FIRST IMPRESSIONS & BATTLE REPORT
ICS, in celebration of their 10 year anniversary have forged, in secret, a master gun. One gun to rule them all, one gun to find them, one gun to bring them all, and in the darkness lace the shit out them!
Here she is in all her glory:
(Click for a larger, more detailed image)
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that this is a very unique and special looking gun and not at all deserving of the comments she has received from the like of Darklite:
So it’s not incredibly realistic — and still looks like it fell out of the arse of the ugliest bird in uglyland at the top of the ugliest uglytree and hit every ugly branch on the way down to the ugly ground before being trampled to extreme uglyness by a rampaging hoard of uglybears.
Rubbish sir! The ICS is not ugly; no one would call her ugly that held her. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines. She’s a fine warbird: weatherly, stiff and fast… very fast, if she’s well handled. No, she’s not ugly; she’s in her prime.
Of course, she had a metal nose…
So, what’s in the box? What do you get for your £269? Actually quite a lot:
- Unique Individually Serial Numbered Body.
- Complete Reinforced Main Gear Set, Steel Pinion Gear, Steel Bevel Gear, Steel Bushings, Metal Spring Guide, M120 Spring, Aluminum Piston, Bore-Up Cylinder, Strengthened Gearbox, New Silicone Wiring.
- Working forward assist to release the gears.
- Super Torque-Up Turbo 3000 Upgraded to M120.
- Metal Body, metal Receiver — Lower & Upper, Barrel, Front Parts, Sight, Stock, Handguard, metal Folding Stock.
- Spring Eject RIS Bi-Pod Vertical Grip Two High Caps, Speedloader, T-Shirt, Sling.
- Metal Tsunami RAS.
- Sanyo Battery in PEQ Battery Box.
Which, as anyone would agree is a lot of value for £269!
I received the gun at the start of the Ground Zero Weekender and was able to give her a thorough run through a check out, both in the range and in the field. Now, I had asked for her to be downgraded to 328fps because Electrowerkz has a very firm limit on feet per second. Zero One had not only down graded her, but also charged the battery, which was very nice of them since it is a small connector and I only have a large connector on my charger.
I zipped up a highcap of BB’s and let rip at a distant tree. As a comparison I also fired on the same target with my LR 300 custom £800 AEG, which has a real steel holosight, Systema highspeed motor (ooooohhh) as well as Prometheus internals and a tight bore barrel.
To put that into context, on the Sunday and using the LR I was able to shoot a guy standing 60 meters away, single shot, in the back of the head. To stand up to that challenge the ICs would have to be hot stuff!
And stand up it did. The rate of fire is of very high quality, somewhere below my LR with its Systema but definitely above a stock TM. Accuracy was good to very good and I was dropping rounds onto the tree with no issues. It doesn’t have the upgraded inner barrel, but it was more than good enough for combat.
Since the whole thing is full metal it has a very nice and very solid feel on the shoulder, which cut down my aim time by a fair whack. I would say that it is balanced very well, even with the PEQ box battery and snap shooting was not a problem. The stock folds down and has a slight bump when folded to hold it in place. I didn’t find it jumped around at all in play.
The tube sticking out the back, which was the cause of so much consternation amongst the geardos is in fact identical to the RS version and a god send in airsoft because this is where the sling mount has been attached and it is a very natural position for it to be in. I found it attached with no worries to my Chalker sling and the whole package sat nicely on my front without dragging me forwards like many other full metal guns do (the hatefull Star Sopmod being the worst.)
So how did it fair in battle?
<—Battle
Well, for a change, the Darkangel team was fighting in woodland this weekend and since this is not a naturally tenable position for the DA’s to find themselves we have a very short time to come to terms with being in woodland, before we got hit and had to sit out for ten minutes.
Obviously in those few moments before being laced, it is the quality of your gun that adds the difference between living and not. For example, a AAA battery gun isn’t going to win, no matter how good you are.
