[TA Events] Operation Zulu (TACOPS), Staffordshire

OzCam

We are pleased to announce the date of the forth coming TACOPS style game; Operation Zulu.

This is to take place at Swynnerton ATE, Staffordshire, on the weekend of the 31st October / 1st November.

Availability will be limited to 100 places.

Click here for more information.

We have given much thought as to how to take the weekend games in to the future and we have decided to split the games in to two distinct formats, BattleSim and TACOPS (Tactical Operations).

BattleSim games will be very similiar to what we have created in the past but with more emphasis on multiple and overlapping sub-mission based scenarios. All the classic elements of Town Assault and Phoenix Rising will be present but it will not be so "milsim" as we have been in the past. But neither will these events be glorified weekend skirmishes.

TACOPS (Tactical Operations) will be for those that want something close to a soldiering experience. These will be based on realistic scenarios in fictitious hotspots around the globe. The first event will be based in South America. These events are not for players that want to have easy access to their cars or for those that want to pitch up tents in designated camping sites. It's for those that are prepared to carry everything they need on their back, to cook their own food in the field and are at home when setting up a basha in a wooded area to get their head down for a few hours.

Booking for Operation Zulu will start at the end of August. There are only 100 places available on this event. The 100 booked players will go up against a staff-based OPFOR for the weekend.

Ticket price: £60

cplcummins

I'm in, finally a good chance to get back in the ****.

Firekitten

Seems like good craic. Count me in.... Time to take my darling out for some fun on the town... well, someone elses town.:rolleyes:

TheDoc

Hawks are in discussion bout it.

Obviously logistics are going to be different so that needs to be sussed as soon as possible to get rough prices to see if some of us can afford it.

As soon as numbers are rough from us we will let you know

Lemming

2 and a half hour drive from Holyhead according to google maps.

Tommyboy71

That makes it a definite............maybe so.:D

Skatedude

so want to go, but cant give a definate answer till i hear back from the doc about my arm, hopefully i will be up for it

evilrobotshane

Sounds like a giggle. I'm a definite maybe.

Rooky1

Sounds great!
Have to try and get time off from work.
Hoping to be there.

OzCam

Here's the site on Google Maps. The pointer's at the main gate, the training area is northwest of it. It's the same size as Dublin Port.

The postcode for your satnav is ST15 0QN.

Swynnerton Training Area was an ordnance factory producing, packing and storing munitions, originally during the Second World War. Located in Staffordshire, 6 miles south of Newcastle-under-Lyme and just west of the M6, between junctions 14 and 15, today it consists of a Camp and Training Area covering 563 acres (228 hectares) of MoD freehold land. It is ring-fenced, has no public access and has no bylaws affecting it. The area contains numerous old buildings and bunkers, an excellent road and track network (all of which is 'drive-on-the-right'), open and wooded countryside, and a lagoon fed by the River Meece with associated marshland.

The Training Area can sustain up to 800 troops, from different units, training simultaneously, over short to medium periods. It is used for all levels of Command Post exercises, and by all types of 'dismounted' (i.e. on foot) infantry, up to company size, including Territorial Army (TA) and Cadets. Large logistic units requiring road and track circuits use its hard standing, woods and buildings in which to establish and disperse; Royal Engineer units perform practical work projects; and it is used for watermanship and driver training, and by the Royal Marines and Royal Air Force. *

There are two very important things to note before you commit:

• The 100 paying players are acting as "government forces" - strict uniform rules will be in effect. You have to wear British DPM or US Woodland. No MultiCam, Flecktarn, CadPat, UCP or MARPAT. Not even Auscam
• This is two days of hard routine. You have to live out of your backpack, you can't go back to the car, and you can't leave and join the game whenever you like.

Ian will be making this as realistic as he can. If it's p1ssing rain all weekend, pack a poncho.

More details will be posted as they are announced.

* http://www.defence-estates.mod.uk/publications/DTE/871_DTE_West_Midlands_Public_Information_Leaflet.pdf

Sod'o swords

It gets increasingly tempting..

Still don't know if i'll be going, but i'll pick up some Brit DPM at salute anyway.

