Hurtgen reenactment airsoft game

Yesterday I took part in the airsoft game played according to a scenario that was loosely built on the history of the Battle of Hurtgen Forest -- the longest battle American army ever fought. I won't write about that battle itself, the article on Wikipedia in my opinion explains it all.

The idea of the scenario was cool, so I thought I'd take part in the game. So I need to explain here the basics of the scenario:

• there were two opposing parties, Allies and Germans,
• the Germans were supposed to be outnumbered, at least by two times,
• Germans are going to build three lines of bunkers and trenches,
• Allies have to take over those bunkers, and protect their own supply depot,
• the players are divided in squads consisting of 8 (Germans) or 10 (Allies) people,
• in each squad only one sniper rifle (with muzzle velocity exceeding 450 fps) is allowed, as well as only one machine gun able to shoot bursts,
• everyone has to fire single only, except the replicas of weapons that were used in WW II (for example Thomson submachinegun) and the replicas of real machine guns, like M249 Minimi,
• every player may carry only two hi-capacity magazines, but unlimited number of low-caps and mid-caps, reloading those mags is allowed only at respawn sites,
• each squad has one leader and two deputies, if all 3 are killed, the entire squad is killed and has to respawn, 
• only entire squads are allowed to respawn -- i.e. if you get killed, you have to go to the respawn site and wait for the rest of your squad.

Of course I signed to play part of the German team, because I like to sit in one place and spray my BBs all over, and I think it's better to be part of the outnumbered side. On that side you have to shame less if you get killed, and you have better chance of scoring any frags. ;)

The place the game was held was great! Cool forest and remains of some military installation. A hill that held three-story bunker inside, as I was told the place was used for some psychotronic experiments, but as I just read on the internet, the place had large antennas built for overseas transmissions, operated by Polish intelligence. Too bad the game didn't use any of those remains, though.

The ideas were great, but the game itself was crappy.

Od Airsoft from Poland photos

The Germans were supposed to lose eventually, but we lost within less than an hour since the game started.  Germans prepared some bunkers and trenches for themselves, but they were so crowded that one grenade (which were allowed) was enough to kill a dozen or so people! The perfect example can be seen above...

We had smal changes in the rules, as German side was highly outnumbered! There was about 150 Allies and ony 50 Germans, so all of Germans were allowed to use full auto. It didn't help, though...

Many people didn't read the rules before the game, so there was some cases of breaking those rules. There was yellow line tied to trees here and there to limit the place the game was supposed to play, but some people missed those lines and fired from behind the map boundaries.

But the rules were also in couple details wrong. First of all, the last stand of German army was built very close to the map boundary. And the respawn point was near, so respawning Germans in one case just waited behing the yellow line and then on command entered the game shooting Allies at very short range. It was not only dangerous, but also stupid, as such events trigger the anger in some players.

I felt this anger on my skin as well. One of the opposing players shot several BBs at me when I was hidden behind a large tree. When he stopped shooting, I started, and hit him with a burst. At that moment the guy dropped his rifle (one of witnesses said, he dropped it so hard he thought it would break), ran at me and threatened to punch me (I can't recall exactly) because I didn't fell his shots. He said he shot me several times in one the packs I carry on my belt. I don't say he was wrong, I didn't feel nor hear a thing, but it was a mayhem everywhere, so I might miss it. I also believe in such cases you should yell at the guy that's playing invincible, but that's all I can approve. Threatening people is not cool.



Here you can see me staying in small trench. I'm the one that doesn't aim at all. ;)



And this photo shows the mayhem caused by smoke grenades. :)

Two other things are worth mentioning.

The shoulder harness for MP5K may work well in urban environment and in games that won't force you to crawl or lie on the ground. I broke my red dot sight because the sling allowed the MP5K to swing everywhere. It was a miracle that all the sand that Kurz was hitting against didn't damage it.

The second thing is that I broke my mG36. I used freshly charged 4,000 mAh 9.6 V battery that gave the replica more power than it needed. As it's tunned to 390 fps, I thought this voltage will give me high ROF as well as high capacity. It did give me very high ROF, high enough to break something inside the gearbox. I didn't open it yet, and I probably won't, but when I know anything about what was broken, I will post information here.