The ICS helped. It went through the mud and trees, it went through the bushes and got down and dirty and every time came up trumps. I had fantastic success using this gun on this day and my final kill count was 27 down for 13 lives with 9 of those being bang kills. Lovely!
Also a nice feature was the bipod. It meant that I could put the gun down and not worry about it being in the mud. Very handy indeed!
Accuracy… Well to be sure, having a proper bipod helps a lot in obtaining pin point accuracy in the field. However, please wait dear reader as next Tuesday I will be testing it out before the games in Electrowerkz, which are as near to ideal conditions as you can get. Suffice to say that during this weekend I was hitting everything I shot at and frankly that is all you can ask for with any gun.
The only gun I have that is better cost £800, so nuff said. The value of this package is immense and it is by far the best airsoft purchase, backed by Z1’s rock solid warranty, that I could have hoped for.
Buy one, you wont regret it. As lex said,
“Its very niiice!”
Here are some images of the trades and two movies; one I show the spring loaded bipod and two I fire the gun dry.
The free T-shirt
MOVIES:
First I show the spring loaded legs:
<—-CLICK FOR MOVIE
Next I show the gun firing (the noise is very loud for an AEG).
The first sound is single shot, then you can hear a burst, then you can hear my wife moaning about me shooting in the house, then I press the forward assist and release the gears.
<—-CLICK FOR MOVIE
So, next week will come a battle report in my home turf; CQB and a full accuracy test from the top floor of electro… watch this space!
Regards,
Basho
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This morning I awoke to Cesca screaming “oh my god!” I knew immediately what had caused the shriek as there is only one thing that puts that tone in the voice.
El spidero!
I didn’t even need to see the beast to know that I was going to need the airsoft shotgun for this one. Quickly I locked and loaded and with some trepidation approached the spare bathroom sink whilst Cesca clutched her hands to her face and looked nervous.
IT. WAS. HUGE.
It was by far the biggest spider I have ever seen wild in the UK. He was stuck in the sink, its slippery walls offering no escape. What to do? Did I simply catch him in a (large) cup and let him go on his way?
Did I hell!
Six pumps and 18 BB’s later the monster was dead. His corpse was too big to flush down the sink, even though I had blown all his legs off.
SHEEEZSH!! I hate those things!
Basho 1 — Spider 0
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The Numly plugin for wordpress:
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Sounds good, so I have given it a little dance; lets see!
Looks like it is working:
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Or “What I saw at the weekend”
CLICK THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE
This weekend the Darkangel team and I drove down to the beautiful New Forest for a weekend of skirmish mayhem. What a weekend we had!
Late Friday afternoon, Trip, Kiero and I arrived at the Z1 campsite and met up with the rest of the guys (and girl; Jenny). The camp site is situated in a couple of fields about a mile down a dirt path and was full of tents. In the final count I was told over 500 people were attending! I saw tents of all types. Some had basic summer fair, whilst others had pulled out all the stops and brought parachute tents, military quick buildings, African plains tents that sat atop their landrovers and all possible permutations of alpine tents.
The London lot had taken over a small corner in the far field and we drove through the grounds to meet up with them.
We quickly unzipped our tents. I say quickly because Trip whipped out his 2 second tent and whooomph he was up and ready! 4 seconds later he had a beer in hand and was looking far too relaxed. At that point I hadn’t even got the bloody tent pegs out yet!
Doc, Kiero and Big D
My Tent!
Lex and his enormous tent
Janno looking hungry
George smiles for the shot
Once the tents were up we quickly got down to business and started drinking (joke!). No, we split into two groups; those playing the first night game, and those who were going to party all night. Guess which group I was in! The weather was glorious and I was very much in the mood to party as I hadn’t seen these guys for a month or so.
Before we got too emerged, I sauntered over to the Z1 crew and picked up my new gun.
ICS, in celebration of their 20 year anniversary have forged, in secret, a master gun. One gun to rule them all, one gun to find them, one gun to find them all, and in the darkness lace the shit out them!
As lex said, “Its very niiice!”
