The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[A_Stoat]

Back at Skirmish Budby yesterday, testing my mid-00s RusFor kit (okay, making sure I still fit in my Gorka and my new E&L Krink runs nicely).

Kinda a weird player group, a lot of the marshals and what I'd call 'permanent features' of the site were playing as it was someone's birthday - and that meant a lot of seriously tasty HPA setups. Sorting for the first game literally ended up as HPA vs AEG and... yeah, that went down exactly how you'd expect it to. Ended up despawning and chilling out about halfway through as BBs started to clean up the area immediately outside our spawn - guys were literally taking one step and getting hit, nothing we could do to try and counter. Fair play to the marshals, they rebalanced the teams straight after and that sorted the gameplay balance out, but a tough first round to start the day!

Rest of the day was a pretty solid one - the site recently got some light beacons, so those were getting some heavy use in a bunch of domination-style games. Played the absolute classic attack and defend with medics on the Village map, which I always enjoy, and the last game we got in before I had to leave at about 3.30 as I was going out in the evening was a variation on the three-stage pushback, utilising a lot more of the site and with more respawns for defenders. Enjoyed the defending round, but was a bit sad we had to go before getting to attack.

Gun ran fine all day, apart from some issues with the mag springs in some new CYMA midcaps. Had it hopping .28s without much issue, and considering it's completely stock internal it felt pretty nice. Definitely a far cry performance wise from my usual PDW, but definitely gameable - and hey, it's an E&L, it's all about the external look and feel, which of course rocked.

Even with the proliferation of HPA gats, I didn't really see any aggro or stupidity. Got absolutely BELTED in the last game at long range - right on the cheekbone, instant welt, big ol' lump and broken skin - and immediately thought "that felt a bit spicy out of an HPA'd AR" but he was probably just running .32s right on the line, and I didn't feel like I needed to complain. Vibes generally quite chilled out and excellent.

Overall 7/10, it was a fun day of airsoft without anything exceptionally good or bad. A nice baseline.

 

[Colin Allen]

As is often the case on a Sunday, this morning saw me at Airsoft Plantation, along with approximately 100 other airsoft aficionados.

Having secured my usual place, my first task was to set up and chrono the Lad’s AK47M that I have been upgrading. No, you did not read that incorrectly; it is a weird hybrid between an AK47 and an AKM, for which I have developed that designation. With the hop set for a lovely long flight with a little skip at the end, it was producing 1.06J, which was very pleasing as I really did not want to open it up again. I was also able to catch up with various people who I had not seen for a while. I was wearing my Swedish kit, complete with its Swedish Chef “Vert Der Ferk?” patch, and was surprised to find another player wearing the same rather unusual camo.

The first game of day the required the attackers, the vile and evil Blues, starting from the far end of the village woods, to collect an ammo tin containing two bombs from the comms shack in the village suburbs and transport it to the Cock Inn and the town hall, which both had to be blown up. We, the noble and virtuous Reds, had to delay them for as long as possible; we had two lives and they had infinite buddy regens after a 30m fallback. A group of us started by defending the area around the Jurassic Park jeep as it seemed likely that some at least of them would come that way, which they did. We held them up for a considerable time; eventually, I was hit and fell back to a building across the Main Street from the Cock Inn, from where I took out many more attackers before being hit, which led to me trudging back through the extremely glutinous mud to the safe zone.

Once they had blown up both objectives, the game was turned around. I was with a group who fought our way up the left hand side of the woods towards the town hall, while the rest of the team went to get the ammo tin and attack the Cock Inn. We had a long and difficult fight against enemies defending the town hall and the various buildings and structures around it. I would like to thank the enemy player who had a flash simulator on his rifle; it made identifying his position and aiming at him so much easier. We eventually grabbed the town hall and waited and waited; it seemed quite a while before we heard the boom as the Cock Inn was destroyed. A few minutes later the second bomb arrived at the town hall, which was promptly blown to pieces yet again in a time that was eight minutes faster than the enemy had managed! Hurrah!

After a break to reload and drink coffee, we set off into the woods for a fallback game. Starting at the wobbly bridge, the enemy had to fight their way through the woods, gather two detonators from the casino on the edge of the village and transport them to the Bedford in the mortar pits, where they would be attached to a missile which then had to be taken to the plane at the DEA base. They had infinite regens on either of two marshals, while we had one life in each of the woods, the village, the mortar pits and the DEA base. Taking up a favourite location on the left, I was able to ambush various groups of attackers until it became a bit too hot and I fell back behind the kill house, where the T-91 dealt out more plastic death on its enemies until I was eventually hit. We put up an epic fight to prevent the blues getting the detonators and transporting them out of the village, during which I was was eventually hit and made my way back to the mortar pits, where we again fought hard to prevent them getting to the missile. A very bold flanking attack almost got through to the Bedford, but was repulsed as we were able to use our interior lines to transfer people to stop them. I was hit during this and moved back to the DEA base, where I was immediately hit by a number of BBs from enemy players who had concealed themselves in the woods around it. That ended my involvement and I went back to the safe zone for lunch. The missile eventually made its way to the plane.

After lunch, the game was reversed; a group of us crossed the wobbly bridge ditch, which had turned into quite a stream, on the right and pushed down that flank in the woods, eventually overcoming a very determined enemy defence of the border and pushing into the village, where we worked really well as a team to grab the detonators and clear the enemy out. Once this was done, another player and I decided to go on a long flank march in order to sneak up on the DEA base from the rear, eliminate any blues who had been hit in the mortar pits and had fallen back to there, and then harass any others who tried to fall back there. Sneaking up on the group of them who were there, a grenade was lobbed over some bushes, landing next to them and, in our opinion, wiping them out; however, they refused to take the hit as they believed that we could not attack them as they “had not regened yet” and we had not completed the mortar pits phase of our attack. We approached them for a discussion, during which I pointed out that we were only doing what some of their players had done before lunch. Eventually, one of them fetched the site owner, claiming that we were camping on the objective, which we were not; when the grenade was thrown, we were further away from it than their players had been before lunch. He decided that, as there were now around 25-30 enemy players there, the situation could not be reset to where it was when we lobbed the grenade. Eventually, we agreed to move away unmolested in order to keep the game going. After a long fight, the missile and its attached detonators were shoved into the plane in a time that was a mere two minutes faster than the enemy had managed, which was remarkably close for a game that lasted for an hour. Hurrah!

When we returned to the safe zone, the site owner confirmed to the two of us that our actions had been correct and appropriate and explained why he had taken the decision that he had. He also thanked us for how we dealt with the situation.

As the light was beginning to fade, a fair number of people left after this game, but there was just time for one last adventure; our now outnumbered team and the enemy set out for the mortar pits. With us starting at the far end and the enemy at the near end, the aim was to get five players to the other team’s start point; as everyone only had two lives, this could become impossible, so if a team was down to fewer than five players, they had to get all of them to the other team’s start point to win. With massive amounts of smoke swirling around and blowing straight towards us, this was a confusing fight; eventually, we were whittled down and the remaining enemy players made it to our start point.

Despite the issue in the penultimate game, it was another good, fun day at AP, with some great play from both sides.

Weapons used:
G&G T-91
Double Bell Colt 607
ASG XP18 Commander (CO2)