Gunman Tuddenham, Three-strikes👎

[mrfoxhound]

Dunno if its best to keep this to its own thread or for it to be moved to the relevant topic i dunno where it should go, ill let mods decide  

 

I want to start off with my original review of Gunman Airsoft Tuddenham that can be found on google reviews , 

 

Visited on the 30th , overall a good site , good marshal's and chrono practices...Unfortunately that's not what ruined the day...That was a group of 3 people who segregated themselves from the main briefs and subsequent game briefs, I had a game interaction with one who was taking the game a little too seriously and was becoming salty , this was brought up to one of the marshals but escalated throughout the rest of that game with him breaking MED causing my friend to bleed from the chin and  other subsequent nonos of airsoft calling people out for cheating  and overkilling and shooting dead players  ,on the turn around for that game all 3 singled out and  confronted my friend and mocked him  for getting hurt when he was isolated from the rest of our friend group. And i believe they decided to continue to break rules for the next game out of spite for content as they all had recording devices for there social media, the next game was a disaster resulting in re chrono for all bolt action users. the 3 group packed up and left pretty fast after game over .Its a shame  i have only heard good things about this site but it was tainted by  the small minority that don't respect what airsoft is .

 

EDIT : i always give sites 3 goes so hopefull my next two visits will be exemplary

 

Response from the owner a year ago

Sorry to here this Harry, one thing we can't do anything about other than encouragement to play better is people's integrity. The fact they went home quickly says a lot. Did you bring up the bullying behaviour with a ref?

Hope you will give us another go.

 

This was on the 30th September 2023 and i think since i have completed my 3rd visit it would be worthy of me to keep my word with the edit i made with my opinion on my other two visits and a more in depth to the first one .

The basic outline for the day at Tuddenham is two games , lunch then two games , They are usually the reverse of the first game , so for example the first game will be a point capture game in the woodland area , Then the second game, Teams switch start position and we play that same game in reverse .This is fine and is probably common all over the country for all airsoft sites. And this is where the problems start , because the site does not change all the regulars have their favourite spot that has an advantage over first timers or non regulars ,Again this is a common thing for every site and you can have them but they have to be well defined and you have to have someway of uprooting that person from that spot with either flanking way that the spot has no overwatch over or over exposure with a lack of cover so there's risk to using the position but also a reward if you can defend or use it well  , The woodland portion of the site has  minimum effort for its set up , the tyre fort is in some open ground and has only been placed there because its open ground , the other is the standard pallet constructed ''village'' just as a reference point for people to respawn. the woodland portion consists of thick bushes mainly bramble up to shoulder height and 50/50 clear view below the knee so most of the skirmish time is mostly walking thru pathway to be shot by regulars laying down hidden away in a spot, and a few funnel and choke points, and this leads to people going to the boundary limit to flank around. This leads to the problem of people just leaving the boundary area going along the the edges and popping back in to the game area, the woodland area has so much potential but is wasted with doing the minimum that is required and just leaving it very disappointing experience, 

Putting more effort and time to trim back some of the more overgrown parts of the woodland site would go along way to improving it, adding defined site limits and removing choke and funnel points with line of site blocking cover  adding better defined objective points and overall maintenance and elimination of regular favourite spots would improve the experience for that section of the site . 

The other part of the site is along the metal road and incorporates a trench system on the right and buildings incorporated in woodland on the left with containers and other assortment of cover on the right , and when people think of Tuddenham this is usually the area people associate with as the site,

This part of the site is definitely layed out better but has some shortcomings that make it disappointing , those include allowing people into the farmers field on the non building side when attacking to just ignore all the placed cover , same problem with the woodland ,the orientation of the containers in my opinion is poor and does not allow any benefit ,there just put there without any thought put in as to why they put them there. The spawn for the attacking team is in a good place , gives a reasonable time for defenders to reposition or move ,the defenders spawn tho is in a terrible position the only reason why it is there is because its opposite the attacker one and  can lead to spawn killing if the attacking team is overzealous.

 

  

Saturday 30th September 2023, is the first time our group of 4  went to Tuddenham and ill pretty much parrot what the review said 

‘good marshal's and chrono practices’ 

I generally go by site rules sites chrono ,The marshals were visible  and about, i want to say that for probably just under 80 people on site they had 5/6  marshals that day and there was a presence that if you couldn't see a marshal one was nearby. 