Firekitten

*shudder* Swynnerton... bad bad memories lol. Its where I did my basic training hehe, Dump, but probably great for airsoft.

diverdriver

This is two days of hard routine. You have to live out of your backpack, you can't go back to the car, and you can't leave and join the game whenever you like.

Not so much Airsoft as Airhard:) For those of you who've never been in the real miltary, it should give a tiny taste of what it's like. I hope they'll be NCO types to shout at the players too. Sounds like fun.

OzCam

diverdriver wrote: »

I hope they'll be NCO types to shout at the players too.

With Ian running the show, that's pretty much a given.

warrier

im in for this.for many years i ran army training ex at swynnerton and it is probaly one of the best the british army has and is ideal for working in section and platoon strengths.it has roads buildings bunkers woods and a pontoon bridge.i know the place like the back of my hand and it also has underground buildings fitted out with sleeping for 100 troops inc mess hall and stores.when the army moved nukes by road they would stop there over night.i spent 3 weeks there once in hard routine mode and woke 1 morning to see a load of russian armour come from know where and parked on the grenade range 2 days later it was gone again how big is it under ground??????????? its also mega for night attacks very creepy in the dark as it looks like a town years after a nuke war

Firekitten

there is a LOT of that area that is underground... and they did more than transit them from what I've heard from mates...

Ghostwarrior

I'm in, Pending Logs....

OzCam

TA Events are now taking bookings for Operation Zulu, the first of our new Tactical Operation games for those that like hardroutine airsofting.

Click here to book your place now... only 100 places are available.

Click here for more details about the event...

Click here to ask questions on the forum...

Don't lose your chance to experience the darker side of airsofting...BOOK NOW!!!

TA Events - taking airsoft to the edge...

TheDoc

OzCam wrote: »

TA Events are now taking bookings for Operation Zulu, the first of our new Tactical Operation games for those that like hardroutine airsofting.

Click here to book your place now... only 100 places are available.

Click here for more details about the event...

Click here to ask questions on the forum...

Don't lose your chance to experience the darker side of airsofting...BOOK NOW!!!

TA Events - taking airsoft to the edge...

What discount ticket rate are you getting for posting that lols

I think this isnt a runner for me, I'm completely up in the air financially, and 100 places, theyll be gone like hotcakes.....in a buy 1 get 5 free hotcake sale

OzCam

TheDoc wrote: »

What discount ticket rate are you getting for posting that lols

I wish.

Firekitten

I heard they planned to take you out to the woods after the game for a special 'thankyou' party... Oh wait... no... they said Doc... and it was more like 'orgy' than 'party'... Damn my memory...:rolleyes:

Lemming

Firekitten wrote: »

I heard they planned to take you out to the woods after the game for a special 'thankyou' party... Oh wait... no... they said Doc... and it was more like 'orgy' than 'party'... Damn my memory...:rolleyes:

You lied Doc! You told me richie had a fit of photoshopping. All this time you were planning on trying to get me to a Hawks "thankyou" party you deviant. As if WOW wasn't deviant enough for you! I feel so dirty now. The trauma!! the Trauma!!!


Ahem. On a more serious note, shall be making bookage for this today

Firekitten

I think as long as they dont take you to see a movie before going back to one of thier houses for 'a drink with the boys'... you're safe... *shudder*

Masada

Firekitten wrote: »

I heard they planned to take you out to the woods after the game for a special 'thankyou' party... Oh wait... no... they said Doc... and it was more like 'orgy' than 'party'... Damn my memory...:rolleyes:

I heard you got taken out into the woods there at the upris... Oh wait, that was all in yore head..



Boyz Noize!

Firekitten

Atleast I turned up Richie....

Firekitten

Speaking of turning up... Myself and Lemming are now booked in!

evilrobotshane

Is there any kind of group travel being organised for this? I'd love to go, but have happily returned to being carless.

Lemming

evilrobotshane wrote: »

Is there any kind of group travel being organised for this? I'd love to go, but have happily returned to being carless.

None planned as of this writing Shane given there's been few people committed to the event yet which is a shame.

Firekitten

For those that havent seen the back story...


Background

The South American country of Piabodor has been fighting an insurgency for over 10 years.

