Operation Overkill

Dirty Dog Airsoft, Shildon UK

27/05/23

Dirty Dog has been my local site for many, many years. It’s one of the most relaxed skirmish sites you’ll ever come across – always a good atmosphere, plenty of laughs, easy short games with plenty of breaks in the safezone to socialise, and gameplay that works for all sorts of players across the airsoft spectrum. I don’t play there as often as I used to these days because I enjoy challenges beyond skirmish days, but when I heard they were planning a full-day Milsim event, it got my attention. I thought if nothing else it would make for a fascinating blog and experience.

Operation Overkill was announced months in advance, with two teams (Green and Black) being given objectives throughout the day that would test their abilities to work as a team. Knowing how the site usually plays, I must admit I was more interested to see if these players could pull it off; there have been similar events in the past but not regularly and I’ve usually been away at other events, so I’ve not actually experienced a Dirty Dog Milsim/big event. It’s not something we get a lot of in the far north of England, and it attracts a lot of guys from Scotland as well, who are always great to catch up with. Quickly coerced onto the Black team by UKAL founder Alex, I was thrust into some team group chats where the local players were excitedly beginning their prep. Memes were traded, largely directed at Green commander James Jeffels and Black commander Michael Comett, and the rivalry was established.

In terms of the event, it wasn’t actually a Milsim. In fact, it was very far from it, and my apologies to the guys jumping on social media proclaiming otherwise. But it was a chance for a full-day game where the teams would really have to function as teams in order to complete objectives which would be revealed during the game. Usually during skirmish events there’s a lot of solo players, or little squads that seem to operate by themselves. It’s disjointed, but everyone has a good time. Overkill was going to pit teams of 100+ against each other and would require tactics and cooperation to win. The group chats I was in were obviously for the Black team, so I can’t comment on how the greens got on, but it soon became apparent that trying to bring speedsofters and skirmishers together with more experienced players wasn’t going to be easy. Some guys were trying to plan tactics despite having no idea what they’d be asked to do, some were busy clogging up the chat with unnecessary chatter, many had issues with guns and kit, and “Lord Commander” Comett was having a hard time trying to keep things diplomatic and moving forward.

I know from doing big events, Milsims and England games that the only prep you can realistically do in advance is to ensure that you’re in good physical condition, and your guns and kit work ready for the day itself. Winning games owes more to your ability to read situations as they unfold and react to the enemy than it does trying to imagine strategies and tactics in advance. I did try to encourage some technical assistance to help guys who needed things fixed but it seemed quickly washed away.

Prep done properly by Royal Huntsman, a Scottish team who travelled for the event. They’ve familiarised themselves with the site in advance, and it’s such a boost to be able to meet face-to-face and prep like this. The team, from what I’ve seen and heard, gave a very good account of themselves and rightly so. This is how to organise a team for an event, and the difference showed in the field. Photo credit – Royal Huntsman

The one thing we did get organised, which was logical, was for squads to be set up – the excellent Comett dividing up the 130 strong black team into roughly squads of 20. Seeing myself more as an observer than any kind of central figure in this game, I offered to just be dumped in anywhere. And I was – the only familiar face in the squad being Norvern Monkeys and England teammate Jon Snowe. I’m sure I know the rest of the guys from skirmish games but not well enough to share a beer. We didn’t have a name for our squad either, but we had our starting orders.

There’s quite a lot going on on this map if you’ve never been to the site before. The red zones were out of bounds, to channel the game elsewhere on site. Two bases, the Green base circled top left, and our Black base in blue at the bottom right. Not knowing what the objectives might be, our plan was to form a defensive line which I’ve drawn on here in blue. The area of trees in the middle is a big hill, which is difficult terrain to fight up and through. The top left, a collection of steel containers, is the site’s centrepiece “Village”, which many travel for. We figured that if we could hold the Greens in the village area by being at the top of a hill, it would allow us to freely pick up objectives behind that line. Each squad had a section of this line to capture and hold, and mine was given the furthest point; the Horseshoe.

I had two concerns with this. One was the distance to travel, uphill, to get there before the Greens did. And secondly, a lot of players on skirmish day are very excitable with the trigger, and I wondered if they would have the discipline to simply sit and hold a position, and dig in when they needed to.