‘The group of 3 people who segregated themselves’

This was Ninja ghillie assassin, hutch , and a third, in the third game hutch had been called out for not taking his hits by some regulars and was getting rowdy and at one point started to stomp towards me and our little group to start a confrontation, the marshal was called and told about this but didn't follow up that's when it escalated and either him or Ninja ghillie assassin or both broke MED and caused one of our group to bleed ,  We all know getting hit is part of airsoft but losing your rag and causing assault is not and should not be tolerated, during the change over  Ninja ghillie assassin and hutch with the third stooge had closed in around one of our group and where mocking him saying ’’we wouldn't had to make you bleed if you had face protection’’ ‘’how does it feel to bleed without face protection’’ and general mocking and laughing at him , i overheard them doing that and asked them what the problem was and they got very defensive about me stopping them from mocking him , The start of the next game a similar thing started to happen to me and i got dinged at 80m on the top of my head and split open at 80m , so i call a marshal to explain that  he might be running hot for my head to be split open at 80m , the marshals response was idiotic he said ‘’i can go and pace it out and have a talk for you’’ ,and my reply was along the line of’’ if you go and have a talk with them now  you wont catch them running hot because you will give them time to change whatever needs to be changed if they are scrutinized for running hot’’, i also had my range finder with me and offered to the marshal but that was ignored , all bolt action shooters where re cronoed but hutch ,Ninja ghillie assassin and the third guy had all left early. Now this had soured our groups opinion but like the reply to the review says

 ‘’one thing we can't do anything about other than encouragement to play better is people's integrity’’

And this is true. We  were not perturbed to try the site 2 more times.

 

28th September 2024 was our second visit but we were a group of 3, we had a friend that had not play much airsoft and we were bringing him along to experience something different , chrono was fine, safety brief was fine, generally everything was going ok until half way thru the first game , at Tuddenham they have the rule 2 lives in the field then back to hard respawn and your two lives you move back 15m to the nearest friendly and respawn off of them , pretty simple , my experience with this on this occasion was woeful dreadful , first encounter i was hit walking back 15m with my hand up by my own teammate decides to light me up  ‘’dead frendy’’ my reply is i need a regen , I'm ignored and he hurriedly continues ignoring me, ok little strange not wanting to medic your own team , another teammate is behind him ‘’hey can i revive off you ‘’ the confusion on his face in the fact i was asking says to me something was wrong in the safety brief for the game rules or there was some misunderstanding either way i got my revive and carried on , later i come across a team of guys  taking cover behind a bush , i moved up and asked ‘’ where you taking fire from ?’’ one of them turned around looked me in the eyes and  ignored me,  i asked again and was ignored a second time , so i thought they are probably a team from a different country visiting and English is not there first language (on my local field we would have people that English was not there first language but we would be able to communicate thru universal hand gestures and pointing) nope,they were regulars i was just being ignored after this it was clear there was a very elitist attitude lingering ,other problems i noticed from the day were people abusing HPA with ROF people just spraying in the general direction of people and shouting take your hit  when they didn't hit anything, there was a huge lack of hit taking, it was nice when people called there hit with the first shot , 75% of the hits i got i had to shoot a second time for them to call it and over the course of the day this can be frustrating and was . The general opinion was of disappointment this time around and just the general elitist attitude of some of the regulars combined with non hit taking made it a very unenjoyable experience where doing a 3rd visit was not gonna happen .i did notice the lack in marshals this time with two playing then after lunch the two playing would swap with the two that were marshalling i have come to the opinion that you do one or the other if you are marshalling your there to marshal and not play.  

 

11th January 2025 The 3rd visit  ,Very optimistic new year maybe something has changed it was -2 throughout the day and about 60 people turned up ,to my surprise nothing had changed over the course of the day only 4 people took their hit, everyone else was either T1000 or would do the sly thing of forcing a trade and only calling hit when they have hit you the lack of visible marshals was also noticeable and raises questions over safety reasons , i went back to the safe zone about a quarter way into the third game i wasn't willing to waste money on people not taking hits pretty disappointing day .

 

After speaking to friends and others in the airsoft hobby that have been to Tuddenham it’s a pretty mixed bag, everyone mentioned the regulars bad hit taking and quality of the marshalling to be mixed ,in my opinion Airsoft Gunman Tuddenham is the toybox of the head marshal which allows him to play out his favourite  movie / tv series /action film / sci fi , with the airsoft coming second and the money 3rd ,As another friend said its not worth the drive and i tend to agree i am definitely expecting to get a ban for this but to be fair I'm not missing much.