I quickly took her over to the range and gave her a little dance. Now, I had asked for her to be downgraded to 328fps because Electrowerkz has a very firm limit on feet per second. Zero One had not only down graded her, but also charged the battery, all for the bargain price of £269.
The rate of fire is of very high quality, somewhere below my LR with its Systema high speed motor, but definitely above a stock TM. Range’wise the LR is slightly higher (in fact the LR is sniper quality), but the ICS is still very good indeed.
The whole thing is full metal and a nice solid feel on the shoulder. The accuracy is great and the gears very loud (like all ICS). It comes with two (!) high caps, the battery in a PEQ box, a T-shirt, a BB loader and a sling.
Fantastic!
Trip and his super custom HK with prowin gearbox
The night ticked on and we partied hard. Those fighting in the night game came back and announced that the site was huge and the enemy experienced. They also announced that ACU cammo is bloody useless in the the woodland! Doh! I guess we are not in London anymore!
Around 1am I drove the spiders out of my tent and went to sleep.
The next morning was beautiful. We woke at 7:30am and, after a quick visit to the bogs, made breakfast and got ready for action. We started in our ACU’s, but I think we all knew that we would need to change later to something that didn’t glow in the dark and announcing in loud clearly annunciated English where we were hiding!
Trip, Me, Kiero
Z1 had put in a massive amount of thought and planning into the days games. The basic premise was that there was three sides in a localised conflict. The DA’s were on Delta, which was signified by the white tags that we hung from our tac gear. We were fighting against “Bravo” and “The Others” in a fully featured war setting. The Idea was that during the day certain objectives had to be held, materials recovered and hostages either taken or rescued. I heard, throughout the entire weekend, many of the Darkangel team say that they thought the whole event was being very well arranged. I would agree. Z1 have done themselves proud.
As the Marshals explained all this to us I took stock of the size of the crowd we had here. 500 people in various gear is a sight to see. It was massive! I could tell that the fighting was going to be very very fierce once we got started.
I was right. The teams made their way to their start points. I began to get an idea of the size of the Z1 play area. It is by far the largest I have ever played. Hills, valleys, camps, bases, dug outs, brush, ferns, paths and off road paths litter an enormous area. The game started an we DA’s looked at each other; already we were lost.
One of the regular players broke from his team and led us out. I have to say that in all my time in Airsoft I have yet to come across nicer regulars in any site. Soon contact was made and men went down in BB fire. The kill rules here are simple. once dead you sit out for ten minutes at designated points and then you are back in. This lends a whole reinforcement aspect to the flow of the game, which worked very well. It also gives you a rest!
The Z1 regular that scouted for us.
Geardo!
Janno describing the size of his breakfast
The DA’s fought hard but made slow progress down the pathways towards the Bravo quadrant. Our ACU was simply too easy to see (we nicknamed it “I-SEE-YOU”.) I was starting to tire and decided to try and flank the enemy on the path by making my way through the bushes. Soon I was lost. The opponents I encountered were quickly beaten by the surprise of seeing me coming out of the bush and giving them a wave, then shooting them. Silly sods. I never cheated by claiming to be on their side, I didn’t have to, a simple wave of the hand disarmed them totally.
I found myself far down the path of their lines and passed back towards the DA’s sneaking up to all the opponents (who were looking the other way) and tapping them on the shoulder. I would simply say “You’re dead mate!” and pass on. I managed to kill 8 before they cottoned on and took me down. It was too late for them, my strategy for the day had been decided. I was going to sneak.
An example of the quick reflexes and well organised responses of the Z1 team came when a crazy women, nothing to do with the game (or so I understand) drove through the game in an open top red car. She obviously had no idea where she was and if she was in danger from a stray BB. The car was very quickly trailed by a quad bike full of Marshals and soon escorted out of the arena.
I teamed up with George and we spent the rest of the afternoon sneaking through the bush as a double team and caused mayhem! Our greatest achievement was taking out the entire “Stag camp.”
We sneak up on “Stag.”
