Speaker 1:
yep, there we go, okay, all right yeah, I guess they're. I don't use zoom very often, so I was messed up in the settings oh yeah, what do you normally use for like video calls and stuff, discord um yeah, well, I barely even do video calls, um, I do them at work.
Speaker 2:
We use, uh, I think, microsoft teams or something, teams or something yeah it used to be skype.
Speaker 1:
Yes, way, way back. Yeah, um, I've used skype for this. Actually, there was a girl in poland that, uh, she couldn't get the zoom working yep, was it um? I'll just share a soft girl uh oh man I think it was, uh, angel hunt. I think that's your call. Sign, angel Hunt.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm not sure I'm familiar then. Oh okay, the name flew right out of my head as soon as you mentioned it. As soon as you need to know this useless piece of information.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. That's how it goes for me too, man. Welcome dude. Well, thank you Thanks for having me on. Yeah, absolutely Well, thank you Thanks for having me on. Yeah, absolutely so. I heard about you through Matty Mo, yes.
Speaker 2:
And I noticed you had Peanut on a while back too.
Speaker 1:
Peanut, Matty Mo, a handful of guys up in that area. Yeah, New England's weird man, when are you?
Speaker 2:
out of South Carolina. Okay, gotcha, we got Airsoft. When you had to order it from china, and, and there was no importers, everything was in chinese or japanese. And uh, what is it? Um, that's crazy. Customs would just seize your 500 plastic gun and you were f*cked. No way. Yeah, they weren't legal, like they were never illegal, but they weren't licensed, yeah, in the united states. And until, like, spartan imports and evic and those guys got involved, bringing them over wholesale.
Speaker 2:
So you actually had to order them off of, like I'm not even sure the website's, just a red wolf is still around but like, yeah, un club or war game wgc club, you just had to drop 500 bucks on a plastic Marui and hope and hope it shows up, hope it shows up. And when it showed up it was going to be Dremel to all the trademarks off, holy cow. No one knew how to fix them. So the local community was extremely tight knit, and so I'm talking late 90s, early 2000s, yeah, so a lot of the stuff that later became like best practices came from up here. I mean the red rag rule, the um. I mean it's, it's I. I hear myself and it almost sounds arrogant. You know, like I'm not, I didn't invent this. I came along later too.
Speaker 2:
But literally the guy that came up with using red rags as wounded rules the term milsim comes from up here. There used to be two fields and they were competing over what they would call their series of games versus their casual games or walk-ons. And one came up with ops, and trigger times was their two things, and the other field started using that too and it became this huge internet kerfluffle, like you can't take our intellectual property kind of thing. And so I was a moderator on the forum that everyone used and I'm like why don't we just call skirmishes like just stupid sh*t, like that everyone takes for granted now, like if I was in the room or near the room or down the hall from when it was being just like debut, so um, that is wild, yeah, so there, so like in the late nineties, it was a chat room by 2000. It was a forum.
Speaker 2:
And then really you only saw, like airsoft Ohiocom, texas had a community in Southwest California had a community at that point in time and pretty much like if you wanted to play airsoft in New Jersey, you drove up to Massachusetts or Maine or Vermont because we had it up here and you know there was no ballot hack, there was no, there wasn't even Lion Claws. So John Liu starts doing like a bunch of Vietnam stuff and then it becomes modern. He did some World War II and then he gets involved with like different military bases and creates like the Irene series and those are games that everyone in the country that even knew about airsoft was like. I got to go to that and buy the DVD for like being in it, like I know people who have a DVD. It's like 20 years old now. Oh look, you can see me on the rooftop for 30 seconds. Oh, that's wild, yeah. And so that was like the first clash of cultures that I remember, because everybody up here, like in the Northeast I think, they drove down to like Illinois wherever the, the Irene, two or three, whichever one it was, was being held, and they literally rented Winnebago's and drove down like 40 guys, everyone got Mohawks that year like it was D-Day, and there's a thing about the Northeast, the Yankee culture, if you will that
Speaker 2:
everyone else in America more or less thinks we're arrogant f*cks. For the most part, yeah, but we're always in a rush and we always work really hard. So, like, because our growing season's only three months my cat just hopped on my lap here so we got to get done in three months what everyone else has, like, you know, 12 months of growing season right, accomplish, she wants kibble and there's some left, she's just being nice. Um. So like, when we see large groups of northeast people go to other events, like down in the south or down in the southwest or the northwest, they generally are the most complainy people with the most tuned guns that also wreck everything. Like there's it's hard to separate those good and bad qualities from each other. But yeah, we bring a certain I don't know if you think of like the boston accent. We bring that, that kind of arrogant attitude wherever we go. So, um, you got sh*t to do.
