Operation Scorpio Event? - New Event near Gloucester?

[Tuton]

Hello All, first discussion post though I've visited the forums pretty much daily for the past few years.

 

My usual group have decided that we're most likely not attending our usual "large airsoft gathering" that takes place each year, and have been looking at alternatives. We've found one, linked below, titled Operation Scorpio taking place in early May.

 

From what we can gather there's 2 elements, gameplay wise, a tournament which we're not too fussed about, as well as an ongoing scenario across 5 days of airsoft. Definitely doesn't appear to be a Milsim event, but as a large ongoing scenario type event, it sounds interesting.

 

https://www.operation-scorpio.net/

 

The issue is this appears to have not been run before from what I've found, which raises some concerns around it. I wanted to reach out here to see if anyone's in the know about this event, or even involved of it's setup and management. It's quite hard to judge the scale of it with some of the information on the above site, so any information would be appreciated. Also eager to hear what people think about it in general.

 

tl;dr - New Airsoft Event this year near Gloucester, does anyone know anything about it?

 

PS - I've had a search for the keywords in the forums and not found anything so far!

Edited January 3 by Tuton
Added clarification on my search so far

[Cannonfodder]

Welcome. This is the first I've heard of that event and as you posted there's bugger all info out there about it which to me is concerning. They do have a faceache page but it doesn't have much more information than the website

[Tuton]

4 hours ago, Cannonfodder said:

Welcome. This is the first I've heard of that event and as you posted there's bugger all info out there about it which to me is concerning. They do have a faceache page but it doesn't have much more information than the website

Many thanks for the welcome! And aye I share that same apprehension - the mention that the Tournament side of it has a £100k prize pot is quite baffling to me.

 

I'm following their Fak-e book as well, so will need to see if anything else comes to light. I have seen that Airsoft Action magazine have made a few posts about them though, which means they're not necessarily lying about the sponsorships

 

Info here!

https://www.airsoftaction.net/operation-scorpio-event-update/

[Cannonfodder]

12 hours ago, Tuton said:

the mention that the Tournament side of it has a £100k prize pot is quite baffling to me.

Tbh that was one of the red flags for me. It's a hefty sum which I'd want reassuring they've already got set aside as hoping to take it from ticket sales is a huge risk. While it's a huge incentive to sign up the ticket cost is going to put alot of people off, I mean you could get a week in the sun for 2 for the same price, so what happens if they don't raise enough? Also having a prize that big is almost guaranteed to mean some will be pushing the boundaries of fair play

[Skullchewer]

"Professional airsoft tournament"

[Cannonfodder]

"Killer......sickest....."

[Von Kirk]

Decided to have a look into this as have a mate near Cheltenham and though it might be interesting to check out having read through as much as I could on their site this event seems weird to say the least. The price of standard play entry seems a bit of a red flag due to just how low it is £100 for 5 days of airsoft, 4 nights of camping and other entertainment, that's £20 a day, you'd be lucky to find a site that would run a standard 6-8hr game for that price let alone a big event. 

 

Reading through the tournament rules though is where this get wild to me though, as while it is possible that a team could win the £100,000 the odds are on the impossible side, this isn't a simple knockout style tournament winner takes the cash. To quickly (as possible) summarize how the 'tournament' works (as best I understand it) there are 10 'heats' over 2 days, these heats are more like challenges though test your aim, team building, etc. where teams can score a maximum of 10 points per 'heat' (100 points total), at the end of the second day the top 4 scoring teams will enter into a knockout style playoff. Now the team that wins the playoffs doesn't instantly win the money they only have a chance to win it, the winning team then needs to play against the 5th - 15th place teams (so a team of 8 against a possible team of 80) if the team of 8 complete all the objectives in the final game they win the £100,000, if the opposing team of 80 wins the money is split among them. However the team of 80 can only get a cut of that money up to £1250 and they must survive to get anything so if only 20 people from that team of 80 survives only 20 x £1250 = £25,000 is handed out. HOWEVER if the team of 8 completes some of the objectives then the £1250 each player receives is decreased for each objective they complete e.g. if there are 5 objectives and 3 are completed and 20 players from the team of 80 survive and each objective knock off £250 then the winnings handed out will be (20 x (1250 - (3 x 250))) = £10,000. Feel free to double check this with the website https://www.operation-scorpio.net/programme as it took me quite a while to wrap my head around it so may well have missed something but that was as best I could understand it. 

 

So the only way £100,000 is getting handed out is if one team of 8 takes on and defeats 80 players or 80 players successfully hold x number of objectives without a single player going down. 

[DanBow]

well done for making some sense of that! I'll be watching the fallout fun from afar!

[Colin Allen]

They claim to be able to host more than 3000 players and state: "Presentation will be a memorable time, we will start by issuing the Grants to all those sites and retailers who are Team Sponsors. Over £600,000 worth of support could be issued to help build the Airsoft Industry."

