The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Skara]

Don't worry guys, hit calling can be shit anywhere..

Last Sunday i was prefiring a piece of cover an opponent kept popping out of (in the same place) and he took a 32 rps burst to the face without even flinching
But anyhow, i think we're going to switch from Sunday morning to Friday night games soon as the temperatures are becoming unbearable down here... Last Sunday it was about 30° and it wasn't *that* fun, although the games were, we invited a club and we had a good time bar the aforementioned episode, many AEGs died for various reasons (mostly Titans being Titans and a couple of stripped gears), went through at least one kg of 0.28s, drank 3 litres of water, kept sweating like a pig

 

[Impulse]

Long one, so grab your snacks and a cuppa...

I just got home from the first episode of 2026's 'Namsoft at Gunman Eversley Alpha. I think my car has an electrical fault though, as the ABS, traction control, and oil warning lights came on, but I checked my oil levels and they seemed fine, and my breaks were fine, and I wasn't getting any wheelspin. Well, at least I got home and my car didn't explode, but I think a trip to the garage is in order...

Anyway, I arrived on Friday after a much longer drive than it should've been. It was a 3 hour trip that should've taken 2 hours at most, because for some reason Google Maps decided to route me through Guildford approaching rush hour on a Friday. Thanks Google... Anyway, I got there a bit later than I wanted, so the spot we usually set up in was taken. With over 100 people booked onto this one (way higher than usual, and Josh, the guy who organises and runs these events, was wary of it), space was at a premium, and our group needed a decent spot for all our stuff. Fortunately, I managed to reserve us a nice bit of space, setting up my tent and gazebo to set up a footprint for our group as I was waiting on the others to get there; one had some work come up and so they couldn't leave until later, and the other guy dropped out last minute so it was just me for a bit. The others did eventually arrive and we set their stuff up and then sat down for a bit of social in the evening.

The following day, two of us went out for the Saturday. I decided to use my m14, set up as an m21, but only at 1.14J because of the sniper ban at Eversley Alpha at this time of year, with my 1911 as sidearm. I also got stitch counted because I was using a plastic holster for it because my black leather holster ripped last game day when I was testing my setup, so this immediately soured my mood; at Gunman's filmsim games, there is the approach of "does it look okay at a glance at 10m", because getting too stitch-county is exactly how you kill events; we should really learn from the WW2 filmsims that died a death because of this behaviour. Plus, there were FAR more egregious examples of non-period accurate gear, but again, it generally looked fine at a glance at 10m. I really hate stitch counters...

Anyway, we ended up sitting in a base for a long time, with the occasional very light engagement with US forces that then fell back to avoid us. The game for this weekend had the main path that runs through the centre of the site represent a river and was largely out of play outside of bridges that the Americans had to make to cross over, with help from the AU forces that were already on the other side of the river. Eventually, the NVA got bored and all left, including the other guy in my group, leaving me with two kids to defend the flag that the US forces needed to raise. They did eventually hit us, hitting me from an angle that I thought one of the others was watching, but then he did make it over to me, medic-ed me back in and I took two of them out before they grenaded the building we were in. This was 1 of 2 times I got sent back to respawn all weekend.

So we went back to respawn and regrouped, coming back out to retake the bases with other players, as we noticed on our way back some of the US forces had raised a different flag. I split off slightly to crawl through some bushes to get some flanking shots on the US forces at one of the bases. I managed to get into a spot where I could see their entire battle line from the side and absolutely hammered them, firing off an entire mag into their flank and hitting a whole load of them, before ducking in behind some thick foliage to reload. I went quiet for a bit, watching for movement through the bushes, before coming out and doing exactly the same thing again when their attention was back on the main bulk of our forces who were hitting them from another direction. Also, meanwhile another VC player was flanking around further than me to get in behind them, so their days were numbered. Eventually, we took them all out and took down the flag, and by this point another group had re-taken the other flag and taken that down, which was nice.

Spent the rest of the day back at that original base, though this was a point of contention among the NVA team, and is probably my main and only real criticism of the whole weekend. Stitch counters I can ignore. Rainy weather, as we had light rain for pretty much all of Saturday, isn't the fault of the event organisers so while I can moan about that, it's not a criticism of the event. However, this event did feel way more like a force on force scenario than a guerilla warfare scenario (which is what it should be). NVA ended up just... holding bases for most of Saturday, when what we should be doing is hitting the US and falling back, or setting ambushes, sneaking around and doing guerilla stuff. But it ended up being more like platoons fighting platoons, NVA guarding bases etc. which is very much NOT how the NVA fought (and won) the war with.

Holding this base for the rest of the game was fairly uneventful, but we did eventually get hit again. I took a spot in a corner, crouched and holding an angle where I managed to shoot two Americans pushing in, but eventually the US stopped trying to push in and endex was called for Saturday. Apparently, the US forces were told if they managed to survive on this side of the river, they could start there on Saturday, so a lot of them simply went to ground in the last 30 mins.

