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

King and Country: New Website

It seems that Andy and the team over in HK have decided that their website is in need of a revamp

Here are three screenshots of an email that arrived in my inbox the other day, together with a promo video available on YouTube

It's looking pretty good I must say. I can't wait for the launch in a few days time

Thomas Gunn Miniatures: October Releases

Yet another bumper month for all you TGM collectors out there, and a little something for everyone, well almost! I've included a combined image of all the figures in the release taken directly from the TGM website. More details and images, as ever, are available from the same location. Enjoy!

Happy hunting!

The Collectors Showcase: LAH Review

Visit the company's website and you will be treated to a glimpse of these little beauties. No other details as yet, not even in the upcoming releases section, but they look like they'd make a darn fine addition to any LAH parade diorama!

Happy hunting!

JJD: October Releases

Here they are, in all their glory. Images courtesy of the JJDUK website and close ups courtesy of The Toy Soldiers Club of Canada. Enjoy!

Happy hunting!

Full of Eastern Promise

www.model-scene.com

www.polakmodel.com

Whilst flicking through the pages of the August/September issue of Toy Soldier Collector I came across an article by Michael Cross, promoting the products of two Czech manufacturers who specialise in scenic items for model railway enthusiasts and diorama makers

The focus of the article is the range of grass mats made by both companies and Michael is eager to heap praise on them. The pictures accompanying the purple prose certainly look good, as do the images on the respective company websites, one or two of which I've included below

A menu screen from the Model Scene website

The mats come delivered in simple plastic sleeves and are flexible enough to allow them to be molded to the contours of a baseboard should you so desire. They can be used singly, combined together in multiples or cut and torn up to form 'patchwork' landscapes of various kinds, and can be glued down or not as you see fit

They come in a variety of seasonal shades, with grass of varying lengths and degrees of coverage, some mats are plain whilst others are adorned with flowers, shrubs and bushes, forest debris or calcium rocks

Happy hunting!

King and Country: October Dispatches

October is upon us, the shops are getting ready for the Christmas rush and the Birmingham Toy Soldier Show is literally just around the corner. Appropriate, then, that in amongst the selection of newly released delights from K&C this month is the latest in their range of military themed Santa figures, as well as a whole lot of other things, and here they all are in chronological order

And now for all those figure sets 'heading for the happy hunting grounds in the sky.' Quite a few once again this month, including a couple of architectural pieces at least one of which I'll be hoping to grab an example of before they all disappear

AE034 High Priest of RA God of the Sun

AE035 Hand Maiden to Priest of RA

AF029 The ‘Follow-Me’ Jeep

BBG032 Prize of Arms

BBG033 Cold Feet Warm Boots

FW106 Lt. Werner Voss

FW107 Manfred Von Richthofen

FW108 Hermann Goering

MK052 The Bishop of Tours

MK053 Richard the Lionheart

MK066 Mounted Templar w/ Banner

MK067 Crusader Archers Set

MK072 Templar Grand Master

MK073 Templar Standard Bearer

RAF020 Sergeant Pilot George Unwin

RAF021 Sergeant Pilot Antoni Glowacki

RAF022 Flying Officer Andy Mamedoff

RAF023 Flying Officer John "Pancho" Villa

RAF024 RAF Policeman

RAF025 RAF Kneeling Armourer

SP037 Church Façade

SP045 Corner Shop House

That about wraps it up for another month. Happy hunting!

Airsoft Arms and Equipment: New Toys

As part and parcel of the general overhaul of airsoft equipment I’ve been embarking on recently I have been getting rid of a number of my Chinese made guns and replacing them with a smaller number of better made Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong made models

The other day I posted about the King Arms Thompson M1A1 I recently acquired and today it’s the turn of another recently purchased gun to have a moment in the spotlight, the G and P MOE CQB M4 variant. Hardly a catchy, ‘just rolls off the tongue’ kind of a title but it nevertheless describes what’s hiding inside the box pretty well

Made in Hong Kong by G and P this is a shortened version [by about 11cms] of their M4 carbine and comes customised with lashings of MOE, or Magpul Original Equipment. Virtually everything dark earth on the outside of this gun is made by Magpul. Available in a variety of shades I decided to plump for the dark earth model to match my multi-cam and tan coloured Warrior webbing, and because I already own a number of dark earth PMag style magazines

As with the Thompson I posted about the other day, I’d been planning on getting a ‘Magpuled up’ M4 for sometime and a few weeks ago decided that the time was right to do so before getting hold of them started to become a bit tricky now that Magpul have pulled out of supplying gear to the airsoft market

As I hope you’ll be able to tell from the photos, she’s a little beauty with decent range out to 40 plus yards and a respectable rate of fire

The fire selector switch has a very positive feel to it and functions perfectly, as does the incredibly solid Mbus rear sight which comes fitted with an extremely powerful spring loaded mechanism! It comes with two changeable sighting holes and is fully adjustable for windage and elevation

The cover on what would be the shell casing ejection port on a real steel weapon flips up but doesn't actually close, it is permanently open and aesthetically might not be to everyone's taste

Surprise, surprise [not]! The cosmetic ejection port hides the adjustable hop mechanism, accessed by pulling back on the bolt release lever at the rear of the upper receiver

Since taking this photo I've added an ASAP to the rear of the receiver to facilitate the use of a single point sling but have decided to keep the Warrior sling attachment on as well

As you can see here the battery fits in the stock tube making for a very tidy looking job as well as adding a little bit more weight to the rear of the gun. The Magpul stock is a little fiddly to get on and off but with practice and the aid of a long shafted, flat head screwdriver all is well!

It's certainly worth mentioning that the gun comes wired with a Deans connector so you may have to adapt some batteries or buy some new ones to use with it. You could always put a Tamiya connector on there but why would you when the DC is more efficient, not to mention smaller? There's just about enough room in there for the small Lipo you can see above but a stick battery might be preferable

The gun comes packaged with a single 120 round Pmag which works perfectly well, as do the 360 round King Arms Pmags pictured above.....

.....and the 75 round Beta Project mags pictured here

These Green Label 75 round Pmags on the other hand are a little loose in the mag well and don't feed all that reliably unless they are held forward as you're shooting

The addition of a self adhesive Velcro spot, preferably in a matching shade if you happen to be anal about such things, will soon have that sorted out

All in all, I'm very pleased with my new toy and am looking forward to taking her out on the field. Thank you to Firesupport for supplying the gun and kindly sorting one of my batteries out with a DC!