17 minute read
AA LEGION: TAIWAN
IT’S ALL GOING SOUTH... 3QB IN TAICHUNG!
THE EVER-SHIFTING TIDES APPLY JUST AS MUCH TO OUR HOBBIES AS THE WORLD AND ECONOMY AROUND US DO, AND AIRSOFT IS NO EXCEPTION! SINCE HEADING TO TAIWAN STEWBACCA HAS NOT ONLY SEEN THE PREVALENCE OF HARDCORE MILSIM PLAYERS WHO BORDER ON RE-ENACTORS OR COSPLAYERS, BUT ALSO GOT INVOLVED IN COMPETITION SHOOTING IN VARIOUS GUISES AND HAS EVEN DABBLED IN SPEEDQB AND OTHER BURGEONING STYLES. BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN MILSIM PLAYERS WANT TO HOLD SOMETHING MORE COMPETITION-STYLED TOO? ENTER 3QB…
Airsoft, if nothing else, seems to be ever evolving and diversifying, as are the tastes of its players and thus the manufacturers serving their interests and developing products pertinent to such shifts; G&G certainly seemed to land things well with not only their ARP9 and SSG1 AEG platforms, likewise Action Army with their AAP-01, all of which seem to have rapidly become the mainstay platforms for SpeedQB players worldwide but particularly noticeably in Taiwan where they’re produced and Speedsoft or SQB is a growing, albeit as everywhere else contentious, demographic.
More recently SpeedQB has seen further division in its playing style and the rise of purpose-built or at least more dedicated and suitable arenas in Taipei in the North, Tainan in the Southwest and Kaohsiung in the very South of the island, all ideal indoor fields for fast-paced close-range 5v5 or even more recently 3v3 and 1v1 competitions in a similar vein to PewLogic’s ‘Going Dark’ outdoor tracer night game I covered back in June 2022’s Issue No.138 that saw us lighting up the skies in the midlands of Hsinchu with a green glow.
But what about players who are still rooted in MilSim equipment and platforms, as well as tactics and arenas, who want to do something a bit competitive or small squad based, but don’t fancy stretching to all new equipment and the powersliding fence hopping antics of the SQB crowd? This idea certainly appeals to me, with my ageing knees, focusing on personal marksmanship and our team’s increasing training in small unit tactics and making good use of communication and cover. Thankfully it seems yet another slice of the pie that is airsoft culture has been cut out for such people; I’d recently seen QMoer, a prominent local Taiwanese airsoft Youtuber who I’ve met numerous times when covering the same events across the spectrum of our interests and industry shows, mentioning his push in the southern counties and cities of Taiwan for ‘Airsoft Battle Matches’ which take the concept of SpeedQB and short, fast and close-range competitive small team force on force game modes, and open them up to the more typical crowds of MilSim players
or casual airsofters.
I was more than happy to divert my attentions away from our usual team Taiji MilSim activities for one Sunday in late July after having been invited along to cover just such an event at a relatively new (or at least previously unknown to myself) site in Taiping, right down at the south east corner of Taichung, Taiwan’s central and second city and its surrounding area where a large amount of airsoft manufacturers such as ICS, G&G, LCT, KWC, and King Arms are all based, in the foothills of Taiwan’s central mountain range, not far from where some of my AIPSC and other skirmish exploits have taken place a little further north in the past.
‘Military Anny’ is another prominent airsofter and media representative here in Taiwan, having recently appeared on local television discussing national service and training in light of the growing threat of cross-strait relations, a story I’ll be digging into in more depth in due course as well, but you may also have seen her appear in at least the last few Popular Airsoft player’s choice awards; she’s well known and liked on the island and further afield and has a wealth of experience in both replica and real firearms usage so makes an ideal spokesperson as well as being our local Specna Arms representative.
MAKING TRACKS
Anny was good enough to drag me along (kicking and screaming, obviously!) with her as she was already planning on covering the event for her own blog and media activities, and it seemed like a good excuse for me to get out of town and do something different as well as cover a new topic, try out a new site, and of course meet old friends and make new ones. So I took my leave of our usual Sunday team outing and planned my weekend around leaving work immediately on Saturday evening with my 5.11 Rush 72 pre-packed to the gunwales with my ‘lightweight’ gear options in the form of my Modify PP2K GBB PDW, VFC PPQ NPA GBB pistol and associated tac gear, helmet, GoPro and other support gear, in case I could get stuck in to the action myself (spoiler; he did, in fact, get stuck into the action after the main competition was finished!). Straight onto the MRT then the HSR bullet train halfway down the country in no time at all, and out for dinner with Anny and the first of my new friends I’d meet, her local policeman pal Chien, who would be joining us the next afternoon and providing some assistance with transport.
