Operation Cold Hammer West Branch

[Misfit61]

This is an informational posts for those teams or groups that are looking for a good time playing airsoft or even the milsim groups out there. Do not waste you time with these guys and this event. We attended and had a terrible time. About half of the people showed up which was to be expected, but worst of all the tan was outnumbered 2:1. Nothing was done to even out the team numbers either. The event was poorly set up and the leaders were young and unexperienced on how to make a good event but yet also make it a good time. The tan leader was a waste of time and a poor addition to anyones team due to the fact he yelled at everyone and he only looked like he was 12. I ended trying to regain some sort of command towards the tan team but there was not enough cooperation to get any sort of legitimate command going. I am speaking from a tan teams perspective but about 3/4's of the green team left within the first hours as well so it could not have been much better for them. I was glad to get out for the winter and play a bit but this was a waste of a trip, time, and money. For those who put on the event, a word of advice would be to get rid of the kid who "tryed" to command the tan team. I hope I do not see his face again in airsoft and, if he wasnt there, I bet we would have had a much better event. Misfit out.

[deputy865]

I've tried to explain this to Dakota a few times about who he picks for leadership, I'll be sure to bring this up again. I tried to warn as many people as I could about him (tan leader).. In fact, I'm typically on the tan team 90% of the time, but went green JUST because he was leading.

Even though this has already seemed to deter you from future events, don't let it. As hard it is to read some of this feedback, it is needed in order to create a better time for the next event. Next time, this isn't going to happen. We are trying hard to make a name for northern Michigan airsoft and will do whatever it takes to do so. We have an AWESOME game type and event that is planned for July (read about it in the events section). I will be the main host for that one and I'm truly excited about it. I have also only selected guys that I know to be mature and good leaders for candidates for the tan/green commanders.

The long break is what deterred most of us. 1.5 hours is far too long.

Thanks for the feedback, Misfit. If you have any more suggestions, comments or questions, PM me. We'll make it right.

[Simon]

Didn't want to post bad news first but misfit took care of that for me.
Edit: To preface this, I want to note that I was on green team and we did have fun but left early to due to safety concerns and because the neighbor began real steel shooting very close by.

Eyepro Violations

Although he told a few people that they needed full seal eyepro, there were still several people only wearing safety glasses, and one guy just wearing basic correctional lens glasses.

There were multiple instances of people removing their goggles for an extended period of time on the field, while under fire.

The "Safe" Zone

Their "safe" zone was the area of the yard around the house and near the garage. There was no form of barrier between the "field" and the "safe" zone. No tarps, nets, fences, boards, etc. etc.

There was constant firing in the zone both loaded and dry. My team wore our goggles in the zone because we felt that if we didn't we would lose an eye. I had to yell to get people to stop.

Chrono was conducted inside the zone shooting in a relatively safe direction.

The organizer had a player locked and loaded in the zone threatening to shoot people that talked during the briefing.

The "Field"

The field was the woods behind the house and as previously stated there were no barriers separating the field from the safe zone.

There were no markings indicating the edge of field.

There was little to no usable man made cover apart from the hunting shacks that served as objectives.

Ending Thoughts

Overall My squad drove nearly 3 hours for an unsafe, badly organized game that should never have taken place. We nearly smashed into 3 cars parked in a group just after the last snow covered hill on the two track trail they call a road. It is by sheer luck that anyone driving a 2 wheel drive vehicle made it there in the first place. No force on in Heaven or on Earth could make us EVER go to another game hosted by this group, whether at this location or not.

[Coussens5]

While it is nice to see people trying to start something of a field on their own, this event was in the top 5 of the worst ones I have ever been to. With multiple safety violations, no leadership, and basically a back woods to run around in... it seems to me they need to read and research what it means to host/ start a field then get it ready to be used by a number of people AND MAKE IT SAFE!!! I seriously wouldn't doubt if the waiver I signed was just a word document thrown together. One of the "Objectives" was a shack that required gas masks to enter because of the urine smell, the other was a shack on stilts that I was afraind someone would fall through. All this with bad organization and no direction, this event and field was just a plain waste of time.

Overall, it reminded me of my friends back yard but with more urine.

[MUSH]

I attended this game with a few of my friends and had a horrible day. All of the problems previously stated were true, besides the one statement indicating that there was no markings on the edge of the field. There were in fact yellow caution taped trees all around the field that were supposed to mark the edge of the field, although no one followed this rule.

Driving: We spent around two and a half hours driving to this place and another 45 minutes trying to find it. Once you exited the freeway and entered the town, it was almost impossible to reach the field without four wheel drive.

