Back-story:  Operation Dark Horizon is based around a small but important action that will take place in and around the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu elements of the 2nd Battalion Royal Ghurkha Rifles are preparing to hold the capital knowing that the Chinese can not afford to bypass them leaving a Battalion of Ghurkhas to their rear on their advance into India, thus giving the British time to make ready their defences for the forthcoming Chinese onslaught into India.

Game Report

I can’t start this report without first of all mentioning the outstanding weather. I have missed a couple of games, but the marked difference between the last time I played at SYA – when it was still winter weather – and yesterday’s sizzling temperatures were amazing.

Expecting British spring weather I had brought just 3 litres of water in bottles with me, thinking it would be mildly sunny with a breeze. By noon I was wishing I had brought double that amount and my hydration back-pack.

Above: Just one of the very well turned out squads that attended 'Dark Horizons'. The British team, in their desert camos, were most appropriately dressed given the soaring temperatures.

Turn out
Taking into consideration the weather, it was amazing there was the large turn out that there was (about 120 people), as the pull of a Sunday barbecue at home with the family and friends must have been great. But the commitment of those who had signed up for this themed event was obvious, particularly when one saw the effort to meet the uniform restrictions on the day.

As well as the uniform restrictions, an ammunition restriction was also imposed. Each player was only allowed to carry 600 rounds on them, players having to hike back to the team Regen point to do any reloading. I did wonder whether this might put off some people who like their ‘hi caps’, but it didn’t seem to be a consideration.

Above: The Chinese team assembles for the morning's briefing. This was just a couple of the PLA squads who waited while the SYA staff gave the squad leaders their instructions and maps.

The game begins
The event was wonderfully organized, I thought. I liked the way the staff organized the squad leaders, and briefed them and then had them brief their squad leaders. Each squad was assigned a specific objective location on the large SYA Proteus site, and great emphasis was placed on the fact that today was not a day for lone wolves to saunter off on their own ‘missions’.

As part of 4-4 squad of the Chinese team, we were assigned to take the Police station and then move on to the Embassy, on the far right flank of the Chinese advance. We had no idea about the size of the British force we would face, or where they would concentrate their attack. As it turned out, we met a flanking force of roughly a similar size, but which – crucially – had some excellent snipers. This initially blunted our advance, and we could see that our Chinese team-mates to the left were advancing faster than we were.

Between the increasing heat and the moral sapping sniper fire, squad 4-4’s progress was very slow, and the British managed to keep us out of the Embassy for half the morning (kudos to their snipers).

Above: One of our (too few!) snipers. Guys like this were like gold dust and everyone seemed to be calling for sniper back-up to counter the British snipers who were frustrating our progress.

Whether it was the fact that we could not determine the size of the force that was up against us, or peoples’ awareness of the restricted amount of ammo to hand, it seemed to make everyone a lot more tentative than usual. It was good teamwork in the end that allowed us to break the stalemate and advance to take our objective – the last of the British deciding that discretion was the better part of valour and legging it out the back of the Embassy building.

The end of the morning was greeted with cheers of success from the Chinese side, as we had – it seems – taken a commanding lead over the British and taken all of our objectives successfully.

Above: My squad-mate, Joe, and myself (right), desperately defend the Police Station against a large British attack. We took and re-took this building again and again. On this occasion we pushed the Brits out, only to have a 'grenade' tossed through a window to wipe us out - my ears were ringing all the way back to Regen! Photo credit: SYA staff cameraman

As the day – and the heat – wore on…
At the start of the afternoon session we soon found that things were not going to be quite as straight forward as the morning’s battle. For a start, the sun had really begun to beat down on us, and secondly the SYA staff had a few cunning little strategies up their sleeves to make things even more ‘interesting’

Squad 4-4 found itself transferred to the defence of the airport. And it didn’t take us too long to realize that we had been really thrust out on a limb, with our small force defending the hangers with British elements facing us on nearly three sides!

‘A suicide mission!’ Our squad leader rather pessimistically put it. This turned out to be somewhat prophetic, as our squad was almost immediately over-run and wiped out by the advancing British.

After Regen we attempted to regroup, but once again good marksmanship from the British side kept us from any organized counter attack on the airport.

The rest of the afternoon seemed so much hard work, with attack followed by counterattack on both sides. We seemed to take a building only to have a large force re-take it moments later, and generally the British seemed to had re-gained the initiative after the mornings mauling.

The rest of the day was a hard slog of building up numbers to assault, a frantic battle followed by a long, long walk to Regen before starting the whole process all over again. But as far as I could tell, the Brits were slowly pushing us further and further back on the right flank.

Conclusion
As you can probably tell from the way I have written this report, the whole event was very immersive and believable. My friends and I really got into it, and took the mission objectives very seriously – and we felt like we actually worked really hard all day!

