Brandon Speelman
ENG 100 – 47398
Personal Informative Essay
Rough Draft 1

Tag’um and Bag’um

So, you want to know how to be an effective player in the sport of Airsoft? This will be a crash course guide on how to help your team win the objective, destroy your opponents, and most of all not getting “fragged” two seconds into the match. Most of all the objective is to have fun, and staying alive and in game means you are having fun longer; because being “dead” on the sidelines is never fun. One of the primary things to staying alive is to think before you move. Now I am not saying you should “camp”, a term that means staying in one spot the entire match. While that tactic may serve a sniper style very well, that’s a more advanced play style; and will not be covered in this guide. All that you should do in this regard is simply think, feel your surroundings before being the typical “noob” and rushing out in the open only to be obliterated mercilessly by the opposition. A “noob” is a term for a new or unseasoned player that normally makes mistakes capable of ruining a team’s chances of winning. When playing in the woods for example, if you are quiet, and not breathing hard from sprinting (actually in your first few matches sometimes your breathing is already hard as your heart thumps in your chest from the adrenaline, very fun stuff), you can hear the branches and twigs breaking under the foot of your enemy. It is almost like hunting, you try to acquire your prey before it finds you and gets away; or in this case shoots you back. Another awesome tip that a veteran can give is communication. Communication is a lynchpin to success for a good team. There is tons of old sayings about how good communication is vital to victory of any great battle. “The single biggest problem in communication, is the illusion that it has taken place” by George Bernard Shaw is one of my favorites at least in this context. This is because most times even veteran players are guilty of the fact that you might plan out you and your teammates move one way in your head; but without proper communication, your master plan will go awry when someone “zigs” when they should have “zagged”. In the best case scenario your team will have radios or headsets to relay your orders to and from command (yes bigger games can be big enough to have a legitimate command structure, like in real combat). Even more advanced, is players set up rudimentary hang signals to silently convey their intentions. Everyone has seen an action movie in where the hero or bad guys hold up their fist in a halting motion and all in unison the team stops in their tracks and drops to the ground. Worse comes to worse, you can always yell at a team member your message. Sure you’ll give away your position, and tell the enemy what you are going to do; but even that is less humiliating than getting shot in the back from a trigger happy team mate who didn’t understand what you were doing and thought you were a bad guy. Surely you should know being prepared wins the day, right? Well if you didn’t know, winning anything in life requires at least some sort of preparation; and the sport of Airsoft is no different. Coming to the field or arena with all your gear in working order, is a good start. Whether you’re a seasoned warfighter who can field strip his/her rifle with no tools, or the literal “first-timer”; just having the instructions that came with your weapon will be a huge boon if/when something breaks on you. Also helps in identifying all the parts that come with your gun, you should make sure you come to the field with: the stock/frame/body of your weapon (usually 1 piece), barrel (can be multiple pieces or even multiple barrels for the more advance players), accessories (sights/optics, lasers, flashlights, range finders, etc.), batteries or gas (this is of most importance, because without it your marker will not even function! Also find out which energy source your weapon operates on, because there is nothing worse than trying to plug in a battery into a gas cartridge slot), tools (in case you need to repair something out there), and last but not least ammunition (and lots of it, its super cheap, doesn’t take much space, and comes in a variety of colors even glow in the dark!). Finally pertaining to preparedness is what to take out in each match, mostly it is the same as what you brought to the field in the first place. You can leave the tools at your staging grounds as well as any extra unneeded weight like extra batteries and gas. Just put together your weapon and load up, check with the officials (if there are any) as to how much ammo to bring because certain game types only allow certain amounts of rounds available. Suit up in a sturdy set of clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty in, I personally use an old camouflage get up I have acquired in my years playing; but at least a long sleeve shirt and jeans (while the pellets aren’t capable of inflicting fatal rounds, a snipers round flying at over 1000 feet per second hitting bare skin will hurt, a lot). As well as goggles or some sort of face protection, a normal paintball mask is more than enough for this. If getting popped by previously stated snipers round can break skin, you definitely don’t want to get hit in the eye with it, protect yourself. You can also bring supplementary gear like knee pads, and even water for those extended games (keep hydrated at all times, this can be a rigorous event). The final topic to having fun outing is teamwork. While it has been previously discussed in other sections, it cannot be discussed enough when it comes to this game. You are here with your friends or rivals to duke it out and see who is the best right? Well “lone wolfing” it or just trying to be a one man show will not get you anywhere but sitting on the sidelines “dead”, and with pissed off teammates who have to finish the round short a member. What you should be is a good leader or squad mate as the situation calls for, use your communication to call out your and enemy movement, and take the shot only when you have the shot. Also along with teamwork is good sportsmanship, in the game of airsoft there is no marking or anything to determine a hit or not (like how a paintball will burst on its target leaving a telltale sign of being shot). If you are hit put your hands up and leave the field. If the game rules call for single shot only, don’t flip to auto, mid game because you can. There is always more to learn, and it will only come from experience. You can ask the more seasoned players for more tips, but again at the end of the day, you are there to have fun! So get out there, strap up, and have a blast soldier! See you out there on the field.