Or “What I saw at the weekend”

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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 cafe and get a cooked breakfast!

Morning has broken!

We quickly formed up in three transports and zoomed off to find a very nice little cafe 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