Skirmishes and Night Games 05/30/2015

Saturday started with skirmishes at SQA and ended with Black Dust, a night op at The Old Frontier.

With less than a week’s time passed after Vietnam Patrol II, the field at Escue Airsoft still shows signs of the epic struggle between US and NVA forces, mostly in the form of foxholes dug in random areas of the field.  Despite loving the challenges posed by RealMil gameplay, the players were happy to get back to faster-paced gameplay.  SQA saw a turn-out of fifty players, a much higher number than they were expecting (in a positive way, of course).  Almost as if to emphasize the casual environment, teams were split up based on groups instead of camo color, and the day was largely divided up into short, quick games of capture the flag, attack and defend, king of the hill, and similar scenarios.

It wasn’t all fun and games, however.  The Escues have decided to come down hard on safety and sportsmanship violations on the field.  Any players caught removing eye pro or conducting themselves in an otherwise unsafe or unsportsmanlike manner received a verbal warning from the admins, as well as a mark on their wristbands, with repeat offenders being sat out for a game or escorted off the field.  To the best of our knowledge, this policy will be in place for future events.

Skirmishes at SQA 02/14/2015

The weather stayed nice for this Valentine’s Day massacre at one of the best fields in the state.

Though I had initially intended to use the skirmish day at Escue Airsoft (SQA) as RBDA’s first “Field Spotlight,” I only got the chance to photograph a small part of the field.  This was because RBDA reached a different milestone instead:  for the first time since I’ve started taking pictures for the airsoft community, I was using an actual, honest-to-goodness, professional piece of equipment.  That’s right, RBDA has acquired a real camera, a Canon EOS Rebel XT.  Unfortunately, the battery died about halfway through the day, and my phone died shortly after, so I’m going to be moving the Field Spotlight to the game on March 28th instead.

As another “first” for RBDA, I had help covering the field this time around.  Todd Wallace and his wife, Mariah, came out to assist.  I’m proud to say that the game blew their expectations out of the water–this wasn’t the backyard chaos that they were expecting, and, as always, the players were all very good about photographer identification.  I’d like to thank everyone, since this means that I’ll likely have help covering future games.