On the Sunday I spent a lot of time walking around the site with a larger group trying to find US forces to attack. Eventually, we decided to hit their base and I managed to get some really nasty shots through small gaps in the foliage and into one of the bunkers, and I got a load more kills on the US forces through this cheeky little gap. Eventually, our numbers thinned, I ran out of ammo for my rifle and went down to only 2 pistol mags left, so I decided to head back to our respawn to regroup with the others (well, I was actually going to leave the game because I knew there wasn't too long left and reloading all those m14 mags would take some time. As I was coming up on our hard respawn, I bumped into the Aussies who had set up camp with one of their field packs (allowing them to reload magazines with speedloaders and remove bandages so they could be used again) just outside our respawn. They thought I was a US soldier, because I came from the direction of the fort where I had also seen the US forces set up and chose to avoid (since when you're reduced to below 4 men, you can't do any objectives and you're meant to regroup, plus I didn't have the weaponry to do anything to them anyway). I managed to quickly shoot one of them, but then I got lit up by their whole group, including their LMG who decided to full auto me in the face from almost point blank range. When I called my hit, they just kept shooting and I had to really yell back at them to get them to stop. They did at least apologise, but that didn't stop the physical pain of it. Glad I had my mouth shut or I might've lost teeth! So that's where I called it, and that was the 2nd time out of 2 that I got sent back to respawn. Couldn't be bothered to reload all the m14 GBBR mags with only 1 hour left anyway, but I'll take playing the whole weekend minus 1 hour as a win.

So, the TL : DR what was good, what was bad...

Good:
The general vibes were great. Unlike the last one where there were some really shitty players, this one everyone was pretty great, which was an achievement with the higher numbers than usual. I didn't get too many issues with non-hit taking (one or two across the whole weekend, but that's pretty great for a full weekend event). With 100+ players, I think we proved to Josh that it was right for him to allow that many bookings, as everyone was pretty great and the whole event from a player perspective felt good
Meeting up with @Tactical Pith Helmet again was good. Good to see him again!
As always, Josh puts so much effort into these games and is a joy to be around. He's very enthusiastic about these events he puts on, and you can really tell!
All sorts of players were there, all sorts of shapes and sizes, and all different age groups too, including a lot of first timers. This is great for the health of filmsim as a part of this hobby!

Bad:
The force on force feel of the event. There were loads of VC players who felt a bit disenfranchised as it felt like the US and Aussies were the ones doing the guerilla tactics, when we were essentially consigned to a more force on force style.
Stitch counting. I hate it, and I really hope it didn't happen to any of the others who didn't have 100% period accurate gear. I genuinely hope that it was just me that got singled out for something that you wouldn't realise unless you actively looked for it.
Getting overshot to absolute hell at the end was pretty rough. As was setting up a field pack right outside our respawn. Not impressed.

I'm still looking forward to the next one in September, and I am already booked on for that, however I am wary and hopeful that the NVA side will feel more guerilla next time. Between now and then I have... a Defiant battlesim weekend, and a 90s filmsim weekend where I'm actually playing NATO instead of OpFor for once, so that'll be interesting.

If you haven't tried filmsim before, I would highly advise giving Gunman's events a look. I don't think I've ever been to one of their events where the event itself has been bad.

 

[Colin Allen]

Today saw a return to Airsoft Plantation for the first time since March. Following last week's poor experience at D&A Dropzone, I needed a good day of airsoft.

The site was fairly busy, not as packed as I have seen it, but there were still plenty of players. Tom and I were the only members of our loose group in attendance and we somehow managed to end up on opposing sides. In addition to playing, I also intended to do some tweaking and setting up of guns, so had my mini toolkit with me.

Having checked in and chatted with the site owner, I set out to range test a new addition to the collection that I had done some work on; as I had my newly purchased laser rangefinder with me, this was also an opportunity to check the actual distance that I test my guns over. It turned out that the structure that I use as a measure is 71m from my firing point; the test went well with the BBs repeatedly ranging it with good accuracy.

The first game was simple; in the first leg we, as the defenders had to try to prevent, or at least delay, the enemy collecting six lights that were in buildings in the village and taking them back to their regen. We started in the village and had two lives, while the attackers, who started on the firebreak, had infinite regens at their start point. Along with a couple of others, I started off patrolling the light woods behind the village in case the attackers came that way; it soon became clear that they weren't going to, so we pulled back into the village, where the fighting was becoming intense. The L1A1 reached out to its enemies at range as a small group of us tried to stop them getting into the tower, where we knew there was a light. One player asked me why I wasn't using full auto; well, it's an L1A1, isn't it! When I was eventually hit, I fell back and found a new position closer to the high street, where the enemy were pushing hard. I soon spotted Tom and sent him back to regen; when he reappeared, I did it again. There was also a super moment when a group of the Blue Team made a rush for one of Land Rovers; a few well placed shots changed their minds. Soon after this, I was hit again and went back to safe zone.

