A few weekends ago my airsoft brothers and I were players at the TA Event’s, “The Chernarus Conflict”. This was a 24 hour Milsim game using the, freshly revised, BattleSim rules developed by Iain of TA Events.
To those of you who play computer games, the country of Chernarus may ring a few bells. As anyone who loves the Arma series of games from Bohemia Interactive will tell you Chernarus, or Black Russia, is a fictional post-USSR country somewhere in the East that is used as the main game location. TA Events have licensed the entire storyline from Bohemia meaning that players at the event could sign up to the various factions found in the series. When someone says that you should get out from behind the keyboard and get some exercise, these events enable you to re live the brilliant, in-depth storyline for (almost) real. A detailed account of the factions and background to the event can be found here and it has a very professional depth to it not usually available to airsofters.
Welcome back to OC, Cesca and I have been away for two weeks as she has been creating a prize winning show garden at the prestigious RHS Malvern Show and I have been camping alongside her revising for my diploma in Combating Financial Crime. Now we are back and on schedule for the summer. Here is what you can expect from the OC over the next few months:
- This Is India podcast 2. We already have this one mapped out and it includes the Shiva temples of Hampi, the tech capital of Bangalore, the majestic palaces of Mysore and the high mountains of Ooty, where we meet up with one of our top travelling companions for the rest of southern India: Gweny.
- Kerala. Enough said. This is a wonder.
- A review of Robin Hood – should it provoke one?
- A Basho film of the Mall.
- A Basho film of the forthcoming 3 day milsim event at TA, Sennybridge, including our Magpul send-up!
- A Basho film of the Malvern garden.
Anyway, before all that:
The Airsoft Adventures Podcast!
This podcast is not on our travels, rather it is about the sport I play with my team mates, the sport of airsoft.
I have been playing airsoft now for 7 years, which is an easy date for me to remember as I started my first proper skirmish on my stag night. I went on from there to play regularly at the old London site of Electrowerkz and was soon drafted into the Dark Angels (as they were then known); a 30 strong team of serious CQB players. Soon after that I was asked to join the marshalling team at Electrowerkz and rose to become a senior marshal and even ran the venue on my own a few times. Unfortunately, Electrowerkz closed on the day I left to go travelling and the Dark Angels became team Delta-Alpha. They have gone from strength to strength since then and have successfully branched out into playing military simulation games as well as appearing on TV, a music video and as “resistance security” for the Sarah Connor Chronicles London launch party. This year, a vote was taken to reduce the “publicity” side of the team and focus on the airsoft and I was raised to become of the 5 committee members. We now prowl around the airsoft circuit, sometimes being hired as a scripted enemy, but always reminding people that Team DA plays a very committed game at a very high standard of fairness and honour.
If you have an airsoft ground, if you need 30 very well equipped and motivated players to come down and kick your local boy’s asses, and if you can find our website, then maybe you can hire: The DA Team.
Today’s podcast takes a look at the differences between playing at the Mall in Reading, which is a CQB venue in 250,000 square feet of disserted shopping mall, and a Stirling Combat mission, which is a serious roleplay milsim event run by ex SAS members and not for the faint hearted.
In this episode we cover:
- What is playing the Mall really like?
- Do Stirling players really torture each other?
- Will villager Trip fight for the Taliban team of oppressors, or the American team handing out biscuits?
- Is the Mall’s safety brief really 50 minutes long?
All will be revealed right here, so please click to play!
If the above doesn’t work try the direct link: http://www.outsidecontext.com/wordpress/wp-content/podcast/TheMall.mp3
Supporting Media
During the podcast, reference is made to the following 12 man kill streak caught on camera by Basho:
This is the first podcast on this subject and we hope to be able to do many more. If you would like to appear as a guest in the next one (over Skype) then please let me know via the comments form below.
The DA’s have played some unusual games over the years, but this was a first for us: this was the first time that we were asked to be a scripted opposition.
The idea has a lot of merit if you think about it. Firstly, games often ebb and flow randomly. One side may gain the upper hand in an attack, but they loose too many men to reinforce the position and soon are driven back and it is the other team who are then on the offensive. Similar to a game of football. However, sometimes a team simply hammers all opposition to such an extent that the suffering team cannot fulfil their objectives at all. Sometimes they cannot get out of their safe zone. The game suddenly becomes unbalanced, tempers raise, cries of cheating go up and no fun is had at all.
Well, at least none by the team getting a kicking.
