Site location: Nr. Durham, County Durham, UK
Site format: Primarily woodland, some building constructs, excellent hill bunker
Weather conditions on visit: Very sunny, no cloud
Loadout: Russian ‘Tiger’ camo, with CYMA AK74 (Kalash AKS74U as backup).
Special rules/notes: No team arm-bands are issued, recognition of team members is visual identification!

Site introduction

NSC is a medium sized woodland site located half way between Pittington and South Hetton, near Durham, County Durham. At this time of year (summer season) the woodland is dense undergrowth - watch out for those nettles! - intermingled with good tree coverage, effectively blocking the sun and creating a nicely shaded canopy.

Between the woodland are a couple of more open areas – notably the ‘Village’ and the ‘Quarry’ – and there are well worn tracks through the undergrowth to patrol and move with some measure of stealth.

The ground is undulating and rough, so make sure you have good footwear. There are plenty of ditches, hillocks, fallen branches and other obstacles that could have you tripping.

Site facilities are somewhat primitive – but, hey, we're men, rufty-tufty men - so just remember to bring plenty of toilet paper and a shovel! (If you are really hard, bring some 'Izal' paper!)

Car parking is also a little scant, the main car park only holding about  half a dozen car on rough hardcore. Overflow car parking is available on the grass verge of the main road outside the site, so it’s best to arrive early if you want to park inside the compound.

The site from a player’s perspective

The woodland is gorgeous! The uneven ground I mentioned above is a real bonus, creating natural defensive positions throughout. At this time of year this means that a person could be only 10 feet away from you and you wouldn’t know until they open up!

NSC has added to this by digging a few fox holes and trench systems, creating objective points to assault and defensive positions at key bottlenecks. It’s obvious that those involved have made a great effort to make interesting and varied zones of play around the site.

Of particular note are ‘The Quarry’ and ‘Hamburger Hill’, two constructs that the team at NSC have put together to create defensive redoubts for ‘defend & assault’ games. The rich vegetation in and around these two areas created beautifully balanced zones that allowed the attackers to creep close – if they have the skill – and prevent the positions from becoming overly dominating kill zones. Very nice.

Surrounding a portion of the site and the Quarry is a low cliff, this can be circumnavigated meaning that if you are not careful you will easily find your team outflanked and fired on from above!

Site Organization

First of all, I have to mention that there was no mandatory chronographing at arrival. And random chronoing is done on reports by players that they suspect is using a hot AEG. The staff are very friendly, and great deal of emphasis on preventing cheating is placed on the fact that the site is regularly populated by a tight-knit group of friends, so there is a lot of self-monitoring and mutual moderation.

Left: 'Ivan the Terrible'! Me looking mean and moody, I actually enjoyed myself immensely - I was smiling on the inside!

The safety-briefing was good, and very humorous, with some nice role-playing of ‘bang’ rule and face-off situations. Great importance was placed on both appropriate eye-wear and footwear. Because this is a medium sized site, there was also a quick explanation of the ‘out of bound’ rules (which I – sadly – fell foul of).

Finally, mention must be made of the excellent on-site shop (provided by Andy’s Airsoft) and there were limited tea and coffee facilities, with some hot grub (burgers and hot dogs) available at lunch.

The games

Play was a series of short games - the objective being to dominate a particular area on the field – as opposed to complecated themed missions. They were designed to make use of the various zones and constructs around the site. So, as the day progressed, we moved from one zone to another.

Play formats were mainly based on defend/assault type games. Although we were treated to a rather novel objective based game designed around the control of a mission object (in this case a large plastic barrel). No, this didn’t exactly inspire me to begin with, but once the game actually started this turned out to be an excellent competition to see who could gain and keep possession of the prize!

Potential visitors should note, NSC does not use coloured team arm-bands as is the normal practise in order to identify team members. You must use your intelligence and own visual memory to recognise who is on your team!

This game took place in ‘The Village’ a ‘death house’ type maze made up of boarding. The barrel had to be held in here, and players were restricted to semi-auto fire inside the construction, so there was some terrific CQB type action inside the village itself.

The Quarry site is a wonderful defensive fort, built into the foot of the cliff I mentioned. The outside of the ‘fort’ has thick undergrowth coming right up to the walls, and there is no clear ‘kill zone’ around it so defenders have to be on their toes!

The day ended in a ‘Hamburger Hill’ game. This was based around a superb construct, and a credit to NSC’s enthusiasm and ingenuity. It is a trench and bunker system built into the brow of a shallow hill. A small number of defenders were nominated and the rest of the players had to assault the bunker, climbing the hill.

Again, NSC avoided to temptation to clear a kill zone (as a real military position like this would have), and gave the attackers some chance of reaching the top by running from tree to tree, and bush to bush. Excellent!

Conclusion

Enthusiasm and friendliness are the two words I would use to describe NSC. These guys put a lot of effort into trying to make an interesting and varied field in a limited amount of space. So much so that staff and players actually have ‘build days’, where constructs are improved or added to.

The playing body is likewise a friendly bunch, and there was no sense of elitism or cliques that I could see. As a ‘newbie’ to both airsoft and the site I was made very welcome, and the site commandant – Razor – made a point of coming up to me at the lunch break and chatting to me.

Above: Razor - the NSC manager - takes time to join in one of the afternoon games.

A measure of the general spirit of comradery of NSC was the fact that one of the members – Evilpredator – sought me out after I made enquiries about travel on their forum and offered me a lift to the site.

So, will I go back? You bet. Yes, it’s a smaller site, with smaller numbers than my introductory experience of airsoft at SYA (there were 30 of us on the day I went). But the compactness of NSC – as I expected – did in fact concentrate the action and the players into a more focused area – meaning that I got just as much action as I do when I attend the much larger South Yorkshire Airsoft site.

Despite the lack of themed operations (perhaps due to the size of the site), if you are an airsoft player that just wants to get into the action – and let’s face it the action is half the game – then NSC is for you!

--- Just don’t forget the toilet roll!  LOL

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Thanks:-

> Photo credit: All photos are the property of NSC player 'George of the Jungle' and I am grateful for his kind permission to use them in my report. 

 > Big 'cheers' goes to NSC Evilpredator who gave me a lift to and from the site - you're a dimond mate!

> And of course, everyone at NSC!

> NSC Airsoft website