Best airsoft places, #3

I started some time ago a series of blog posts about my favorite places for airsoft games. Today's game was supposed to take place in one of those places (I didn't go as it was raining) so it is a good time to write about the SD.

The SD is a short for Sztab Dowodzenia, which means Command Staff. I wrote about one game that took place there, but I believe it is not enough! But before we go any further, take a look at the satellite photo of the place.



The lighter green is a large area covered with tall grass and the darker areas are woodland parts. There are many large hills, some of them made of concrete (built as large bunkers for trucks or something even bigger).

I don't have a lot of good photos but I uploaded something for you to take a look. I made this panorama using a bunch of poor quality photos taken with a crappy camera three years ago so take this into account. ;)

From Airsoft from Poland photos

Why do I like this place?

First of all it is H U G E but lies within the Warsaw city limits. It has a couple of small buildings you can play with and a lot of large obstacles like the hills you can see on the photo. You'll also find some barbwired fences, many trees, trenches and embankments, and a small creek. This place can hold games of up to (I guess) 200 airsofters.

You can see some interesting places on the second advertisement video we recorded there.

The pleasant game on last sunday

On last sunday I played a pleasant airsoft game. The first for more than two months. I haven't played since my last purchases. So you might say that this was the first time to test my new stuff.

The game took place on the southern borders of Warsaw, on a site where greenhouses used to be some time ago. It consisted of some abandoned buildings and a lot of empty space, covered only with grass and bushes. There was one very important element of this site: a high hill that was the most important place during two scenarios that were played. Below are photos taken from that hill. It was located on the northern side of the site.

From Airsoft from ...

At the very beginning we were divided into two teams, based on our camouflages. Team of players in flecktarn (german) camouflaged jackets versus any other camouflage (woodland (american), DPM (british), polish camo). The guys in german camo (including me) were divided into two smaller teams, one of 4, the other of 11 people. The scenario said that the smaller group were parachutists dropped some time ago on the ground. They were ambushed by the enemy, the second group was supposed to rescue them. After the rescue both teams were supposed to take over the hill. The team that held the hill at the end of the scenario (scheduled to be after 2 hours) was supposed to win.

The scenario wasn't as stupid as it might look. But nobody suspected that half of guys dressed in woodlands, DPMs and polish camos are going to be late for the briefing. At the end of the scenario we counted 15 guys in flecktarns and 30 in the second team. No wonder we had simply no chance to win...

After teams were balanced, the rules were changed. The team that was supposed to take over the hill was now ordered to protect it from their opponents. The attackers started at the other end of the asphalt road you can see on the pictures. We started on the hill the photos were taken from. My friend and I quickly found ourselves a great place -- the right flank. We camped in the building you can see on the right hand side on the last photo. The one that had two trees near. The attackers soon started rushing towards us, we sprayed some BBs at them. Two other guys that lied under those trees went somewhere else and we were on our own. And then the fun started.
Under those threes were two holes in ground, which were a part of sewer system I suppose. The hatches were removed (and probably sold). We agreed that it'd be a good idea to stick near the two holes. If we sat on the ground near, we could shoot above the high grass. If we jumped inside (which was not difficult), we could hide from enemy fire.

The place was great for two reasons. First of all it wasn't stormed by attackers. They found themselves another point to attack. But single enemies tried to walk past us and attack our camp from behind. Since we got our eyes high above ground level, we were warned early enough to shoot those enemies. There were two guys we weren't warned about, but we easily heard their movement in the dry grass. One of them was shot by my friend, the other was "shout-killed" by me some time later. I hid in a dark place and when he was close enough I told him he was dead. As simple as that. ;)



The above photo shows a small group of enemies thinking about what to do. Note that they were in the hot sun while we sat in the cool shade. ;)



This guy had his goggles and binoculars, but didn't have any weapon. ;)



We had a lot of time to make photos. ;)

I must say that AUG was not fully operational. Three or four times it didn't fire when I pulled the trigger. I didn't find any rule when it did and when it didn't work. If it happens again, it'll have to be shipped back for repairs.

The cold and wet game

Today we played a cool game with people from Żyrardów in a very nice place. I tried to find a good satellite photo on Google Maps, but in my neighborhood photos on Google Maps are only in low-res. So I will show you photos on our polish site Zumi. At the center of the photo you'll see a bunch of trees planted regularly on a field. It is an old orchard. There was one building (not in very good shape, I must say) and remains of two other buildings.

