18 minute read
AA LEGION: KRYTAC OM JAPAN
OUR LAMENTATIONS ABOUT CONTINUED CANCELLATIONS AND DISRUPTIONS AS A RESULT OF THE PANDEMIC HAVE BEEN AS STORIED AND TYPICAL AS THOSE OF EVERYONE ELSE, BUT THANKFULLY RESTRICTIONS SEEM TO BE SUBSIDING AND BECOMING A THING OF THE PAST! WITH MUCH OF THE WORLD AND EVEN THE MOST TIGHTLY SECURED PARTS OF ASIA FINALLY OPENING UP ONCE MORE, STEWBACCA MADE GOOD ON THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO AND FIND OUT WHAT ALL THE PAST INTRIGUE REGARDING THE LAYLAX/KRYTAC OWNER’S MEETING IN JAPAN WAS ALL ABOUT!
I’ve been threatening to visit Japan for longer than I care to remember, at least since I took an interest in the language, largely as a result of airsoft and my pressing need to better understand Tokyo Marui’s cryptic manuals! Taking night classes in my final year of university and the year following graduation, as well as working during my summers away from university studies in a Japanese-owned aerospace bearing factory in my hometown to fund my ever worsening airsoft habit, I slowly built my knowledge and skills in manufacturing, along with a flegling understanding of the language.
I guess things finally came full circle for me and with the further easing of quarantine and travel restrictions, and I felt extremely lucky in getting a spot at the LayLax/Krytac Owner’s meeting as well as booking my flights the morning before Taiwan and Japan announced their final full reopening and visa free unrestricted access quarantine less travel opportunities… I just booked my flights before the rush and the price spike, it seems!
Having had such a long term yearning to see the Land of the Rising Sun, but always having had mainland China-related trips get in the way for various reasons in the past, I was beyond excited to finally have a plan in place to make landfall on the spiritual and technical home of all things airsoft related. My hosts were the crew from LayLax, an increasingly well-known and respected brand with an ever growing team of people who are not only expert in what they do, but dedicated to innovation and bringing the end user components and products that fulfil their needs and turn already good base products and airsoft guns from OEM companies into powerhouses on the skirmish field, with their Prometheus range of barrels and HOP buckings being a typical first port of call or trusted go-to for many an airsoft tech the world over. But there’s also an ever-growing line of soft goods, tactical gear solutions and niche products that really solve some of those tiresome issues airsofters face on a continuing basis.
Co-hosts of course were Krytac, the in house airsoft sub-brand of Kriss USA, the people who brought us the real steel VECTOR recoil-mitigating submachine gun and aside from the airsoft AEG variant of their well known and loved PDW/
SMG leviathan, Krytac as a sub-brand have also brought to market licensed FN P90 AEG
PDWs with collaborations with other industry names such as Evike Manufacturing Group and Cybergun, as well as their more recently announced SilencerCo Maxim 9 replica shock entry into the GBB pistol arena… which I’ll be getting more hands on with in the longer term, and which I’m personally extremely excited
about.
So, what do two such industry leaders do to capitalise on such strong brands and near cult-level followings within the Japanese domestic and wider international markets? Throw an epic party… with airsoft guns, skirmishing, competitions, giveaways, an on-site marketplace, and an excuse for players to engage in their favourite cosplay shenanigans and show off their custom Krytac gun builds! Akin to the National Airsoft Festival held in the UK every August Bank Holiday, the LayLax/Krytac Owner’s Meeting (KOM) is one of the highlights of Asia’s airsoft (or ‘survival games’ as they are known out here in various languages) scene.
With around 200 players from Japan attending as well as a handful of industry insiders, internationally renowned influencers and yours truly tagging along to see what was going down, the KOM is definitely worth more than a cursory report, especially given that 2022’s ‘volume 5’ was the first returning event following ‘rona restrictions ruining everyone’s fun.
SHOOTERS ASSEMBLE!
