators (there are more than the usual number of HPA guns), but I have no doubt if concerns were raised they'd be willing to do so, because...

 

Marshalling: Impeccable. The marshalls were polite, patrolled the site, and including player marshals were available in abundance. They monitored the team balance and didn't hesitate to rebalance if things were uneven. There is a three-strikes rule but zero tolerance for bullshittery: the marshals told us that by the end of our second day 67 players had been banned over the life of the site, which averages out to about two per game day. I'm sure the bans are weeding out the crap players; I think a considerable number of players were banned on our first day and one on our second. Other players might find this alarming - I find it reassuring. This leads directly to...

 

Playerbase: On our second day the players were uniformly excellent - perhaps the best I've ever played with. Aggressive in pushing up, called their hits, minimal overshooting and very, very little bitching even when players had copped a couple of bleeding welts. I didn't have a single negative interaction in the entire day. This was an improvement over the first day, where the players were generally good but marred by a couple of Teflon terminators. This is not a milsim site and you're not going to encounter much in the way of multiglam geardos (night game possibly excepted), but you will encounter a few speedsofters, although of the nice kind rather than the knee-slide overshooting SpeedQB kind (of which I think at least five got banned during our first day and won't be missed).

 

Turnaround Time: You'll get 5-10 minutes in the safe zone between games to reload, no more, and certainly no finding half your team standing around chatting while the rest of you are getting absolutely mullered in-game.

 

Average:

 

Value: £25.00 for an evening game (£50.00 including rental equipment) and £35.00 for a day game (£60.00 including rental equipment) will seem steep to players used to paying £25.00 for woodsball and a free lunch. However, it would be deeply unfair not to stress the excellent value this represents compared to other urban or CQB sites, especially given that London players won't need to wake up at the crack of dawn or return in the dead of night to attend. The prices are comparable to the other (now-defunct) London sites, which were much smaller and in much worse condition.

 

Site Shop: Limited to what you'll need on the day; BBs, propellant, pyro, cold drinks and snacks, and complimentary battery charging. No hot food, no guns that I could see. Card payments are accepted without issue, even for low-value transactions. While they don't seem to have any guns to sell you...

 

UKARA Membership: Echelon are UKARA-registered and able to provide you with a UKARA-registered defence.

 

Game Modes: These aren't hugely innovative (almost all find object, bring it to place, keep it there) but frankly they work well. There's not really any need to create complex objectives for players to misunderstand, and not really the room for them anyway. What you get is a simple, coherent team objective which leads to you all getting to shoot a lot of people; what more could you ask for?

 

Bad:

 

I really struggled to think of a downside that personally affected me (and was the site's fault, unlike my temperamental AUG) but I am aware of a couple of teething issues that you should probably be aware of.

 

Cancellation Communication: I saw on Facebook that a few weeks ago some players had turned up to find the site not open for business; the game had been cancelled owing to a lack of bookings. You should definitely book if you intend to play to help the site gauge whether it's worth running the game day, and so they can communicate to you if the game day is not going to happen.

 

Shop Issue: I also saw on Facebook that either on the first game day, or within the first couple of game days, there had been a major spat between the third party engaged to run the shop and the site management. That lead to the shop packing up halfway through the day and taking its rental equipment home with them. I expect this won't be repeated but it does speak to a certain lack of organisation.

 

Conclusion:

 

I think the second day might have been one of the best day's (well, evening's) airsoft I've ever played. As more of the site opens up and any remaining bad eggs are weeded out I expect the site and play to improve even further. I'd wholeheartedly recommend Echelon to anyone that wants to play some close-quarters CQB and I'll certainly be back.

 

Bullpup Watch: My AUG, I think that was about it sadly. On the first day there was an AEG AUG too.

 

Other Site Reviews

CAMO CQB Skirmish Arena (Essex)

Invicta Battlefield Black Site (Kent)

[Hrimfaxi]

Appreciate the effort to type that, nice review.  It's on my list of new sites to visit, sooner rather than later as I suspect it won't be around for many years.  

[Cr0-Magnon]

Thanks for the detailed review. Last I heard having a drum mag with a pistol was a contentious issue. They've now confirmed they allow them?

[PureSilver]

On 30/09/2021 at 17:03, Hrimfaxi said:

Appreciate the effort to type that, nice review. 

 

On 01/10/2021 at 12:13, Cr0-Magnon said:

Thanks for the detailed review.

You are both more than welcome, it is always a pleasure to be able to give a genuinely favourable review, especially since people generally only leave ones if they’ve had a truly terrible experience.

 

On 01/10/2021 at 12:13, Cr0-Magnon said:

Last I heard having a drum mag with a pistol was a contentious issue. They've now confirmed they allow them?

There was at least one player the second time we played with an HPA-tapped drum in a pistol. I didn’t examine it closely, but I think it was a TAPP-modified WE drum, probably on a Hi-Capa or Glock. I personally have a violent dislike of such things but he seemed to be using it responsibly.

 

ETA: Their site does go into more detail, in fact their Rules page is usefully comprehensive. The weapon magazines section reads "Box and drum mags are not allowed (unless on an HPA pistol)."

[MrWilson]

Nice review thanks dude!

Drum mags are allowed on all pistols  We tend to allow drum mags on other types of weapons if they are lower capped drums. Always trying to improve here so its good you didnt list anything that effects gameplay/safety.

 

The cancellation issue was my bad. Two people who booked via a message instead of our booking system turned up I completely forgot and persoanlly appologised to them and offered a free game as an appology. They now have a good joke about it with there inner circle.. which doesnt bother me good for them .

 

As you can expect the site costs an absolute fortune to run thats how we fell out with the shop. The other James wanted to discuss a possibilty for them to pay alittle standing fee to be on site every day and they outright refused and got their knickers in a twist. It is what it is and I got no hard feelings against those guys so good luck to them! 

 

If anyone has any suggestions shoot em my way I'll improve