Disciplines.

There are things that annoy me in airsoft. I don’t go complaining to marshals, or shout at other players, or give crappy reviews, or go bleating all over YouTube to whoever might listen in the hope I can stir up some drama for a few cheap likes.

No, I come here to write about it and try and make it educational.

I’ve just had a brilliant skirmish day at Dirty Dog Airsoft, my local, and this time I took my daughter along; LolaWarrior. She’s 16 now, and has had four game days previously from the age of 11 but now wants to really get into airsoft, especially the Milsim side of things and wants to get involved with a team. The main aim of this skirmish day for me was to test out a couple of gun builds and make sure they were running nicely, but also to walk through a game day with her to give her a bit of guidance. We’ve recently had an airsoft day at home where we got a load of kit out, discussed different styles of airsoft and I talked about things like hop effect, joule limits and how it all works so she has a bit of an understanding. As an Army Cadet, she’s not completely alien to it all and picks a lot of stuff up quickly.

As a bit of a last minute arrangement, Lola didn’t have much warning to get any kit in advance. She had a spare MTP shirt that I’d bought her for outdoor pursuits and a pair of green combat pants, and we dug out some face and eye pro and bodged a loadout together. I dug through my stores to find exactly the same loadout, to match it. We took a Northern Ireland chest rig each and went out for a light, easy skirmish day. And it was a very good one.

So what’s the rant about then?

Well, not a full on rant but maybe more of an observation – wouldn’t be worth a blog if there wasn’t a point to it.

The first game was a full site game with two teams searching for a marked container, one for each team, that had to be delivered to a location inbetween the two spawns and held for five minutes. Lola found the containers up a tree on top of a hill and we quickly secured ours with the enemy held some distance away. A number of players volunteered to transport it downhill and start moving it towards the target location. Lola and I joined twenty or so players in holding the defensive line around the crest of the hill. All good so far.

One guy stood up, out in the open on a path in full view of everyone around.

“GUYS, WE’VE SECURED OUR CONTAINER AND WE’RE GOING TO START MOVING IT DOWN THE BACK PATH” he yelled.

Stealth is everything, I explained to Lola. And that one guy had basically just told the enemy team that we’d found our box in that area, and that it was on the move, and where it was going next. Although I was also explaining how to move, use cover, and locate targets throughout the day, the noise discipline became a recurring theme.

As a sniper, it’s not something I particularly have to worry about if I’m operating alone and in many ways, it becomes a very useful tool in covering my own movements and shots, but running an assault rifle as part of a team it’s hugely problematic.

While holding a defensive line, we found ourselves sitting on a hilltop overlooking Dirty Dog’s famous centrepiece; the Village. From the top, it’s about 80m to the village perimeter on average. We found a group of six young players perched on the top of the hill watching enemy players well within the village’s border. At least 100m to target. And yet, dug in among the vegetation which gave good cover, they started engaging both on semi and fully-automatic fire modes. There’s no way on this earth that they’re getting anywhere near the target so it’s a bit of a wasted effort, and I explained to Lola that this is a very good position normally because it covers a couple of paths that are the only easy route up the hill, but by constantly opening fire these guys were alerting the enemy to our location and instead of luring them into a very favourable ambush, by alerting the enemy to our presence they were diverting the enemy towards our left flank which pushed a larger number of their forces against a much thinner point in our line.

As you’d expect, our position started taking fire as a few enemy players attempted to move up through the undergrowth away from the paths to assault our position. “Can you see them?” a young lad asks me. “Just listen for footsteps and look for any vegetation moving, and shoot the vegetation that moves”, I reply. I put a few rounds of 0.30 into a noisy bush to demonstrate. Noise discipline works both ways. By staying quiet, you can hear incoming threats and react to them.

We had another game later in the afternoon, where the team had to set up defensively and hold off an enemy attack as long as possible. Lola and I moved into trenches at the front of our lines and quietly hid, the aim being to have our backs to the enemy, covered by thick vegetation, and then engage the enemy when they came past us. Shooting them in the back and causing confusion as they take fire from both directions. Unfortunately, we’re being watched by a member of our own team as we set up. He likes the idea of being at the front with his LMG and sets up a couple of metres to our left.

“GAME ON” is called. Lola and I sit quietly – we don’t want our presence known just yet. The guy with the LMG has other ideas though. There are a lot of loud crunching noises as he decides to flatten out all the tall dead grass and vegetation that’s covering our backs, trying to get a flat area to lay on where he can see to shoot outwards. Obviously, the enemy hears all the commotion and we’re hit by an absolute wall of fire from the entire enemy team in our backs, as they hose the grassy area on full auto. And that’s all three of us out of the game.

The final nuisance occurs in the next game. There’s a track that runs down one side of the game area, and it’s not occupied by the enemy team. I explain to Lola that we can use it to flank the enemy, but there’s a gap in vegetation halfway down that means we’ll have to quickly, and quietly, sprint past that bit before anyone realises we’re there. A few players follow us, but we make our move quickly and get back into cover. I look back thirty metres at the crowd of friendly players looking to make the same move.

“COME ON GUYS! LET’S GO! AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHH” screams the first one, encouraging the rest to follow suit as they shout “CHARGE!” and alert everyone to our position.

It’s another long walk to the safe zone as we’re very quickly outnumbered.

Stealth is your biggest weapon in Airsoft, more so than the gun. Being able to outmanoeuvre the enemy is what the game is all about, not just sit there with fingers on triggers. It helps your team enormously to be discreet, learn a few hand signals, and don’t alert the enemy to your position by firing unnecessarily.