I cruised down with a bunch of OK Airsoft’s finest to Texas this weekend for NTA’s OP: Steel Spider event. This event was based on crime syndicates vs. Law enforcement. It was an easy 5 hour drive “with a traffic jam in Atoka” to Dallas.
The OP was held at the Reindeer Manor AO in DeSoto. Wisely we chose to play the “Mafia” and wore all black on a 100+ degree day! Needless to say he heat was pretty extreme with shade being few and far between for the majority of my fighting positions -- yes I am just that lucky.
While I have some criticism about the OP, let me first say I truly enjoy playing with the Texas community. I really get along well with the North Dallas guys and gals and they have some great players and leaders. That being said I was disappointed in the event’s explanations of the scenario objectives. I honestly had no clue what we were doing besides “shoot bad guys”.
Also with such a large number of factions target identification was very difficult, for example FBI wore black tops with tan bottoms, were the Mafia was in all black. Again with so many factions deal making and breaking got to be out of hand. While this might have been in the design of the game it looks much better on paper than in actual play. I was constantly taking fire from factions that were 10 minutes ago “friendly”. This made for a very large problem during the first half of the day when all the “crime syndicates” where fighting amongst themselves as the Law Enforcement teams bore down on us, this could have been by design but it translated into so pretty rough game play the first half.
The AO for me was difficult to play. It was a mix of open field play, light woods to small CQB, in and around small pole barn like buildings. There were numerous fence lines making it difficult to know where the AO started and ended. I often ran into fire from across a fence line on what I thought was a different piece of property. Also I don’t know how many time the line “corrals” either prevented me from maneuvering onto an enemy position or trapped me in.
We also ran into some issues regarding the spawn points which is always an uneasy subject no matter how you handle it.
There was few heated incidents, but cool heads prevailed. I had heard talk about some hit calling issues, but I did not witness any first hand, in larger games this will always been an issue.
Check in and chrono was easy and painless, the Steel Spider shirts are very good looking along with the custom dead rag I received from Ms. Fox. The safety briefing was quick and to the point.
The admin’s were polite and on top of the issues, I would give Steel Spider 3 out of 5.
I know the staff will build on their future installments of the event and I look forwarded to heading back down “hopefully in cooler weather” for future Steel Spider events!
I want to say a quick thank you To Crank Smurf, Fox and all the other admins/staff for putting on the event. I know what a difficult task it can be and while things don’t always work out like you planned, it’s the effort that counts and I thank you for that.
Also a quick shout out to Mike for cooking us all lunch, thanks man! You can find event photo’s and AAR on the MSE site.
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