Airsoft Football

Duck and take cover all, a new training game for you is incoming!

After the Big Game, we realized that we should have posted our airsoft football game ideas, so you all out there can run this as well. We have run this a couple times and it is a lot of fun and doesn't take many props to play.

This game is intended as a team building exercise, and encourages moving in a unit to protect the football. Good communication and staying spread out but close enough to cover each other helps a lot. Feel free to use any weird way to choose sides so people are playing with new folks as much as possible (like everyone with facial hair on one team, or everyone wearing white socks... what ever works). This will help people get used to dropping into a new team quickly and that is a very handy skill to have at larger events. (Ever loose your guys at a big event? If you can grab 5 other guys at a res point in a large skirmish, head out and operate as a team right away you spend far more trigger time, have more fun and meet new friends a whole lot faster than if you spent half the day wandering around in the woods trying to refind your buddies, right?)

Here are the basic rules of it all:

You need a "football". We usually use a large ammo can filled with sand. Any decent sized container with some weight will work; coolers, foot lockers, what have you. The game works better if the football is large enough that two people are needed to carry it effectively, since this is a team building exercise.

A field to play on. We like to play this in mixed woods; pines, open hardwoods and scrub. This forces some tactical decisions like do you take it down the scrubby side of the field and possibly get caught up closer. Or do you move through the open trees and possibly get taken by snipers at a distance? A fairly large field makes for a longer game, and you might want to time the game on a bigger field.

End zones. These should be the same size, one at each end of the field. A couple tall sticks with flags attached or spray paint on the grass works. You need a clear line at each endzone, if the football crosses it, its a score.

Benches. Well, not physical benches, but each team has a res area along side the field. When you get hit, you go back to your team's sideline, wait a minute or do 10 pushups then come back in. (We allow players to choose between a minute or 10 pushups so they have the option to take a rest or hit the ground and come back in fast but more worn).

Players. Shirts vs skins is probably out, but some way to differentiate teams helps here.

The rules are pretty simple beyond that. The football starts in the center of the field, each team starts in their end zone. The first team to grab the football and move it into their opponents endzone scores. If you want, time the game and at half time the teams switch ends. We have variants for real football scoring, but you will probably want to run it simply at first; one point for each time a team crosses the goal line with the football.

If you want a real meat grinder version, put the res points in the end zones. This game is much more difficult to score in; as the ball gets closer your opponents res faster and are right where you need to go. Be careful about engagement limits in these games, as there will be some very close up firefights in this version.

Another variant is played more true to football; everyone has spring pistols and rubber training knives, the plays start on a line of scrimmage, and when the football hits the ground or the person/people carrying it are hit, the play stops. You then reset the line and make another play. On this version, we have run four plays per side only, no first downs at all to make the play move faster. A two man run over the line is 7 points (touchdown) and a one man run over the line is a 3 point field goal. Usually this variant is played with a smaller "ball" like a 50 caliber ammo can or the like.

So grab your gear, find a football and have at it!

Oh, and here is a little secret... The ammo can has to cross the line, the contents may or may not have to. In our games, we specify that the can must cross the line, but we have never said that the contents have to. No one has realized this little semantic principal yet, and no one has yet dumped out the sand... I'm betting they will after this post though.