We skirted around the camp, which has multiple sand bag positions and great fields of fire down the front paths. Slowly and silently we crept in the rear entrance; hidden through bushes. I led and came across a rear guardsman who back at me and, yes you guessed it, waved. I signaled him that he was dead and to his eternal credit he took the “bang kill” silently. Let me say it again; what a honest player. Passing by him I could see 8 players dug in around the camp and all looking the other way. We passed silently into their camp and I bang killed 4 of them before the others even realised they were under attack. As I moved to the fifth George noticed that I had been spotted and opened fire. Suddenly we were in a large firefight and all were killed. nevertheless, we had taken the whole camp!
A nice feeling. We congratulated ourselves and walked to the dead zone where we chatted with those who had fallen in the fight and swapped stories about the firefight.
After that, my other highlight was taking the “Check Point Charlie” base and holding off a massive 20 man onslaught, only falling to a grenade thrown through the door after taking 8 men out.
It is an example of the size of the place that we fought the same men all day and didn’t see more than 200 of the 500 doing battle.
The end of day results put Delta in second place by on 90 points and so there was all to play for. Big D made up much of our score by finding one of the most valuable packages; the gold nuggets.
As darkness drew we retired from the fighting for dinner then made our way back to the night game. Lex and Trip had arranged with the Z1 commanders that they would announce the start of the night games by letting off a mark 120 pyrotechnic, which could be heard from all parts of the site.
Lex and Trip wire up the pyrotechnic.
CLICK ME FOR A MOVIE OF THE PYRO GOING UP!
The boom sounded and we started the attack. Night games are always chaos and thus it was this time. All too soon someone was injured and the game was halted whilst he was looked after. Trip and Lex then powered up the night scope and went and kicked 30 assess in the pitch black.
I decided to bug out at that point and go back to party harder than last night. Like only the Darkangel’s can!
On the way back to camp our resident singer; Big D together with Janno and myself came up with new words for the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which goes as follows:
Janno strikes the pose!
I see a little silhouetto on the airsoft field,
Scaramouche,scaramouche light up the mother fucxer–
Thunderbolt and lightning-BB’s very frightening me–
Galileo,galileo,
Galileo galileo
Galileo He’s a newbie–
But Im just a newbie and nobody loves me–
Hes just a newbie boy from a rental family–
Spending his life for an EO-TECH–
Easy come easy go-,won’t you geardo?-
Bismillah! no-,we will not geardo!-
geardo!
Bismillah! no-,we will not geardo!-
geardo!
Bismillah! no-,we will not geardo!-
geardo!
Will not not geardo!-
Will not not geardo!-
No,no,no,no,no,no,no–
Mama mia,mama mia,mama mia let me geardo!-
Beelzebub has a devil put a sidearm for me?,for me?,for me?-
’nuff said!
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of many snoring ‘angels. Brushing the multitude of spiders from my obviously irresistible body I crawled out of my tent and started to make the coffee. then someone had the best idea I had heard all day; let’s find a café and get a cooked breakfast!
Morning has broken!
We quickly formed up in three transports and zoomed off to find a very nice little café in Christchurch. I was so hungry that the other team members christened me “F18” in honour of the speed I drive (which was a fully legal speed, I assure you!)
The second days fighting saw the ‘angels stick closer together and work very well as a team. We even followed the objectives in the plan!
The Delta a Bravo teams joined forces and attacked the entrenched Others.
Our mission was to assault the high hill camp, but first we had to get past the defenses along the roads leading to the base of the hill. We decided to flank the opponents and snuck along through the ferns to the far far left of the road.
The DA’s’ quickly adopt local camouflage and blend in! You can’t tell but there is 4 maybe 5 DA’s in this picture! Can you even spot a single one!?
Moving well as a team we beat a path upto the hill and started our assault. The fight was tough, very tough but after much battle, laying flat and crawling up the mud we were victorious in taking the highest point and beating the defense to a pulp. Janno, as is his way, led the cry for a “Hell yeah!” and the Delta/Bravo men and women cried in unison.
