OVER THE BEACH

HAVING BARELY RECOVERED FROM THE PENGHU ISLANDS MILSIM FEATURED LAST ISSUE, STEWBACCA WAS MAKING HIS WAY SOUTH AT THE START OF OCTOBER TO TAKE PART IN THE MOST RECENT ITERATION OF ONE OF THE MORE PROLIFIC AND ENJOYABLE MILSIM EVENTS IN TAIWAN. THIS YEAR POLK IV WAS ON A NEW SITE, AND OFFERED NEW CHALLENGES, AND HE’D LITERALLY BE GOING ‘OVER THE BEACH’ WITH TEAM TAIJI AND THE REST OF THEIR REDFOR TO TAKE ON THE DEFENDING BLUFOR ENTRENCHED IN THE ROLLING HILLOCKS AND JUNGLES ATOP THE DUNES, TESTING HIS EQUIPMENT, ENDURANCE, AND LONG RANGE MARKSMANSHIP TO THEIR LIMITS!

POLK - derived from the phonetic derivation of ‘pork’ (and named for the fact they ‘go the whole hog’ with a spit roast pig for the communal dinner) is one of the larger MilSim games within Taiwan, predominantly by the ‘northern alliance’ of team leaderships and ‘survival games’ organisers in the upper half of the island.

Players, however, from all over come to enjoy not just the large-scale gameplay, but just as importantly the camping and barbecue communal dining and carousing… it’s what we in my prior UK team would call a ‘Chill-Sim’! The shooting is an element, but the camaraderie and party are also important, and 2024 saw its fourth iteration.

After I joined POLK II and III which were both held on the same camping ground and surrounding jungle in the northeast of Taiwan, this year we in fact went West and South to QiDing in the Hsinchu/Miaoli county area near our Pewniversity training site but to the coast itself.

If you remember back to POLK II it was later in the year, and thereby a little cooler and easier to deal with the weather; however the foliage of the part of the campsite we had booked was almost impassable, cutting us to ribbons with vines and thorns, and severely hampering gameplay. POLK III was in the same campsite but the south end with much better terrain to play in, but we had to beat the summer rush with the booking and pull it forwards to midJuly… which made it lethally hot for many of the players, almost literally in the case of one unfortunate hospitalised guy who later recovered. Thus the ‘Goldilocks’ search on the part of the organising staff who took on board all the past feedback and decided to shift gears and sites to the opposite coast and again into October when the heat had started to dissipate somewhat.

The QiDing site is a well-developed camping and activities complex; a gaggle of university students were sharing it with us over the weekend, so it’s clearly still actively used for summer camps for the ‘civilian’ or normal folks. With horses and stables on site (some people even had time to take armed horseback photos during their down time!) as well as cycling, camping, dining and other activity facilities, it was certainly nice to once again have shower facilities to look forward to after the game, and a good-sized camping area to spread the teams out in.

Once again our preparations began in earnest months in advance! Our command element devised custom gridded maps of the area using satellite photographs to allow us to coordinate our own RedFor (and especially Team Taiji within it) without interference or interception of our plans or communications being so much of an issue as our maps would be coded for ourselves. Along with this we were separated out into a formalised squad structure with around five members per squad, grouped into two ‘bricks’ by radio callsigns, creating three main groups of ten or so working together under their squad leaders and RTOs. There were also floating lone command elements who coordinated with the organiser’s top level and other element commanders, as well as having a couple of roving forward operating pair or trio units who got out ahead to cause trouble and relay information about opposition’s movements to allow us to better respond to their positions and challenges in game.

We also had a few ‘dry run’ days of testing our final gear setups and preparing our units and strategies in advance; honestly I think this is where our main strength always comes from, not only being one of the largest teams and bringing half of an entire side to each MilSim, but the fact we all play regularly aside from a few family commitment exceptions or other individuals missing things; we play and train alongside each other all year basically and hone our tactics… not every team has the strength of numbers or ability to always play so regularly in force.

