Oooooh yeah - that place rocks! Hooah!! Spec-Ops on Portland Rock in Dorset. Damn, what a site; what a day!

Awesomeness abound and fun all round, and the best skirmish I've been to since the first one I ever went to - although things did get off to a shakier-than-usual start after my M14 managed, by dint of absolutely no effort, to achieve a range of, ooh, at least 40 feet, if you include droppage

The A.I.C.S. didn't actually do any better, and the pair of them need serious looking at and fixing. I really cannot be bothered to do either I'm afraid, which says a lot about how I feel about airsoft as a general concept at the moment. So many people have been saying the same thing lately I honestly believe its all just a matter of sunlight and the glorious Vitamin D that it yields, and with a miserable-as-hell Winter season in the UK we are all a little bit "Meh.." about everything. So there; that's alright then

The best thing about Spec-Ops by the way is that it is like playing in the early section of Half-Life 2 in the semi-flooded quarry area that you scoot through on your hoverboat thingy. Its *just* like that bit, and the rusting machinery and ghoslty industrial buildings make for the most atmospheric place I have ever played.

Airsoft International were there on Sunday and besides there being at least 4 photgraphers of indeterminate affiliation, there was a Canadian guy was doing the interview rounds, so I was witness, not for the first time, to the strange phenomena of excitable English people clamouring for the attentions of any American-sounding person, possibly in the vain hope that some of the romance and associated glitz will somehow rub off on them. Perhaps they wish to collect it in jars for use later when there's not enough `cool` around, I don't know.

Another possibility is that folks are hoping for some vague fame by getting their mugs into an international magazine (and of course the chance to speak to someone who sounds like they're from the movies ) which is fair & universal I guess as I sure hope one of the shots taken of at least some of our team makes it in there!

Shockingly enough, a Yankee accent isn't always all it takes to grab our attention over in blightyland - excellent games and structure, not to mention a truly fantastic site to play in, are also all provided courtesy of that bloke wot runs it, like (if anyone knows his name please post a reply below, just for reference) and his briefings were a breath of fresh air as he delivered the most concise of concepts with humour and even a little charm: "You lot go dig in there and you other lot attack 'em when I say so. Got it? Good." And you really can't say fairer than that.

The chap in charge seemed to understand what we really want to hear at a briefing for once, and after a cursory safety and courtesy speech the thing we need to know is simply where to attack and/or defend, and roughly where the bad guys are coming from.

Team commanders and time switches and drop points and rocket launches and helievacs (heli-evacs? Hel-evacs? Whatever) and hostages and the like are all well and good, but to have somethng as simple as "attack that" or "they're over there, get 'em!" is such a wonderfully easy pretence it pits people entirely at their ease, and, at the end of the day, we are under no illusions as to what we're doing at a skirmish; you may as well just simplify it down to what it is - bleedin' Cowboys and Indians

There is a trade-off in terms of time here that I really appreciate too, although perhaps the guys on my team mostly prefer the open-ended all day scenario a-la Ground Zero, but I think they are wrong in some ways; right in others that they may or may not even appreciate, I dunno.

My thoughts on this essential choice of structure are;

- The single, sprawling days where objectives are laid out and timed throughout the day requires only one briefing, and then you are free to get on with whatever you like. The actual leadership of each team is down to the appointed Sergeants and not everyone listens to their plans, and if they do, either forget or ignore them half the time. Proper squaddies we are not In any case if you do listen, and possibly even obey them, these orders and plans still need to be dished out constantly throughout the day and while its handy having one person who (theoretically) knows what's going on, chances are ya ain't gonna find him more than a couple o' three times a day, so you tend to wander around in a unconcerned, unstructured way.

Now this means that although the entire day is actually used for playing, giving you at least 6 hours of skirmishing, the time wasted walking around trying to find some action, and the time spent trekking across the massive site to a dead zone when hit, pretty much accounts for about half of those hours.

- The seperate, compartmentalised pieces of action one gets from the individual games when briefings are as succint as the ones at Spec-Ops, combined with the reasonable size of the quarry areas (didn't use any of the many-thousand-acre woodland this time, but really didn't need anything more from the day - it was that cool) means that actual downtime in-game is minimal, and the instant respawns keep the action fresh, as do the well-utilised areas in which we were fighting. Pretty badass all round then, and the main reason I appreciate these shorter, sharper bursts of action is that it keeps you driven and refreshed for each and every game, and ensures that everyone on both sides can really give it everything they've got for every single firefight. I think thats something really worth preserving, personally.

