Airsoft is a game, and ultimately to win the game (or if it’s boring, to end the game), a team will have to complete the game objective. In either case, you want to be completing the objective as quickly as possible, before the enemy team does. Otherwise you lose and everyone will call you a loser and tell you you suck and throw bread at you. Probably. So everything you do in the game should be geared towards achieving that objective, otherwise you’re wasting your time and impacting your teams’ capabilities. Everyone likes a bit of trigger time but if you’re shooting enemy, it needs to be contributing to your teams’ effort on the objective.

The objective can be anything at all, and how you achieve it will depend on the site and the type of objective. The first step is to actually listen to the game briefing. I can’t stand having people chatting during briefing because I do want to know what the fuck is going on, because from the second I get into that briefing, I want to win. Otherwise you waste time wandering around the site aimlessly looking for a marshal to explain where you should be and what you should be doing.

No matter the storyline, or how clever or complex the objective is, generally speaking the two teams will look to charge towards an objective, so you tend to get two masses of players moving towards each other, which is fine because you do need numbers to take it. It could be a flag, a location, a bomb, a hostage. It doesn’t matter what specifically the game objective is; it’ll just be a point where two teams meet.

However, if numbers are even then both teams will end up with a firefight locked in a stalemate until someone produces a breakthrough. That can be a sudden burst forward to take up a better position, or the arrival of a weapon such as an LMG, sniper, mortar or similar that the enemy team struggle to deal with. Or in most cases, one team is weakened by lots of players heading back to spawn and not rushing back to help, after which the numbers swing in favour of the team with the most players left.

What snipers are particularly good at, and everyone else can too, is drawing resources away from the main effort. This is where flanking comes in. Ok, sometimes we look for an alternate route to an objective. If there’s a way through, great. If we get bogged down, we want to take up a good defensive position (yes, despite the fact we’re technically attacking the other team) and try to draw enemy players away from the main force by making them think there’s an attack coming from another direction.

What we want here is a smaller force (in this example, two players) to tie up a larger number of resources on the enemy team (in this example, six players), to reduce the combat strength of their main force. Good defensive positions hide how many players you have but also allows you to dig in and take fewer hits while, hopefully, the enemy are drawn out into the open where you can hit them.

The other common type of game will see one team defending a position while the other team try to attack and clear them out. Pretty much the same as above, but one team is static. If you find yourself on the defending team, the objective is going to be to slow down the enemy attack as much as possible, because they’re usually timed or a case of reducing the numbers enough to either seize the position or perhaps an objective within the defended area. So you need to learn to dig in and use cover well enough that it becomes an absolute pain in the arse to attack – you’re trying to make it really difficult to be taken out.

Bunching up in a big group right at the back just allows the enemy team to take a lot of territory very quickly, and if there’s a group of you together then only the players on the corners of buildings (in this mock up) are able to open up with weapons – there just aren’t enough firing positions for everyone. Territory is important in Airsoft to restrict the enemy’s ability to move or outmanoeuvre you, and to slow them down. Always try and start your defence from the furthest forward position possible unless this puts you in open ground because you’ll end up getting slaughtered.

No point being scared, this is Airsoft and you paid to get shot up, so get stuck in. Spread out and make a gauntlet that the enemy is going to hate fighting through. Don’t jump out from cover (this goes for all defensive situations) because firstly, you’re at an advantage if you’re in cover, and secondly if you charge out to attack, you’ll be focused on that one target you’re aiming for and won’t be scanning around for other potential threats.

Finally, you might have games that involve you delivering an item or retrieving one (bombs, hostages) from one location to another. There are two approaches here; either move in one mass to gain fire superiority over the fragmented enemy team, or move it with a very small, stealthy unit and take unusual routes through the site while the bulk of your team creates noise and distraction. If you want to send it stealthily, then be prepared that the small unit is very vulnerable to attack and can easily lose the objective. Make sure you know exactly where they are so you can retrieve if possible. Avoid trying to lead an attack with the objective – keep it protected until there’s a safe path to move. And try not to shout things like “GUYS WE’VE GOT THE OBJECTIVE HERE” – sometimes it can be beneficial for your own team to not know either, so nobody spoils the surprise. If they’re not in possession of the objective, the enemy team will be constantly asking for its location and even hiding it from marshals is a good idea so that nobody talks. Use cover (guide here).

Everything you do in a game should be geared towards either achieving the objective, or creating opportunities or providing support for your teammates to do it. If you take your squad out of the way to go and shoot tires, that’s your team at a numerical disadvantage which tends to be the biggest hurdle to winning games. Also, it gives you some structure and something to do when you turn up to a game day – so go do it. Unstructured game days filled with people just pissing about and shooting plastic like an excited child get boring fast.