In the return leg, I was with a group that pushed into the suburbs, fighting our way slowly through the various structures and picking up one light at Jurassic Park. It seemed to take us an awfully long time to push forward as the defence was very strong, but we eventually made it to the edge of the village proper, where we found another light. Here the fighting was really intense and it felt like we were making very little progress and getting bogged down; however, suddenly, the defence began to collapse and our entire team were able to push into the rest of the village, collecting the remaining lights and getting them back to our start point in a time that was just 90 seconds faster. Given the length of the two games, this was remarkably close.

The next game was rather more complicated. Three of our team played the role of downed pilots; they started at the DEA base and could move wherever they wanted. The rest of the team started at the Border and had to find the pilots and then get them to our contact on the firebreak; once they were there, they were safe. However, the blue team started in the village, which was between us and the pilots, who started on the far side of the site; they wanted to capture the pilots and imprison them in the Town Hall. Both sides had infinite buddy regens after a 30m fall back, while the pilots had to stop and remain where they were for 60 seconds when they were hit. This was a hard game; our initial attacks on the village did not get far in the face of a determined defence and lots of well deployed flashbangs. Several of us switched direction, hoping to push through the slightly more open terrain towards the pond; this worked and we slowly forced our way into that side of the village. Once we were inside the village, the fighting became even more intense with BBs flying everywhere. One of our pilots appeared, being escorted towards the Town Hall by some of the enemy. We shot them and, unfortunately, him; once he had counted to 60, he was hit by a lot of fire from the enemy. Gradually, we were pushed back and, after a long game, all three pilots were imprisoned in the Town Hall, with only 31 seconds remaining on the clock.

Luncheon was then taken and I was delighted to find that the catering team now have plant burgers, which were rather nice!

After we had dined and chatted and looked at each other's guns, we set off for the reverse of the previous game. Rather surprisingly, we came up with quite a good plan; one group of our players would set off to find the enemy pilots, capture them and and escort them to the Town Hall which, along with the rest of the village would be secured by the second group, of which I was part. While this was going on, a third group would form a cordon around the contact so that the pilots could not get to him if they evaded the group looking for them. I started out in the area around the fishing hut, which soon came under severe pressure; taking hits all the time, we slowly fell back, keeping the enemy's attack to a slow pace and forcing lots of them to fall back to regen. We held them at the high street for quite a long time; the little QBZ 97 reaching out much further than it should to give me another hit on Tom. We were pushed back again. However, just as it looked like we would lose control of the Town Hall, a group of our colleagues appeared on the far side of the village with the three pilots; rallying, we pushed back hard against the enemy so that they had an easy run into the Town Hall in a time that was much shorter than that of the Blue Team.

After this, I decided to spend what was left of the afternoon setting up a couple of guns.

It was really good to be back at AP again, even if most of our group were absent.

I have decided that Double Eagle gears are crap:



Next weekend might involve visiting a new airsoft site that has only been open for a few weeks; then again, it might not!

Weapons used:
Ares L1A1
Real Sword QBZ 97
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

 

[VictorFourTwo]

View attachment 28390
The Battle Lakes cat, 2017.

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Muffins, aka Harry.

 

[Colin Allen]

Muffins, aka Harry.

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Of course! Muffins!

 

[RebelScum]

If you haven't tried filmsim before, I would highly advise giving Gunman's events a look. I don't think I've ever been to one of their events where the event itself has been bad.

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Nice report. I was there on the US side for the weekend, leading 2nd Platoon, so it was interesting to hear your experience from the Vietnamese side.

First up, the stich-counting. I'm really surprised at this as I've never seen it at Gunman events, and usually the players appreciate the effort everyone puts in. The VC and NVA all looked amazing and if you looked really closely you'd see a lot of post-war or 80s kit on the US side, and even the odd modern gun disguised with hessian sack. To be honest I really don't care. If you make any effort I applaud you - especially if you can do it on a budget and it still looks cool. These games are really about the atmosphere and how much you throw yourself into the role, noting that a) we are not really soldiers in Vietnam and b) not reenactors at an event. Josh did say you may not fire that many rounds all day, but that's just the game. I spent day two evacuating inflatable casualties of war in pink body bags, which I'm pretty sure I also didn't see in Platoon.