Safety: There was someone shooting real firearms just outside of the field, and this is a huge safety issue. Besides that, there were numerous amounts of players without full seal goggles on during play, and I caught a few people without any goggles on a few times on my go pro during firefights. The tan leader "ares" was the person who was threatening to shoot people from the balcony in the staging area.

Field: The field was okay, there was not much cover as previously mentioned, but you could make due. I had some fun times during the game besides my feet freezing but overall I would not have driven two and a half hours just to play in some guys back yard.

And in addition to all this madness I lost a 60$ m93r mag, and two of my body pins. If anyone is to find the m93r mag, please notify me and i will send a reward.

[Gimpalong]

Unfortunately, I have to echo what has already been said by MUSH, Reaper, Wraith and Misfit.

I've played at this field ("The Swamp," or the "Jackal Field") two times previously and the same issues have continued to occur.

I have spoken quite a bit with Ogre (the event host and property owners' son), offered to help with reffing/modding and even to help with a build day on the field to add bunkers, etc. I know that he has tried to make improvements and that he is a well meaning person. Unfortunately, a lot of issues continue to occur that seem like a combination between an inexperienced field staff and the age/maturity level of many of the players who are playing airsoft for their first time or playing at their first big event.

Eye Protection

Ogre did inform people that full-seal goggles were required. Despite this, I did see several people wearing shooting glasses or non-full seal goggles both on and off the field. The property owner, Ogre's father, who acted as a sort of moderator during some of the game, only wore eye/reading glasses on the field.

I personally saw only one person remove their goggles during the very beginning of the game, and he was told immediately to put them back on. This occurred while both teams were waiting in their dead-zones/HQs for the game to begin. I heard several players shout at other players to keep their goggles on.

Safe Zone

I was happy to see that a chronograph was used and that everyone was required to chrono their rifles. No zip-ties or other identifiers were used to indicate minimum engagement distance. Each player was told what their minimum engagement distance was based on the chrono reading.

There was a significant amount of shooting in the safe zone, both dry and "live" firing. I had to tell several players to stop and that I "valued my eye balls."

For those that have played at the SFOD field in Davison, this field is fairly similar. A house/backyard backs onto the field itself.

The tan team leader did threaten to shoot anyone talking during the briefing.

The Field itself

The field is a fairly small, gently rolling, wooded box maybe 3-to-4 football fields wide interspersed with trails and deer blinds. Several buildings were set up as HQs, and there are small log bunkers, in addition to the two story blinds, scattered throughout. The field boundary is marked with yellow caution tape. I spent quite a bit of time on the left field boundary and found it to be marked with caution tape every 30-to-40 feet.

It's also important to keep in mind that Ogre doesn't charge for these events; so any materials like wood, flags, tarps, game props, the little solar lights near the back corner strong-point, come out of the field owners' pockets and out of their time.

Driving

The field is off of Stony Ridge Rd, which is a dirt/gravel seasonal road. It is plowed by the property owner. It is about .5 miles off of Scribner Rd, which is a gravel/dirt road plowed by the County. Several people I talked to said that they had a hard time reaching the field because their GPS guided them to the wrong location or took them down unpaved/unplowed seasonal roads. Its hard to blame the event host for this, but a note mentioning the road conditions probably should accompany any future events. Having played at this field previously, I did make a post in the event thread as well as on the FB post discussing the correct location of the house and mentioning the nature of the season road. A sign was put up at the corner of Scribner Rd and Stony Ridge Rd to direct players. This sign went up after many players had already arrived for the day.

In the end, it's hard to blame the event host for road conditions leading to the field, GPS/technology failures or lack of map reading skills.

Real Steel Shooting

There was a period in which a neighbor or someone in the vicinity was shooting some sort of real weapon.

The Game Itself

The game had a few simply capture/hold type objectives. Points were awarded for holding deer-blind type structures or killing the enemy commander. In addition to the dead-zones near the team HQs, "Mobile spawns" could be placed by each team to facilitate getting players back into the game.

These "mobile spawns" seemed to cause the majority of the complaints that I heard voiced. The tan team was essentially boxed in at the very start of the game and the green team's "mobile spawn" was placed less than 30 feet behind one of the major strong-points on the field.

There were, like most winter games, issues with hit calling. I heard a lot of complaints from tan players that green players weren't calling their hits. I think some of this had to do with the mobile spawns putting players back into the game really quickly. It also, I believe, had to do with the amount of clothing and tactical gear people were wearing. White BBs over white snow, poorly functioning hop-ups due to cold weather and other factors (brush, twigs, etc) all contributed to hit-calling issues.

The game did have team-balance issues. When I arrived at 10 AM, I was the only green player. By the time the game was about to start the teams stood at 17 (tan) to 24 (green). Five green players who showed up immediately prior to the briefing were armed-banded with blue tape and put on the tan team, which, by my count, should have brought the teams up to 22 (tan) to 24 (green).

