Well, at least you will have something to compare and contrast with!
(BTW, as a reenactor you should be able to buy RIFs without going down the UKARA route - as long as you are a member of a bone fide insured group or organisation such as AFRA)
(BTW, as a reenactor you should be able to buy RIFs without going down the UKARA route - as long as you are a member of a bone fide insured group or organisation such as AFRA)
The group I'm a member of here in the UK is a Roman period one 
And it's really too much kerfuffle with the re-enactment route, including having to always have the paperwork on me in case I get stopped by a police officer. All in all it is much easier and more convenient to just get UKARA registered.
Kitwhore files: S&S Lee Enfield No. 4, AGM Sten Mk. II, Tanaka Kar 98k, WE Luger P08
Wishlist: AGM Stg44, possible LE No. 4 gas project
Dead easy with the AFRA route (as long as you are a reenactor) - card in your wallet should a police officer take an interest. Telephone number for him to ring too!
Chommers, you forgot this one:
Turn up with kit that's not perfect, but absolutely fine for airsoft. Have a whale of a time and make some good friends. Have a forum-based benny when someone talks about their kit wanting to be at reenactor level, vowing never to need your kit to be at reenactor level. Leave airsoft and exclusively take up reenacting.
.... Then have a benny on a reenacting forum complaining about people that didn't strive to get kit absolutely perfect. Leave reenacting. 
don't forget to make a massive, MASSIVE deal about the fact that you're leaving tho...
yup its a very varied case open days , the ones i tend to stick to now have a fair few in ww2 and Nam is very popular as well , i tend to only stick to 2 sites now , and its how i first got onto both the ww2 and the nam , by seeing folks , talking and then getting hooked , me and a friend dived into and our first game was Alsos , i was on the german and he was on the Usa side and i still think was my best days airsoft , thou Gothic was very close. My main site now does single shot for the entire morning game (apart from support weapons) , which is great for us and the garands etc , and hopefully they may extend it to the afternoon as well one day , though its nice to use the grease gun from time to time.
would love to find a site which is like pow in scotland (though maybe a different site lol) where they heavily promote ww2 and have so many players just play in that , but i think we need to cater for 3 types of WW2 games , ww2 heavy larp , ww2 heavy airsoft and one in between , which i think the amount of games on offer to cover , but all 3 types won't be for all, so guess there needs to be a balance.
don't forget to make a massive, MASSIVE deal about the fact that you're leaving tho...
... and then carry on reenacting...
.... Then have a benny on a reenacting forum complaining about people that didn't strive to get kit absolutely perfect. Leave reenacting.
don't forget to make a massive, MASSIVE deal about the fact that you're leaving tho...
don't forget to make a massive, MASSIVE deal about the fact that you're leaving tho...
... and then carry on reenacting...
Oh Christ, did that really happen?
yes 
before getting back on topic , i find open days are good for getting you'r kit combat ready , working out were best to store bb's and speed loaders, getting webbing sorted etc etc so you don't spend half a ww2 event fecking about .
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
Haven't been to an open day for ages and, have no interest in going to them again. Originally, this forum was mostly populated by similar people, before the gear whores and gun freaks came along! Dadio, you've got far more time at a good WW2 event to fine tune your kit before game on, than at a rushed, run for profit open day. Don't forget that, at a WW2 event, there are also plenty of people around who can help you with your kit and offer tips, if you want them. At an open day, a player in WW2 kit is just a novelty for the COD fags.
When I want your opinion - I'll tell you what it is!
Excellent thread.
While we've all lost interest in open days to a degree, i attend them for work and *years ago* you'd get players (at least one or two) at every open day in WWII kit. I just dont see it now.
Perhaps they've all found the WWII airsoft scene via forums/mags etc but I can't help but think that if if CW, Webby, Yith and Adey and myself hadnt occasionally turned up to phoenix in WWII kit we've never have even realised there was a potential scene.
So perhaps a lot of new players just dont know it's here? especially the ones to whom it will be new and fresh and 'must do'.
Not everyone reads forums or even goes on the internet that much, not everyone read AI or AA. To many your perception of 'airsoft' is limited to what your local site offers and if no one plays in WWII kit, they dont host a WWII game etc you wouldnt know there was a scene would you.
I have to agree with Josh about groups as well. At one point if hohenstaufen or PBI turned up to an event you'd sold 20 places already. Dog Co booking in would be 20 allies in one fell swoop.
At the mo, and i'm somewhat out of step with this, other than the two big US groups (34th infantry and Dog Co) are there actually any players groups over five or six guys these days?
"I think we are in rats' alley - Where the dead men lost their bones."
well we have a group of between 8-12 players who mostly do german , we'r called chapter 11 largely organized by Vince and Gordon.
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
So perhaps a lot of new players just dont know it's here? especially the ones to whom it will be new and fresh and 'must do'.
Have found very much the same thing here in SA. Advertised the WW2 games on our regular airsoft forum, and got minimal hits. Went to the local geek CON's in full kit (got mistaken as cosplayers - embarrassing), attended the local airshow, handed out business cards and told people about WW2 airsoft - and our numbers tripled in the space of six weeks. Granted, we were small to start out with, but still - have been seeing amazing feedback since we started our ad/PR drive.
Advertising and publicity are key for the player counts, methinks. Doesn't help with quality, unfortunately, but it's a bit like the army: boot camp sorts out the dross, but only if the recruiters can get the numbers there in the first place...
Spot on mate.
We can't sit behind our forums, pop a few posts up and expect 100s of people to book on. You have to get your hands dirty. That's the problem we have here at the mo. nobody is that bothered about actually doing something about it. I completely resemble this comment too by the way.
I'm hoping magazine presence will be a good start to getting new blood involved, but know we need to be in the field promoting if we're that bothered about it.
Heer Schmidt
Hmmm, yes you are quite right, I'd not really thought about it that much before. If we are just an invisible niche activity, then given the rate at which people seem to give up and move onto something else I'm not surprised the numbers aren't looking so great these days.
Cheers
Martin
"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" Helmuth von Moltke
Toys: AGM MP40, Cyma M1A1, TM M14/G43/SVT40, TM VSR/K98, SnS No. 4, ASG Sten, Ppsh.
Arnhem3,Gumrak,Campoleone
In the two and a half years (2003-5) I did WW2 airsoft at Fireball open days and national games, I can safely say I managed to fully convert a grand total of zero people into the genre. Tac vests and multiple pistols were just too popular and no-one was interested in thinking before firing.
I even ran two WW2 games there, and the only people who attended that who are still playing today are the ones I organise CiA with.
So yeah, I got my hands dirty quite a lot, nearly 10 years ago. We ran a very successful WW2 scene for 6 years, but slowly the people have ebbed away.
There are 300-400 people visiting the forum every day, 600-700 people visiting the website every day, 15,000 people per month. There is the interest there, it just isn't getting translated to bums on seats!
Website (not forum):
The "So you want to play German?" article has been read by over 7,000 people
The "Beginners guide to Brit kit" article has been read by over 7,000 people
The "101st kit guide" has been read by over 4,000 people
Website (not forum) visitors by country
UK - 84,790 (reading 148,879 pages)
US - 45,691
Germany - 8,794
China - 8,384
Canada - 6,406
France - 5,510
Have you got the data to see if this is registered users who are accessing pages? Can you tell if it is the same user accessing a page multiple times?
