Airsoft Tour of Duty: Smashing Pumpkins

It's been a good while since I last set foot on a skirmish field, longer than I care to mention, so I was really looking forward to the game I played last Saturday

I took myself off to what I think is still my nearest site - new ones seem to be springing up all over the place at the moment so it might not be any longer - The Grange over at Balsall Common. I signed myself in, paid my green fee and then journeyed a short distance to The Proving Ground at Honiley where the game was actually being played

They were playing at the same site on Sunday too and had between 30 and 40 players booked in for the day. The turnout for the Saturday game was, on the surface, disappointingly low. In total, there were 10 of us playing, so five a side. I actually quipped whether anyone had a football!

Needless to say nobody did, but one of the games did involve pumpkins, and they're vaguely spherical and not dissimilar to a football

To be honest, it took me a while to get myself fired up and 'into it', partly because the small number of players meant there wasn't the usual buzz and accompanying noise you would normally expect, but once I'd got going I thoroughly enjoyed the day and the experience served as a timely reminder of what I love about this slightly off the wall hobby of ours

We played through a number of scenarios lasting 30, 45 or 60 minutes. The games were well thought out, with crystal clear objectives that were challenging but achievable, and often reversed to give you the chance of bettering the opposition

One such game involved the use of two pumpkins. The pumpkins in question - one named Peter and one named Patrick - represented two heads of state and we players their close protection squads. Over the course of 30 minutes we were tasked with moving our respective Presidents to three different locations and holding them there for 10 minutes before moving them on. The enemy, of course, didn't know where the holding sites were. Their job was to find where the President was being held and 'assassinate' him

The winner of the game would be the team whose President had taken the least amount of damage from enemy gun fire. Pyros were not allowed to be used on the Presidents! They say pictures speak volumes so I'll let the following images do the rest of the talking. Suffice to say I was in the team with the biggest grins on our faces at the end!

Our President ended up with a few minor battle scars. You should have seen the other guy!

And here he is, with considerably more holes in him than he started out with! The air was positively blue from the banter flying around during the course of this one!

Pyro'ed Pumpkin. Smashing!

Just to reiterate, I had a very enjoyable day, made even better by the fact that the team of lads I was playing with won every single one of the games played. The fact that there were only ten of us playing didn't lessen the enjoyment one iota. If anything, the smaller numbers made for a far more tactical days play and there wasn't a single issue with players failing to take their hits. A big thank you to the organisers and everyone else involved

See you on the skirmish field