I had tweaked my plate carrier and supplemental backpack to maximise my comfort and efficiency, focusing on only carrying water in the pack with two Camelbak bladders to give me up to six litres on board in total. I tend to run out of water before anything else, from past experiences of all the POLK, Sanxia and PengHu MilSims, but not this time! I also decided to field the VFC Cybergun licensed Colt M16A2 whose review is headlining this issue as my primary rifle; the T91 optics setup had suffered in the rain of PengHu, and I wanted a fixed 4x optic and a lighter setup with a more classic outline, also taking their M733 as a backup gun with magazine compatibility, and the Sig Air/VFC M18 sidearm.

Prepped And Ready To Roll

As Saturday 4th October rolled around all preparations were in place and our resident Irishman Colin was good enough to pick me up on the way past and we travelled down an hour and a half south quickly on the highway before the weekend rush. We got to the site an hour before we really needed to, but that allowed us to wander around and get some familiarity before signing in as the rest of the team rocked up and unloaded all their personal effects.

With everyone on site we began setting up camp together with our array of tents organised into the available spaces; being a long boi myself I have my own ‘3 man’ Quecha tent that I purchased way back before POLK II which I tend to end up sleeping diagonally in to fit, along with my gear stowed around me out of any potential rain. Some of the others were sharing larger tents that were a bit more intensive in their assembly, so I mucked in where I could to help expedite things. The team leaders were rounded up around 11:30 for the primary situation briefing which then trickled down to us just before we all went to the dining hall for lunch and then returned to the camp to start final gearing up for a 13:00 deployment.

“ONCE AGAIN OUR PREPARATIONS BEGAN IN EARNEST MONTHS IN ADVANCE! OUR COMMAND ELEMENT DEVISED CUSTOM GRIDDED MAPS OF THE AREA USING SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHS TO ALLOW US TO COORDINATE OUR OWN REDFOR (AND ESPECIALLY TEAM TAIJI WITHIN IT) WITHOUT INTERFERENCE OR INTERCEPTION OF OUR PLANS”

With everyone buttoned up in their gear, mags sorted, hydration and other sustainment sorted and radios tuned into squad level or command level channels (our RTO/squad leaders would carry two radios to allow comms, whereas we could listen in on everything but only transmit on squad level for the most part, to keep things less chaotic) we all moved to the flat field nearby for a massive group photo before heading south to the beachfront for our initial action, BluFor heading off up north.

With around eighty players per side, RedFor deployed in full force to the south entrance to the kilometre long beach-head section we would be playing along, with the Taiji ‘Yankee’ element taking responsibility for that left wing, and the other teams making up RedFor splitting into the central and right prongs of the trident attack we had planned. BluFor however would be split, with forty of their number entrenched at the upper end of the play area overlooking the beach and the central hilly and jungle areas, ready to defend and repel our assault, while the remaining half of their team would assault after twenty minutes of our initial action to simulate a local QRF response.

After the obligatory ‘doing cool guy shit in hot places’ posey photos and team pictures “Game On” was called and we began moving up the beach; it was a lot slower going than we’d hoped, as the tide was quite high in during the afternoon, so we were forced to either move along the upper edge of the beach on the light dunes, or stick to the stony section above the breakwater line. It took us longer than we’d hoped to reach our dunebase rally points, with the main callsigns peeling off to form a three-pronged sideways attack with Foxtrot One and Two (our two squads) taking responsibility for the northernmost action, and thus being first to take fire on the beach as we reached the top end of the site and came under observation from the bushes lining the top edge of the slight cliffs.

BEACH-HEAD!