Right: My latest acquisition - the CYMA all metal and wood AKM. As it turned out the weight of this lovely replca only added to the weary slogs back to Regen! But, on the up side, the additional range it had proved very useful as we struggled to cross the open areas between objectives.

The organization of the event and the standard of marshalling was excellent, which helped us concentrate on the game and not worry about things like cheating or cheat calling. Not that there seemed to be much of that – although I have to say that as the day and the heat drew on there were a couple of flare ups, with tempers – literally – boiling as the sun battered down on us.

I can’t blame these few guys who ‘lost it’ as the conditions were as extreme as I have witnessed so far in my short airsofting career. The heat really wore people out, and made some players – understandably – irritable by the end of the day.

All in all, it was a fantastic day, an excellent themed event and a very taxing game. But I think everyone came away feeling that they had really played hard. It was a great feeling.

Link to my complete Flickr photo gallery of the day: Ranger's 'Dark Horizons' album

Well, if today is anything to go by, Sunday will be a bit of a scorcher!

It will be nice to get back into sunny airsoft, although this does mean I will have to make some special preparations. Gone, for example, is my autumn/winter loadout and in comes my spring/summer kit. Chief among this is my new purchase of some Under Armour Hot Gear base layer clothing - it will be interesting to see what this stuff is like and whether it keeps me comfortable if the temperature starts to climb!

Additionally, this is my very first SYA theme event. Called 'Dark Horizons' it pits a force of British (wearing base tan - desert DPM or Yankcam) against a force of Chinese PLA (dressed in base green - DPM or woodland). The background story is:-

Operation Dark Horizon is based around a small but important action that will take place in and around the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu. Elements of the 2nd Battalion Royal Ghurkha Rifles are preparing to hold the capital knowing that the Chinese can not afford to bypass them leaving a Battalion of Ghurkhas to their rear on their advance into India, thus giving the British time to make ready their defences for the forthcoming Chinese onslaught into India. [SYA]

I will be - of course - playing OPFOR (Chinese in this case). I would have liked to go the whole hog and turn up in something Chinese (US Woodland would have done, as the PLA did copy this camo at one point), with a nice Real Sword Type 97! But money being tight, it will have to be my Russian Tiger or DPM with an AK.

Being a big Battlefield 2 fan, it would be a terrific laugh to turn up as one of the PLA characters from that game. But time and cash flow are against this (sadly).  

There is an ammo restriction on this one (600 rounds only refillable at the unit HQ), so this seems the ideal opportunity to get my pistol into action! It will give me an emergency back-up of an additional 40 rounds.

Another preparatory issue is hydration. Do I take a hydration back pack? Or will a canteen suffice. Bearing in mind I can refill over the lunch break a 1 litre canteen seems appropriate, particularly at the pace I intend to take the game (I am still not 100% after my illness and do not intend to run around - no matter how much Shaun screams at me to do so.)

Finally, goggles. This may be a chance to swap out my clear lenses for my smoked ones. Additionally, do I wear my larger tactical Bolles or my nice ESS V12s with their easy change range of lenses? 

AEG of choice: CYMA AK74
Secondary: SIG P229
Rig: M23 Pioneer chest rig
Camo: Russian Tiger green base

After an absence of three months I am raring to go - and intend to really throw myself into this one. Match report to follow. 

Despite a comparatively low turn out (for SYA) of just over 50 players, everyone was in very good humour during Shaun's pre-game briefing. For those that had attended 'low turn-out' games before, they knew that these days could be every bit as exciting as capacity Open Days at South Yorkshire Airsoft thanks to the experience and cunning of the SYA staff. So expectation was high as the players gathered for the commencement of the day's activities.

Above: The sheer size of the SYA Proteus Camp site means that organizing interesting games for relatively small numbers has it's own peculiar challenges. But the SYA staff did us proud and kept the objectives and areas of play tight - making for action packed skirmishing! (Click pic to enlarge.)

Meet me behind the tank sheds!

This was my first game at SYA starting from the 'tank sheds' as a base of operations, but I found them very cozy (in an agricultural sort of way, as the local farmer stashes his hay bales there). And Team AKA soon set up shop, flag and all, in front of our own little hay castle.

A very welcome neighbour was the Airsoft Skirmish's travelling store in the adjoining shed, and the proximity of so many airsoft goodies proved to much for some members of the team (particularly Legs, who bought a lovely little TM Vz. 61 Skorpion machine pistol).

Warm up (...literally, it was bloody cold!)

I'm always a little cynical about the tactical merit of the morning games, as I feel that they can sometimes be a little contrived and simply a pre-amble to the more intense afternoon semi-milsim event(s). But I was very surprised by the excellent quality of the first few games on this day.

