Winter...

I was playing a 2 vs 2 game this weekend just to have a little fun. Here in Canada its snowy and cold as it is every winter. This is just a quick summary of how that went.

My teammate and I started out along a path and hunkered down in an area that we judged to be a likely crossing point for the enemy team. We didn't want to move much because the crunching of snow under our boots was a little to loud for comfort. We waited, and waited, and waited until it reached the point that we were just sitting up against trees concealed. Both of us were getting cold and bored so we decided to change tactics. We got up out of the trees and started down the path quickly and aggressively hoping to run into the enemy team and get into a good engagement. The whole time I was dealing with awful fog issues from the new goggles I was testing. We quickly found what we were looking for as a burst of bb's came towards us from the left. I couldn't see much so I simply went prone and returned fire on the group of trees the bb's were coming from. Meanwhile, my teammate who could see, moved around a little while firing and took out the player who fired at us. We weren't sure where the other one was so we remained for awhile watching for movement but since we didn't see anything we decided to retreat back to our original location.

At this point we were cold and tired of holding cold metal airsoft guns. So we decided to make an even more aggressive attempt at engaging the other team. We charged into the trees in the direction they were. Every five to ten meters we would stop and let out a burst of fire to the front, left, and right, then move up. We repeated this process, knocking the snow off the tress with a hail of bb's every time we couldn't see what was behind them. Until suddenly my teammate yelled and the next thing I knew I was on the ground behind a log with hundreds of bb's hissing over my head and a hit teammate. I tried to return fire but was soon also hit in the ear (that hurt a lot). So with that, the game was concluded at the business end of a Classic Army M249. Turns out the trees I blasted at not five seconds earlier had more than just more trees behind them.

Skeleton Sidearms SS17 (glock 17) Review

     Last fall I made the decision to purchase a Skeleton Sidearms SS17. I was looking for a reliable green gas side arm and came across this pistol during my search. What sold me on the gun was the fact that it looked good, was supposedly TM compatible, and came for a reasonable price.

     Initially, I was very impressed by the feel of the SS17. It has a full metal slide, and it came with a choice of either a metal outer barrel or plastic. The trigger safety did not really work very well, however I did not find anything else wrong with the operation of the gun.
    
     Internally, the gun seemed just as good as any KJW pistol I had seen. Not to mention the two prong hop up seemed like a nice touch to finish it off. The pistol sounded good, fired well, was great on gas, and fairly accurate.

     The SS17 seemed like anything I ever wanted in a side arm. After a full season the pistol was still working well though I had only put 500-1000 rounds through it. I cleaned and oiled it often. However that all changed this month as during a game, the gun jammed up and I could not figure out what caused it to stop operating. I had fired about half a mag through it that day, and when I pulled it out to replace my empty primary, nothing worked. The trigger was stuck, and the slide was stuck. Upon further investigation later I found that the hammer had broken. A friend of mine was not at all surprised as he had owned the exact same pistol and the hammer broke twice within a few thousand rounds before he gave up on the thing. To make matters worse it turns out the SS17's are surprisingly hard to find parts for. When they said TM compatible, they really only meant the magazine.

Overall, in my honest opinion, this pistol is a waste of money as the hammer is known to break, and hard to replace. It performs well when it's working however it's nothing better than any other gas pistol. You're much better off getting a Wii Tech or KJW. I would not recommend the SS17 for these reasons.

Pros: Feels solid, fun to shoot

Cons: Hammer breaks very often, nothing really special, hard to replace parts

October 5th Game: Round one

      Last weekend TAG-4 along with Task Force Diamondback attended a game at our local field. The game included about 80 players. All the players were separated into two teams, red, and green. Task Force Diamondback and TAG-4 were placed together on the green team and ready for a good game.

    The First Round: Defending the “Bomb”

    The first round of the game was a simple scenario. One team had to capture and hold a “bomb”, while the other had to defend it. Green team (our team) was given the defence objective. The map was a fairly large area with some interesting terrain, Green team started in a junk yard of old cars and furniture. Ahead of us was a hill with a small “town” on it. The town consisted of two rows of two story buildings, separated by a sort of street in a Wild West stile setup. On the other side of the town there were a handful of wood barricades, beyond those, a bus. That bus was where the bomb was located. After the bus there was a maze of tire stacks and barricades separating the first bus from a second bus on the other side. Just beyond the second bus was a tree line. That tree line is where the red team was located. To the left of all that, the junk yard continued on along the left flank of the entire course. To the right of the town there was a clearing, then a small amount of barricades and tire stack flanking the town.