We came under fire as we began trying to deploy up the dunes, which in itself was a bit of a souldestroying exercise in climbing a 70 degree incline on sand that was constantly collapsing! Unfortunately the knotted rope that was supposed to assist us had apparently been removed, potentially by BluFor patrols, so we scrambled up using what solid roots we could find. I managed to take a sniper shot to the forehead during my covering action with some of the rest of Foxtrot Two; our new girl Ning was playing medic for us and did a sterling job all weekend of being where she needed to be when we all needed her!

For this game the dynamic had adjusted somewhat again; medics or squad leaders would have their mobile phones on them, and they would then take a photo of the casualty with one of the finite number of team coloured wrist-bands applied and send it over messenger APP to the organisers so they could track losses and regens in real time and ensure fair play. Patched up, but with my head still ringing a little I ended up being last man left on the beach, just as a gaggle of armed people came into view from where we had begun our advance!

Not wanting to risk friendly fire, and struggling to make out any team ID colours with them being silhouetted against the blazing sun, I held them off at around 100m alone while trying to get confirmation of all our units movements; some of our team were joining the game late due to other commitments, and other RedFor units had perhaps yet to redeploy. In the end it became apparent that they weren’t backing down or identifying themselves so we decided to get me up the dunes on the tail of my team leader up there, not before dumping a few magazines to make them disperse and scoring an elimination. Thankfully it later turned out they were indeed team FGMT of BluFor, as they came and found me after the first round to share war stories about seeing my lone imposing figure and long rifle guarding the rear of my element.

Having finally clambered up the dunes and gotten out of the searing direct sunlight I took a breather with our team leader Jon and took the opportunity to fully reload and re-gas all my magazines as I’d run out most of the eight 30 BB mags I was carrying! Thankfully I had a speedloader and gas can on my new belt kit setup which worked excellently for me all weekend, rarely getting in the way or caught on anything, and not causing my backpack to be overloaded as in previous instances when I’d used it for such things as well as the water.

Listening to the wider comms net, aside from some annoying interference, we heard good progress from out teammates in other squads. RedFor had managed to pretty much eliminate or otherwise displace the BluFor elements at the very north and secure the Blue Team flag atop one of the higher hills just up from the cliff edge; presumably they deployed forwards and inland not expecting such a large element of us to go full on ‘Leeroy Jenkins’ and do the hard thing of the beach assault! Indeed it was only once Foxtrot One and Two reached the top end of the beach and all our compatriots had peeled off and mounted the dunes that we drew any attention or came under any fire… sometimes, you just have to do things the hard way, fellow shooters…

As I finished reloading all my magazines the QRF BluFor continued to move up the beach not seeing Jon and I secreted in the thick shrubbery above them; we called in our contacts, readied ourselves and started raining hell from on high on them as their teammates had with us. The M16A2 was zeroed out to around 50 metres, but can range to 70 or 80 in reality, running .43g bio BBs I immediately eliminated one of their number on the waterline of the beach and began shifting my fire left and inland along with Jon to keep them at bay a little longer. By This time 1500 was rolling around… it had been a long hour and a half since game on, and we’d all covered a lot of ground and inflicted a lot of casualties on BluFor it seems.

Nonetheless we were reaching the end of our twenty minutes required to hold the Blue Flag with ten or more team members and resisting counterassault. As the time elapsed Jon called in to command that we’d fulfilled the goals and took the flag for the allotted time, and we called EndEx over comms and down the beach to the guys we’d just been hosing

UP THE DUNES, WHICH IN ITSELF WAS A BIT OF A SOUL DESTROYING EXERCISE IN CLIMBING A 70 DEGREE INCLINE ON SAND THAT WAS CONSTANTLY COLLAPSING! UNFORTUNATELY THE KNOTTED ROPE THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO ASSIST US HAD APPARENTLY BEEN REMOVED, POTENTIALLY BY BLUFOR…” from above. We clambered up and reunited with our other team elements just beyond the shrub line at the hill with BluFor’s flag, of course stopping to take some nice scenic pictures; all of us were pretty shattered having moved and fought under the beating sun, and it was decided to break early to recover and prepare for the hog roast already in preparation. It seems we finished things too early due to our effective action, but we did somewhat hobble ourselves in the effort; we all ensured the team rehydrated sufficiently and took stock of themselves and their gear.

