How was it for you and pics

A great weekend & thanks to everyone involved

Steve.D

Some pics from weekend here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martel732ad/

Not sure where to start

Thanks to everyone who attended, we had quite a few drop out at short notice but things turned out quite well.
All those months of hiding the 34th inf from the booking list did pay off the deception we set up worked to plan.
The Germans turned up and thought they had a walk over when they saw 5 allies to take on

Those that have never seen Taffy’s site found it’s dimensions a pleasant surprise I hope.
That last mission objective we threw in was because of the start delay for the 34th inf we just didn’t want to give them a short day for their money, so we made sure they where all dead to finish their day.
The 34th did a great job they all knew what to do on the day and got to the rear gate without a hitch, their officers made good use of the video we gave them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9ieZn5By0
They all had a map however as it was their first time on site they did overshoot the hill 960 but luck was with them and they didn’t get spotted.

Pride did a great job with the props the tank turret pillbox was awesome and filled the back of my jeep when we drove it up on Friday night.
The Bangalore torpedoes were also a nice touch to blow up the roadblock.

Marsha did a good job with her squad re-capturing the SG41 as did the small Brit and US defending contingent waiting for the light aircraft.

Several weeks ago a guy I didn’t know offered to help with the command structure on the Allied side, at the time I thanked him and said I had it all sorted out with Alex but would keep this guy in reserve.
As it turned out in the end Alex could not come due to back problems so this guy was pulled in and dropped into the deep end. This was only his second WW2 airsoft event but without him the Saturday would have been much effected to the degradation of all.
This guy gave out the morning brief on safety and other aspects in my absence and by all accounts did a great job of it.
He was first in line to offer to take on any task and finished every sentence with SIR.
This guy was Tommy9151 and he deserves a medal if for nothing more than eagerness to take part and have the best day he could at the same time he made the day work for others.

All the Germans did a top job taking their hits as much as they gave them out. For a second time this year I got shot in the nose in exactly the same spot and yes it was bleeding again.
However I also got the German that did it at the same time, we both took a blast in the face at about 20ft but he was more lucky.

Magma, Tommy and I drove the jeep to the Big Fish chippy in Mold on Sat night me with bloody face it just had to be done.

On Sunday unfortunately both Tommy and Magma had to go home the previous day and possibly lack of a good night’s sleep had taken in out of them.

However for day 2 the locals from the EX-site turned up in Brit and US kit this helped keep up the numbers and they performed brilliantly, they did have local knowledge but due to the way we organised the squads this didn’t help so much.
We were still undermanned on the Allied side and at one point considered putting helmets on the sheep (dads army style) but felt the Germans keen eye sight may not fall for the deception.

Thanks to Taffy for use of this great site once more it is just epic if you can get things to work to plan.

PS wriggly kept us all entertained with her stories on Saturday night and it was nice to see you at your first WW2 event we hope to see you again.
Also the German guy who had driven all the way form Portsmouth was quite energetic and prepared to take the long way round to get a job done.

Actually Nigel it was Plymouth not Portsmouth a 7 hour drive

Oddball has covered most of the points I was going to make so just a few left.

Overall kit levels were very good thanks for the hard work on your impressions

Everyone had a great attitude, kept to their squads and followed orders even when exhaustion was setting in, great work guys

It was geat to see reenactors from both Bristol and Stoke trying the airsoft version for the first time, they made the crossover perfectly. From chatting to you after, you all seemed to enjoy the airsoft side of things we look forward to seeing you all at other games in the future

The 34th looked fantastic as a unit and put in some really good coordinated attacks.

Having the Exsite guys on sunday was a big help, your kit levels were great but your fair play and great attitude were even better, many thanks for attending.

Great to see many new faces at the game

Only down side for me was 2 of my guns packing in and a third giving me trouble but I'll leave it a week or 2 before I look at them I'm just airsofted out

Thank you for the mention in dispatches, sir.

I must mention that I did have input from prideofengland during the briefing on certain points which I wasn't aware of, and I'm grateful for him doing so.

I'm still loving the turret! who made it? I take it it pivots nicely?

To be honest the rotation was a bit clunky, it was a last minute idea to make and use one at the event and I did not have time to make a proper turret ring so it just ran on castors with some brackets to stop it jumping out of the ring. Sometimes though it would snag and need a good shove to get it going, but it did look cool when someone was inside rotating it

the turret was cool when we overshot hill 690 and saw that to the side of us we were like WTF it looked cool and made us a bit wary attacking the hill great prop still gutted we could not bring back with us lol

great prop still gutted we could not bring back with us lol

It got left on the hill as Taffy could not fit it in his SJ, I would like to see a photo of how the turret looked on the top of Pride's van please tell me you have one

It got left on the hill as Taffy could not fit it in his SJ, I would like to see a photo of how the turret looked on the top of Pride's van please tell me you have one

Thankfully no, it was not a good advertisment for my electrical business

The turret did stick so I pushed it with my head and it worked fine. Pity the 20mm didn't work.
I think I shot one person but he may already of been dead.
Looking at the photos I had no idea so many people were attacking me, it was a complete surprise.

