We want everyone to have the best experience possible at every one of our events, regardless of whether it’s your first airsoft experience, or you’ve been playing for years, whether you come on your own, or with a bunch of mates.
We have an excellent reputation for welcoming new players, helping them to learn the rules, and ensuring that they are included in the games in a fair manner, pairing them with more experienced players where necessary. There’s nothing worse than putting all the regulars on one team, and all the new players and visitors on the other. We don’t do that. We ensure that the teams are as balanced as possible, and are not afraid to mix them up during the day if it’s obvious that one team is just dominating.
We enjoy competitive play, but not to the point where half the players go home miserable because they never stood a chance.
With no paint marks or electronic hit registration, airsoft is a game based entirely on honour. Every player in the game has a resposibility to play fairly, and honestly, to ensure that every other player has a great day.
We’ve learnt from our negative experiences at other sites and from paintball games, that if you force a player to sit out while everyone finishes playing (especially if they’ve been shot very early on) it just encourages people to cheat. You’ve paid us to play airsoft, not spectate, so we make sure that the only time you sit out watching is if you’ve overdone it and need a break to recover.
We also have a great team of volunteer marshals, who help us out because they love giving people a great experience. We have hi-vis marshals overseeing the games, and we also have marshals embedded within the teams, to help feedback any potential issues or bad feeling before it becomes an issue.
It’s a very frequent occurrence in airsoft to be completely convinced that you’re hitting someone, and they’re ignoring it. Almost all the time you’re actually missing. Repeat issues with a particular player should be reported to a marshal, who can monitor them. We have a very low tolerance for “cheat callers” who, instead of speaking to a marshal, decide to start shouting at the other player, telling team-mates that the other team is cheating, and very soon half the players are grumpy, and start cheating becasue they think that’s what the other team is doing. Almost every time, the pellets are dropping 10ft short of the target, but look like they’re hitting.
Occasionally, some people can get very angry, and upset at some perceived injustice in the game. We usually remove these players temporarily, remind them that it’s a game, and once they’ve calmed down, let them back out again. We do not tolerate abusive/threatening behaviour or violence, whatever the reason – offenders will usually be asked to leave site.
There is a huge range of airsoft sites and game styles to choose from out there – overly aggressive and competitive players, along with those who enjoy causing more pain than is necessary are advised to visit a different site instead.