I travelled out a few days prior to the main event, held at Tokyo ‘sa-ba-ge’ park (Japanese short form for ‘survival games’) in Chiba to the east of Tokyo central, with Jonothan of Airsoftology fame flying out from Taiwan on the same day but a different flight, as well as Scott and Alan of Landwarrior Airsoft representing the Scottish/UK contingent and obviously their business interests as one of the UK’s trusted key distributors of all things airsoft related.
Prior to our arrival Norah and Romain (Nonocat AND Thunderspear),the duo behind New Zealand’s ASGC retail and social media representation, had already arrived and settled into their own sightseeing schedule, along with Kevin (RandomGuyKev), and Scott and his cameraman Iosephus (the guys behind USAirsoft) from the states who had also been in country a few days covering local airsoft shops and the scene before we landed.
Alongside these well-known figures in the industry and especially the social media side of things, Evike representatives Matt, George, Maria, Danny and Wilson, as well as Krytac’s team of (uncle) Allen, Mytch and Randall were all attending as more behind the scenes types to take part in not only the festivities themselves, but obviously the all-important organisation, media coverage and underlying business that supports the whole endeavour as well as ultimately putting the quality goods in the hands of the enthusiastic end users.
We were all greeted and taken very good care of thanks to the LayLax international team in the form of Masaki, Ryan and Marck who are all no doubt well known to those of you in the community, and along with their wider support teams had the unenviable task of organising the event itself as well as the arrangements for everyone travelling in and staying for the week or two in country to support their individual media efforts and reporting! A typical Sunday skirmish is often likened to ‘herding cats’ so god knows what these guys and the wider LayLax team have to endure to pull off an awesome event of such domestic proportions, let alone keep all the other international elements and components in motion! Suffice to say, they acquitted themselves excellently and delivered a great
experience for everyone
involved, especially us first timers.
GETTING OUR GAME ON!
What of the event itself then? In the early hours of
Saturday 5th of November the international media and business teams began amassing in our hotel lobby ready to ship out in salvos carried to the Tokyo Sa-bage park by van along with all our supporting camera, protective and tactical gear - many of us would indeed be taking an active role in the shooting festivities, and eagerly so, myself included!
Arriving on site we began setting up our personal equipment and allocating borrowed airsoft guns from the LayLax pool available; getting our own guns into Japan is just a nightmare nobody wants to deal with, after all, and of course we wanted to keep things on brand in terms of the selection of guns and gear used! I ended up with the EMG Cybergun Krytac FN P90 AEG, a call-back to my very first game of airsoft all those years ago, and a long overdue return to the familiar form factor and handling of one of my alltime favourite guns; love it or hate it, FN nailed the ergonomics and anthropometrics with their bullpup PDW platform.
The game site itself is fairly expansive, with a main arena off to one end that is bisected by an overhead catwalk ideal for marshals and photographers or videographers to oversee the action ongoing below. With the field itself comprising of one side with CQB style distributed shipping containers with window cutouts, barricade arrangements, abandoned vehicles and even tower structures to hide amongst, while the other half of the arena is a more ‘sandbox’-esque array of overgrown Hesco sangars filled with rubble around which to fire and manoeuvre on the enemy lines. Both sections are accessible by limited corridor chokepoints linking the two halves of the arena under the aforementioned catwalk, all of which makes for a fairly complex floor plan and plenty of angles to consider both when attacking and defending.
As the sun began moving higher in the sky more and more enthusiastic participants were arriving on site, parking their vehicles and setting up their gear or wandering around the marketplace section between the Safezone and main playing area; this was populated by myriad local shops or custom gun workshops displaying their wares from guns, gear, patches, memorabilia and everything else in between an airsofter could find to spend their money on! I managed to meet a few faces I’ve known for a while through social media including Mayo (gotohmayo) who has her own design house and shop for patches, street wear and various airsoft accessories and is known for her gameplay at Japan’s BLK FOX SpeedQB style arena among other exploits.
