Outside Context

There is a lot of talk on the for­ums about play­ing with the beau­ti­ful WA range of pis­tols. Opin­ions are ser­i­ously divided between those who, not to put too fine a point on it, hate WA’s:

QUOTE(Ghost_Rider @ May 11 2005, 06:20 PM)
Yes. Don’t buy over­priced unskir­mish­worthy pistols.

This has been a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment from the “W.A.P.S” consortium.

…and those who like them. Per­son­ally, I think it is time to put this one to bed! I have there­fore taken up the chal­lenge of skir­mish­ing with WA’s and writ­ing about my exper­i­ences here.

Firstly, who the fuck am I? Well, I’m a reg­u­lar player at the Lon­don Elec­trow­erkz venue run by Fire­fight Air­soft. I play most-every tues­day with a couple of friends and I like to kick ass. I am not a new­bie. My play style is fast. I like to wear close fit­ting clothes which don’t inhibit move­ment and strong front body armor to allow me to make the more sucidal rushes without being badly hurt. I use a Web­tex Cross draw vest (gun on left) and one of my many right hip and thigh hol­sters. To keep me mov­ing fast my AEG is a MP5 but to make sure that my pis­tols get well used I only take out 1 hi-cap mag. One of my spe­ci­al­it­ies is the two pis­tol rush, John Woo style, with max­imum speed (amaz­ingly this works great as enemies tend to get dug in and immob­ile) fir­ing full and clear­ing, reload­ing as I go.

Basic­ally then my guns all get well used! But what guns are they?

I will be field test­ing five dif­fer­ent pis­tols to keep this com­par­ison on an even keel:

1. Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle Hard Kick. This mon­ster of a pis­tol is my cur­rent favor­ite. Pur­chased for £110 from new this baby fires on green at 300fps.
2. Tokyo Marui Glock 18c MAEG . This is prob­ably the most accur­ate skir­mish pis­tol in the world because it has zero kick back. This little beauty can really lay rounds down through the same hole. Pur­chased for £100 it clocks in at about 260–270.
3. West­ern Arms Colt Delta Élite (sil­ver) . This is the first WA I bought. Second hand, but in great shape, this is a won­der­ful look­ing gun. Cur­rently upgraded with a new return spring. I paid £100 for this, a mag, deliv­ery and a very very nice hol­ster.
4.West­ern Arms Wilson Super grade Com­pact (two tone). This little baby is my latest pur­chase. Using the same mags as the Delta it is heavy and power­ful as well as accur­ate. Bought second hand it has a few upgrades (not sure what) and was £100 includ­ing post­age.
5.Unknown make mostly metal 92fs. Bought 10 years ago for £200, prob­ably worth £80 now. Nice gun but not to mod­ern stand­ards of accur­acy. Takes green no problem.

As you can see all the guns were roughly the same price, the only dif­fer­ence is that the Tokyo Marui’s are new and the West­ern Arms’s are second hand. In other words, can you skir­mish WA’s for the same price as TM’s and do they work as well?

NIGHT ONE! Tues­day 17th May.

The Usual Sus­pects con­greg­ated at Elec­trow­erkz for their weekly ass kick­ing ses­sion. Also present were a high num­ber of new comers and the usual experts such as the Dark Angels.

My Load out was as follows:

Web­tex cross draw. WA Wilson in the cross draw and the Colt Delta Élite in the Bian­chi on my right hip (by the way, I can­not recom­mend the Bian­chi range of hol­sters enough. They are bloody great).

(sorry for the crap photo, they will be clearer next time).

One thing to keep in mind is that Elec­trow­erkz is dirty, wet and full of hard walls. If a gun (and indeed a player) can sur­vive here, they can sur­vive anywhere.

Mem­or­able events:

I got to use the pis­tols in the very first game of the night; Battle Field. This is a dom­in­a­tion type game that requires your team to hold two out of the three floors to win the game. Com­mon battle points are stairs, dark rooms and cor­ridors. Very quickly the AEG ran dry and it was pis­tols time!

The imme­di­ate bene­fit of the WA’s is the safety fea­tures. Both pis­tols enable you to hol­ster them cocked and ready to fire. In fact you can­not put the safety on until the ham­mer is back. This enables you to draw and fire very very quickly, as you simply have to click off the safety to go live. The Delta has only a right handed safety, but the Wilson has both right and left. The other fea­ture that becomes appar­ent is that the WA’s don’t hold many BB’s. In fact you have 15 in each. This is only just more than the TM Desert Eagle holds in one mag! Obvi­ously, you need to be care­ful with your shots or able to reload quickly.

The enemy had held us from des­cend­ing our stairs for most of the game, but a lucky hit had forced them to with­draw. I led the team (mostly new­bies and one pro) down with both pis­tols at the ready. again the ease of cor­ner­ing with pis­tols is a god send, you are simply much more mobile than with an AEG. Com­ing to the bot­tom of the stairs we were presen­ted with the night­mare that is the ground floor final mesh stair­case. This is almost impossible to take against a pre­pared enemy.

As you can see, it is a bas­tard of a nar­row, turn­ing, stair that draws fire like you wouldn’t believe. We decide to rush it. Run­ning down the stair I draw fire from the front and unload the pis­tols rapid fire in return, hit­ting the enemy in the knees.

The knees? Where as many people are used to green gas enabled heavy kick and fast fire pis­tols, the WA’s have a drop that much shorter. I was aim­ing at the oppon­ents face and only man­aged to hit his knees. Still he was dead and I wasn’t. I forced another enemy to with­draw with some fire and both pis­tols clicked back empty. This was most annoy­ing. I quickly tried to reload. 15 shots is not many and I will have to prac­tice reload­ing to be effect­ive. Reloaded, I attacked again, only to be mowed down by three guys (and shot in the thumb – ow!). Much to my dis­may as I walked back was that my team (apart from my brother) were still cower­ing up the damn stairs. There is noth­ing worse than a rush where you are the only one with balls enough to go. I know a few play­ers that would have done a Rus­sian Com­mis­sar on any new­bie that didn’t charge.

Still, the pis­tols per­formed well if a little inac­cur­ate. I put this down to my new­ness with WA’s (at the moment). No prob­lems with mags or gas vent­ing, nor prob­lems with the blow back. On the vest they stayed put and gave me none of the prob­lems the Desert Eagles does with its weight.

Next week I will be tak­ing the Colt Delta along with my Desert Eagle to test them side by side in the same battle.

I will also be tak­ing some movies of the action as well as a lot more pictures!

So until then, best regards,

Basho

PS: Please post your com­ments and sug­ges­tions in the com­ments sec­tion, I WILL NOT spam you.