Hello, yesterday I just discovered a new activity that I never tought existed before. I knew about paintball but now this activity called milsim is totally different. You don't shoot everywhere without thinking and you don't have unlimited ammo. Here are some videos about this activity. Unfortunately they are in french but you will see the totally different kind of look that milsim has compared to paintball. Has anyone ever tried this before? http://vimeo.com/2388901 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD3t3eyZzhY
I played paintball years ago when is was actually fun. We had two groups of guys with semi auto weapons and limited ammo, no more that 200 pellets each. Today's version of paintball is essentially full auto via dual hairtriggers, with unlimited ammo and it's truly a shitty game. Especially when you run into some ego tripper who's spent a couple thousand on equipment and decides to go to an open game where most of his opponents have showed up and rented their guns. There is also an important mathematical ratio to understand when you play paintball, as a player spends more money on his gun, the likelihood of that person admitting they were shot will decrease. Today's paintball absolutely sucks. So, it seems MilSim is paintball with ammo limits and weapons in the relative realm of reality. Basically we have paintball without the douchbag factor, I like it. although it does seem each of the guys in these videos has dropped a pretty penny on their kits.
It looks to me to be a hybrid of paintball and airsoft. I've played paintball a number of times but didn't like the lack of weapons accuracy and video gamish run and gun tactics. The younger son had played some airsoft with some other Marines, when he came back from the 'Stan and really liked it. He said it was similar to their pre-deployment simunition training. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simunition The weapons are the actual size and weight of their real world counterpart, in fact if placed side by side they're hard to tell apart until the bolt or ejection port cover is opened and are more accurate. Anyway, we've bought more over time, and have recruited a number of their friends that are veterans (some still active) and play as often as we can. Some groups really take it seriously and practice quite often and are actually tactically proficient. You can usually pick up on those that are playing "Army" and trying to emulate what they've seen and those that actually know what they are doing tactically by their use of angles and muzzle awareness. Here's a Nashville Airsoft group that aren't half shabby. You can still tell they are weekend warriors, but they're trying to do it right. They're doing a hostage rescue scenario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHthA_aYnuQ Heres anothe big game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCNXqml1uaE
MilSim - aka Airsoft - is great. Practical Purpose - the Military and Law Enforcement use it for close-combat training (room to room clearing) as the weapons used in Airsoft weigh the same as the real thing, and the trajectory at close range of the bb's allows actual shooting in such scenarios. More realistic training that way. I played for 3 years when I lived in Florida. Now brightly colored balls flying through the air. No need for a full face mask either. A lot of squads mirror themselves off of real units in regards to camo, ammo vest, types of weapons, etc. Large events, everyone have the same group of guns is ideal as you can then interchange ammo clips with each other since they work for everyone. Its quite fun and I'd play out here in CO if they had it.
I agree! I have not ever heard of the military using Airsoft for CQB training. I think you are confusing it with Simunitions training, which the Military and Police do use extensively. Simunitions are fired through the standard service weapons, most often requiring a drop in adapter that does not permanently alter the weapon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simunition I do think that Airsoft is a much more realistic simulation than paintball.
I've seen/heard of local Police municipalities using it for CQB training. But no point debating it. Would love if there was somewhere to play out here since I had a lot of fun playing it. We used to play with the medic rope rule (5-knot rope).
We'd each have a piece of rope/string that had 5 knots tied in it. When you got shot, you'd put your red rag on your head so people knew you were 'dead'. A teammate could run over to you and untie the 5 knots, then run off. Once you tied the 5 knots back into the rope, you were then back in the game. However, next time you were shot, you were dead-as-a-rock and out of the game for the rest of the round. We'd typically play a few game types - Capture the Flag, Pilot-Down (one player is designated a pilot and is only armed with a handgun. He is considered wounded. One team is trying to kill him, the other is trying to rescue him. He finds a spot to hid and can't move from it until rescued), Hunt the Snipers (two people are designated snipers - with or with out an actual sniper rifle - and have to shoot a tin can target at the downed helicopter - a large fallen tree - with out getting shot. the defending team are not allowed to speak once shot on their comms and have to be constantly moving) and a Base Assault (a small, often times 2 person, team defends a bunker across a steam, with unlimited lives - a team mate just has to tag them back in - while a much larger assaulting force has to run up and touch the bunker) or Base Asault 2 (each team has a position to defend, which ever team reaches the enemy bunker first wins). Once every know and then our Squad would host a larger event (up to 100+ people) where we'd have a pre-created scenario with missions to complete. Always fun playing in a swamp - from heavily wooded, to a steam, to waterlogged, to open field...with farm animals to watch out for too boot!
Heres a link to some videos of the team I played with - as you can see from the first video, we played the OpFor vs the local US Army Reserve unit. http://vimeo.com/channels/117922 They got a good chewing from their CO as we managed to kidnap one of the drivers with out the rest of them knowing >.<