Winter Game Afteraction report

Hey all, we had a short game with the LMAG guys over the weekend, out in the open woods.  The snow had all melted, and a light dusting had not penetrated into the forrest we were playing in, so it was bare ground in most places, save some left over hard pack snow in a few open spots.  Granted, it was cold at about 25 degrees, but not horrible at all.

As we have discussed in a few other posts, electric replicas and some gas guns are less happy in the cold.  We had a few battery failures, and one of the gas guns was just burping more than throwing plastic, but all in all we had most of our gear function as expected.

Three games were played, and it was a snipers holiday!  The guys with the sniper replicas did exceptionally well in two of the three games and held their own in the third.  The only real issues were communication based, and I know we hammer on this a lot on the blog, but it is worth saying again.  We forgot one of our own rules.. on the second game of 7 on 3, we forgot to set pass phrases (aka challenges).  At one point two of us were on patrol searching for the infiltration team, and we came upon a second team.  They were equipped with similar gear to the known infiltration team, and were in deep cover.  I called out "friendly?", and because of the wind and extra cold weather gear they were not able to make out the call.  Had we used a pass phrase, I would have called whatever our challenge phrase was as I approached, waiting for a response.  Sadly, this ended badly... friendly fire isn't.  The other fire team noticed our approach, and since we were staying low and in soft cover, they could make out movement and not exactly who was in the brush.  This is another point we hammer on, but it merits repeating... know what you are shooting at!  A few shots later, two of the four of us were out when we finally realized both sides were friendly, and we had done a lot of the infiltration teams work for them.  Needless to say, I felt dumb as a brick for forgetting to set a challenge phrase, and in the end it cost our team dearly.  Everybody makes mistakes, definitely learn from them!!!

Also in these games, Bishop had problem with his glasses fogging under the mask, and had two separate chances for a called kill (aka sniper kill, mercy kill, bang kill, ect).  In both cases, he took the high road, and didn't take the kill, as he was concerned it was his own team and ended up out from it.  This is something we will cover in a future post; testing methods to prevent fogging on lenses and ways for airsoft players who wear glasses to keep their fogging down to a minimum.  We are experimenting with a lot of different solutions and we will let you know what works for us.  Obviously, method one didn't work.

A few other things that we tried on this event you may want to try in your games:

We played a game of "your team".  Captains are chosen (in this case the two most effective snipers of the earlier games) and they choose team members for the other team, alternating back and forth.  Ie, you are trying to choose the least effective team for your opponent. Either by gear for the situation, experience or who is having a good day vs who is having an off day.  Your Team is a game we play often in social situations as a lark; same rules when you are out at a restaurant, in a sort of fantasy football like game.  In airsoft, it makes for some challenges, as you may end up with players on your team that have not played your field before, may not have optimal equipment for the situation or that you have never met and played with before today.  It is a great way of learning to adapt to new situations and working with people you have not met before, and makes you a better player in large mil sim games.

So that's the quick version of our first winter game of the season, and we will fill in more details as other games get played to give new players some first hand accounts of what to expect in winter games.

Over and out!