Want to join or create a team

[shatis]

Hi everyone ive been looking to join or create an airsoft team to go play airsoft with near the west london area. My closest sites are syrmish wcyome, Guman bravo and south herts airsoft. I've been playing solo for a while now as non of my non airsoft friends want to join. HMU if your intrested. I mainly run Gbbrs .

 

[Cannonfodder]

imo the best way to get into a team is to let your actions on the field speak for you. I'd avoid any group actively recruiting, often there's a reason they can't get new members or keep hold of existing ones.

Setting up your own team also had its pitfalls. You need to decide from the outset things like whether you'll be a rag tag bunch with different kit and guns or something more uniform. Also you'll need to decide just how involved members will be. Do you want to only meet up on gameday or will you want to meet up at other times for socials or practice sessions?

 

[Austeyr]

As somebody who was somehow elected the "leader" of what would be considered a "team", although we're just a largeish (10+ per game day typically) group of friends (With a "team" patch)...

The only way a "team" can be really beneficial is milsim events where team play is crucial. A few of us have a "milsim mindset" but keeping everyone together in a typical skirmish isn't possible at the best of times. Setting up a uniform basis or a certain platform is also not great unless specifically attending milsims as people will tend to have different tastes, for example our group runs everything from Yank to Rusfor to Hoodie/Jeans and everything in between and the same goes for weapon platform.

I think you'll be more likely to find teams that attend milsim games as it's where they typically congregate. The friend group "teams" typically want to keep themselves to themselves, we've had people ask us before to join up and we have to politely decline and specify that we are literally just mates hanging out at a game

 

[Tackle]

Threads like this have been posted up many times, as the learned gentlemen above have pointed out, teams can have many pitfalls, getting tied to a bunch of guys who you later may realise you don't get along with or have the same goals.
That then could mean that in order to leave the team, your local sites are no longer viable, due to awkwardness or worse.
A good team tends to have a more organic growth method, couple of guys who are already mates, or become mates due to mutual playing style etc, & who then gradually, & subconsciously, increase their numbers by inviting players they've got to know at their local sites, people they've seen in action & who they've assessed not to be utter psychos or cheating cnuts, the kind of players that as a team, you wouldn't want to be associated with lol.

 

[Tommikka]

The main point to this as mentioned by others is to understand what everyone wants from it

The core of a team may be a group of friends who play, may be players who become friends, may be nothing but a rag tag bunch of the locals, and could be nationally dispersed randoms who form an identifier for whenever they turn up to the same event

Some go for the social only and add on a little of gameplay, others are about the game and add socialising at events
Some are totally serious about gameplay or stitch counting, others just for fun and also those who take their fun side highly seriously
Some play together as a finely tuned group, others will disperse at a big game seeking out the fun, and might shout out to the others when finding a good shoot out


My team began as a one off lads day out, two of us were instantly hooked and kept playing, many of the others never played again and some hung on to turn up when convenient
When we found the wider world of events and discovered teams we attempted to recruit and form a team, but with lack of interest (of suitable candidates for us) we gave up choosing to just play and offer ourselves to faction leaders
One day we met a guy on site who had recently began playing and he spoke of forming a team - we told him that’s unlikely after our failed attempt and spent the day playing together which resulted in the three of us calling us a team of three plus our occasional hangers on

We picked up some more, and after years of suggesting finally convinced the site owner to let us run an event. This then resulted in panic when all of our communist contacts booked to play our game - I remember the Saturday evening after set up stood on top of a hill overseeing our efforts and saying to my original buddy that it was fine for the newbie but “this time tomorrow we could look like a right pair of dicks to the whole community”
It was not the most perfect event ever, and I have little memory of it, but a success
History had occurred, and brought a decade of event organising until covid happened

Team mates came, went and returned
It was always a “fun first” team and all events were “by players for players”
It was always easy going, but needed commitment to run events (to have the numbers on the day and for the work to make things happen)

At one point we considered a team subscription for the ‘core’, and after a while were getting event proceeds into the team account (however every single event was at a loss when we added up the cost of equipment / props built by a couple of us, and that’s not counting a lot of free pyrotechnics (to say the least)


At one event we filled a valley of multi coloured rainbow smoke at our sponsors expense, and at another our sponsor spent the morning freaking about the amount of pyro he handed me with a hangover first thing in the morning (it was a brand new format and I had no idea on likely quantities for the different pyro types)
his face was the definition of relief when he saw how much I returned with that afternoon, especially when I let him know that I had already kept an estimate for the next day
(That may or may not have been the dry summer when I was the only person allowed to use pyro due to fire restrictions, which meant no sales and only me burning their bank account - saved by a night of rain which allowed pyro to be sold and used for the main day)

My world is paintball, but running paintball events brought us into running airsoft events

It’s having moved onto playing as a team that brought wider experiences for something near to two decades of my life as well as new friends across the country (and a few spotted about the world)
I’ve played games, run games, had discount ‘sponsorship’, had real sponsorship, I’ve sponsored teams myself, led a scenario team, been a member of a tournament team (mostly photographing them, but also training and playing some events with them (members in the team have moved to semi-pro level, and international level), I’ve been an event photographer and official tournament photographer, and made TV appearances. Two of us almost bought a site (which would have ended up preventing the best of those experiences)

 

[shatis]

thank you guys for the advice!!!!!