From Airsoft from ...

This is the building. If one could get to the top of the tower there, he'd found himself THE BEST camping place ever! Fortunatelly, there was no floors in the tower so without much courage (or climbing gear) the tower was inaccessible. :)

I used mG36 with silencer. I think the replica looks much better with it. Since I don't believe in silencing ASG replicas with tubes filled with felt cloth, I removed the felt from the silencer. The only function of the silencer is to look nice, so I don't think I need extra weight there... ;)



The weather wasn't friendly. The temperature was slightly below 0°C (freezing point, 32°F), so the ground was frozen. You couldn't get stuck in a pool of mud. But during the first hour of our game it was raining. It was not a pleasant experience. Everything (replicas, ground, trees) was cold enough for the water to freeze. So my mG36 was soon covered with a thin layer of ice (each drop of water quickly froze on the replica). Water didn't freeze only on our jackets, so I was afraid that mine will become wet (since it's not water proof).

When it finally stopped raining, after a while, the snow started falling. Better snow than rain, right? :)



Now a word or two about the scenarios we played.

The first one was the simplest "you start here, we start there, we shoot each other". The game like this is a must have (a must play?), since it's the best way to prepare your muscles for the strain and to test if the replicas shoot well.
Then we played "storm the building" twice. Since there was 11 of us I had to be in the attackers team two times. We played the most dumb variation of the scenario. Teams were balanced well, and both had respawn points. This is stupid, since the guys who had to protect the building always have advantage. The first game ended with defenders' victory, but the second ended the opposite way. Somehow the attackers (at that moment 6 of us, only 4 of the defenders since my girlfriend's MP5K battery run out of power and the spare battery was in my pocket) managed to get to the building.

The third scenario was in my opinion the best. We set three "bomb spots". The attackers had to go there and blow it up (blowing up was played as firing a cracker). We had "moving respawns". If you got killed, you had to go 20 metres (yards) behind your own team and wait there a moment.
One time a guy from the opposite team almost killed all of us. In such case we'd probably loose the game since we had no "20 metres behind living team members" respawn and couldn't get respawned. :)

I uploaded all the good photos my girlfriend Ania made here, but I can't promise that I'll host them there for long time. I have 80% of my disk space on Picasa empty, but finally it'll run dry. Then I'll probably start emptying it by deleting some old photos. But I think it will not happen during the entire 2008.

Airsoft game at old railway buildings

Yesterday I played an airsoft game with Pluton Egzekucyjny (a young ASG team from Żyrardów, the town I live in). The game took place in Adamów, in couple of abandoned buildings. They were used by PKP, polish national railroad company.

First of all, when I opened my car's trunk and the replica bag I noticed that my Cyma AK-47S has broken stock. When I bought it I was aware that the folding stock in every replica is very delicate and may be broken soon. This disallowed me to use the replica, because I couldn't separate the stock from the rest of the gun. Only one of those rings that attach the stock to the body was broken and I didn't have hex key to remove the other.

From Airsoft from ...

When I took my stuff we could go for a walk to see the place.

From Airsoft from ...

This was it -- one large hall, one three-story office building with two stairways and many entrances.



The hall inside.



The office building as seen from the inside of the hall.



The office building. Cool red paint on the walls and pink tiles in toilettes.



One of the stairways. Broken windows. I heard that one of the people almost fell out through this window. It looks as it is not high above the ground, but this photo was taken while standing on top floor.



The hall seen from the office building.



The office building seen from near the hall.

I had much fun, 'cause I played with my favorite replica - MP5K PDW. :D

You can find the photos on Picasa Web Albums. Here's gallery of photos taken by my girlfriend and couple of photos I took yesterday. I can't promise they'll be held on the Picasa forever. ;)

Best airsoft places, #-1

This article is not exactly part of the series titled Best Airsoft Places. I don't consider this place one of the best, but it surely is interesting enough to mention it on my blog.

We played there once, at the beginning of our airsoft career, 3 years. Most of people from our team had only spring replicas, some shotguns, pistols and stuff like that. Only two of us had AEGs, including me.

The place was a primary school. We played there at night, with lights out, and all the classrooms shut. So we used only corridors and stairways. But that was just enough fun for all of us.

Best airsoft places, #2

Since there's no airsoft game in Żyrardów tomorrow, I'll feed my airsoft hunger with photo-memories.

