Its Saturday 23rd July 2022 - 6am! I struggled to sleep the night before thinking about what's going to happen when I wake up. Anxious, excited, nervous, scared? Is it going to hurt when I get hit? Is my gear going to hold up? Am I over or under dressed? All these thoughts running through my head.
I get up, grab some breakfast, pack my bag and wait for MrG to turn up so we can go to the site together. We turn up, get booked in at the gate and park up. We get out and straight away you can tell the new guys from the pro's. There's walking bushes, big ass intimidating guns that look VERY scary, everyone just looks like they're ready to go to WW3!
We took our own RIFs for the first game which means they need to be chronoed (checked to see if they're shooting within the safe limits). The marshals came round and could probably tell its our first time and ask us if we've been checked. Obviously we hadn't so once we made it clear it was our first ever time, they were super helpful. They took us to the chrono area and talked us through what we need to do and got us chronoed and issued us with a tag (to show we've been checked).
This put us at ease straight away because the marshals were so friendly and helpful. As we are getting our gear on, people come over to us and introduce themselves and let us know if we need anything or need any help or advice to just ask. All these bad ass looking people aren't so bad afterall!
So we've been checked and now it's time for the game and safety brief. We all stand around together and the marshal at the time made the brief so fun (Shout out to Niall), made us all laugh. After the safety brief, its onto the the game brief. I think we started with a simple warm up game of TDM (Team Deathmatch), Red vs Blue.
Game On!
We are split into teams, told our spawn areas and off we go! All still shitting ourselves but the adrenaline is taking over at this point. We know there's no going back now. We head out to our spawn, have a little team brief with the pros and then the marshal calls game on.
I can't remember exactly how the game went if i'm honest, but I know that I was stood around like a spare part for a while wondering what the hell is going on. Luckily I wasn't alone. There was a few newbies that started that day and we kinda just ended up gathered together talking and trying to spot enemies through the trees. Looking back, I should have just ran in there and got stuck in! As soon as we got engaged and bullets (BBs) are whizzing past our heads the excitement and adrenaline kicks in and wow, what a feeling. Then I get hit! I loved it! It hurt more than I thought it was going to but in that couple of seconds, it made me feel alive. I go back to spawn and now my fear is out the way, i'm ready to go!
I head on up the hill on my own after losing my teammates and meet up with a talking bush (Sniper). He asks me if I want to tag along with him and help him sneak around and get to a good vantage point. We go through the bushes, trenches, over a river, up and down the hill sneaking around helping each other along the way. He was picking people off from a distance and I had him covered when it came to close quarters. After a while I get hit, he tries to revive me and unfortunately gets hit too. We are both out and head back to spawn. On my way back, i'm thinking to myself how amazing that was. Having my first shootouts and going on a little sneaky mission with the sniper, I was in love. I really do wish I had taken this up years ago.
Things I learned about my first game:
It really doesn't hurt as much as you think it's going to
The marshals and other players, however scary they looked, were all really helpful and friendly
I needed to make changes to my gear - goggles fogged up, cheap earpiece for the radio, needed a better sling for my RIF. All things that can easily be sorted for the next game day, which I did. It's a learning curve, but an enjoyable one.
I'm really unfit!
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