Also attending was Japan’s poster girl for Krytac, the petite but boundlessly energetic and pleasant Saoreane (saoreana_airsoft) who’s not only an avid VECTOR lover and airsofter with her own branded accessories and kit shop, but also a fellow teacher moonlighting as a shooter, and a great friend of the Krytac team. The very well known and loved, both in Japan and the wider airsoft community, Lilly (lillianemoo) also rocked up in her epic flatbed backed JEEP with her cute Beagle in tow and began blogging her experience on site before prepping with the rest of us ready to get stuck into the action. I was also very happy to bump into Itsuya (Itsuya_miridoru) who I hadn’t seen for years since her last trip to Taiwan when we saw her at the Combat King Monthly Hooha show in Kaohsiung prior to the COVID dark times and her starting a family.
Mason (Maydaysann) had also joined the group the night before at our hotel and was helpfully lending out some of his gear to our international team as well as engaging in his trademark high energy and humour escapades, which of course we all ended up getting involved in later on as well.
MAKING THEIR MILLION (YEN)!
With all of the domestic participants cycling through the chrono station and sighting in their guns on the multi-lane range provided, we began a bit of a familiarisation exercise, walking the site and checking out the small team competition assault course that groups of five players could enter in the hope of taking away the coveted million Yen prize money for fastest completion time; this involved the whole five man squad starting in a Polaris all terrain buggy and the driver flooring it along one side of the course before turning right into a demarcated parking spot, and the team swiftly debussing.
All competitors then had to run the gauntlet of ‘crocodile teeth’ style staggered opposing 45-degree angled jumping pad stages to make it to the platform on the other side where one elected player would then moonwalk a rolling stack of drums filled with
ballast sand along wooden rails between platforms without slipping off before the next two elected players could perform tandem beam walking while engaging small circular targets on posts to their sides as they progressed. Next all competitors had to make it through a wide low-slung camo net obstacle before the final elected contestant clambered up the stairs to the platform overlooking the whole arena and engaged an array of targets with a scoped AEG to stop the timer… all of which had to be completed as quickly as possible and had to be under two minutes to even be in the final running!
Throughout the day we also availed ourselves of ample refreshments thanks to the on-site diner caravan as well as the police SWAT van that turned up in the early morning and turned out to actually be a cunningly disguised chow wagon distributing
complimentary burgers, hotdogs and even parfait treats to the clamouring hungry queues; damned good food, and much appreciated by all it seemed… not all heroes wear capes! With all the preparations made we all gathered at the entrance of the main game area for the festivities to be officially opened, with LayLax’s COO Nomura-sama (no.63landshark) and the site operator kicking off proceedings by emerging from a container to great fanfare sporting hilariously oversized Kriss VECTORs with ultra-long rails, all finished in gold colour overall! The welcomes were made, site and competition rules covered and the Masaki introduced the international team while everyone took photos and videos and we had some nice group shots taken thanks to the official photographer teams. With that the games began! Our international squad would be filtering in to one of the themed game modes to cause as much trouble for the opposing team as we could muster; the ‘gold rush’ game sees players not only trying to survive the onslaught of flying plastic dealt out by their opponents, but also collect as many ‘nuggets’ of gold from the ground as possible in the form of the plastic spherical casings common to many coin operated toy vending machines. Those of us playing donned our gear and guns and got ready for a forty minute long infinite-regen deathmatch which saw us stretching our teamwork abilities and using fire and manoeuvre across both halves of the arena as best we could. We were playing into the setting sun which made seeing red dots and the opposing players a bit harder, “ALL COMPETITORS THEN HAD TO RUN THE GAUNTLET OF ‘CROCODILE TEETH’ STYLE STAGGERED OPPOSING 45-DEGREE ANGLED JUMPING PAD STAGES TO MAKE IT TO THE PLATFORM ON THE OTHER SIDE WHERE ONE ELECTED PLAYER WOULD THEN MOONWALK A ROLLING STACK OF DRUMS FILLED WITH BALLAST SAND ALONG WOODEN RAILS BETWEEN PLATFORMS WITHOUT SLIPPING OFF”
as well as ‘foggles’ becoming an even harder issue to overcome, but nonetheless we went to work with gusto and there were plenty of photos and video snapshots of us usual suspects rolling around corners, through vehicles, containers and ducking behind Hescos as you would expect when you throw overexcited foreigners into the mix of local players and the cacophony of gunfire; we were
having a whale of a time, and seeing plenty of enthusiastic and honourable play from both sides, just the way it should be.
