[TA Events] Operation Zulu (TACOPS), Staffordshire

evilrobotshane

Headed off in the direction of this tomorrow morning. Looks like a total of five Irishpersons and one less fortunate making up the bulk of 3 section of the government forces.

This'll be my first time airsofting abroad (proper abroad like, not Predator) and also my first serious milsim, and also I haven't been camping in a few years either. Here's hoping it's worth being in town at half six in the morning for.

Lemming

evilrobotshane wrote: »

Headed off in the direction of this tomorrow morning. Looks like a total of five Irishpersons and one less fortunate making up the bulk of 3 section of the government forces.

This'll be my first time airsofting abroad (proper abroad like, not Predator) and also my first serious milsim, and also I haven't been camping in a few years either. Here's hoping it's worth being in town at half six in the morning for.

Be prepared for an unmerciful and rough crossing tomorrow and I hope you've got good sea-legs cause the weather looks to be sh*t on the Irish Sea.

evilrobotshane

Lemming wrote: »

Be prepared for an unmerciful and rough crossing tomorrow and I hope you've got good sea-legs cause the weather looks to be sh*t on the Irish Sea.

I've got sea-legs coming out my ass.

Lemming

I'd like to thank everybody who attended for playing and making a cracking event, and to Ian and the staff at TA-Events along with the folks who kindly played OpFor and CIA, and of course the UK MoD for use of the site.

It was amazing, the weather was truly horrendous over Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I had a great deal of fun doing everything from;

• Having to march/fight our way into our base of operations to secure it and set up a 'harbour' whilst carrying all our kit for 24 hours (no cars to return to ... )
• Raiding a building to retrieve a CIA operative whose cover had been blown
• Crawling about 50m in the dark along a road whilst frequently having to avoid vehicle headlights in order to perform CTR on a target ammo dump whilst remaining undetected
• Securing ammo dump and having to force-march all the supplies out on foot on suspicion of compromised military comms.
• Performing a two-man pathfinder task on incoming pick-up to ensure no ambush an then guiding them into the supplies.
• Having TA and Royal Marines on exercise wandering through our positions looking a bit bemused.

(the list is not exhaustive but are the bits that stood out in my mind)

I didn't fire a single round through all of that, and spent half the time wet & cold, but I had a fantastic experience in doing so. The event was, in my mind at least, what milsim actually is; as opposed to 'battle sim' to coin a distinction by TA-Events themselves that most people take to be milsim.


Edit: pictures are up already, courtesy of Sector 6

Puding

some great pictures there, the slow pace the tactical sim at time lends itself to photography it seems

how many people did ta events get in the end its a bit hard to see from the pictures, as that could be the complete group or just a section?

I didn't fire a single round through all of that, and spent half the time wet & cold, but I had a fantastic experience in doing so. The event was, in my mind at least, what milsim actually is; as opposed to 'battle sim' to coin a distinction by TA-Events themselves that most people take to be milsim.

sounds great and what i think of when someone mentions milsim to me, but with all these events it is always the attitude that the players bring that seem to drive the style of event, in this case ta events made it clear from the start what type of event it was and you only got people 100% up for that which worked.

It always hard to label stuff, film sim, milsim, tactical sim, battlesim, i think in general you have airsoft and then milsim airsoft, and then you can break milsim down into categorys depending on what your looking for ta events seems to have broken this down rather well, tactical sim as this event was and then battlesim, but you could keep going and going in trying to classify things but i do not see the point, to me its the joy of airsoft you can normal find something that suits you, be it speedball style competitive airsoft ( take aim cup end of things) right thought to the tactical sim ( like this ta event, the hard core milsim team based courses in places like Estonia and course based swat events based on real world tactical competitions), horses for courses.

(yay for the early morning pre work rant )

TheDoc

Puding wrote: »

some great pictures there, the slow pace the tactical sim at time lends itself to photography it seems

how many people did ta events get in the end its a bit hard to see from the pictures, as that could be the complete group or just a section?



sounds great and what i think of when someone mentions milsim to me, but with all these events it is always the attitude that the players bring that seem to drive the style of event, in this case ta events made it clear from the start what type of event it was and you only got people 100% up for that which worked.

It always hard to label stuff, film sim, milsim, tactical sim, battlesim, i think in general you have airsoft and then milsim airsoft, and then you can break milsim down into categorys depending on what your looking for ta events seems to have broken this down rather well, tactical sim as this event was and then battlesim, but you could keep going and going in trying to classify things but i do not see the point, to me its the joy of airsoft you can normal find something that suits you, be it speedball style competitive airsoft ( take aim cup end of things) right thought to the tactical sim ( like this ta event, the hard core milsim team based courses in places like Estonia and course based swat events based on real world tactical competitions), horses for courses.

(yay for the early morning pre work rant )

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

evilrobotshane

That was good stuff indeed. A different slant on things - securing an area while wearing a big rucksack, posting guards so you can cook your dinner, calls to stand to when you're tucked up in bed, stealthy strictly-no-contact observation.

There was a platoon's worth of folks there - three sections and assorted bits like the commander and the CIA agents.

Puding

TheDoc wrote: »

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

has always come thought when i;ve been in contact

Lemming

TheDoc wrote: »

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

A) Well, if it doesn't make tactical or practical sense he will very much let you know.
Yup. Well, up to the point of getting the job done. If there's a time factor he does very much care (as happened the previous year at B6 for one particular mission)
C) Oh yes.

TheDoc

heh, I believe last year we were supposed to be back in base by 12 midnight on first night ops, and we arrived back at what 6am.

Gave me an impression he doesnt like reading watches

OzCam

That was mostly due to the navigator bringing us the wrong long way around. Ahem.

wormbyte

Thanks guys for contributing towards a successful event.

I spoke to the section commander of Echo 2 on the Sunday morning and he told em he was very impressed with the way you guys performed. And as a current serving squaddie he came with a lot of experience.

Was a great shame about the weather as we had many more great things planned for the Sunday including a kick-arse assault on the OBUA building which you guys carried out the CTR on. The intel gathered from that was going to be used for the assault.

Overall, I was very pleased with the way the event panned out. Everyone that participated was of the correct mindset and that is a big factor when trying to run MilSim games.

TACOPS was for a chance to set TA Events definition of the word "MilSim" which is a term that has been abused for far too long (even by myself). Which is why I have now seperated my game formates in TACOPS and BattleSim. So one is hardcore and the other is a more light-hearted version of MilSim, with more sub-mission and taking inspired by war films and military based games.

All this will be roled out in the New Year along with the new website.

All the best,

Ian