In terms of the gameplay I have to say I personally enjoyed how it went, although for a game with 100 players we didn't seem to see many of the enemy on day one. To start with we spent time getting to our Forward Operating Base, and then two of the platoons were tasked with the Aussies to get the pontoon bridges up over the river. We had a particularly vicious close-quarter firefight with an element of NVA on the way into the FOB, but luckily they were overwhelmed pretty quickly by our numbers. We then were tasked with securing the Firebase at the other end of the site, which we did with no opposition, which really surprised us as we took a very long route to get there, and I really thought we'd get bumped. In the afternoon we ended up participating in the longest mission I've ever had in Filmsim, simply because we got bottled up at the Firebase by a few very well hidden and determined VC near one of the pontoon bridges. My efforts to sacrifice the Aussies to get us across was in vain (call them Kiwis and it really winds them up), so it meant our platoon had to take a really long route to get to the valley. On the way we overcame an ambush that had been set up for us, and after a very long walk we arrived at our map objective, setting up the radio mission and waiting to be attacked. Eventually we were spotted, but for whatever reason nothing really materialised aside from the odd pop-shot at us, and the mission was completed. I then decided to route us back to the Firebase by the most direct path, and we ended up in a mess of a firefight that seemed to draw out the entire Vietnamese force, who swarmed out of the trees like Ewoks on Endor. I managed to get a good position only for my trusty RTO to order a withdrawal, leaving me on my own next to a VC tunnel I'd stumbled across. Needless to say we were cut to ribbons although I managed to get back unharmed (my men less so - I of course blamed the RTO, rather than my map reading). We then hunkered down in the Firebase until the end of the day.

Day two was also interesting. We were tasked with holding the Firebase for about an hour, waiting for 3rd Platoon to return from a mission, although we did expect an attack at any moment. I had a hunch that 3rd Platoon would get ambushed at the pontoon bridge so took a small team out to meet them. Unfortunately none of us spotted the VC team that was quietly hidden in the undergrowth 10 metres from our position, who proceeded to lob the best grenade I've ever seen as I waved them forward, wiping out pretty much everyone from 3rd Platoon. We were next, and after being overrun ourselves, a mass attack on the Firebase was triggered. It was honestly like the Alamo with bbs flying in from everywhere, and the US forces taking a lot of casualties. For whatever reason the attacked died down and this gave us a chance to regroup and focus on evacuating the bodies we'd accumulated during the weekend. We were massively helped by US and Aussie Special Forces who were tasked with distracting the enemy and keeping them away from us as we quietly moved our dead to the evacuation point. To end the day we then launched an attack on some VC positions, ending up in great firefight, where I was genuinely struggling to see a target in a giant rice hat, due to the efforts made to stay hidden, and plenty of foliage in the hat. I laughed when EndEx was called and he popped up a few metres away. I have to say as a counterpoint to the stich-counting you experienced, one of the VC lads came over to a group of us who were wounded and complimented us all on looking the part. Made my day to be honest, and worth all the effort.

It's strange but I also find at the mid-month games at Eversley that larger numbers sometimes results in less action. It's very counter-intuitive, and possibly down to the fact that larger groups make more noise that you can avoid? Not sure if that is the reason, but like you say it's always worth giving Filmsim a go. It's never about the winning, so take your hits, ham up the role, and come up for some witty insults for 1st Platoon, who always seemed to arrive after the action had ended.

 

[Impulse]

First up, the stich-counting. I'm really surprised at this as I've never seen it at Gunman events, and usually the players appreciate the effort everyone puts in. The VC and NVA all looked amazing and if you looked really closely you'd see a lot of post-war or 80s kit on the US side, and even the odd modern gun disguised with hessian sack.

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Yeah, I'm totally with you on that point. It's why it annoyed me so much when someone did do the stitch-counting, because in all the filmsims I've been to so far it's been pretty good. I saw a couple of modern AKs with wood parts bolted on to hide it, modern rifles wrapped in tape or hessian, and more modern alice pouches instead of the older m56 stuff. But I've never heard of anyone kicking up a fuss because when you take a glance at it, it's not really noticeable unless you look for it. Apparently apart from me with my holster (it was a black holster too, so it didn't stand out...). And that was only because my actual one ripped the week earlier. Good to hear that mine was likely an isolated incident, as I'd hate for that to start creeping into Vietnam games like it did with the WW2 games (and killed that scene because of it)

For whatever reason the attacked died down and this gave us a chance to regroup and focus on evacuating the bodies we'd accumulated during the weekend.

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Honestly there weren't actually that many of us here. I think I counted around 8 NVA players, maybe 10, including myself who ended up hitting the base. I can tell you the reason the attack died down is because you managed to whittle us down with some good shooting and a phenomenal grenade throw that took out two very dug in players, until it was only me left and all I had was two pistol mags left

I then decided to route us back to the Firebase by the most direct path, and we ended up in a mess of a firefight that seemed to draw out the entire Vietnamese force, who swarmed out of the trees like Ewoks on Endor. I managed to get a good position only for my trusty RTO to order a withdrawal, leaving me on my own next to a VC tunnel I'd stumbled across. Needless to say we were cut to ribbons although I managed to get back unharmed (my men less so - I of course blamed the RTO, rather than my map reading).