RUNNING AND GUNNING
Running the EMG Cybergun Krytac FN P90 with a trio of magazines wedged in to my own JPC style rig with thanks to LayLax’s SMG and AR ‘Bite Mag’ hard shell pouches, I was throwing down firepower gleefully to a pretty decent range, but still managed to expend a few full reloads during the long game; this required me to duck out to our team re-arming station just outside the gamezone entrance while the action continued in earnest. All in all it was great fun not only trying different guns and gear than I’m used to, but also getting thrown in the deep end of another country’s gaming style, and playing alongside some great names and faces I’d only just met in person despite knowing each other for longer online.
The game wore on and we began to wear out; despite being noticeably cooler than Taiwan’s usual temperature and humidity range I was nonetheless dripping wet in my typical fashion, and we were making sure to stay hydrated throughout as well as taking every opportunity outside the wire to clear our lenses and make sure the GoPros or other devices were all keeping track of our action for the inevitable videos to follow later. As the main game came to a close we felt like we’d acquitted ourselves fairly well; I came out with a good few welts from the able marksmanship of the local players, and despite the lower power levels of Japan’s airsoft legal limits, the rapid strings of fire found their mark, evidently I’m a big walking target wherever I go! Following this a few rounds of smaller team deathmatches were arranged just for us in the CQB half of the arena after all the other players had retired to finish competing in the time trial challenge, duelling contest or just avail themselves of the refreshment and shopping opportunities. The duelling followed on from
the final assault course run and saw pairs of players facing off against each other, with two pairs of plate targets attached to twin Texas stars on a connecting beam being prepared for each player who then started back to back. On the
GO signal both players had to clear the four targets off their plate arrangements as fast as they could before turning and shooting their opponent in the back before they had a chance to finish their own plates off.
With our smaller mini-tournament I teamed up with Scott, Alan, Mason, and Norah and we ran a good squad offence but neglected to protect our team’s ‘flag’ button at our spawn the first round; Mason and I got some great CQB clearing teamwork under our belts at least, and made it all the way to the other team’s base just as they hit ours for the flag. Lesson learnt, Scott hung back the next round to run defence while Mason and I ran off and Norah stalked around in her silent fashion and ran interference, dropping more than a few of the OpFor from cover. We had a great time making use of that half of the site with much less traffic so to speak and really got to try out the different angles and play off against each other well.
INTO THE SETTING SUN
As the sun finally drifted behind the distant Hescos and treeline we called it a day and headed back to the staging area to safe our guns and strip off our gear, especially with mine being typically dank following my exertion, before reassembling at the small stage in front of the gamezone entrance for the closing remarks, announcement of the competition winners, and the customary raffling off of numerous shiny toys and accessories. Many happy faces went home heavier an AEG or GBB among other treats that day! Following the closing of festivities we began packing everything up and chatting while awaiting the van to return us to the hotel in the same salvo system as before; I went in the last lot and had a good chance to continue chatting to people before they left, and hung out with the Krytac crowd to talk about their business and products; I’m looking forward to having more to share regarding all that in the longer term! With everyone shuttled back to the hotel we all showered and tidied ourselves up ready for the team dinner at one of the nearby restaurants, complete with surprise birthday cake and toasting for Alan!
So, that was my first experience of the LayLax/ Krytac Owner’s Meeting coming to a close; an excellent and well organised event that for the most part ran smoothly despite the sheer numbers of players and things in motion, and a great opportunity to meet and greet the local player base and personalities I hadn’t had chance to see in person beforehand. But that’s just the beginning of our escapades in Japan over the course of our stay, so I’ll have more to touch on in a follow-up report!
Many thanks as always to the organisers and particularly the LayLax team for the obvious amount of effort, patience and resources they must have to invest to accomplish something of such scale and success; it was much appreciated by everyone! AA