It was one of the best days I have had, I really don't know how the rest of you lasted a 2nd day!

Well done to everyone and thank you to the reenactor who showed me how to fit a mp40 strap, sorry I couldn't remember your name.

It was definitely thorns in everyone else's gear and it was an honour to listen to you telling stories during the Saturday night social, Miss.

Thank you for attending.

I still have a few thorns embedded in my hand, I expect they will work their way out eventually.

A couple of comments on the rules;

i) the 'don't run away from grenades' thing worked really well, just as at Crete. Actually made greandes useful outside of a urban situation. I did enjoy 'bombing over the ridge' at theend of day one, very Italian Front.

ii) the life tokens were more of a mixed bag, in constrained situations (Like our attack on the airfield to capture the Enigma machine) they were brilliant - let the company CO allocate resources and us to manage our attack in a grinding attritional sort of way. In the more fluid situations with open flanks they seemed to get overrun too quickly, so perhaps we needed to give a bit more thought about where to put them.

I did wonder if it might have been worth having some sort of 'medic' system - if you get hit you bleed out after five minutes, but if someone gets to you and medics you, then you can go back straight away. Alternatively just bleed out after a minute and go back (which might help with the tokens getting overrun?). Dunno really, I think there is a great mechanism lurking in there trying to get out, just trying to think of ways to make it work.

Despite the low ammo limits, I never ran out of ammo at all before getting killed

Cheers
Martin

Yes Martin the LT boxes do have some points to be ironed out and we wanted to field test the ideas to see what worked well for each scenario.

You having a guy in medic kit was a nice touch so helped a lot as he was prepared to CARRY THE CAN
He had the hassle of the LT BOX but the benefit of it at the same time, I think the medic still needs to cry out and fall down for several seconds etc on a mobile mission.

The other guys just drop and call medic.
At the end of the day HILL 959 we all got shot to 5h1T and the box got over ran so we remote medic'd just by call out until the bag ran out which also worked but should be kept for a last resort hence we didn't suggest that option in the briefings, people soon realised it could be done that way and did it.

As this was our first test of this system on an open site we were over generous with the tokens allocating 3 per head on each mission, if we did it again it could be more like 1.5 per head as many didn't get shot.

I think the LT system and carrying of the box has a good feel to it as we can adjust the strength of a force by the lives they have.

I think the LT system and carrying of the box has a good feel to it as we can adjust the strength of a force by the lives they have.

Yes, I quite agree, in particular it is a great way of balancing out missions and breaking stalemates.

Cheers
Martin

heheh every time i was hit and it was a bit i took myself out of the game for about a minute before i took a token as i was the fool carrying it lol , but think it worked well , hard to gauge the amount as the second attack of the hill and turret we had about 3 tokens left so was very close , i like medic rules but something about dying and it matters and don't get to silly with your deaths

We didn't want to bog people down with strange medic rules so tried to keep it simple and in general it worked and was adapted as it went on.

On day 2 we didn't use the LT system by plan as it would not suit the mission in the quarry. It was just a case of attacker fell back one location and attacked went forward one location or the other way round depending on your point of view

The second day was far less arduous than the first in terms of up and down terrain so was a good end to the weekend for those that stayed.

I wasn't watching how long people stayed dead on the ground and was quite happy with the general result.

PS great photos guys and I know Marsha has a video of facebook but only short.

I didn't have time to take one video clip but I do have the first site visit video from April, the place was much less overgrown then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGTAh5ADxU

As I said later to some of the 34th guys I was going for the clip from Anzio when we went for the SG41.
I was to have the tank roll over the hill top to complete the effect but I could not get everything there on my own for Saturday. also didn't have a German tank driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGTAh5A ... page&t=945

Hello there, I'm Chris, one of the Brits on Saturday. Came down from near Wigan with Tom (the other one!) for our first try at a WW2 game. We've been playing at a bunch of northern sites quite regularly in our budget Brit para uniforms but the prospect of a themed event not too far away caught our attention.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, from all the extras built up on the first hill, to the radically different terrain than we're used to. Have to say I don't think I could've survived Sunday as well, as by Saturday evening I was feeling pretty crippled. Actually I wish I'd pushed with some attacks more but being my first time against a pretty high concentration of bolt-actions made me overly wary, but I tend to play pretty slow and sneaky in woodlands usually so it's a hard habit to break!

The LT concept worked well, the only potential problems being losing whoever has it on mobile games and uh when a fixed point is getting overrun there can be a lot of people suddenly queuing to try and get back in! But overall it's a good idea as you have to be careful with your life but getting hit isn't a severe stop to your participation.

So many thanks to everyone who organised the event and Tommy9151 for keeping Allied morale up in our little group. I hope you got a good cup of tea eventually!

Out of the entire day I got one cup of tea and it was absolutely foul!

But at least it was a good test run for my tommy cooker, I've learned some valuable lessons that I shall apply at future events concerning it.

yer dont bring it lol

was good fun watching you and private ashley trying for about 10 mins to get started lol

learn from us yanks a bottle of water is good enough oh and a ton chocolate