I suspect that this is going to end in tears and recriminations.

[DanBow]

It's a shame that we are so prepared for it to fail. This is exactly the kind of thing we, as a sport/hobby, need to get us some positive media attention. Maybe lessons will be learnt for the next one, or we might just be surprised how well run and organised it is! I suspect pigs might fly but it would be nice!

[Colin Allen]

13 minutes ago, DanBow said:

It's a shame that we are so prepared for it to fail. This is exactly the kind of thing we, as a sport/hobby, need to get us some positive media attention. Maybe lessons will be learnt for the next one, or we might just be surprised how well run and organised it is! I suspect pigs might fly but it would be nice!

We may end up being pleasantly surprised and eating humble pie; however, this venture gives the impression of being somewhat overoptimistic and likely to disappoint.

When claims of rewards on this scale are being made by a team who seem to have suddenly appeared on the scene, a healthy level of scepticism is required.

[Von Kirk]

45 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

They claim to be able to host more than 3000 players and state: "Presentation will be a memorable time, we will start by issuing the Grants to all those sites and retailers who are Team Sponsors. Over £600,000 worth of support could be issued to help build the Airsoft Industry."

I suspect that this is going to end in tears and recriminations.

The underlying company running this is Project Zodiac Limited, they have a website you can visit https://www.projectzodiac.org/about, it seems the idea is to run large scale airsoft and paintball events and then funnel that money back into the industry, its in theory a nice idea but I question given how low some of the ticket prices are what sort of money they're making on this event that they can break even let alone help fund Airsoft and Paintball events for the next 2 years. 

Edited January 4 by Von Kirk

[Colin Allen]

33 minutes ago, Von Kirk said:

The underlying company running this is Project Zodiac Limited, they have a website you can visit https://www.projectzodiac.org/about, it seems the idea is to run large scale airsoft and paintball events and then funnel that money back into the industry, its in theory a nice idea but I question given how low some of the ticket prices are what sort of money they're making on this event that they can break even let alone help fund Airsoft and Paintball events for the next 2 years. 

Interesting!

They state that they provide sites with "Up to £2500 Training Bursary to cover mandatory training of site marshals"; where is the money coming from?

At the moment, this all seems to be vapourware.

[Cannonfodder]

3 hours ago, Von Kirk said:

Words

Thanks for breaking it down for us, tbh I hadn't looked at the details of it. This puts me off even more as to me it's a bit misleading to post the prize as £100k when in reality that's the whole prize fund.

 

1 hour ago, DanBow said:

It's a shame that we are so prepared for it to fail. This is exactly the kind of thing we, as a sport/hobby, need to get us some positive media attention. Maybe lessons will be learnt for the next one, or we might just be surprised how well run and organised it is! I suspect pigs might fly but it would be nice!

Unfortunately those of us who've been in the hobby for a while have seen many events touted as being the best ever and game changers, only for 99.9% of them to turn out to be a total clusterfuck. If this does turn out to be in the 0.1% I'll happily admit to being wrong but I won't hold my breath.

21 minutes ago, Colin Allen said:

 "Up to £2500 Training Bursary to cover mandatory training of site marshals"

Training for marshals? 😂😂😂😂 Is there anyone on here who has been a marshal and ever had any training?

Edited January 4 by Cannonfodder
Bloody auto correct

[JimFromHorsham]

Well it all sounds very exciting , my spideysense says it’s all smoke and mirrors though to try and generate some sort of kickstart investment with the illusion that there is plenty of money in the pot already .

[Colin Allen]

38 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

Training for marshals? 😂😂😂😂 Is there anyone on here who has been a marshal and ever had any training?

Mandatory training!
I marshalled at two different sites for three different site owners; I did not receive any training in anything.

[Cannonfodder]

From what I've seen over the years it that the only qualification needed is to be mates with the site owners 

[Colin Allen]

35 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

From what I've seen over the years it that the only qualification needed is to be mates with the site owners 

Strangely, I was not mates with any of the ones I marshalled for; I regarded the first (a husband and wife team) with contempt and tolerated the others.

[Shamal]

I think that Airsoft is a game played for fun and enjoyment.

By offering a monetary prize those reasons go out of the window and it becomes a competition which some players will be desperate to win at any costs. We have all seen instances of "I hit you mate","no you didn't mate". Can you imagine how this sort of scenario would be escalated if I large prize payout was at stake.

Competition is ok in the case of putting your skills to the test in a static comp by hitting targets and trying to beat the best time and accuracy of other players and the winner gets the shiny new gun.

 

I think I would be keeping a good distance from this event.

 

[Colin Allen]

31 minutes ago, Shamal said:

I think that Airsoft is a game played for fun and enjoyment.

By offering a monetary prize those reasons go out of the window and it becomes a competition which some players will be desperate to win at any costs. We have all seen instances of "I hit you mate","no you didn't mate". Can you imagine how this sort of scenario would be escalated if I large prize payout was at stake.