Speaker 1:
I mean, that's you know. Yeah, no one's time for this.
Speaker 2:
You know, but, um, I don't know. Sorry, but my wife does cat rescue and they've decided this is their room now. Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah, except my allergies don't agree. So we've started, right, yeah. I don't know Okay.
Speaker 1:
When I say, hey, what's up? We're starting, all right. Awesome.
Speaker 1:
There's. No, I don't use a format, I just okay, just like. We're like if we met and, uh, if you came over our house for a party or something, yeah, I'm like, hey, what's up, that's it, record it hit record. There you go, started right yeah, I mean that that's really what I. I tried formatted stuff in the past. I had a couple other podcasts in the past that I never really went on about, because one of them I don't want to promote Okay, because it was like a religious-based one.
Speaker 2:
Oh sure.
Speaker 1:
Or anti-religious.
Speaker 2:
Fair. Either way, some will be offended, you know.
Speaker 1:
Well, it was like my belief systems changed in the last uh, you know year or so and and so I'm. I look back at that one and I'm like I mean I was pretty, you know it was, they were, it was funny, but uh, and it was kind of casual conversation. But um, and the other one was kind of casual conversation but there was a little more formatted, and this format that I do is, um, I really enjoy it. It really fits me better right. So when I try to do like a planned video, like to relay information or something, yeah, oh dude.
Speaker 1:
I'm like. I want it to be short and concise.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
And like okay, step one, like I'll write down bullet points of what I want to cover, and then for some reason I just don't go off of it. You know I'm like so it's very difficult for me. I'd rather just talk like this Sure. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:
So I'm going to ask you a question. Your hat is nest. What does that stand for for you?
Speaker 1:
I honestly don't know. Let's look it up, so we got it. You know where we got? It was uh gti I see that part. Yeah, yeah, uh-huh that's a government training institute. It is uh down here in barmell, south carolina, where third coast airsoft holds a lot of their events. So my son and I bought two hats and two shirts back the last time I went there, and the hats still fit, but the shirts don't. So they're in my drawer waiting for me to lose weight so I can fit into them.
Speaker 2:
Nest Sniper, let's find out, because, um, I'm sure it's an acronym oh no, it most certainly is it just, uh, I'll go after you go, do you know it? I know a nest. I don't believe it's the same one, but oh, what do you?
Speaker 1:
which one you know?
Speaker 2:
I don't know any uh nuclear emergency support team or strike team, depending who you ask.
Speaker 1:
I'll bet that's what it is, because that's okay. So here's GTI, nest, and GTI is a nuclear facility. Oh, okay, yeah, it's a shutdown nuclear facility.
Speaker 2:
Here we are. Maybe I'm wrong. Non-conventional elevated sniper training we are maybe, maybe I'm wrong uh non-conventional elevated sniper training gotcha that's what it is, hey, so it sounds pretty badass too. Anything that ends in sniper training sounds badass okay, oh for sure, yeah, yeah, casual walk-on sniper training or quist yeah right, so yeah it's uh, she's gonna kill me with allergies. But here we are, yeah, yeah man, if you need to. She's begging for attention. Sorry, no, I'm good I got to. No worries, this is really laid back.
Speaker 1:
If we have to cut something out, we can. I don't edit out content like in the middle unless there's something like this or we have to take a break, or yeah, casual use of the N-word or something.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yes, or casual use of the n-word or something. Yeah, yes, exactly no, um. So you've interviewed some people I know. Um, I've said I think peanuts first game was one of our early. We have one series of events that is now in its 17th year and I think he was at the second one as a very young.
Speaker 1:
Wait a minute. You, you all. Yeah. Stag ops. Yeah. Has you guys been putting on events for 17 years?