Despite this imbalance, tan actually played really well. The team of players wearing desert MARPAT were very effective and made a lot of pushes and flanking assaults.

After the first break/dinner, the green team had around 5 players, while the tan team had 10-15.

Conclusions

I really want this field to be successful and for it to be another destination in Northern Michigan beyond Area 51 Paintball. It's always exciting to get out and play, but as I read some of the above commentary and think back to the game, some of the safety issues are simply shocking.

I do want to make it clear that Ogre himself has tried to improve safety since the first event, Operation Jackal I, in July (?) 2012. He has consistently asked (therein lies the problem, asking, not telling) people to wear full seal goggles, has made sure to have a chronograph on site and has started the process of building up the field in terms of bunkers and cover.

Would I personally attend again? Yes, probably. Would I be comfortable having my own (fictional) child attend? Probably not.

[Ogre]

I tried make full seal goggle a requirement, I constantly reminded others to use Full Seal and keep them on. I even went out of my way and provided some players who had misplaced them with some extra Full Seal I always keep on hand.

As far as the Real Steel shooting a half mile away went, I talked to our neighbor, I informed him of the dates of the event a month ahead of time because he is a gun smith and normally test fires them when he gets done working on them, I talked to him immediately after the event, giving him my concerns. He said he had forgotten about the event date and thought it was the weekend Prior, he was only firing blanks but he assured me that it will not happen again.

As far as the field goes, I know one of the command posts had fallen into disrepair but all of them were structurally stable so we didn't rope any of them off, they will all be cleaned out as soon as the weather breaks.

We also had 3 mods drop a day before the event who I had been teaching how to recognize players not calling hits and the rules. I think if we would have had them the event would have went more smoothly. The mod we had was last minute, I apologize that he wasn't wearing full seal, I told him prior to the event he had to wear full seal and had set some aside for him, I don't know why he chose to ignore it. I will talk with him about that soon.

Furring the briefing the Tan commanded threatening to peg anyone not paying attention to the briefing was just a scare tactic, we have had problems with people not listening before and rules getting confused because of it. No one was ever in danger.

I apologize to anyone that didn't enjoy the OP. Things went south with this one. Its hard to host when everything is coming out of our own pockets, either way, we plan on doing a lot of work and planning on the field this spring and summer for jackal III

[Cats (Doom)]

I only stayed for the first half of the first day but here's a few suggestions for improvement:
1) Place signs around the house area to remind people they should be unloaded and on safe when in the area.
2) Turn the basement and garage into the only goggle-free parts of the safe zone.
3) Set up a designated area and direction to safely test fire guns from the safe zone.
4) Chrono and tag guns, and check eye protection, as people are funneling in a single-file line onto the field for the first time.
5) If real shooting had started that close to my field, I would have called the game in and investigated untill I was sure everyone was safe and the source was determined. Maybe Im a bit over zealous but the safety of players seems more important than messing up the schedual and scoring for a days events.
6) Edges of the field need to be marked better.
7) You really needed mods, or at least someone enforcing goggle rules and safety in the safe zone.
8) Get rid of that tan commander; I was not on tan team but from the times I saw him he contributed nothing but frustration, confusion, and put a damper on peoples fun.

Things that we're good or I don't agree with other complaints people made:
1) The road was fine considering this is northern Michigan, if people had a hard time navigating or finding the location that's their problem; you shouldn't feel responsible for those complaints.
2) The smell of the objectives; not a concern.
3) The man made cover was fine; if someone can't figure out how to play only using natural cover, its simply not your problem. The objective buildings we're big and obvious and that's all I could ask for.
4) Team balance; it was obvious you tried. The green guys with blue armbands we're a bit confusing but stood out easily enough on the field.
5) Event was FREE and one of the few winter events anywhere in Michigan.
6) The event was in northwestern Michigan; thanks for bringing airsoft to an area that doesn't have other events.
7) The mod situation is understandable and you did what you could without them.

Overall safety concerns and that tan leader need be addressed before your next OP. Otherwise just keep talking to people like Gimpalong to get some experienced feedback, and trying to improve the important things, and Jackal III should be a good OP all things considered.

[EDIT] grammatical mistakes.

