Optac Airsoft Site Review
Where is the site?
The site is based in a huge woodland area in stoke - Huntley Wood, Cheadle Stoke on Trent, ST10 2NS
How much did you pay to play? What was included?
We paid the non-members price of £25. This included the full airsoft game day and for an extra £5 you could have a full dinner. The food available was a full chicken dinner, hot dogs and biscuits.
What did you think about the safe zone and the safety brief?
The safety brief was a little long, but when you put into consideration all the bits most sites don’t include it was very comprehensive. For example a full site risk assessment, child protection policy, and extra information for women’s first aid. Overall the safety brief is possibly the most informative one we have ever had and that was great!
What game modes did you play?
In the first half of the day we played an HVT game but with added objectives.
We attacked first, we were taken up in jeeps and given a full military brief (this was so cool). We had to storm the police station and clear that out before moving into the woods to clear out the defenders and find the 2 HVT’S that the defenders had hidden. Once we had rescued them both we had to take them both back to the police station and hold it for 15 minutes while waiting for an exfil. This was great! It was hard to get to the police station as first as it was at the top of a hill and the defenders were really stuck in. We had airsoft smoke grenades and pyro going off all over the place. We have all agreed that this was an amazing game to start the day with. Once we had control of the police station we all entered the woods. We had no idea which direction to go so we split up into 2 fire teams and went for it. We found the HVT’S within the time limit and held the police station for the full 15 minutes.
The marshals were all over the gameplay too, any problems any player had got dealt with there and then! Great marshal team!
Once we had completed attacking we switched sides, it was our turn to hide the HVT’S and defend. Luckily after our solid ridge line and radio comms, we were able to hold the defending team off. They only managed to get 1 HVT.
Over dinner, the whole site was buzzing it was a great morning of airsoft! Not one negative comment.
After dinner, we did a full afternoon airsoft game. We played a bomb detonation game. The scenario was NATO special forces to destroy 6 SA80 missiles that were based at two separate locations. We had also had to get a bomb to the enemy fob.
The game was a 2 stage push back with the attacking teams first objective located within the village, surrounded by woodlands. The first part of the game was to blow all the missiles up at different points in the game zone we managed to do all the missiles in time. Up and downhills.
Once the missiles were destroyed, we had to move down a hill into a hedgerow to plant a bomb into the enemy fob. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to do this in time, we ran out of ammo, energy and just general life! The game was on the east side of the site, it seemed big to us, it wasn’t even a quarter of the site…
By the end of it most of our team ended up in the safe zone, we had over an hour to go home and we were so tired.
Before we left we took some ace team phots which will appear on Facebook.
We were asked by members of Equal Airsoft to make a little video too. The video was for a very poorly little lad who loved everything cosplay and anything military. It was a little get well soon video but to him, it will make his day, we managed to get a huge group and even the site owner jumped in to show his support.
What did you like about the site?
The size of the site was great but also varied terrain. Some parts of the site were really hilly but others were flat with loads of cover. The staff were great and ran a really good day. Every one of us said the jeeps were a great feature too.
What didn’t you like about the site?
The only thing we could think of was the safe zone wasn’t fully covered, (or at least the bit we used wasn’t). It looked like it was being built up slowly though, so we know next time we will have full coverage from any winds. Luckily the weather was gorgeous, so this wasn’t an issue for us anyway!
We would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Rob and his marshal team for giving us an amazing game day, it was a well organised day and the marshals were on point with hit taking. Safe to say we will be back soon!