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Was that your platoon we hit at the bottom of the valley? Near that bunker that had a flag? If so, you were... very unfortunate in your timing as we had just come out of respawn in force to retake both the wall and that bunker to put the flag down, so you caught a big group of probably about 15 of us there. Then another element, who had already looped back to retake the wall independent of our large force, came down from the wall to help us, so it was probably half of the NVA team that came down on you guys at that point. Plus we had me and two others who flanked to the side, and one brave lad who flanked all the way around and started shooting the now very surrounded platoon in the back.

Interesting to hear the US perspective in detail, so thank you for that! Honestly, I'd love to sign on as US one of these days, but unfortunately the people I go to these games with are die-hard NVA players and would never even dream about it. It's tough for me, because most of my kit is American; I was using my very loud GBBR m14 over the weekend, and I have both an xm177 and m16a1 build for two of my MWSs, and a 1911 as a sidearm, as well as a set of m56 webbing (though I was chicom'd up for this one instead). Someone on the NVA side even commented upon seeing my m14 set up as an m21 that "you could do a great USMC setup with that"

I was gutted about the sniper ban though, as there were a number of times where I wish I had one of my many 2.32J bolt actions with me. Any engagement in the valley and some of the fights at the wall would've been very handy to have it, and then it would've also allowed me to hit the firebase from the other side, dropping shots in from the hill on the edge of the site. My local site is more close range than Eversley, so I'm very used to negotiating MEDs and finding the rare long range fire lanes (and generally carrying 5 pistol mags because it's basically a primary with a sniper rifle secondary sometimes)

 

[RebelScum]

Was that your platoon we hit at the bottom of the valley? Near that bunker that had a flag? If so, you were... very unfortunate in your timing as we had just come out of respawn in force to retake both the wall and that bunker to put the flag down, so you caught a big group of probably about 15 of us there. Then another element, who had already looped back to retake the wall independent of our large force, came down from the wall to help us, so it was probably half of the NVA team that came down on you guys at that point. Plus we had me and two others who flanked to the side, and one brave lad who flanked all the way around and started shooting the now very surrounded platoon in the back.

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Yes, that was us! I suspected we'd run into more than we could deal with, and I rather belatedly requested that we call for back-up. Unfortunately most the the platoon had been flanked (or were shouting medic), so I knew it was time to get out of there. I did loop around back to get eyes on the Tower to see if there were any survivors, but I could see you were mopping up at that point, so I spent the next 20 minutes doing an escape and evade via A-Frame, to get back to the Firebase. I was bloody nervous crossing that pontoon bridge I'll tell you.

Surprised to hear you had limited numbers attacking us at the Firebase. Honestly it felt a lot more and I was very impressed how close you got to the perimeter, particularly when someone threw a blue smoke on our bunker roof, causing all sorts of confusion. I thought it was going to be a difficult ask to overrun us, as usually the enemy force has to get around the back from the Wild West town side, and really press the attack, but the shooting into the base was very effective, and the foliage meant we couldn't see anything. At one point we were just blazing away at anything that moved, forgetting we were on realistic ammo limits. Lots of good fun was had.

Anyway always good to hear the perspective from the other side. And of course if you ever feel like defecting for the day, we could always do with the extra firepower!

 

[Colin Allen]

Bright and early this morning, I left home for the journey to Terminal Six airsoft, the new site near Stansted Airport run by BBguns4less. Some of you may remember their somewhat unfortunate debut on this esteemed forum, wherein they got something of a rough ride.

On arriving at the site, I was directed to the parking area, which was in a field next to a decently sized marquee, which served as the main prep and staging area, with capacity for possibly fifty people. Forty four players were present.

Having prebooked, checking in was easy and done in the BBguns4less shop. Chronoing was well handled and efficient.

The safety and rules briefing was well done, covering all the key points in sufficient detail. The large barn in which this was done had space for about another 20 players to set up.

As an aside, the site has clean permanent plumbed toilets.

Following the briefing, we set out for the first game. Both sides had a number of poker chips, which were in a bucket at their regen point; each player could carry one at a time and had to get them to a bucket in the centre of the site. Not knowing the relatively small playing area very well, I followed a group of other players down the right hand side and was soon involved in a series of rolling firefights as we pushed through the woods. I got several good hits and was hit a couple of times before the game ended; we won this by a considerable margin.

Following a 15 minute break to reload etc, we went back out for the next game. This required us to get a VIP from the Forest Base at one end of the site to the boat at the other end so that he could flee the country. The defenders has two lives in the cemetery and two around the boat, while we had infinite regens; initially these were taken at our start point and could then be taken at the cemetery once we had cleared the enemy out of it. The enemy put up a tremendous fight around the cemetery, using the dense undergrowth as cover and slowing us down. Eventually, we cleared them out and pushed towards the boat; however, we had spent too much time clearing the cemetery and timed out just before we were about to make our final assault on the boat.