We have the hill!
Then, of course, the union of the two forces failed at the marshals command. After many hours slugging it out, including one master shot from the LR, which took out a guy bloody miles away, we passed back by the home safe zone and called it a day.
Night vision glock!
The remaining DA’s salute their leader!
The event had been very successful and we all had a great time. We packed in very high spirits and slowly, taking our time, we drove off in convoy. We used radios to keep in touch whilst driving up the M3 and after many good byes my car left the others for its journey to Buckhurst Hill.
There and back again. The event was over for us, but the memories will last until we next take up arms at Zero One.
Regards,
Basho
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So I have signed the blog up and we shall see how it goes!
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One of the true great online comics. I cant post an image because he would get mad, so please check out:
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My darling wife,
I cry a bitter tear at being parted from you during this awful conflict. It is terrible, not only because all war is terrible, but also because I have no peace of mind and no time to myself. Whenever I think of you my attention is suddenly drawn painfully away by the sound of explosions and the sights of horror. I just want the best chance for my family to make it to old age, but my duty is always foremost in my mind.
We arrived here in high spirits. We have been told that we had come to liberate these people, and we will do so. They are not like us, my darling. Their lives lack the meaning that our people draw from the trust in our leader. The men and I fought against their army; its was a pitiful thing. Our tactics, armaments and the natural fighting prowess of the men of our country soon put their forces in retreat. We now control much of the land and have taken their capital city without much loss. My crew on the tank continue to perform their duties with honour my love and I am most proud of them all. I see everyday that our military is actually doing very well.
We passed by some of the buildings and architecture of this corrupt régime. I cannot tell you the size of the buildings and the strange art within. This place has the power to shock and awe you at any time, even if that shock is one of beauty. To fight in a place like this we focused our minds on our task. As I told the men; we are simply defending the freedom of you all back home. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. And by our actions, we will secure the peace
The political situation is more than clear to us than ever before. We hear of you all doubting our mission, but we do not. It is like our leader said, “Faith can be found, if the will is there. Our leadership has the will, and faith is with the people…” We know that God is on our side. We ask every nation to join us and not to oppose us.
We could not allow our country to be threatened. Invasion was an action of self defense. Too long had these people harbored those who have attacked us and tried in every way to weaken our freedoms with their vile religious views. Our leader was right, we could not allow this to continue. It would be unpatriotic. I know the world is split in agreeing with us. Can they not see that once military action has been taken that it is too late, far too late to continue their arguing with us? They must follow where we lead. We, who will police the world. Why? Only because our nation is the most powerful and the most free.
We, our allies and us, formed a just plan. A simple change of leadership. This could have been bloodless, but they fought anyway. Their fanaticism knows no bounds. They guarded the border, but we went around and over them. They had no chance against our forces speed and intelligence equipment and we rained down bombs on their troops from the air.
The war is won, for now (there are many other countries who wish us harm.) It is up to us now to win the peace and rebuild this nation in our own image. Unfortunately the insurgents want otherwise. They have formed themselves into a hidden resistance. They are hiding out amongst the people, after all a soldier with no uniform looks like a civilian. They have armaments, we think being smuggled in by the neighboring country (Our next target?) and they are using these to attack our vehicles and troops as we try and maintain this fragile moment of peace and rebuild the nation. Everyday a new crash and boom means more of our troops have died. But we will not give up! We will never give up! We must not give in to these terror fighters. We must make these people see that we are the only way, the free way, forwards for their nation. There is no choice, they will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.. We will not lose as our culture is simply naturally superior to theirs. Our faith in our government and our church, stronger than theirs. We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement and every financial influence and every necessary weapon of war.
We will obtain a lasting victory here my love, an when we do, I will be flying home to your loving arms as soon as I can. I miss you, I love you. Rest assured that I am safe over here and I will do my duty.
All my heart,
Paul
Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist
Generalfeldmarschall
Panzergruppe von Kleist
Gespenster-Division
Château de Vincennes
Paris
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