[Ogre]

Mar 11, 2013 12:35:45 GMT -5 Cats (Doom) said:

I only stayed for the first half of the first day but here's a few suggestions for improvement:
1) Place signs around the house area to remind people they should be unloaded and on safe when in the area.
2) Turn the basement and garage into the only goggle-free parts of the safe zone.
3) Set up a designated area and direction to safely test fire guns from the safe zone.
4) Chrono and tag guns, and check eye protection, as people are funneling in a single-file line onto the field for the first time.
5) If real shooting had started that close to my field, I would have called the game in and investigated untill I was sure everyone was safe and the source was determined. Maybe Im a bit over zealous but the safety of players seems more important than messing up the schedual and scoring for a days events.
6) Edges of the field need to be marked better.
7) You really needed mods, or at least someone enforcing goggle rules and safety in the safe zone.
8) Get rid of that tan commander; I was not on tan team but from the times I saw him he contributed nothing but frustration, confusion, and put a damper on peoples fun.

Things that we're good or I don't agree with other complaints people made:
1) The road was fine considering this is northern Michigan, if people had a hard time navigating or finding the location that's their problem; you shouldn't feel responsible for those complaints.
2) The smell of the objectives; not a concern.
3) The man made cover was fine; if someone can't figure out how to play only using natural cover, its simply not your problem. The objective buildings we're big and obvious and that's all I could ask for.
4) Team balance; it was obvious you tried. The green guys with blue armbands we're a bit confusing but stood out easily enough on the field.
5) Event was FREE and one of the few winter events anywhere in Michigan.
6) The event was in northwestern Michigan; thanks for bringing airsoft to an area that doesn't have other events.
7) The mod situation is understandable and you did what you could without them.

Overall safety concerns and that tan leader need be addressed before your next OP. Otherwise just keep talking to people like Gimpalong to get some experienced feedback, and trying to improve the important things, and Jackal III should be a good OP all things considered.

[EDIT] grammatical mistakes.

Agreed, and given the feedback I've seen Alex Will Not be commanding again. I would like to apologize to anyone that didn't enjoy the event, if your willing to come out again, next event will be far better organized, All of us work and we had little extra time to prepare for Cold Hammer. Considering I'm getting some vacation days pretty soon since I have been working at Leelin for about a year.

[Knief]

Mar 11, 2013 10:41:08 GMT -5 Ogre said:

I tried make full seal goggle a requirement, I constantly reminded others to use Full Seal and keep them on. I even went out of my way and provided some players who had misplaced them with some extra Full Seal I always keep on hand.

The mod we had was last minute, I apologize that he wasn't wearing full seal, I told him prior to the event he had to wear full seal and had set some aside for him, I don't know why he chose to ignore it. I will talk with him about that soon.

Dakota,

You have to step up and be a real leader here. You don't ask people to wear full seal goggles, you make them. If they don't have full seals, they don't step onto the field, period. I know you want to be a nice guy but you have to be willing to turn people away. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't be hosting games. Yeah, it sucks to be the asshole, but that's your job to keep your players safe. I've only ever had a to kick out a couple players wear full seal goggles. Once you do that, everybody else gets the hint and either gets with the program or leaves on their own. Either way, you and your players win.

As for the moderator who wore eyeglasses, it sounds like he's your dad. That's a tough situation, telling your dad that has to follow the rules, especially when it's his property. But look at it from the perspective of your attending players. By having a field official, the field owner, for that matter ignore the most basic safety rule we have in airsoft, what kind of message are you sending to your players? This creates an environment where other player are going to remove their goggles as well, because the hosts don't wear them why the hell should the players?

You and your dad should have a sit-down where you can express your concerns. I know he wants the field to be safe, and my guess is that he didn't realize the message that his actions sent. Let him know that you can't very well ask players to wear goggles when the field owner won't do it.

Furring the briefing the Tan commanded threatening to peg anyone not paying attention to the briefing was just a scare tactic, we have had problems with people not listening before and rules getting confused because of it. No one was ever in danger.

Scare tactic or no, this is completely unacceptable. Again, you're creating an environment where safety isn't a priority and that's completely unacceptable. If people won't shut up during briefing, kick them out. If you send one person packing, nobody else will say a peep until you're done. Give them a warning first that the next person to interrupt you is getting the boot. Then, give them the boot if they pipe up again. It's really that simple.

While you may feel bad for sending somebody home, every other player on the field will appreciate it and respect you for it. This is how you take control of a crowd. If you have a reputation for taking bullshit (which you rightfully do), people will continue to give you bullshit. If you have a reputation for keeping everybody in line, everybody will start falling in line in future games without you having to be so harsh.

You're the leader here, you have to be able to enforce your own rules. Don't plead with people. Don't ask, don't beg, don't kindly request. Enforce the fucking rule by removing players who break it on their first offense. And make sure your dad wears goggles.

Furthermore, if you have another game where basic safety rules aren't enforced, you won't be able to continue to post games here. We can't keep advertising a field where players aren't wearing full seal goggles on the field at all times.