In recent months the insurgents (“Ejército de la libertad”), led by a Pablo Torras, have been supplied weapon shipments from support groups out of the neighbouring state of Talara. Gunrunners, profiteering from the Piabodor’s internal conflicts have been making daring crossings over the border in order to supply the para-military with weapons and ammunition.

The greatest activity is in the south of the country which is a notorious area known as the badlands of the south. The area is currently controlled by the para-military group and government forces have so far been unsuccessful in establishing any form of control in this troubled area of the country.

But with elections only 12 months away the present Government want to launch a new initiative in order capture Pablo Torras and thus severing the head off of the growing insurgency. Consequently an expeditionary force has been sent south in order to setup a command post and a base in order to carry out sustained operations within the area.

The primary task is to shut down all illegal transit across the border with a secondary objective of locating and capturing Pablo Torras.

Swynnerton

Swynnerton Training Area was an ordnance factory producing, packing and storing munitions, originally during the Second World War. But today it consists of a camp and training Area covering 563 acres land.

Old buildings and bunkers can be found throughout the training area, all of which are connected by means of an extensive road and track network, amongst open and wooded countryside.

Swynnerton Training Area is located in the county Staffordshire, six miles south of Newcastle-under-Lyme and approximately 40 miles north of Birmingham. Situated just 2 miles west of the M6, between junctions 14 and 15.

Ghostwarrior

Ghostwarrior wrote: »

I'm in, Pending Logs....

Yeah... So I'm not going now due to circumstances out of my control. Hope ya'll enjoy now ya hear, say hello to Ian for me.

TheDoc

If I was allowed operate personal protection for Ian or Mike I'd be there in a second in fairness, them lads are ****ing crazy and you know youd have the best game ever.

evilrobotshane

Headed off in the direction of this tomorrow morning. Looks like a total of five Irishpersons and one less fortunate making up the bulk of 3 section of the government forces.

This'll be my first time airsofting abroad (proper abroad like, not Predator) and also my first serious milsim, and also I haven't been camping in a few years either. Here's hoping it's worth being in town at half six in the morning for.

Lemming

evilrobotshane wrote: »

Headed off in the direction of this tomorrow morning. Looks like a total of five Irishpersons and one less fortunate making up the bulk of 3 section of the government forces.

This'll be my first time airsofting abroad (proper abroad like, not Predator) and also my first serious milsim, and also I haven't been camping in a few years either. Here's hoping it's worth being in town at half six in the morning for.

Be prepared for an unmerciful and rough crossing tomorrow and I hope you've got good sea-legs cause the weather looks to be sh*t on the Irish Sea.

evilrobotshane

Lemming wrote: »

Be prepared for an unmerciful and rough crossing tomorrow and I hope you've got good sea-legs cause the weather looks to be sh*t on the Irish Sea.

I've got sea-legs coming out my ass.

Lemming

I'd like to thank everybody who attended for playing and making a cracking event, and to Ian and the staff at TA-Events along with the folks who kindly played OpFor and CIA, and of course the UK MoD for use of the site.

It was amazing, the weather was truly horrendous over Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I had a great deal of fun doing everything from;

• Having to march/fight our way into our base of operations to secure it and set up a 'harbour' whilst carrying all our kit for 24 hours (no cars to return to ... )
• Raiding a building to retrieve a CIA operative whose cover had been blown
• Crawling about 50m in the dark along a road whilst frequently having to avoid vehicle headlights in order to perform CTR on a target ammo dump whilst remaining undetected
• Securing ammo dump and having to force-march all the supplies out on foot on suspicion of compromised military comms.
• Performing a two-man pathfinder task on incoming pick-up to ensure no ambush an then guiding them into the supplies.
• Having TA and Royal Marines on exercise wandering through our positions looking a bit bemused.

(the list is not exhaustive but are the bits that stood out in my mind)

I didn't fire a single round through all of that, and spent half the time wet & cold, but I had a fantastic experience in doing so. The event was, in my mind at least, what milsim actually is; as opposed to 'battle sim' to coin a distinction by TA-Events themselves that most people take to be milsim.


Edit: pictures are up already, courtesy of Sector 6

Puding

some great pictures there, the slow pace the tactical sim at time lends itself to photography it seems

how many people did ta events get in the end its a bit hard to see from the pictures, as that could be the complete group or just a section?