Having stuffed ourselves with Japanese food and talked shop about ourselves and our personal histories, we all retired to our respective hotel rooms/ home and finalised our prep for the morning; it would be a fairly early doors start as we had to grab breakfast and taxi it out to Taiping out on the city limits where the ‘BaoDao’ (Treasure Island) airsoft site is located.
A warm welcome awaited us, both from the people and the weather; it was already hitting the mid thirties by around 0800 and Anny and myself dropped our bags and grabbed our eyepro, cameras and some hi-vis vests to start our walk-around of the site and competition area. The site itself is fairly expansive despite being wedged in by the foothills to the east and an industrial estate surrounding the rest, with an array of structures, fences, drum stacks, abandoned vehicles of various shapes and sizes, containers with doors and windows cut out of them and even killing house style rooms created from metal frameworks and corrugated fence panels; the operators have certainly invested a lot of time, effort and money into making an excellent gaming arena!
This is sadly not always the case here in Taiwan where things are a lot more fast and loose in general due to the lack of regulation and player’s arguable tight-fistedness in terms of pay-to-play attitudes; they tend to spend a lot on guns and gear and play for free in abandoned places that you have to be ‘in the know’ about or get referrals regarding and our own team TaiJi cycle between such places on a weekly basis and rarely play at paying or officially organised sites. These are definitely the exception, rather than the rule here in Taiwan, or certainly in the north at least; many of the midland and southern sites tend to be operated by gun shops or with the support of manufacturer’s or other entities behind the scenes, with many of our past games in the area being hosted and operated by the KUI Airsoft shop team I cut my teeth with in Zhubei when I first arrived, or ICS’ own staff team who I haven’t seen in far too long, and many of whom have since moved on it seems.
This well maintained and laid-out setting proved ideal for the game style and themes planned, the Airsoft Battle Match, or ‘3QB’ as I coined to simplify the concept, is basically what the portmanteau of acronyms sounds like; 3 Vs 3 CQB competitive gameplay! The Treasure Island regulars had formed their own sub-teams of three players each and turned out in force, fielding a total of 32 initial squads all competing in a typical elimination tree until the remaining two squads would battle for the ultimate champion title.
BLACKED-OUT OPS
Using around a quarter of the total site which had been cordoned off as well as had a large black sheet fence erected down the long edge of it to keep it separate from the remainder of the field which would continue operating the regular morning skirmish during the competition; there were ample angles and obstacles to hide behind and perform small team fire and manoeuvre tactics with, without getting ‘lost in the weeds’ or stalemated too easily. The whole setup seemed very well thought out and proved to force the action well and keep rounds from running on too long, although there was an upper time limit established just in case the last men standing were feeling overly cautious, this didn’t seem to happen all that often however.
Throughout the day the atmosphere remained jovial and good-spirited; the whole operation ran very smoothly with squads prepping in the main safezone area and players rarely being late or disorganised as their team names were called to the entrance over the loudspeaker. The organisers ensured fairness and controlled conditions by supplying the AEGs to be played with; a mixture of the site rental guns, many of which seemed to be Arcturus AK variants along with your typical ARs; everyone was issued a gun of their choice, and a single midcap of 150 BBs to last each bout, with some BBs usually being expended in testing and ensuring magazine function and sighting in as the guns went between players constantly and the organisers had boxes of midcaps and Odins on the go to keep them reloaded and game rounds progressing smoothly.
With all six players of each bout having tested their AEGs there’d be a paper-scissors-stone (or the local Taiwanese variation thereof) to decide who chose the starting ends, and whichever team was going slightly uphill would then retire to their start point at the far end of the arena from the entrance area. Marshalls would accompany them and ensure everyone was prepared before the ‘game on’ was announced, whilst Anny, myself and two other photographers were ambling around in hi-vis vests to get the best action shots of squads moving together or the last men (or in some cases women, there were some in attendance!) standing circling each other as quickly or quietly as possible to gain the advantage and land the final killing stroke.
Games continued unabated for most of the morning, with a brief break to rearm and ensure everyone had taken on fluids after each of the elimination stages between heats where the victorious half of the previous rounds would progress to fight off each other and get to the next stage. The sun was getting high overhead by the time the final rounds arrived and everyone was looking fairly well cooked, myself very much included! Bear in mind I hadn’t even donned my own gear yet as such and had already saturated my lightweight t-shirt and 5.11 trousers in sweat, not that that’s anything new for me here, but some of these lads and lasses were clad head to toe in BDU’s, plate carriers, and even balaclavas or in the case of one girl an EOD suit, complete with shield, although I think she was helping organise things and wasn’t taking the shield in game as such… they don’t do things by halves out here!
