Posts Tagged ‘Airsoft’
I have often remarked that the challenge of making an airsoft film - when you are also playing in the game - is that you can only edit what you film. In other words: all the events and action is "live" and you cannot simply stop filming, back everyone up, and take a different angle! I have tried many approaches to defeating this problem such as using multiple camera's, being an extra slice of awesome and filming everything that happens. However, milsim proved a stronger challenge. How can I make a film about a shooting event where for the first 10 hours...
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I stood alone in the pre-dawn of the morning and the silence of the surrounding forest was punctuated only by the hooting of owls and the snoring of AQT players as they serenaded the coming sun. I was taking my turn on watch and the firebase was so dark that I couldn’t really see my way to walk around the inside of the perimeter. It was a large base by airsoft standards, about 70 meters long and 20 wide, with several small wooden buildings, huts and fire positions all surrounded by steel barrels acting as the wall between the players and the trees beyond. Every few steps I raised the NVG scope to my left eye and took a look into the gloomy and misty darkness. Through the NVG there were only dark shapes with blurry outlines, suggestive of men among the trees, but these didn’t move so I took them to be bushes. Nevertheless, I gripped my rifle tightly in my right hand.
I again cursed the idea that I was the only sentry.
My team leader, Trip, had listened to our single-sentry concerns and then laid out what we were going to do, “Well,” he began, “we can leave, but if we do the AQT will turn on us. Or we can stay. The opposition will probably attack in the early morning, so I will make sure that we have the last sentry watches. I will go first. Basho, you will take the last watch.”
I didn’t sleep very well as what if the enemy sent in a silent unit to take out the sentry? We wouldn’t know we were under attack until we were all murdered in our sleeping bags! Consequently I kept my boots and fighting rig on when in my sleeping bag, with a drawn pistol next to my leg. I was determined not to be captured without a fight.
Four hours later it was my turn and here I stood, alone in the darkness, straining my ears to hear any noises and feeling the tension in the air. I was on the last watch, so I knew they would be coming any moment. I leaned over a barrel to get a better look at a suspicious tree and then, satisfied, turned away to walk on. Suddenly, there was the unmistakable crack of a stick being stood on – someone was right behind me! My heart beat in my ears as I flicked the selector switch on my M4 to full auto. I thought to myself: I must be fast and smooth, I must get off a burst in an arc to be sure of a hit then I have to shout the alert to the sleeping base. As my eyes strained to my left I suddenly saw a flash of unmistakable movement in my peripheral vision. He was coming low and left for a knife kill! I planted my foot forwards and span, pulling the trigger as I turned. The AEG motor kicked into life and started spitting high-speed BBs. I was sure that I was going to get at best a 50/50. My arm strained to draw the arc of fire as fast as possible and the opposition shape started to resolve, raising itself up in alarm of its own. The white BBs flew through the air between us and rattled into the –
- into the deer!
I released the trigger, but it was too late and the deer took a scything burst across the haunches. It brayed in fear, reared-up its legs high in the air and then bounded off into the night. Gone. Just as suddenly as it began it was over and I was alone again with only the sound of my heart pumping in my ears and my face flush with cold embarrassment.
A whispered voice came from one of the huts, “What was that? Is it a stand to?”
I pushed the selector to safe. “No mate, false alarm”.
“Right,” the voice said, tired, and went away.
I walked on, continuing my vigil. I knew that they were out there – probably laughing.
Criticism isn’t as easy as people like to think. This is because that, while everyone knows when things have not gone optimally, as the old adage goes, “opinions are like assholes; everyone has got one”. However opinions are not often the result of well thought-out analysis, but rather the result of frustration and the need to vent anger. In airsoft, where bad command decisions can lead directly to the unquestionably real pain of being laced or embarrassed, most teams have a very simple method of dealing with the potential for such situations:
They don’t have commanders at all.
I don’t blame them for this; as it is the commonly held consensus that leading airsofters is like” herding cats” and not worth the effort. Consequently, while airsoft players often dress like the most elite of Special Forces, in battle they lack the most fundamental structure that every unit in the armed forces learns from day one. It can be quite funny to watch players wearing thousands of pounds of kit get laced up by mongrel teams in jeans and toting AEPs because they are acting only as individuals not as a cohesive unit. I often refer to such “team’s” airsoft tactics as a Barbarian Horde approach, but actually this is an insult to the great Hordes of antiquity that worked well together. No the actual playing style of the average airsoft “team” is best illustrated by allusion to the teamwork shown in the movie Black Hawk Down…
…and I don’t mean by the US.
It is often said that Airsoft is a game of extreme variety. At one end of the spectrum there are the speedball players who only play in small arenas. For they the game is about CQC accuracy, high rates of fire and aggression. Tactics tend to be personal and if they play as a team at all it is usually in very small groups. There is hardly what could be called commanders. This was the airsoft of Electrowerkz. Veterans of that site tend to be tough, able to run into massive volumes of fire without flinching and a little unhinged. All the way at the other end of the spectrum is the sort of military simulation that companies such as Stirling offer in the form of training missions, hiking into countryside for 2 days for a 10 minute fire fight and being tortured when captured. It is into this enormous dichotomy that Tier 1 Military Simulations has launched their services pitched at both parties.
Note: The film is at the end of this article. If you want to just watch that then please scroll down.
It was when I was sitting in the steam room at Virgin Active with 20 sweaty men all dressed in the same set of bright beach shorts, and making jokes about their penises, that something struck me as odd,
“This has to be,” I announced into the cloud of steam, which was being jetted into the room at an alarming rate and temperature, “the most surreal Ground Zero Weekender I have ever been to.”
The member of team Delta Alpha to my right leant in and said,
“Do you feel better now, though?” He asked.
I considered the question.