Today the second place in the contest for the best airsoft place in Poland - the Miami.

This place has nothing to do with Miami and, to be honest, I have no idea why somebody named it this way. It is a place used some time ago for railroad stuff, located in Warsaw.

Here's a photo from Google Maps.



The most important building is the one with the weird shape. It's an old roundhouse. For a better description let's assume it has it's beginning and end. The beginning would be at the left hand side of the building on the satellite photo.

Here's the roundhouse as seen from south.



Here's the inside of the roundhouse. Photo taken while standing at the beginnin of the building. As you can see it is divided in half by a large wall.



Most of the games we played there were very simple. We fought in the roundhouse, one team started at it's end, the other at the beginning. The beginning had couple of rooms on the first floor that would give this team large advantage. In most cases they just started to defend that place, so we changed starting places after each round.

On the following photo you can see the wall. The people are from opposite teams. You can imagine the fun we had. A small note: we have a rule that one cannot put his arm behind any obstacle (wall, door, whatever) and shoot if - he can fire only if he puts his arm, replica and head to see what's inside. :)



The same wall seen from the other end. It was often that two or more people stood at it's end and sprayed BB's to hit or simply scare the other team. Unfortunatelly I don't have a proper photo...



The following photo shows the roundhouse's beginning. The camera was located somewhere near the wall. You can see why the people defending that floor had such an advantage -- they had a perfect place to hide. It looks like it's an end of one of rounds, the defenders get their butts kicked. ;)



Oh, that's me. Marked with red cloth to show that I got killed.



The camper-defender. Note that we don't condemn camping - we set the game rules that campers don't have their advantage. Even if the round rules are that the attacking team must get into one room in a building in a specific time and there's a camper inside that room, it's not difficult to hit him. Three or four people rush inside at the same time - he wouldn't kill them all, would he? ;)



This is the campsite from within.



No explanation necessary...



They made it, the last defender got shot.



Enough photos from the roundhouse.

The Miami had couple other interesting places. For example - an old pool for water in case of fire.





There was one quite large building. Two stories high (ground floor and a basement), one long corridor and many rooms on each floor.





Unfortunatelly, the place got demolished. I am very sad, because it was VERY playable, something like the Q2DM1 map in Quake ][...

Photos were made by me, Mamut, Squarek and probably someone else...

Best airsoft places

This is the first post in new series: best places for airsoft games. I would like to show you my favorite 10 spots for airsoft games in Poland. Since I live near Warsaw, they're aren't far away from our capitol city.

Each one of them will have at least couple of photos and a brief description.

1. Halinka - Old Hall in Ursus Tractor Factory.

This is the place I started my airsoft games at. No wonder I like it very much. I played there first time 5 years ago and last time somewhere in the beginning of this year. We were thrown out of there by security guarding the hall so we had to find ourselves another place to play.

The most important advantage of this place is that it is a hall and we play inside. You don't have to worry about rain, snow. There are two two-story building "inside" the hall so we can also play some office hostage rescue / bomb defuse scenarios. This is one of those buildings, shown from the only non-roofed spot in the place.











This is the most fun part of the hall. We call it Filary (Columns). You can see them at the left hand side of the photo. One group starts from one, second from the other end of the columns. There is also a long room next to that spot, shown on the following photo.



This is my favorite place, because:

• we could play many different scenarios, including very short skirmishes,
  
• the whole hall is protected from rain, weather didn't stop us from playing.

Added on nov. 2nd, 2007
Take a look at an old Shamo movie that was shot inside the Halinka. It'll show you how nice the place was in more details than I can describe with my poor english.

Fort Chrzanów -- where we played airsoft this saturday

I forgot to write something about the place of our last airsoft game. We met at so called "Fort Chrzanów", one of many ground fortifications that surround Warsaw. Well...they used to surround it, now they're inside the city boundaries. The place consists of few small hills, one long building, partly destroyed. This building has entries only from one side and many rooms, it's not much but better this than nothing.

I think that one image is worth more than a thousand words, so I'll show you few photos from the site. First of all -- take a look at a page from website about Warsaw fortifications. You can find there few photographs of this place (they were taken few years ago I guess, the place looks now...cleaner (now you won't find there so much toilet paper)), map of this fort (taken from Warsaw city map) and aerial photo. The latter looks VERY NICE, especially when you also take a look at this fort in Google Maps. I can't tell when they were made, so I don't know how to understand the differences between them.