After another short break, the game was reversed; taking up a position on our far left I helped to hold off the enemy for a considerable time, including sending the VIP back to regen with an unfortunately aimed shot that hit him in the gentleman’s parts. Having eventually been hit, I fell back and carried on the fight until another hit sent me back to the boat. By this stage, there weren’t many of us left but we put up a good fight until the VIP made it to the boat with two minutes to spare.

The lunch break then followed which was, rather unsurprisingly, followed by another game. The attackers had to get five flags (or as many as they could) to the tower in the Forest Base and we had to prevent them from doing so. We had three lives and they had infinite ones. Three or four of us took up positions on the left hand side using various bits of cover and, in my case, the trench system (I do love a trench system); we kept them at bay for the whole game, scoring many, many hits on them, while taking a few ourselves. From my position in the trench system, I could also support our colleagues to our right by enfilading the attackers as they tried to push forward. Eventually, they pushed us back until the survivors were grouped around the tower for a last stand. We put up a hard final fight, but our numbers were decreasing rapidly; fortunately, the game ended in the nick of time and no flags made it to the tower. I had just prepped my suicide grenade when the game ended, intending to blow up myself and the enemy when they stormed in to plant their flags. My great great grandfather would have been proud (or maybe not).

It was now 16:00 and quite a few players had to leave. The final game was a simple one of infected; most of us set up in the ammo dump and the four infected players had to shoot us, stab us or blow us up. I got a lovely long range hit through a small gap on one of the infected, which was admired by one of the marshals, but was almost immediately hit by another of them who had sneaked up from another direction. Having regened and joined their infected ranks, the game ended fairly quickly.

So, what did I think of Terminal Six? I have to admit that I went there with some trepidation and was not expecting very much.

The site is currently quite small and is still very much a work in progress; they have quite ambitious plans for it and are still experimenting with the site. They are not averse to feedback and are prepared to adapt games if needed. At the moment, it provides what someone I used to know described as good, old fashioned airsoft. The site is well run, with a strong emphasis on player enjoyment as well as safety; breaks between games were short. The day was fun and well organised, with a good mix of players including first timers and seasoned veterans, all of whom were friendly. Cooked food was available at lunch time.

Would I go back? Definitely! Based on today, they have started well and I hope they continue to develop the site and that it thrives.

Weapons used:
G&P/Hurricane Kit SR47
JG/Double Eagle AMD 65
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

 

[Austeyr]

Bright and early this morning, I left home for the journey to Terminal Six airsoft, the new site near Stansted Airport run by BBguns4less. Some of you may remember their somewhat unfortunate debut on this esteemed forum, wherein they got something of a rough ride.

On arriving at the site, I was directed to the parking area, which was in a field next to a decently sized marquee, which served as the main prep and staging area, with capacity for possibly fifty people. Forty four players were present.

Having prebooked, checking in was easy and done in the BBguns4less shop. Chronoing was well handled and efficient.

The safety and rules briefing was well done, covering all the key points in sufficient detail. The large barn in which this was done had space for about another 20 players to set up.

As an aside, the site has clean permanent plumbed toilets.

Following the briefing, we set out for the first game. Both sides had a number of poker chips, which were in a bucket at their regen point; each player could carry one at a time and had to get them to a bucket in the centre of the site. Not knowing the relatively small playing area very well, I followed a group of other players down the right hand side and was soon involved in a series of rolling firefights as we pushed through the woods. I got several good hits and was hit a couple of times before the game ended; we won this by a considerable margin.

Following a 15 minute break to reload etc, we went back out for the next game. This required us to get a VIP from the Forest Base at one end of the site to the boat at the other end so that he could flee the country. The defenders has two lives in the cemetery and two around the boat, while we had infinite regens; initially these were taken at our start point and could then be taken at the cemetery once we had cleared the enemy out of it. The enemy put up a tremendous fight around the cemetery, using the dense undergrowth as cover and slowing us down. Eventually, we cleared them out and pushed towards the boat; however, we had spent too much time clearing the cemetery and timed out just before we were about to make our final assault on the boat.

After another short break, the game was reversed; taking up a position on our far left I helped to hold off the enemy for a considerable time, including sending the VIP back to regen with an unfortunately aimed shot that hit him in the gentleman’s parts. Having eventually been hit, I fell back and carried on the fight until another hit sent me back to the boat. By this stage, there weren’t many of us left but we put up a good fight until the VIP made it to the boat with two minutes to spare.

The lunch break then followed which was, rather unsurprisingly, followed by another game. The attackers had to get five flags (or as many as they could) to the tower in the Forest Base and we had to prevent them from doing so. We had three lives and they had infinite ones. Three or four of us took up positions on the left hand side using various bits of cover and, in my case, the trench system (I do love a trench system); we kept them at bay for the whole game, scoring many, many hits on them, while taking a few ourselves. From my position in the trench system, I could also support our colleagues to our right by enfilading the attackers as they tried to push forward. Eventually, they pushed us back until the survivors were grouped around the tower for a last stand. We put up a hard final fight, but our numbers were decreasing rapidly; fortunately, the game ended in the nick of time and no flags made it to the tower. I had just prepped my suicide grenade when the game ended, intending to blow up myself and the enemy when they stormed in to plant their flags. My great great grandfather would have been proud (or maybe not).