Gearing Up

Apart from a Pentagon Ranger Shirt, it quickly dawned on me that I didn’t actually own any black kit, and certainly didn’t want to buy anything purely for one game day, but the site were insisting that even the rigs had to be the right colour for the team which presented many problems. In the past I’ve often regarded black kit as being the preserve of indoor CQB players, and as a sniper I obviously have a great love of of camouflage, so I’ve avoided it completely. I managed to get enough non-airsoft clothing together but didn’t own a rig, but thankfully Jon had a spare SAAV kicking around in black, which is more than capable of holding pretty much everything you could need even on a two day event.

A lunch break was announced, so in terms of kit, this was going to be two 3hr sessions with an opportunity to refuel in between. In the anticipated heat of a cloudless day, with a lot of fighting uphill where mobility was going to be an issue, I decided a light skirmish kit would be enough, with a kit bag at the base if I needed it. Being an objective-based game, and a lot of “snipers” on the team, I left my sniper kit behind but added the VSR to the base bag – if the team needed it, I could step in and do some sniping to score points. Even wearing black.

Black kit in summer is still easily hidden, because you use stealth techniques while moving and use the overgrown natural vegetation as cover the same way someone in green camo would, so we weren’t actually at a disadvantage.

To the kit then – the SBS MC51 would be the primary. I’ve recently been working on the hop and it’ll lift anything now, so I decided on 0.28’s for higher fps at shorter ranges than something above 0.36. It’s a pretty old, and basic gun, but it works flawlessly and easily shows up more expensive builds.

The rig would hold as many mags as needed, I own 14 but took 8 including two mag clamped together. For skirmish style play during daytime, there really was nothing else needed weapons wise. I wanted to be as mobile as possible, so the only other kit was a radio. Of our squad of 20, only 4 had radios, but it was enough to relay a bit of information around. It was connected to the squad rather than to HQ, as our squad leader had a radio link to HQ anyway. It always surprises me how few people actually run radios; they’re happy pouring hundreds of pounds into gun upgrades but the biggest difference is being able to pass information to each other in game.

There’s my kit then. Gun, mags, radio. Nothing more. A bit warm with long sleeves but the amount of time spent crawling through nettles justified that; certainly a lot cooler than some very heavily loaded multicam players on the opposing team. No boots, in part because I forgot to put them on because I was too busy socialising around the safe zone, but these are Adidas Terrex walking shoes which are more than up to the job. I did regret actually taking a kit bag to the base, because on a few occasions it became too tempting to walk back after being hit to and reload mags and take on fluids – all that stuff should have been on me in the rig and it wouldn’t have added too much extra weight. It was more of a pain walking back to get it after the game too, as it had three more guns in (“spares”/”other options”) which weren’t necessary, as well as my usual game day shit of spare parts, tools, tins of baked beans, bags of different ammo weights, spare clothing etc. I should have been on the front line a lot more than I was.

Game On

Our first task, before any objectives were announced, was to haul ass up the hill and capture the Horseshoe position. So it was a running start, and I was a few seconds behind because I hadn’t loaded mags fully despite having three hours on site to get ready. Upon reaching the top of the hill at the Horseshoe, we found scattered resistance and started engaging from cover. I have to give a mention to the medics on our team who worked tirelessly at the back of each squad, darting forward to get players back in the fight, then rushing back to safety to ensure we still had the ability to revive. There were a few grenades thrown forward but I was thankful for the familiar “boom” of mortar fire from the rear of our position. Usually, mortars are very inaccurate at airsoft but they do look and sound cool, but this mortar was expertly fired, and I watched the first round hit down in the middle of a group of enemy players. With this fire support, we’d soon captured our position and it seemed like the rest of the Black team had achieved similar success further down the line. Job done. I was impressed with the discipline of our squad as they held positions diligently, using cover but opening up good firing lines on the enemy, engaging accurately and with the medics doing their job of keeping us alive. It was going well.

Holding the line with our unnamed squad, a random collection but they pulled together brilliantly.