I didn't fire a single round through all of that, and spent half the time wet & cold, but I had a fantastic experience in doing so. The event was, in my mind at least, what milsim actually is; as opposed to 'battle sim' to coin a distinction by TA-Events themselves that most people take to be milsim.

sounds great and what i think of when someone mentions milsim to me, but with all these events it is always the attitude that the players bring that seem to drive the style of event, in this case ta events made it clear from the start what type of event it was and you only got people 100% up for that which worked.

It always hard to label stuff, film sim, milsim, tactical sim, battlesim, i think in general you have airsoft and then milsim airsoft, and then you can break milsim down into categorys depending on what your looking for ta events seems to have broken this down rather well, tactical sim as this event was and then battlesim, but you could keep going and going in trying to classify things but i do not see the point, to me its the joy of airsoft you can normal find something that suits you, be it speedball style competitive airsoft ( take aim cup end of things) right thought to the tactical sim ( like this ta event, the hard core milsim team based courses in places like Estonia and course based swat events based on real world tactical competitions), horses for courses.

(yay for the early morning pre work rant )

TheDoc

Puding wrote: »

some great pictures there, the slow pace the tactical sim at time lends itself to photography it seems

how many people did ta events get in the end its a bit hard to see from the pictures, as that could be the complete group or just a section?



sounds great and what i think of when someone mentions milsim to me, but with all these events it is always the attitude that the players bring that seem to drive the style of event, in this case ta events made it clear from the start what type of event it was and you only got people 100% up for that which worked.

It always hard to label stuff, film sim, milsim, tactical sim, battlesim, i think in general you have airsoft and then milsim airsoft, and then you can break milsim down into categorys depending on what your looking for ta events seems to have broken this down rather well, tactical sim as this event was and then battlesim, but you could keep going and going in trying to classify things but i do not see the point, to me its the joy of airsoft you can normal find something that suits you, be it speedball style competitive airsoft ( take aim cup end of things) right thought to the tactical sim ( like this ta event, the hard core milsim team based courses in places like Estonia and course based swat events based on real world tactical competitions), horses for courses.

(yay for the early morning pre work rant )

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

evilrobotshane

That was good stuff indeed. A different slant on things - securing an area while wearing a big rucksack, posting guards so you can cook your dinner, calls to stand to when you're tucked up in bed, stealthy strictly-no-contact observation.

There was a platoon's worth of folks there - three sections and assorted bits like the commander and the CIA agents.

Puding

TheDoc wrote: »

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

has always come thought when i;ve been in contact

Lemming

TheDoc wrote: »

WEll spending alot of time with Ian in berget as I'm sure lemming can support, that lad

A) Doesnt like being told what to do
Doesnt give a **** how long something takes aslong as its done
C) Takes his larp and milsim extremely serious

Thats a good drive to make fantastic events.

A) Well, if it doesn't make tactical or practical sense he will very much let you know.
Yup. Well, up to the point of getting the job done. If there's a time factor he does very much care (as happened the previous year at B6 for one particular mission)
C) Oh yes.

TheDoc

heh, I believe last year we were supposed to be back in base by 12 midnight on first night ops, and we arrived back at what 6am.

Gave me an impression he doesnt like reading watches

OzCam

That was mostly due to the navigator bringing us the wrong long way around. Ahem.

wormbyte

Thanks guys for contributing towards a successful event.

I spoke to the section commander of Echo 2 on the Sunday morning and he told em he was very impressed with the way you guys performed. And as a current serving squaddie he came with a lot of experience.

Was a great shame about the weather as we had many more great things planned for the Sunday including a kick-arse assault on the OBUA building which you guys carried out the CTR on. The intel gathered from that was going to be used for the assault.

Overall, I was very pleased with the way the event panned out. Everyone that participated was of the correct mindset and that is a big factor when trying to run MilSim games.

TACOPS was for a chance to set TA Events definition of the word "MilSim" which is a term that has been abused for far too long (even by myself). Which is why I have now seperated my game formates in TACOPS and BattleSim. So one is hardcore and the other is a more light-hearted version of MilSim, with more sub-mission and taking inspired by war films and military based games.

All this will be roled out in the New Year along with the new website.

All the best,

Ian