All in all, around thirty rounds later the final two teams ‘SAB’ and ‘HT’ were facing off as the lunchtime siesta was very much ready to kick in for everyone else, and after some excellent and hard fought final gameplay ‘HT’ squad walked away as the final victors. I have to say I hadn’t seen any issues whatsoever throughout the day, everyone was in great spirits, playing and working together well as both teams and opponents, and taking everything in their stride, all this despite the top prize being 10,000NT, basically 100USD for each of the three players on the winning team, with other not insignificant cash prizes for the runners up.
Typically in the competitive shooting I’ve been involved in cash prizes are expressly forbidden due to the obvious corrupting influence they pose, and yet everyone involved seemed to just get on with it and take the decisions and outcomes without a second
thought or any protest, which I must say was excellent to see. I’m not sure if that’s an artefact of everyone involved being well known to each other, as regular players of the same site, an artefact of it being early days in the game format, or the fact perhaps the prizes weren’t announced beforehand, but regardless of the motives or lack thereof everything seemed to be organised and executed very well with the minimum of issues throughout; pretty good drills, for my mileage and the things I’ve seen over the years.
With the last heat decided everyone retired to the fairly comfortable covered safezone to enjoy the typical ‘bian dan’, a Taiwanese rice lunch box with meat and veg atop, as well as copious bottled water or energy drinks to stave off the perpetual risk of heatstroke. By the end of the day I was still feeling a bit of a headache despite the guys telling me their fridge was my fridge and I’d sunk about 5 litres of various fluids as a result; welcome to the tropics, fellow shooters!
With everyone else’s appetite for battle (and my clothing) thoroughly whetted the winners and runners up were announced and trios of trophies handed out along with the red envelopes of prize money to the top four teams, followed swiftly by the somewhat customary prize draw supported by local manufacturers and retailers, with many players walking away with a raft of TMC tactical gear in the shape of plate carriers, chest rigs, hats, gloves, as well as BDUs; one team seemed to get outfitted entirely with new Flecktarn trousers by the time all the ticket numbers were called! While others walked away with an array of gas pistols, AEG AKs, and even a few bolt action rifles and oversized pillows in the shape of grenades and radios, again, spirits and banter remained high throughout it all.
NEW FRIENDS; GAME ON!
With that all done with, many of the teams and also the players who had been doing the morning session’s skirmish alongside began filtering out again, and the remainder were our media group, the site organisers and the true hardcore players who were hanging around also joined in the afternoon skirmish session, soon to be joined by Chien I’d met the night before and a few others.
As 1400 rolled around about eight to ten of us geared up with our own equipment and headed out to ‘enjoy’ (or endure?) the insanity of the afternoon heat; I threw on my plate carrier and helmet and began GoPro filming our exploits. As with the morning session, I found the standard of play and sportsmanship of the regular guys to be excellent and devoid of any drama, we all just got really stuck in, communicated in a mix of English, Chinese and hand signals to call out or opponents locations and just had some all-round great fun moving and shooting in pairs or four man teams through the vehicles and containers littered around the site.
The PP2K really has been playing on form since my friends in the know took a look inside with me, and I’ve since set up a specific placard for my interchangeable rig that nicely holds all four of my stick mags for it that were previously an utter embuggerance to store and reload on the fly with, so I was in my element and even managed to singlehandedly wipe out most of the opposing team in one round.
Finally as the numbers of players still able to stand and fight dwindled and the clock hands moved toward 1700 four of us decided to just use our pistols and play 2v2 in the same cordoned off arena the 3v3 players had used in the morning and again my long standing adventures in gas pistols and more recently IPSC & IDPA paid off with me getting some excellent double taps in on the guys… albeit accidentally on my own teammate at one point that kind of hamstrung myself and left me alone against the other two!
All the adventuring, photographing and sheer sweating done with we packed our gear up and Anny looked into organising exfil out of Taichung; as it was most of the HSR trains had gotten booked up so she decided to stay in the city overnight and I took my chances and took the train out to the high speed rail station and got an unreserved seat ticket; I was lucky enough to land a seat despite the Sunday night rush, but I am truly sorry to the unlucky folks who had to share the neighbouring seats with me… I was less than fresh by the end of all that, homeward bound into yet another sunset and with more war stories to share!
I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to the organisers, and regular players at BaoDao; as always the welcome in Taiwan is as warm as the weather and the language barrier seems to be ever-reducing as I spend more time here, even QMoer was commenting on my ability to share my ideas in more depth as we’ve progressively happened upon each other over the years, so I guess I’m going native eh? And of course many thanks to the lovely Anny for inviting me along and organising the accommodation and transport, as well as Chien for helping us back to the train station and just for being an all-round solid player and person.
‘Til next time! AA
