Playing Army Men...with a whole new meaning!

Today I attended my first ever airsoft game, it was an awesome time. I got a ride from Residence commons all the way down to Smiths Falls (about 45minutes from Ottawa) by a very nice fellow by the name of Jean, he was also renting out guns to five of us, and giving out free bb's for all that were renting.

It cost me $60, and that got me a rental gun, magazine, bbs, field fee (which is $20), and someone gave me a free Cadpat BDU...which is basically a Canadian Forces styled jacket and pants. But what really made everything worth it, was playing the game.

For those who don't know, Airsoft is basically Paintball...but with select-fire, automatic bb guns that fire plastic projectiles at around 300 feet per second. All of the guns are imitation of the real deal, they are 1:1 scale replicas of various military used firearms.

I woke up at 6:15am to my alarm clock's buzzing, following a nearly sleepless night...due to it being a Friday night in a Campus dorm, and also due to my excitement about today. It was like Christmas Eve! I had received my Cadpat (Canadian Forces Camouflage) coveralls the day before. I was set to head out at around 6:30am, but my ride wasn't supposed to be around until at least 7am. I sat around for a bit, turned on my computer while I waited for a phone call from Jean. Eventually he called, and said he was close, then called again to say he was outside Residence Commons.

I headed down, carrying all of my gear (including water and sandwiches, and everything I could think of) in my Frosh Week laundry bag. I was heading out the door of Residence Commons, when a guy runs up the steps and inside, he looked like a soldier...although apparently he had left the van that I was going to be riding in to go to the ATM for some cash.

We drove down to the "Foxden" (picture below):

After a being the first ones to arrive, we got out the rentals and I started to look over some of the guns, wondering which one I was going to be using for the day. Once everyone arrived, and we were all dressed up in our camouflage, load-bearing vests, helmets, goggles, we headed out for our briefing with the host and owner of the field (Rick). We divided up the teams, and headed out to the game area.

I was put on Blue team (and for those who are wondering, yes it was RedvsBlue) and given an M4A1 carbine for the day.

The day was longer than I had expected, but that just meant it was more time to have fun! The game started at around 10:40am, and finished at about 4pm. I am 100% sure of 4 kills (don't worry they're alive now), with a smaller percentage sureness of about 1-2 other kills because I was with other people. I also surrendered one guy, but we were in a standoff situtation so we were both surrendered!

The best part was when my group of 4 that I had been going around the field with most of the day (of about 20 something players total of both teams), everyone else died and went back to respawn. Leaving me alone at the front lines. I looked up over the bushes I was kneeling behind and saw 2 guys, I opened up on them and heard one guy yell out "Hit!". Kill one. I looked up again an saw that the other guy was either carrying a very big gun with a scope or a sniper rifle, I ducked as fast as I could and decided that if I was going out...I spray and pray (although aiming was involved) I stood up and fired at the guy. Kill two. I continued down the path, happy about my victory. I glanced to my left...about 20-25 feet to my left was another guy looking away from me. I aimed up my sights on him and let off a burst and then he yelled out "Hit!".

Those few moments alone were well worth my $60.

One other time it was rather difficult to get one guy, my teammate said a guy in the bushes was lying prone on his back. I looked over and sure enough, I could see his vest sticking up. I let off a few bursts from my gun, I was pretty sure I had hit his vest, but he hadn't called out "Hit!", so I tried for a better angle and got him.

Other interesting events throughout the day included seeing someone fire off an M203, which is basically a propane powered grenade launcher; I also was involved in an assault on a sniper tower (in our shorter games of attack/defend) where someone threw a smoke grenade into the area in front of the tower. This engulfed the field in a big orange cloud of smoke, I ran forward toward cover, stumbled on some branches and began to run too fast into the piece of cover. I was just regathering my sense of direction when a gun sticks out from the other side and surrenders one of my teammates, I was about to ask if that included me...but caught a bb on the edge of my goggles. I quickly raised my gun, and got out my yellow flag to put around the muzzle of the gun (showing that I was out).

Overall: "Best first game ever."

Cheers,

Andrew