Competition is ok in the case of putting your skills to the test in a static comp by hitting targets and trying to beat the best time and accuracy of other players and the winner gets the shiny new gun.

 

I think I would be keeping a good distance from this event.

 

I will be surprised if this event actually happens in anything like the format proposed.  As you say, it is a terribly bad idea.

[Project Zodiac]

Hi All,

 

I am the Project Lead for this event, Craig. I have messaged the admin here to make sure I can reply in plenty of detail without breaching any rules (I don't want to be seen to be promoting Op Scorpio in this thread). 

 

You have all raised some familiar points that I am keen to address, and will do as soon as I have heard back from Admin. 

 

I can assure you this is a very real event, ran in a very different way to a traditional airsoft event. We promise to be 100% transparent with you all and will, in full detail address every point made to give complete clarity.

 

In the meantime the contact number on the website will come straight through to me if you would like to call through and discuss further (I won't post the link without admin permission, but the number is on the contact page). This is the first known thread we have discovered about our event and I am grateful for the feedback. I will be having edits made to the website to reflect your points.

 

Until then I would urge you to re look at prize fund distribution, and any of our sponsors would happily take your call to confirm their involvement I am sure.

 

Until my next post, enjoy your weekends, if it wasn't for threads like this we would not be able to build these events into what they are.

 

Craig 

Op Scorpio Project Lead 

Director Project Zodiac Limited

 

Massive thanks to Tuton for starting this thread, hope we get a good welcome ourselves 😉 

Edited January 6 by Project Zodiac

[1st commando]

I'll be honest this is looking very much like the airsoft equivalent of Fyre festival . 

Just from a numbers point of view  .

 

You need 1000 paying players just to get the primary prize money from admissions and that's without taking into account the rest of the event costs which for something of this size would be substantial.

 

The website gives no real detail but just one line bullet points of the week.

 

The website also shows  a fire service presence on site for the week which i am highly dubious of having worked with blue light services for various events and organisations.

 

No information on the people running the event or even their identity , no limited company registered that i can find , no indication that the amount of interest is actaully there to make the event viable at this stage.

 

I do not envy the organisers trying to get this started and appreciate the effort it takes to get this kind of event set up . However without anything more solid I just don't see it as viable.

 

I am surprised at some of the "sponsors" of this event as if it does turn out to be a fyre festival type affair there are some big, well trusted names that would need to ask themselves some very serious questions down the line   

[Cannonfodder]

@Project Zodiac what experience do you have in running airsoft events? I ask as the website and your post here suggest about ⅘ of fuck all.

[1st commando]

I have actually since found company information for Project Zodiac should anyone wish to look 

 

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/14777537

[Project Zodiac]

😢  I really don't want to do this...

 

Firstly guys, I still haven't had a response from admin, so I still feel limited in my response.

 

@1st commando while your mathematics are spot on... you actually added up the wrong ticket 🤦‍♂️. To enter the competition and be in with a chance of winning the £100k you need to be a Participant. This is a £385 ticket and there will be 8 members per team. I am sure you can work out that we can more than cover the prize fund with 40 teams (320 paying players). It really depends how greedy we are as event organisers, which isn't very. 

 

The £100 ticket you refer to in your equation is an access ticket. For those who want a longer weekend of all the things they enjoy and love about airsoft. Irrespective of wether they view this as a sport, hobby or just a reason to be out making friends.

 

Company registration details are at the bottom of every page of our website. We are sorry you didn't see them, but this is a legal trading requirement. 

 

Project Zodiac has been set up in 2023 to promote, build and protect the armed combative sports industry. Running events is our way of giving back to the players and the community as a whole. Our sponsors are supporting us because they share the same vision  as we do, and wish to build a focal point in the airsoft calendar that represents all. Ask them.

 

@CannonfodderAs you know, this is our first airsoft event. But the team here manage events all year around and know how to provide for a large group of people. Sponsors and supporters of the event are shaping the "airsoft" theme and together we can assure you fresh approach to an airsoft event that gives back and reflects the requirements of the community. 

 

I take whole responsibility for any misinterpretation of the pricing, price fund distribution or any other conflict. But I urge you to simply read through and look again. We are having edits being made to reflect your feedback and make things clearer. 

 

Guys, airsoft is always under threat, especially right now with social media purges. We must stick together as a community and encourage each other. Even if not ourselves, then other event organisers who are trying to support the hobby that you all partake. 

 

I will as promised let you know when our next web update is live but in the mean time, if you do have any questions please do post them here because I am sure your not the only one asking it. If you'd prefer you can call in on 07780 634 559 and someone will happily take your call and answer your questions.

 

I truly wish you all well. 

 

As a #airsoft-forums.uk exclusive: We are holding an onsite media day within the next 10 days. You can expect a lot more from us after that 👍