'Serious Saturday' at Red Alert Airsoft, Newbury
I started playing Airsoft a year ago , after a long hiatus. Since then, I have played quite a lot, pretty much every two weeks (and then, during the summer, an additional Friday evening targets session, every other week). I am still not particularly good at it, and I could certainly do with getting fitter, but I have got to a point where I am content with the equipment that I have, and I can go out and play with a sense of purpose. I have played all of my games at Red Alert Airsoft, in Newbury. This is for three reasons: the people there are just lovely . Such a friendly, welcoming, down to earth group. it is about 10 minutes away, which is very convenient I enjoy it! I like the mix of games, and while some days have, perhaps inevitably, been better than others, none has been less than excellent. I am sure that there are other good Airsoft sites, but I’ve just got no incentive to go anywhere else. The days that I enjoy the most are the “Serious Saturday” days. This is an all-morning game, with a break for lunch, and then either an all-afternoon game, or a slightly slower pace of smaller/shorter games during the afternoon. There is nothing particularly “serious” about it - everyone is there to have fun, as usual, and no-one takes the games too seriously. There’s always a chance for a laugh and a chat with the other team, normally after you’ve just been hit after spending ages getting to the other side of the site. In my experience - perhaps because of the scary-sounding “serious” name, or the fact that it is on a Saturday when Red Alert mostly runs Sunday games - Serious Saturday has fewer participants, and most of the ones I have played have had somewhere between 10 and 25. Given the size of the site, that makes for two (or three) small teams, and the possibility of splitting down into two-person squads, and that - for me - really works. Skirmish days, when there are 100+ people on the site, are fine, but I do prefer the quieter, slightly more strategic, days. The games are more objective-focussed, and work best when everyone on a team works together. Sure, there’s scope for sneaky individual game play - I spent quite a lot of last Saturday hiding in some ferns, on overwatch on a couple of key points on the site, happily taking down people as they appeared nearby - but it needs to fit in with the overall team strategy to make sense. Red Alert has acquired some rather fun Arduino-powered “bombs”, which can be used for various game modes. Last Serious Saturday, we were playing a “disarm the bomb” game: someone had planted a bomb at our base, and we had to comb the site (30+ acres…) to find the digits making up the code. We had to get them back to the bomb, and disarm it, in the 30 minute time period. The other team had the same objective, and the team which disarmed their bomb first won - not that, honestly, it really matters (to me, anyway) who wins. I’m there to have fun, and get a bit of exercise. The “bombs” are really rather impressive, and I think that they could actually be used to trigger a pyrotechnic device at the end of the countdown… and that would be fun. I also spent a bit of time testing the Topdon TS004 thermal monocular for Airsoft - I will probably try that again when the ferns have died down, and sight lines have opened up a bit. There’s one more “Serious Saturday” this year, and I am looking forward to it. the people there are just lovely . Such a friendly, welcoming, down to earth group. it is about 10 minutes away, which is very convenient I enjoy it! I like the mix of games, and while some days have, perhaps inevitably, been better than others, none has been less than excellent.
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