ENG 307 DIGITAL DESIGN PROJECT

Written by Alexander Cooper

It’s an overcast afternoon in West Virginia, with the birds chirping, animals moving around, and the sound of gunfire happening in the distance.  An epic battle is occurring on the outskirts of Panthera Training in Old Fields, WV, with participants of MilSim West’s Saratov Resurgency blasting away.  Two factions, NATO and RUSFOR, are fighting over a checkpoint that protects the civilian population inside of Saratov.  The civilian population surprisingly comes to RUSFOR’s aid, with the election of the new president of Saratov being put on hold to send the foreign invaders out.  Has anything I have said so far made any sense? No? Well nothing makes sense inside of the immersive world of MilSim West.  Join me to explore the immersive world of MilSim West Saratov Insurgency. 

Milsim West was created by two ranger army veterans, Joshua Warren, and Brian Clarkson.  The entire purpose of the events they host is to have a “realistic Military Simulation experience”, as you are in the field for 40-60 hours depending on the event.  Joshua has been hosting games for over 9 years, and has no plans of stopping anytime soon. Josh’s idea came to place when him and a few of his military friends came together and wanted to come up with a “real” simulation in terms of airsoft games. There are other existing “milsim companies” but no one truely does it like MilSim West. None of them involve being in the field for 40+ hours, or eating in the field, or patrolling around for hours on end. Since MSW has been happening for so many years, there are venues that have been played at that are no longer possible to be at, either due to the government, or other changes. Milsim West games are hosted all over the country at a variety of venues, with most of them being military training sites, or 500-1000 acre spots in the middle of nowhere.  Most of the places that are played at have lots of buildings, or huge structures to make the game more immersive.  GTI (government training institute), Panthera Training, and Guardian Centers are the 3 biggest venues used on the east coast, and are absolutely massive.  

As one can tell, these places that are played at are absolutely massive. At each event, there are normally anywhere from 300-600 players on a good event. Now in terms of how these events are ran, there are two different types of MSW’s, force on force games, and insurgency games. Force on force have only two sides to them, NATO and RUSFOR. NATO is the American/Western Powers team and RUSFOR being the Russian forces team. Both factions have various “teams” that are affiliated with them. Insurgency games are ran much differently, and this is the type of game I attended back in September. Insurgency games have NATO and RUSFOR, but also have a civilian faction as well. The civilian faction are loyal to no one and are allowed to do whatever they want (within the game boundaries) during the event. This could be from robbing people, opening a food store, running for mayor, or just being an everyday citizen.

Insurgency games are a lot more “role-playing” heavy in terms of how the game is ran. Civilians make or break the gameplay most of the time, with them normally outnumbering the NATO and RUSFOR factions. This is simply because people love to have fun during these events and while they still have “action”, there is normally a lot less of this during Insurgency formatted games. Before the game actually occurs, players are expected to come up with a fake name for their “character”, as they will be issued an ID at check in with their characters name, fake money, and other information. I attended the most recent insurgency event, The Saratov Resurgency in September. There were over 500 participants at this event, with there being 450 civilian players, 25 RUSFOR, and 100 NATO. The civilian team outnumbered both factions by more than 10-1, as the insurgency games always have a higher amount of civilians present at these events.

Every MSW event always has some sort of “lore” behind it, and the lore behind The Saratov Resurgency was that NATO was attempting to set up an outpost inside of the town of “Saratov”. That was the only bit of lore we were given in advance, and everything else was made up as the game went on. The event goes from Friday-Sunday morning, so there are almost 2 full days of play to be had. Once the check in-process was over, the civilian and the RUSFOR team moved inside of the town to set up. The RUSFOR team had an objective to guard the only entry point to the town, while the civilian team just set up inside of the town wherever they wanted. There was an entire “government” who ruled the town, that had a police force, a tax agency, secret police, a bank, and a whole lot more. There were also the civilians who set up shops, a club, places to eat, protection agencies, and more. Meanwhile, the NATO faction started about 2 miles away from where the main town was, as the main objective of this game is for NATO to “win the hearts and minds” of the civilian population. There were just too many different civilian groups to count, notably there were people who ran the night club, the “UN”, the police force, and the trash man. The club was only open at night, with you having to be 21 or older to drink any sort of alcoholic beverage. The “UN” people were a bunch of people who committed all sorts of warcrimes, and were quite literally exiled from the city by the government. The police force and the secret police were a group of about 10-20 people who drove around and abducted people who had been speaking against the government (before the election), and the trash man was the humble public servant who won the presidency. The “president” was given a letter that had a grenade inside, and barely managed to escape death. Only two times did the NATO faction attempt to take the city, and were absolutely destroyed by the civilian population. Despite all of the infighting, murders, and kidnappings, every group in the city grabbed their guns when they heard that “NATO IS COMING TO TAKE THE TOWN”. Both times after failing to take the city, the NATO leadership was publicly executed by firing squad.

I had not had the urge to attend a MilSim West event until a few of my friends suggested I go a few months back. I had only watched YouTube videos about the event series, and was very interested in attending since the venue was only 3 hours from my house. This was not a “force on force” game, but instead the “insurgency” game type that I had heard about. My friends recommended to me that I go to this as my first event, as they are a lot easier to understand. I did some research and I decided that instead of bringing a typical airsoft rifle (that shoots plastic bb’s), I was going to rent out a blank firing gun. A blank firing gun is a real firearm that has been adapted to fire blank rounds only, meaning that the barrel is obstructed and there is no way to fire real bullets. To use a blank firing weapon at MilSim West events, there are very strict rules. You must be over 21, not be a felon, and must know how to operate and disassemble your firearm correctly. I decided that I was going to rent a full auto blank firing replica from a vendor who was going to be on site, since I do not own a blank firing firearm. Minus the fact that owning a full auto rifle (blank firing or not) is incredibly difficult and expensive. I filled out all the needed paperwork, and paid for the rental, and ammunition for the rifle. The rental was $300 for a weekend, and I bought over 700 rounds of blank fire ammunition, as I did not want to run out. Before being allowed to use this firearm, you must go through a blank fire safety check before entering the AO (Area of Operations). You must be able to disassemble your weapon, re-ensemble it, make sure it functions correctly, and they check all of your ammunition. This is done to make sure no one has real ammo, or so the game goes smoothly with blank fire weapons.

The player base for MSW has been growing every single year, with more and more players coming out to their first events (like me). The way that this is able to happen is quite interesting though, as Joshua actively trolls people on the internet. When people say that MSW is not the only “true” milsim company, Josh proceeds to troll and disagree with them. He ratifys it like this: “My playerbase is so large already, with hundreds of players coming out to every event I host, why would I care if one salty airsofter disagrees with me?”. Some people say what Josh says is cruel, but at the end of the day his events keep growing so I think he is doing a damn fine job at his business. Most criticism Josh receives is from people who have not been to any of his events, and pretend like they know everything about his event series.

Overall going to a MilSim West event was a lot of fun, and the role-playing aspect of it all was the best. Being able to fire a blank firing replica at other players and no one getting hurt was awesome, and I recommend anyone, airsofter or non-airsofter to try this out. I would recommend going as a civilian if you’ve never gone like I had, because you can have a lot more fun role-playing whoever you want to be, instead of being a solider. Becoming immersed in this game really reminds you that at the end of the day, we are all silly war nerds playing a silly war game. 🙂