“Airsoft is a game of honour,” is a phrase that will pop up in pretty much every site briefing you attend. In the UK, it’s the pre-skirmish mantra, talking about how everyone should be taking their hits, playing fair and holding themselves to a high level of honour.
Everyone nods and agrees, but right after “game on!”, people start screaming at nearby bushes to take their hits, complaining about how the guys 20 metres further than the range of their gun are “clearly not taking it.”
It’s exhausting.
What sort of airsofter you want to be is really up to you: skirmish supremo, milsim master or a sublime speedsofter – the sport is for everyone. But if you’re calling people bellends or swearing and shouting, you’re creating a shitty atmosphere and making yourself look like a dick.
Airsoft is really a game about attitude and it’s important to try and have a good one.
Before we get into why that is, one big caveat.
If you’re not taking your hits in airsoft, you’re a baddie
The only important part is that if a BB leaves the barrel of an airsoft weapon and comes into contact with you or any part of your gear (dump pouch, sling, stuffed animal threaded into your molle), you’re hit.
This is the one golden rule of airsoft and without it, the entire game falls apart, and we’re just people with toy guns trying to inflict pain on each other. You know, like paintballers.
Nothing else matters. If you think you might be hit, take the hit. If you’re not sure whether it was a ricochet, take the hit. You don’t want to get a rep for not taking hits, so if there’s any doubt in your mind about whether you’re hit, take it and shuffle back to regen/scream for a medic as appropriate.
If you ever intentionally don’t take a hit, you’re a knob. it’s just the fact of it. You’ve put your fun over other people’s on the field and it’s disrespectful to everyone involved. This includes the cry of “if they’re not taking hits, I’m not taking hits,” because toddlers aren’t allowed to play airsoft, so don’t act like one. Rise above it and be the better player. Airsoft is a game of honour and all that.
Tell a marshall
Here’s what you should be doing. If you’re close enough to see your rounds landing, you’re close enough to see what they’re wearing and what they’re holding. Take this information, call a marshall, let them know what the deal is.
It’s not a big deal. A decent site/marshall will take your information and file it away, maybe marking the player or keeping a closer eye on them. They won’t be annoyed that you’ve calmly told them about a player you believe you’ve hit. My favourite sites are Airsoft Plantation and the Rift Airsoft outfits, and at both of them when I’ve reported players that seem to be Kevlar-coated, the marshalls involved have apologised that my day has been impacted and taken the information.
Two things are important here:
- It isn’t the staff’s fault that players aren’t taking their hits, so being respectful is important. Sometimes you can be worked up, Airsoft is a combat sport and adrenaline is all over the place, just try to remember that they want a clean and effortless game too. If they don’t appear to be doing anything about it immediately, they could have called it in by radio and another marshall is looking into it.
- The description is everything: “That guy in Multicam” isn’t useful, “the guy in Multicam with an MP5” is better, but “the guy in Multicam with a tan vest, MP5 and black helmet with a GoPro” is A-grade, and should make sure they can keep an eye on the player.
Also, complaining about people not taking their hits after the day is over is largely useless, as your descriptions will be no good and there’s nothing that can be done. Just let a marshall know the next time you pass them.
Sometimes, you won’t get a decent resolution. As a last resort, just pack your stuff up and go home. If a marshall is bad, calmly tell the site owner as you leave, and the owner can look into it. One head marshall I spoke to while running this admitted that his team of marshalls has sometimes been weaker than he’d like, but that he’s always going to side with one of his staff over someone screaming and shouting.
Flipside: You should tell your mates when they’ve been hit
When it comes to your friends, you can just tell them. Sometimes people don’t feel their hits, sometimes it hits a weird bit of their clothing. The best way to manage this problem would be if everyone politely tells their teammates if they notice they’ve taken a hit and if your friends are really your friends, they’ll be happy you told them. Friends don’t let friends not take their hits!
This keeps the games clean and helps your unwitting mate from getting marked by a marshall because he was unlucky enough to get a BB in the fold of his trousers or on a rucksack and not felt it.
“Don’t be a dick” means not causing a scene, not overreacting, understanding you or your weapon may not be as good as you think, talking to marshalls, policing your own teammates and making sure everyone’s having fun.
Anyway, here’s why you shouldn’t be getting shouty.
You’re a bad shot and your gun isn’t as accurate as you think it is
The number one reason people think that the opposing enemy team isn’t taking their hits is that they’re simply not hitting them.
Sorry, but it’s true.
This is a bitter pill for a lot of players because you have to accept that it’s a problem with you or your gear.
A confession: I’ve had games where I’m genuinely not sure I’ve actually hit anyone.
My first day of airsoft was at the Cornish site KGB Airsoft, playing with some dependable-but-bashed-about ICS L85s. After the entire day, my friend and I stood excitedly talking about the time we thought we might have hit someone.
It’s hard to do when your adrenaline is ramped up but if you really pay attention to the flight of your BB, you’ll notice they’re kind of garbage. A single leaf can be all it takes to knock your BB off course, but there arealso things like the maximum range of an AEG, the settings of your hop and the fact that even with an optic, your BBs can go all over the place if you’re not shouldering your rifle properly, ensuring your barrel is straight.
But OK, say you’re watching the BBs bounce off the chest of your target. It’s still worth keeping quiet because…
People get defensive when challenged
Has anyone ever come up to you after death claiming you’re not taking your hits? What’s your first thought? I guarantee it’s not “oh, maybe I was hit”, it’s to double down and claim that you’re not hit or you would have felt it.
It’s a natural response, so there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. I’m mostly referring to people screaming at each other and getting salty. I’ll actually say that if you are certain you’ve hit someone and you want to quietly tell them – respectfully and without calling them out in front of everyone – that they took a round to their plate carrier and didn’t feel it, I think that would be OK. However, you never know how people will react and it could end up being a pretty negative interaction.
With that in mind, why would you want to put yourself in the middle of that? That’s what the marshalls are there for. Short of a citizen’s arrest for bad airsoft, you have no more power on the field than any other player.
Screaming shouting (and cheating to beat cheaters) makes you look a knob
Airsoft is a pretty small community. Reputations follow you from site to site. With the growth of huge social media followings for airsoft and the fact that most players will often go from site to site, one big tantrum could mark you out as a troublemaker.
Personally, as soon as I’m in a firefight where people are shouting at each other, I’ll move to a different flank when I regen. I don’t really want to spend my leisure time listening to people shout at each other because they haven’t realised their guns don’t have range on each other yet.
The problems here are pretty deep; all that swearing will often mark you out to marshalls as someone to watch and may make them take you less seriously in future. However, you’re also making people less likely to want to play with you again and creating a toxic atmosphere, because all of this stuff is likely to become reciprocal by players on the opposing team.
You can watch this in play, where shouting and swearing leads to a situation in which an entire site is sure the other team is cheating and the standard of play goes out of the window.
Cheating is pretty rare and often unintentional. But as every player has their blood up when they are on the field. Don’t blame yourself too much if you lose your cool for a bit.