It was now 16:00 and quite a few players had to leave. The final game was a simple one of infected; most of us set up in the ammo dump and the four infected players had to shoot us, stab us or blow us up. I got a lovely long range hit through a small gap on one of the infected, which was admired by one of the marshals, but was almost immediately hit by another of them who had sneaked up from another direction. Having regened and joined their infected ranks, the game ended fairly quickly.

So, what did I think of Terminal Six? I have to admit that I went there with some trepidation and was not expecting very much.

The site is currently quite small and is still very much a work in progress; they have quite ambitious plans for it and are still experimenting with the site. They are not averse to feedback and are prepared to adapt games if needed. At the moment, it provides what someone I used to know described as good, old fashioned airsoft. The site is well run, with a strong emphasis on player enjoyment as well as safety; breaks between games were short. The day was fun and well organised, with a good mix of players including first timers and seasoned veterans, all of whom were friendly. Cooked food was available at lunch time.

Would I go back? Definitely! Based on today, they have started well and I hope they continue to develop the site and that it thrives.

Weapons used:
G&P/Hurricane Kit SR47
JG/Double Eagle AMD 65
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)

Click to shrink...

Lovely write up as always Collin and glad to see you're back out at it!

Will definitely give them a try in the near future myself

 

[Colin Allen]

Lovely write up as always Collin and glad to see you're back out at it!

Will definitely give them a try in the near future myself

Click to shrink...

I was not hopeful and was fully expecting to come home at lunchtime; they still have work to do, but it was a good, fun day.

 

[A_Stoat]

Sadly let down by Battlestations Boston, who did no marketing for their milsim this weekend and were apparently somewhat surprised that our team was 7 of their 8 bookings. Oh well - we aren't out any money, and they did kindly offer us various options to transfer our bookings to a future event, but... yeah, nah, we're good thanks. It's a shame, as we were looking forward to it, and if they'd only shouted up that they were struggling for numbers we would have happily started badgering more of our friends to come and play.

This meant we were at a loose end today, so four of us decided to hit up Phoenix Airsoft and not waste the weather. Considering it's literally a 5 minute drive from our regular haunt of Skirmish Budby, the difference was absolutely unbelievable. Definitely a good day of airsoft, but an unusual one, and we came away satisfied, but with mixed feelings. Probably about 50-60 players total, a complete and noticeable lack of rentals, and plenty of snacky guns and ghillies with gopros, but nothing too obnoxious.

THE GOOD:
The site is absolutely massive, and very different to Skirmish's plantation and managed woodland paintball site feel. Overgrown, plenty of clusters of structures, loads of undergrowth to work through, and a few key paths. I was very glad to have my ghillie bolero with me, and gameplay felt much more 'airsoft' than the paintball/airsoft hybrid we're used to at Skirmish. Definitely a welcome break from routine, and a really fun site to play on overall.

The first game was a 1hr 30 milsim-style mission, with multifaceted objectives, global medics, and tons of different respawn points. I had an absolute ton of fun skulking around the bushes, and my trusty E&L Krink was on song all day. I felt like I played decently, our team worked really well together, and I was getting some really good kills. Honestly, the first game was worth the price of admission alone, even if it was a pretty gruelling way to start the day. There was another big mission after lunch which was a similar sort of thing, with a couple of shorter games in between, but even these were much longer than I'm used to. I really enjoy the longer, more free-form objective-based games, because endless TDM and flag captures does get a bit tired. The general gameplay was a real highlight.

The safe zone was really quite well appointed (although the toilets are downright grim), albeit a little small - most of us ended up working out of our cars, which was okay. Food and drink prices were really competitive (£1.75 for a can of Monster is supermarket-ish price, which I'll take all day long), and reasonable greasy food truck quality. There were also a couple of pop-up surplus shops with some interesting bits on sale, including a set of PVS-7s at 2.8k which seems... optimistic for a walk-on day. I did like that you could vape and smoke anywhere on site, but I can imagine that would suck if you don't smoke.

Pretty much all the players I spoke to were friendly, as were most of the marshals one-on-one, and as a complete newbie to the site I felt pretty welcomed. I'm a pretty gregarious guy and I enjoy a chat, and nobody was unpleasant to me directly.

Marshalling was pretty solid, with the emphasis seeming to be on letting players play - timelines were flexed and spawn points moved on the fly to allow games to run to a proper conclusion rather than simply timing out or ending up as a spawn-lock. The multiple objectives definitely helped with this, and it definitely seemed like the whole day was set up to be about fun rather than keeping score between teams.