[GiantKiwi]

Literally a section for it https://airsoft-forums.uk/forum/51-skirmish-sites-stories-reviews/

[Anonymoose]

That is a gigantic wall of text.

 

Why is it all in bold?

[Jaylordofwaargh]

7 hours ago, Anonymoose said:

Why is it all in bold?

emphasis 

[Tackle]

@mrfoxhound thanks for your review mate, unfortunately I can't move your thread as Gunman Tuddenham doesn't have a thread yet.

If you want to copy & paste it here:

https://airsoft-forums.uk/forum/142-site-list/

as a new thread, that should work, if I do it it will look like it's my review.

[Emergencychimps]

The wall of text isn't doing the ops point much good. 

 

However I think the general consensus is a moan about the site, hit taking, lack of action from the marshalls over issues, not having dedicated marshalls. 

 

I am a "regular" there, although in 2024 Im not sure I did more than 5 games. I'm not a marshall, but I have been attending for 12+years. 

 

Over the years it has had its ups and down, currently it's mid way through a change of manager, different people will be running the different weekends they run (skirmish, battlefield and filmsim).

 

The brambles have always been an issue and are worse than ever, but keeping on top of all the maintenance is very hard! They have done loads, loads more is needed. 

 

I've noticed the dates the op mentioned, some would be skirmish, some battlefield and possible a filmsim. They have very different rules and are meant to be very different experiences. I suspect the lack of consistency comments and it being their personal playground is connected to this. 

 

Generally tuddenham is great, though I've had some truly awful days there too. Of all the sites I've done, it's the most consistently good (sometimes amazing), if i rated every event I've ever done, I'm confident tuddenham would have the highest average of all sites attended.

 

However they are not perfect. I've seen (and mentioned on the how was your skirmish thread) how some days have been awful. I did a game in September time and it was truly the worst day of Airsoft I've ever witnessed. It was also the day I've seen the most non regular attendees at tuddenham, I spotted several large groups who were visiting and they effectively hijacked and ruined the weekend. I've personally witnessed the marshall deal with cheaters and seen people told to leave the site. 

 

I've seen player marshalls work very well and badly. 

 

General advice, pick your event there carefully, want more "realism" , then filmsims are for you, want to squirt loads of bbs for your hpa pistol, do the skirmish. Even then, there is the potential for it to go wrong, they can only provide the venue, rules, rule enforcement and encouragement, a lot is on the players. 

 

As mentioned, I've done a lot of sites over the years and it'd be a real shame to write tuddenham off, it's generally far better than most sites I've been to. After 3 bad visits I can understand why you would though. 

Edited 18 hours ago by Emergencychimps

[Jacob Wright]

Emergencychimps - I think you’ve put it far better than I could. 
 

I’ve only been playing at Tuddenham on and off for the past 3 years, had some really good days and a couple less so - but on the whole myself and the team keep going back as it’s close by and overall not a bad site. 
 

To highlight the matter of perspective, I’m pretty sure I was at that September games and only noted one episode of non hit-taking all day - yet you clearly had a completely different experience. 

 

Completely understand why the OP may be reluctant to return, I think 3 opportunities would be my limit as well. 

[Emergencychimps]

@Jacob Wrightthanks mate, kind of you to say. 

 

I'm a massive fan of the site in general, it has provided some of the best and worst Airsoft I've ever done, but on balance it's much more likely to be decent to good. Their Halloween night game was something else! 

 

But I've been to sites where it's been awful and never had the prospect or potential to be semi decent (awa Herts, I'm looking at you!). 

 

Some sites just aren't for you, I recently did Blackstone cqb and I can't fault the site (in fact, from a business/service they excelled) but it just isn't for me. 

 

I suspect some rotten luck and the wrong games types are the cause here. 

[Jacob Wright]

Yes, definitely. I've always found the Marshals friendly and fair, and as a group we enjoy the different types of games they run there.

 

Pragmatically - you could probably apply the approach to anywhere: it comes down to personal preference and experience on the day. I went to the RIFT Battery at the beginning of 2024, really well run and good fun - but I'm not the biggest fan of CQB so wouldn't go back.

 

It's funny you should mention AWA, I haven't played there in about 12-13 years and although I'm sure its improved, those few bad experiences from many years ago mean I probably won't go back.

 

So overall I'm not saying that deciding whether to go or not based upon other players reviews of sites is a waste of time, in fact some reviews are really handy (Asomodai review series) - but sometimes its probably worth going and having a look for yourself.