SE Tour Review: Skirmish Wycombe (Buckinghamshire)

[Asomodai]

Site Name: Skirmish Wycombe

Contact details: 01494 578077

Website Address: https://skirmishwycombeairsoft.com
Facebook Page: Skirmish Wycombe Airsoft | Facebook

Site Address: Fryers Farm Lane, High Wycombe HP14 3NP

 

The last true long standing site close to London that I had never been to. @Albiscuit and I were going to go to Red 1 Oblivion, which fell through so decided to dust off the old reviews and give Skirmish Wycombe a visit. We attended on 30/01/2022.

 

Skirmish Wycombe are usually fully booked and run every week switching between Saturdays and Sundays. It's a paintball site which is also used for Airsoft. It's a fairly long running site. 

 

Small Woodland site which has nice variation with regards to elevation with a valley running through a third of the site and elevated precipice above it. Short/Medium/Long range engagement distances. Foliage is both low and high but hardly any at head height so there is enough visibility for bolt action users and not so great for the taller person. There are plenty of earthworks and man made structures (None of which are particularly complex and only one small elevated building.)

 

Good:

 

Playing Area: It is quite a small site but it's nice and varied, despite being a paintball site first, the zones are opened up nicely and run into each-other for Airsoft ranges. As explained before there are lots of manmade buildings and earthworks, though maybe something a bit more elaborate could make this a truly excellent. 

 

Turn around time: Pretty short, you certainly get your moneys worth, they get lots of games in. 

 

Safe Zone: Small area, though it looks like it could be expanding soon, everything is covered and was big enough for the small crowd that attended. Park bench style seating and tables. Digital signage for the food stall, Battery charging available. It was good overall, but it did feel a little "tired", could do with some sprucing up. 

 

Safety Brief: Short and sweet. Covered most things. 

 

Food: Pulled pork with BBQ sauce and for us non pork/veggies, freshly cut Mediterranean vegetables with Mac and Cheese. It was stonkingly good food for an airsoft site, and is included with the £30 entry fee. Seems to be cooked on site. The tuck shop had digital boards with the prices on, they do freshly made milkshakes (Shakeway style made with different sweets etc) Had what appeared to be syrup style fizzy drink dispensers. So for Food and Drink, this site is first class. All the more impressive that it's in-house. No food trucks here. 

 

Shop: Really good shop! A large and wide selection of RIFs and pistols. They had an LCT Val, WE Makarov, G&G GK5C, F2000's. Really interesting selection. Prices are high like at most on-site shops. But not many places have this breadth of selection.

 

Game Modes: Mostly simple, but effective, usual domination/zombie/4 way round robin games. Have a nice looking bomb setup. 

 

Average: 

 

Value: £30 is quite a lot to ask for when the site is pretty small, but the food and turn around time does make up for it. 

 

Clientele: Very young, lots of rentals and new people to the sport with very few older gents. They were friendly enough, but behaviour in the field was very suspect.

 

Toilets: In an elevated shack in the car park, not an ideal position. It has real porcelain which is usually a good rating by default, but they were a little dirty and stank quite badly! I think the waste is stored underneath and removed periodically. 

 

Car Park/Entrance: Small mud car park, sign posted at the entrance but you need to follow signs for Fryers Farm thereafter and not mistakenly come off the other junctions within. Car Park is nearly right at the end of the main track after you see a gate that says "Staff only". It hadn't rained much recently, but I can imagine it getting slippery up to the nearby elevated safe zone.

 

Chrono: Mandatory and everything was tagged. Usual 350 FPS for AEGs, shotguns and pistols. 450 for DMR and 500 for BASR. Would get a "Good" but Al overheard a marshal ask another marshal

 

"This guys rifle is shooting over 350 on one chrono and 320 on another, what should I do?"

 

"Go by the reading that lets them play". 

 

They also required me to chrono by .2's so they do not account for joule creep on heavier ammo. 

 

Bad: 

 

Hit taking: This was the massive bugbear of the day. In the morning there were some poor hit takers, mostly from frustrated players who couldn't break through enemy lines. We really enjoyed the mornings games despite this and were glad to carry on without grumbling. I made a prophetic comment at lunch (As long as the hit taking doesn't get any worse, I would consider this site fantastic, we'll see what happens!)

 

The Afternoon was a complete shitshow for all three games. Two almost whole site games fighting over a single objective, there were about 4-5 grey hooded rentals, none of which would take their hits, you could see bb's pinging off them, they held important buildings which overlooked the main objective and wouldn't budge. I went up to one at the end of a game and said how well they held up and if they died at all? "Nah mate". It was almost comical how it was the grey hooded players that didn't take hits. It was a classic stereotype.

 

On my own side there were other hooded rentals who would get shot, take the hit and instead of walking back to spawn 3 minutes away, would go behind a hedge and spawn straight back in. 

 

I had to exclaim to many rentals on my side that dead men don't talk as they kept trying to relay information to me about enemy whereabouts after they had been shot or asking me where I was shot from when I was walking back to spawn.

 

Marshalling: I was tempted to put this in "Average", there are a number of marshal's, but only one appeared to have any experience or clout, and was looked to for advice by the others on a consistent basis. Considering how many people were complaining about how bad the hit taking was, I didn't see anyone get spoken to, no test shooting and no shadowing of suspect people. 

 

CEASEFIRE: In the afternoon games ceasefire was called no less then 6 times in two half hour games. Unsure as to why, some people say it was because people were walking on a footpath nearby. This needs to be sorted with maybe a proper fence etc as it killed the flow of the game (And many people would sneakily move up and into better positions from where they were when the ceasefire was called).

 

Conclusion: 

 

A really difficult one, we really like the site and we will come back to see what happens playing against different people. The morning was excellent and was great gameplay but the inaction over hit taking really killed the Afternoon for us to the point that we left slightly early deflated. It goes to say, there were roughly just as many rentals as there were experienced players.

 

We liked the informal atmosphere and the on-site facilities were great. They limit numbers as the site is rather small and the numbers were about right. I'd like to come back and see what it looks like with summer foliage. 

 

The Marshalling team need to be far more pro-active/confident in dealing and directing players, maybe some more experience would be a good idea. 

 

Bullpup Watch: T97, an Aug of some description.

 

Best Guess Map: 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Asomodai

[Albiscuit]

Despite the obvious flaws I had a great day, the rentals were easy to shoot, granted some were invincible but I felt like I was in the special forces racking up the kills ?

 

I would prefer some more marshals if there are going to be that many rentals I prefer other sites but it’s defo not one to avoid. Would happily go back if we found other places were booked or not open

And honourable mention to the safe zone. The food and coffee shop selection was great. The shop had everything you could want or need too. Just the toilets hat let it down

[Cannonfodder]

Another great review and one to avoid I think. Personally I judge a site on the quality of hit taking and how well the staff can do their jobs, everything else is secondary

[Skullchewer]

Went here for the third time today. Have had one good day here, and one BLEH! The bleh day was marred by a lot of people not taking their hits.
Today I was going alone, last minute, and it's 15 minutes from my front door, so what the hell.
Great day, everyone called their shots and great teamwork.
So it's a bit hit and miss this site.

[EDcase]

Been a few times and generally like it.  I haven't noticed any bad instances of non hit taking.

I like the terrain which has some cool options for tactical advances.

 

 

 

Edited February 7, 2022 by EDcase

[Skullchewer]

Went again today. Great day. Definitely some immortal players but they were rentals, and that's not unusual for rentals ??

Small site but very fun.