R&R… AND HOG!

Having done our work well as a team, we sidled off in a somewhat spent state and returned to camp to get out of our rigs and chill out for a bit before dinner. An hour and a half of gameplay on the first day might seem a little tame quaint to those of you back in the UK who used to run all day Copehill Down events with me, but, try coming here and doing it in the forty degree heat and the near hundred per cent relative humidity, in a sandy and vicious jungle environment, where spiders the size of dinner plates await you!

And of course we had also worked hard to finish the fight in short order which somewhat left the organisers taken aback; there wasn’t really enough time to play another full game or set up an alternative, so with conditions as they were and the state of people after that action it was decided to call it a day and crack open the well-deserved beers for everyone.

I gleefully ditched my rifle and rig and made my

“WE WERE REACHING THE END OF OUR TWENTY MINUTES REQUIRED TO HOLD THE BLUE FLAG WITH TEN OR MORE TEAM MEMBERS AND RESISTING COUNTER-ASSAULT. AS THE TIME ELAPSED JON CALLED IN TO COMMAND THAT WE’D FULFILLED THE GOALS AND TOOK THE FLAG FOR THE ALLOTTED TIME, AND WE CALLED ENDEX” showered with my BDUs on to wash out the worst of the sweat, before stripping down to clean myself up.

Re-joining my teammates at camp we broke out the tinnies and started our after action report, reviewing our performance and progress, as well as checking out the stalls near the open field. Our friends at Bolt Airsoft and also newly-founded brand Amarok were displaying their wares on the run up to MOA’s more official releases, with Bolt’s GBBR AR platform nearing readiness since Bill, Anny and myself visited them to check it out last summer.

Amarok are producing heavy-duty high-capacity midcap magazines of their own design which seem to feed fairly flawlessly, with other M-LOK-compatible accessories such as various grips and cover panels on the way in time for MOA, and of course the star of their show was their tactical Corgi, Nini, who was getting all of the attention for being a goodest doggo, myself being no exception of course.

With the pig’s bacon being thoroughly cooked and diced up by the dab hands of the barbecue staff, we all assembled at the dining hall again and took our assigned team tables, Taiji occupying four of them and dividing ourselves up as best we could but still allowing a bit of mingling and variation. The standard dishes prepared by the began coming in thick and fast, and then we went outside in shifts to pick up plate loads of pig, which of course was cooked to juicy and delicious perfection with a great flavour that ensured the carcass was stripped clean in short order by the nearly two hundred hungry mouths among our number!

This is usually one of the best parts of the ‘POLK’ events, and the intent is always to ‘play well, eat well, drink well’ in good company, so along with the shooting action, the friendships and opportunity to get a lot of the major teams on island in one place at one time is a great opportunity to revisit old friends or make new ones, so after finishing the bulk of my meal I started doing the rounds of the tables.

It’s Taiwanese custom to ‘cheers’ all the different tables in turn so of course I grabbed a can and my beer shot glass to go and catch up with people on BluFor and the other teams that I hadn’t had chance to see during the day. “There are no enemies in airsoft, only opposing forces” is a mantra I try to follow. Everyone was in great spirits throughout the weekend, sharing fistbumps on the field and clinking beers off it; everyone seemed to be playing very well and enjoying themselves, with minimal complaints that I heard of.

