The Warrior Blog: Road to Rostov

By Guillermo Lopez

MSW Road to Rostov overview. (Layout of event and personal opinion and experience as a first time participant)

Basics:
This event consisted of 3 factions: NATO forces, Russian forces and a semi neutral militia group.

The basic layout was two main combat outposts (general bases) each laid out according to it's leadership. I was on NATO forces as a US rifleman. Our base was set up with the main CP in the middle surrounded by a few self made bunkers for defense. On the outer perimeter we were surrounded by a few rolling hills, we chose the highest ones on each side to create OPs (outposts) (OP north, OP west, etc.)

In total we had 3 platoons which rotated on patrol missions, move to contact missions, CP security duties, and some squads had recon missions. During the times my platoon was assigned to security we would rotate guard shifts non stop (ratio depended on the likelihood of enemy assault according to intel), I'll admit it kinda sucked to be woken up at 2am in the freezing cold to be told "hey it's your turn to stand watch" but it really added to the experience.

Our leadership consisted of former and current members of 75th us army rangers. The one who stood out the most to me was SGT McCoy, this dude was as legit as they came, the way he spoke to us was always in a way to motivate, educate, and to keep us in line. After a successful defense against a Russian assault on our cp his AAR to us was something like "that's what the fuck I'm talking about, you see that? These Russian motherfuckers now know that they're going to get their fuckin teeth kicked in if they even dare step close to our shit, I wish these assholes would try that shit again. Go ahead grab some chow, drink some water but don't become a bunch of sloppy motherfuckers. Make sure there's still guards on shift. Keep up the solid work, you can go ahead and pat yourselves on the back but don't be faggots about it."

AO/bivouac : (Clovis, CA)
The AO was like a damn painting. It looked like nothing I see out here in SoCal. Green rolling hills that look like something out of an old Disney cartoon, trees that look like they came out of a Tim Burton film, thick fog, random trailers and shacks, and oh... Freezing as fuckin shit cold nights. After the first night we decided that we didn't wanna go through that nightmeric cold again so we decided dig holes to take cover in and also to sleep/live in. Digging the hole was an experience of it's own during an Airsoft game, like me and mark kept saying.. "We dig, get shot at, we shoot back, they leave, then we start diggin again". Lol

Firefights:

These bbwarz fire fights were also unlike any others I've been in.. When the Russians would assault, all you would hear is a fuck ton of screaming in Russian, a fuck ton of blank firing rifles, and a fuck ton of pyro, oh and Enola Gaye sponsored the event so there were a fuck ton of smoke grenades everywhere too. Imagine seeing a silhouette in a tree line, yelling in Russian and shooting at your buddies with blank firing ammunition and then one of your boys pulling out his AR and firing back with blank firing ammunition making your sordins work so that you don't go deaf.. Little things like that made the quality of gameplay so awesome. A big thanks to the Russians for making this shit legit as fuck.

Event winners/losers: N/A.
What I quickly learned about MSW is that the gameplay and experience itself is what the whole point of the event is. Both sides had their fair share of losses and victories but in the end all that mattered is how sick the experience was.

Rating/final: 10/10
This overview just does not do the actual experience any justice. I've done a lot of milsim style games, and MSW really showed me a new meaning to the term "milsim". This game was really unlike any other Airsoft game I've ever experienced. I highly recommend it to any of you. I can only imagine how much sicker it would have been having an IPA coalition group there. A huge thanks to MSW and all it's sponsors for making this experience possible.