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