    

     Once both the red and green teams had reached their starting positions, the ref with us radioed the red team ref to start. The green team was not allowed to move until the red team reached the first bus in order to make things a little harder for us. I had TAG-4 all lined up and ready to go with the two Task Force Diamondback (TF Diamondback) fire teams, Alpha niner, and Alpha six, to our right. The ref finally gave green team the green light, and all 40 odd players shot off towards different positions. I kept yelling back at TAG-4 “keep it tight” as we headed straight for the town where the largest concentration of red team players had taken up positions. All the while I was responding to furious radio communication from Alpha niner and Alpha six coordinating our positions and confirming enemy locations in and around the town. I had TAG-4 stop and stack up against a van on the outskirts of the town. At this point we were taking small amounts of enemy fire from random positions across the town. The remainder of TF Diamondback kept moving right towards the far side of the town. After confirming it was safe to do so, I had a few members of TAG-4 cover me, and another TAG-4 member, as we moved into the closest building on the left side of the town. Once we were safely inside we covered the rest of the team as they moved in as well. Taking up positions in the left side of the town, we began firing at various targets across the “street”. Before long, we had taken the largest threats out and so I again had two members of the team cover me while the rest of us moved into the buildings across the street.

    

     With the whole team safely inside one of the buildings, I radioed Alpha niner and Alpha six asking for a sit rep (situation report). They told me they had the right of the town secure however they where taking some fire from a team of enemy players that had taken up positions on the right flank of the town. I looked out ahead and saw that a large number of enemy players had accumulated behind the first bus (the one with the bomb). Seeing as this was the objective, I told the team to start firing on the players behind and around the bus. After awhile, and a few hits/re-spawns on TAG-4’s part, we had softened up the positions around the bus enough to move out of the town and assault the first bus. Between us and the bus were several wood barricades. We had already ensured all enemy players behind them where long gone, so we moved up to them to get a closer vantage point. After taking out a few more players we moved up to the bus. Or should I say I moved up to the bus. I ran out from behind a barricade straight for the bus, just as I was about 5 meters from it I heard a burst of full auto fire coming from my left. I looked over to see a player who had been hiding behind a stack of tires blasting bb’s at me and my first reaction was to dive for the bus and lay up against it. It worked. Then the remainder of TAG-4 quickly rushed to my aid and took out the player behind the tires.

   

     Since the whole team was stacked up against the bus, I took a moment to survey the area and figure out what was going on elsewhere. As I was doing this, Alpha six radioed me frantically warning me of the team on the right flank of the town. He was soon joined by Alpha niner also telling us to watch our backs as they might try and take us from behind. Because our assault on the bus was going fairly well, with a number of other green team players joining in the fun, I asked Alpha six and Alpha niner if they thought TAG-4 could possibly flank the flankers. They confirmed that it would be the best thing to do so I briefed the team on our next goal and we moved quickly to the right. It was a bit of a pain to make it across the field as small amounts of enemy fire forced us to stop on occasion, and on top of that we had to make our way across a pile of jagged loose rocks. Once we reached the location we took up various positions and opened fire on the flanking red team. It certainly came as a surprise to the red players as they hadn’t noticed us until we sent a barrage of plastic flying towards them at 380 feet per second. However, they had a relatively decent amount of skill and retaliated with just as much. We hit a few of theirs, they hit a few of ours, and then my gun sadly ceased to function due to a broken tappet plate. While I was expressing my discontent over the current situation I was also hit.

    

      Leaving only two TAG-4’s left to harass the enemy team; I walked back to the re-spawn, pulled my Gas Glock 17, and slung my M16 around my back. Then regrouping with the other two TAG-4’s that had just been hit, I radioed Alpha niner to figure out was the situation in the town was. Alpha niner told me that the red team on the flank had been taken out and they had met up with the two TAG-4 members still there. We arranged for all of TF Diamondback to regroup in the town for a final assault on the red team. Then we moved into the tires separating us from the second bus and began taking out red team players one at a time. One of the refs had moved the bomb from the first bus to the second to “make things more interesting” however the bomb seemed to have been forgotten as the game turned into more of a team death match. A few TF Diamondback, including TAG-4, were hit during the final assault, however soon we had taken out the entire red team down to the last man who put up a decent fight from behind the second bus. That concluded the first game of the day with a green team victory.

(Because of the length of this post, I will save the second game for a separate post.)

True Tech Airsoft

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TAG-4 Airsoft

I have been playing airsoft for about five years now. I started out using clear plastic spring pistols, and now I am the leader of an airsoft team, TAG-4, or Tactical Assault Group 4. We operate as part of a larger team called Task Force Diamondback. However we have a separate function as an Elite fire team. This year we began attending events at our local field on a regular basis, and have gained a lot of experience. However we are just getting started!