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. 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