As the meat supply ran dry we all departed back to our camps to partake in our own snack and beer supplies. Colin had even brought his projector down and had ‘Generation Kill’ playing in our camp with a bunch of our team sat around our makeshift amphitheatre and watching, drinking and chatting into the night. At some point someone decided we should go and get more supplies as we had run out, the nearest 7-11 being ‘only’ a 50 minute walk

“SOMEONE DECIDED WE SHOULD GO AND GET MORE SUPPLIES AS WE HAD RUN OUT, THE NEAREST 7-11 BEING ‘ONLY’ A 50 MINUTE WALK AWAY… SEVERAL HOURS LATER WE RETURNED HAVING WALKED ALL THE WAY TO IT, STOCKED UP AND THEN STRUGGLED TO GET UBERS OUT IN THE BUTT END OF NOWHERE AND NOT FANCYING WALKING BACK… NONETHELESS REGROUP WE DID” and finally around 03:00 we sidled off to bed.

RINSE, REPEAT, AD NAUSEAM

06:00…ish… rolled around and I began stirring once more, somewhat dehydrated by the previous day and not helped by the evening’s entertainment, I peeled myself out of bed and got myself dressed in shorts and a T-shirt to move around camp and continue the rehydration regimen.

McDonalds breakfast en masse arrived for use around 08:00 so we all got stuck in to that and leisurely ate at camp and either over-indulge the night before, over-exert themselves on the first day, or as with some of our guys they just have to leave a bit early for familyrelated activities they can’t escape on the Sunday. We were still in fairly good strength, but BluFor had lost around half their number, so it was decided they would be entrenched once again and we would have to fight through the jungle to displace them and gradually force them back into a corner; having the tree cover was a great help compared to being exposed to the direct sun the day before. discussed the coming morning’s action.

We once again geared up and moved out, this time getting some very cool team photos on the beach, before slightly reshuffling things to streamline squads with some of our number having left us. Onwards we went, moving through the jungle terrain before rapidly coming under fire from BluFor and beginning another hour and a half of grind in better cover at least.

We would be once again assaulting north, against what was left of BluFor; as is usually the case people

I took charge of the remnants of Foxtrot Two and we moved up the left edge of the shrubline along the cliff edge of the dunes we’d run along the day before, taking cover behind large trees or the natural berms and posting BBs through the gaps at whatever BluFor we could make out. Apparently they had a wealth of machine guns on their team, many of whom turned out to be the 62sf team I knew from some of them previously working at TMC Taipei before it closed down, and organising last year’s GBBR LARP I attended.

They had a bunch of VFC Mk48 LMG AEGs and someone even had a microgun, so it was no wonder we had a tough time running them down and pushing them back. Eventually we moved to within around ten metres of their final element before EndEx was finally called. I’d run through at least two full battle loads of ammunition and reloaded in the field under fire while we slowly edged forwards and Ning had her work cut out playing Florence Nightingale to us all with great effect again, as well as throwing down with her AEG in her own right while tailing me into the furore. Again it was some damned hard fighting and slow going, but we inexorably pushed forward with great communications and squad movements and support again, I think we did ourselves proud.

With all that done with we once again returned to camp and those who hadn’t already dismantled their tents did so; on the way it seems the aforementioned university students were pulling their own version of the Songkran festival and having a massed merry water fight… feeling dank and dejected in another set of drenched BDUs, I figured I’d revisit the tradition of POLK III and have them douse me like my teammate hosed me down last year, so ditching my rifle and rig I beckoned them to dump a bucket on me, and I immediately felt better for it!

I once again took the opportunity to properly shower and change into slightly less grim clothing for the drive home, and did my rounds saying goodbye to the other teams before people disappeared back into the heartlands from whence they came. We all said our goodbyes within the team and began loading our cars and heading off on our return journeys; Colin dropped me off at home and I began working through the dank mess of equipment and guns I needed to clean up and/or service… The magic never ends, fellow shooters.

Many thanks to the POLK IV organising staff for another excellent event with great teams, play and food and drink, to my friends in Team Taiji for their great teamwork and performance, and of course to the other teams who showed up in force and made the game and the camaraderie what it was and always is. And of course many thanks to ‘Jerry’ Wu Cheng Yi for his outstanding full-time photographic exploits for this game. AA