THE BAD:
It was like airsofting in 2010. Everything negative was "gay". Every second joke was about gay sex. There didn't seem to be any malice in it, and the one guy I gently challenged on it didn't get aggy or double down, but like... I'm a gay bloke in my 30s. I had enough of that in high school, and I kinda thought we'd moved past that by now as a society in general. Didn't see any point bringing it up to the marshals, as several of them were taking part, and I wasn't going to let it spoil my day at all - I've been called a hell of a lot worse - but it was like stepping back in time. (INB4 'oh it's just banter'.)

Hit taking wasn't stunning all day. Despite a very specific safety brief (we'll get to that), there was generally quite mid hit taking from a few different people all day. Now, it's a big woodland site, so that definitely increases the perception of non-taking, but we all saw a few incidents on both sides of blatant non-taking, and then the inevitable subsequent overshooting and aggro. While most of it didn't impact the game, there was one bit of flat-out cheating, which did annoy me a little bit as it really held up a time-sensitive mission. We had one guy to clear out of a building in CQB. Initially, he was doing a really good job - hiding in an alcove behind a curtain, and either popping out to hit us as we breached or (more frequently) dropping one of his seemingly endless supply of BFGs to get full room wipes. It was only after we cleared the room that I realised he had literally been behind a curtain/blanket - not a wall or door. I queried this with a marshal, who agreed that yep, he'd been cheating massively as the first grenade he dropped should have killed him, and in fairness did have a word and gave us extra time to complete our objective, but this was clearly a site regular who knew the rules just choosing not to follow them.

Site direction wasn't great - it was very much "yeah your objective is at G&T and your respawns for this are Mosque, then up the path towards Scrapyard", without any indication of where those are. There is a map in the safe zone, but I feel that it could have been a little better explained at the start of each game, for the benefit of new faces.

THE WEIRD:
Hard pyro spam. Seriously, Phoenix regulars go loaded for BEAR with the hard pyro, and for some of them it seems to be their primary weapon. I can't really complain - it's fair play, after all - but a few players seemed to want to play some kind of 18th Century grenadier rather than use their guns. I've never been 'naded so much in a single game day! Just an odd thing to see at a primarily woodland site.

The vibe seemed to oscillate wildly between fun but relatively serious gameplay, with people playing seriously but not taking themselves too seriously, and weirdly spiky aggro moments, right from the first game. It was hard to put my finger on, but it all just felt oddly fragile. In fact, the entire vibe was very weird, and this was summed up by...

The safety brief. That was... an experience. It started off with a VERY strong "if you cheat, if you don't take your hits, if you are abusive, we will ask you to leave and ban you for life". It then went into a rather detailed explanation of the procedures for searching everyone's kit and cars if anything was reported missing. This was a little bit of a red flag - if you're having to talk about it like this, that kinda implies it's a regular issue for your site, but maybe they were just laying out a position to protect themselves. Then it went through a rapid fire version of the usual - no blind fire, no mags in the safe zone, eyepro, etc. It ended with, I kid you not, a group pledge led by the head marshal. Everyone had to raise their hands and promise to remember that they were playing army men in the woods with their friends, and not to get salty - I really quite enjoyed this as a concept, it's nice to say it out loud so we realise that none of us are actual stone cold T1 operator badasses. It then took a left turn and included such pledges as noshing all our mates off and buying the marshals a round of drinks. See point 1 of The Bad.

OVERALL:
Honestly, this place feels like a pocket dimension. The fact that it's so close to our regular, and so incredibly different, is just mind-boggling. I had a really fun day of airsoft - the bits where I was crawling around the woods with my mates were my ideal kind of games. It's just... a weird, weird place. The vibe was bizarre. Will we go back? Absolutely. Is it somewhere that I would take a new player? Absolutely not.

Odd. Just odd. Fun, though.

 

[Cannonfodder]

Sounds like they're going to stay on my list of sites to avoid. The casual homophobia is childish at best. I agree that the thing about searching people's kit/cars does make it sound like they've got a problem with theft and demanding to do searches could land them in hot water, I work in security and the law is very specific and strict on what you can (and more importantly can't) do when searching people and their property. As for the hit taking, I'm not surprised it was iffy considering it was the regular haunt of a certain dickhead youtuber

 

[A_Stoat]

Sounds like they're going to stay on my list of sites to avoid. The casual homophobia is childish at best. I agree that the thing about searching people's kit/cars does make it sound like they've got a problem with theft and demanding to do searches could land them in hot water, I work in security and the law is very specific and strict on what you can (and more importantly can't) do when searching people and their property. As for the hit taking, I'm not surprised it was iffy considering it was the regular haunt of a certain dickhead youtuber

Click to shrink...

I legitimately had not made that connection!

Jesus... yeah, that tracks.