The main objectives were in sealed envelopes and were given out periodically. There were two “side objectives” running throughout as well – contraband, taking the form of gold bars, drugs and fuel rods, which were scattered across the site to be collected and deposited in a stash, which was a building forward of the team base and could be raided at any time. The other was to kill the base commander – contraband could be spent to force the enemy commander to leave the safety of their base. Having a defensive line, some loose Black players were tasked with gathering contraband in safety, though when we found any on the front line it was passed back.

(Left) Bubba, for the first time ever on the opposing team, with one of the mortars that wreaked havoc throughout the day. (Right) Emma, one of the medics who worked hard in the heat to keep us going. Mortars and Medics made all the difference, if you had good ones, you were ahead.

Four main objectives were won during the first half of the day, these involved taking and holding a position. Despite looking good at our end of the line, I was surprised to learn at lunchtime that the scores were 2-2, and the game was much tighter than it looked. I was glad to have the SAAV which came off quickly and easily at lunch, and enjoyed a good 30 min break to take on more cans of Rockstar energy, visit the toilet three times as a result of that, and eat a flapjack. Comett approached me and said he wanted the team back at base 15 mins prior to the restart, for a meeting and a bit of a rant about some of the medics grouping together and presenting an easy target, so I got walking around the car park to relay that to as many Black players as I could, assisted by Alex. It was important to restart on the front foot, and Comett rallied the team well. We knew what we had to do in the second half to get ahead.

“GAME ON” came over the radios and as before, we ran to our objective (same position as the morning). Now, I’m pretty good when it comes to running and sprinted past the entire black team to get there first, but halfway through we were gunned down by the Greens on top of a ridgeline in our sector of the map. By my reckoning, at full speed they could at best be only halfway to that position, so either a) They started Game On before we did, or b) They restarted in advanced positions rather than from their team base. Rather than shout medic, I stormed back to base to complain at command and the marshal who was attending to it – and I rarely complain, but it bothered me. A bit out of breath from sprinting anyway, I had a couple of minutes to cool down before returning to the action.

To revisit the map, our new position was the blue line bottom right, a long way downhill from where we needed to be. The Greens were sitting in the treeline, LMG’s and support weapons raining down fire that pinned us in a desperate defensive line in front of the “Tin Hut”, which was actually our contraband stash and couldn’t be lost. We’d lost control of the game, and were on the back foot. The path just above is a track about six metres wide, a short open area but any attempt to cross it resulted in our players being gunned down from an immediate, tree covered hill, too risky to expose medics to. Similarly, the Greens couldn’t advance either for the same reason. They were able to effectively hold us with much fewer numbers, and I noted out to left of the map that some greens were attempted to push round to the rear of our base, presumably to take out our commander. It’s at this point some players could give up, but thankfully few did, although many were standing around wondering how to punch through. A long time passed with a few ballsy attempts to break through before a surge of Black players eventually managed to gain a foothold on the right flank. I saw most of our forces burst up the track on the right and slowly we managed to make progress up the hill to try to capture more objectives. Remarkably while this was going on, with all our forces concentrated in the area just forward of the stash, a lone Green sniper managed to crawl slowly right through, unseen, and actually managed to raid our entire stash on his own.

That, the dodgy restart, and a sneaky radio transmission by a Green that jumped onto the Black channel and instructed all of our team to urgently fall back to base (I’m undecided on whether that was genius, or cheating) meant that the final scores were

Black team 460 – Green team 665

I have no idea how the points scoring actually worked, I just concentrated on doing what I was asked to do, but (England vs Scotland aside) the results don’t matter in airsoft games. It’s having a good time, and hopefully learning something. I learned that the guys on both teams really can step their game up a bit when it matters, and I hope that the site starts to do more of these big games because they’ve executed this one so well. Working as a team to achieve objectives is what airsoft is all about. I’ve met a lot of new people during this, and I’d even go as far as to buy more black kit if it meant being able to play alongside them again. Yes, there’s a bit to work on at squad level (comms for starters) but there are some damn good competitive players at Dirty Dog and it’s been an absolute joy to be a part of.

Oh, and there was a free bbq with free cake at the end too, but I’d happily play without that reward.

Nice one DDA, I’ll see you at the next one!