The SYA war chiefs - Shaun and co. -  had devised a series of wonderful 'point to point' games based on extraction and patrol, which not only kept us constantly on the move, but also concentrated the point of contact between the two forces into a small area.

Left: The 'Ragtags' snatch a Pyrrhic victory from the jaws of defeat! (Click pic to enlarge.)

The first game event in particular, where we had to get a downed 'Dutch missile' from point 'A' to point 'B' –  was a corker. Either team took it's turn to be the hunters or the hunted, as we either tried to evade detection and extract the 'package', or searched the compound for the team with the 'package'.

Of particular note was the 'Ragtags' team effort, for their superb self-destruction of the 'missile' to deny it's capture to the opposing team. Their thunderflash nearly took out the whole tail fin of the mock missile!

If you go down to the woods to play...

At this point I have to relate my own version of how Joe – my team mate – and I got 'lost in the woods'. In actual fact we didn't really get 'lost' as such, but just completely detached from the main game as it moved passed us and to the far side of the camp...

While the main battle went on way to our far 'right' and out of ear-shot, my 'opo' – Joe – and myself were actually embroiled in our own little private war with a section of  the Yellow Team, who outnumbered us 7-2. Apparently, the group of Yellows were just as oblivious as we were to the fact that the game had ended, some way away and some time ago.

Eventually a search party was sent out to look for us and tell us the game had ended 5 minutes hence, and we were rebuked by our team mates for holding up the start of the next game....There's gratitude for you!

Afternoon delights

If anyone thought that we had had enough frantic running about in the morning session, then they were in for a big surprise. The pm games were just as fast paced and intense, with the SYA staff constantly cajoling us to 'push, push, push'!

There was no let up in the tempo of the battling well into the late afternoon, and the 'house to house' combat was very aggressive indeed. Luckily, everyone was so good natured on this day that despite the ferociousness of the CQB inside the camps buildings, no one lost their rag, and as far as I could see there were no 'calling out' or heated disputes.

All in all, it's actually hard to recall the events of the rest of the day, as we lost all track of time, so caught up in the game were we. The time simply flew by and before we knew it the day's end was called.

Conclusion

I love low turn-out days I have decided. And although Shaun will have a completely different view (having to make his bread and butter), I prefer days like these to the 'over-crowded' ones, where you can't seem to move without bumping into a large patrol of enemy. But there again, I do find that you do tend to be forced into tighter team work on on the  'sell out' events. So it's all swings and roundabouts.

But ten out of ten for the organisation of the day – we all enjoyed it.

Highlights:-

Best moment: Forget all the 'kills' - the wonderful feeling I got when I medic'd a team mate.

Worst moment: A nasty instinctive bit of shooting I did on one yellow that hit him right in the family jewels at close range. I apologised profusely (sorry again if you are reading this).

Best turned out team: SART, in their Police tactical black uniform

Best individual uniform of the day:  Tied between the guy with the Ghost Recon loadout, and Eddie with his superb Russian Partisan.

Best weapon on site:  Afraid it was one on the Airsoft Skirmish stand - the Mauser Kar 98.

Best game of the day: 'Alamo' game (which we Reds won) - where we had to prevent the opposition getting to the 'Alamo'

--- With thanks to the South Yorkshire Airsoft staff, and my team mates on Team AKA. 

Any initial ideas that we would be enjoying the first skirmish of Spring have been well and truly thwarted by a sudden cold snap. It's actually been snowing in Yorkshire this morning. Of course, the weather could change, but I have to consider packing some cold weather kit.

Above: Freezing fog makes planning an airsoft outing a difficult proposition. Not only do you have to worry about what to wear, and pack - but travelling becomes a issue. Driving home on icy roads, in thick fog on a dark night is not everyone's idea of fun!

Trying to cover all the bases - packing wise - is a bit of a  problem in airsoft, the main issue being the space in the car. Because I rely on lifts to and from my skirmish site of choice, packing has to be kept to just the essentials. So while it may seem a trivial point, whether or not to take that big winter coat and wet weather items does play on my mind.

 I look on with envy at the guys who arrive on site in a works van, and have all the space they need (although, what the Police would think about stopping a 'mobile armoury' is perhaps a different matter!).

So keen am I to wear my new Spring camo, that - in the end - I may just have to bear the cold and freeze! 

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to drop out of Team AKA's latest mission. And what a great pity I did - as it was our best showing yet.

Still, Moonskank provided me with a nice photographic record of Team AKA's activities. Below is a photo which epitomises the team's philosophy of 'enthusiasm over authenticity'!  Thanks Moonskank.

The full album can be seen here: Moonskank's Flickr airsoft photo set