Yet another good thing about the briefings is that you're placed, when being given it, where you can actually see all the relevant points and places, so there's no quibble over where you're meant to be at any time. With that said though....

[Now I myself am really chuffed with the day because I kicked some serious *albartroth* with well over 20 people shot by mine fair(??!) hand, soe of them geardos with PTWs and the like, and little ol' me with my totally stock Marui AUG. I did indeed `lol` at the time, a fait bit if I recall correctly. I also had to `improvise` a little, but hey, where's the harm in that? ]

-

....bit of a sneaky one but worth mentioning because a] I kinda have to justify what I did and b] Intellectually it was the best thing to do for everyone concerned. Well, not strictly for everyone, especially those that I shot, but still; everyone, for a given value of `every`

While defending a small corner of the site against the bad guys (we had no team names, just our lot had orange rags tied onto us and the other guys didn't. Another example of the refreshing informality IMHO) I was inevitably shot and had to respawn. Now, maybe the organiser chappie (I really got to get this guys name, c'mon folks help me out here!) thought I was on the other team (unlikely), or maybe he thought it would be good to spice things up, but he directed me to respawn out of the base and anywhere out in the quarry....

.....the quarry that was, apart from that one small corner, ENTIRELY occupied by the enemy team. Perfect.

So I wandered the whole arena, contemplated slotting just about everyone in the back, was told by half the team that I wasn't supposed to be there (but I wasn't gonna let a little thing like that stop me) and eventually found one side area amongst the vast blocks of stone that had no-one in it, and was about the requisite 100 metres from the nearest bad guy. I faced onto the flank of the enemy's positions and I wasn't behind anyone, and I had already had the small team who would eventually corner and kill me on my tail, they told me they had been tracking me since before I respawned in so to be honest, I was more than justified to respawn behind enemy lines.

And hey, it certainly livened things up...

Even despite the dubious nature of starting to attack people who were facing the wrong way, I didn't just start at the back and work forward as I have done before (on one memorable occasion wiping out 25+ people on my own in less than 2 minutes! Oh yeah...) I fired warning shots at the first couple of guys who fell to my trusty AUG, and they had started to return fire and everything so it was all good and proper. I did bang-kill a couple of guys and blatantly shot at least 2 people in the side, lacing them from ankle to elbow with BBs, but overall it was totally fair and I had not only the people in front to deal with but also the tracking team, who caught up and got the drop on me at about the same time as I did on their front man, which I chose to take gracefully rather than trade ammunition at a range of <15 feet.

Besides he had better cover, and I didn't fancy trusting meself to shoot from the hip!

-

Another moment of semi-glory (hah! *polishes knuckles* ) was being the last man standing in the Last Man Standing game, or, at least one of the last Men as I wasn't dug out of my rather *perfect* hiding place with only one way in and a peek-hole no-one would notice that covered the entrance to this very well. Shame its a working quarry and wont be there again next time, but I guess I'll just have to have another moment of brilliance wont I?

....and being one of the 10 or so defenders in the final, King of the Hill battle against the other 60-odd people was really cool, and taking out 4 and then 3 people with grenades that were, though I say so myself, cooked off just enough and thrown very acurately as I was told later by a passing person who was victim to one of them that; "You're not allowed grenades next time, you're too good"

Was I chuffed? I was bloody beaming.

And that was about that, apart from the weather (wet) the police armed response units (on standby up the road after someone reported `terrorist training` in the quarry - a single copper came to check it and was quickly reassured that all was well and good, but the boys with the REAL toys were standing by just up the road) and the coastguard (scouring the nearby seas for a 14-year old boat thief who called them to laugh about the boat that he and his friend had stolen. The friend made it back to shore, the other one hasn't been found yet. Sad, but hey: thats evolution baby).

All in all that was a damned impressive day's skirmishing, combined with some randomised glitz and glamour from the international press presence and one helluva bodycount (by my modest stanbdards ) and even with the extremely cold start and torrential rain, it really was one of the best skirmish days I've ever had. Top hole.

....and I've just had word from another personage who attended also, along with TrooperX who I met down there its all getting shockingly small in this (little) world here!