Absolutely love night games, just never enough of our local sites in Kent running these throughout the year! I arranged a Night Event at my local Airsoft haunt back in 2015 - when it was just a case of a bunch of us buying some tracer units & tracer bb's & wanting to test them out, that then grew exponentially & ended up being 90 of us running about at night, absolute fun & absolute chaos & carnage, but was thoroughly hooked so decided to take the plunge.....
2016 came & invested in a high end thermal weapon scope, which was an unbelievable game changer & recently invested in some Flir BNVD-51 NVG which again are absolutely stunning in quality. Our local site initially kicked off a series of monthly night games, unfortunately the numbers dwindled so stopped with these. Fortunately though, our local site has really developed their Milsim scene & ran x4 events this year (last one in November) with x6 already planned for next year, so the sizeable outlay of night equipment is offset against a longer term investment (That justification helps me sleep better at night!!). What also adds to the depth is the Milsims cater for different scenario's at night:-
March 2018 - Russia Vs. NATO - Thermal & NV in play
June 2018 - Cartels Vs. DEA - Thermal & NV in play
September 2018 - NVA / Vietcong vs. U.S. Army - No night equipment & torches only (no weapon attachments)
November 2018 - Falklands; British Army vs. the Argies Army - NV only - no Thermal.
The above also caters & attracts different types of players - Vietnam drove big numbers, real excitement & lots of accuracy for the die-hards around uniform (not strict though)
As our local Milsim scene is always developing, we bought about the idea of during the much darker months having the two main structures lit up with lighting courtesy of a couple of generators, very much gives both forces clearly detectable points of interest to head toward within what is a massive site, but plenty of ambush opportunities along the way, this helps give balance to the teams so it's not so one sided. We're also fortunate that both our regular OpFor & NATO teams both own NVG & Thermal, so again makes it a much more balanced playing experience, certainly makes it better for first timers as well, as previously NATO forces were being pummelled by OpFor with a solitary Thermal. Few comments to some of the previous points raised throughout this chain:-
Any point turning up when others have NVG & Thermal - Absolutely! NVG is easily defeated with a well drilled team with white lights, Thermal not so much, but then it's only usually a very minor amount of players with Thermal, target them & take them out & the others struggle! Also see above with our local site , adding lighting to main structures gives everyone a balanced playing field, as well as giving you somewhere to aim & head for when traversing around the site in the pitch black.
Organisation - As mentioned earlier by others is an absolute must; A good cohesive team will work together at night & disciplines are a must, going off solo won't help anyone, will encourage friendly fire & also bloody dangerous! Couple of essentials to support organisation - Red Dead Light at night, straight forward red light that when you're hit / DMW or just out of the game (en route to the crapper etc.) shows the individual is hit & not to be aimed at. Torch - whether attached to gun or not, absolute essential & no brainer, disciplined use of course, couple of you advancing towards anyone (NVG / Thermal users), light them up & that'll rending them useless, wipe out & destroy! Additionally - one of the other rules which has been introduced is different coloured tracers for the opposing forces, OpFor Red Tracers / NATO Green Tracers, again a very simple addition that helps drive better play at night, avoids a hell of a lot of friendly fire as well!!
Cheaters at night - Definitely, but will get better as time goes on; again fortunate at our local site that we have both NVG & Thermal users, these users (myself included) have helped drive much better integrity at night, first few Milsims, no surprises there were a few accusations of non-hit takers, now both forces are consciously aware that either side has night devices so cannot pull a fast one, the more regulars that attend these nights helps drive better integrity as well, always a challenge finding a site which runs regular night games with decent numbers to develop this.
Hope the above point of view helps from someone that loves the night games, feel like i'm plugging our local Milsim events as well - but what's great about these is that the regular milsim attendees work closely & collaboratively with the site owners to ensure the series develops, gets better & caters for wide demographic of player & most importantly helps introduce those thinking of toe dipping into Milsims & night games with a bit of structure & organisation.
Mike