Speaker 2:
Um technically 19, but the longest running series of events, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so it's interesting I. I introduce yourself real quick and.
Speaker 2:
I don't think we got to that part so yeah, that's why I wasn't sure if we restarted yet.
Speaker 1:
or I kind of know you're cool, no, no, I love, I love starting an impromptu like we did, so no, it's great.
Speaker 2:
Sorry, that was a little catty for their shedding. I give them the word. We're in Maine, it's definitely. Oh yeah, you can, even though we're in Maine. It was like 100 a week, so the cats have had enough, oh God.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure. Yeah, dude, that's hot yeah.
Speaker 2:
We got a week or two of below zero and then we got a week or two of 100 degrees and the rest of the year it's pretty mild up here. So anyhow I am, gordon was my birth name, but 20 yearsish years ago on the internet I used cobalt as a screen name, which became my call sign and someone in your audience might remember the magazine, pardon my note. Scratch, there, it's just getting cat hair out of my beard and stuff.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's cool um someone in your audience might recognize me from the northeastern airsoft group, which I was the admin from 2009 until its death in 2021. And that is the only proof we ever had at the time until the database was gone that the word Milsim was created up here. A lot of the big names in the world of Airsoft now either came from up here or have come up here and been influenced. I can think of one that's heavily branded from being from the other coast, but they actually cut their teeth up in Connecticut up here many, many moons ago. So the Northeastern Airsoft Group was founded before I was involved.
Speaker 2:
Like I said, it was a chat room in the late 90s and it was a bunch of guys who had been deployed to germany, japan, korea, saw airsoft happening out there and imported it directly with that, with customs trying to steal them along the way. Um, the guy that came up with the red rag rule he's an nsa guy. Um, there are three guys in fifth group. Um, who started there was two Massachusetts State Police Response Team guys, one or two FBI dudes and then two guys who were either JSOC or JSOC adjacent, and that's all they're going to ever know.
Speaker 1:
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:
Pardon me, there's way too much dick measuring clout chasing my friend is more special dick measuring, clout chasing oh, my friend is more special than yours bullsh*t in this community. None of that's relevant. I have seen nothing, done nothing myself. But this is the group we started with. And so one of those JSOC guys was a LARPer, but he didn't LARP Lord of the Rings. He actually was part of a Roman legion, but he didn't LARP Lord of the Rings. He actually was part of a Roman legion. So this dude would go away for three to six months. Do some super spooky whatever, come back play.
Speaker 2:
Airsoft for a weekend or two. Teach people how to live off the land for a weekend and then be a legionnaire in some other reenactment somewhere else. Oh, that's wild. I'm hesitant. He was a public figure eventually, but he's no longer with us. I'm not going to out him. If you don't know, you don't know. That's fine. But I don't know if you can see the cats right up on my desk. I'm actually looking over her, but I don't think she's there.
Speaker 1:
Oh no, I can't see. She's not in the camera.
Speaker 2:
No, During the pandemic I built a desktop flight sim and she loves to just rub her teeth on my flight stick over here, which, out of context, sounds terrible. Yeah, I have, I have right. So underneath the screen I have an F 16 upfront panel, I have a dual throttle. Left I have the flight stick, right I have the different button panels and stuff, and it just makes it really hard to use it as a desk and then she'll just she'll just sit here in front of me like pay attention to me now oh, that's amazing
Speaker 2:
dude, yeah, she was a rescue. It's not really airsoft related, but she's one of we have five rescues, okay, and she was seven when her family abandoned her to the shelter and she was in the shelter for three years so they gave her up because she was anxious and I'm sure it had nothing to do with that family broke up and remarried and there was a teenager and a toddler involved and some other pets and you know there's a lot of change for her. So they just threw her out. But you know cat lives, you know 10, 20 years. So my wife heard that story and was quite motivated and we had just lost one of our cats. So we went and got her and she's giving me a hellish glare right now, like pay attention to me.
Speaker 1:
I didn't know shelters would keep animals that many years.
Speaker 2:
Most don't. Maine doesn't have no kill. Maine is a no-kill state. So we get cats from all over the world Because most places will kill after so many months or probably a year. Um, the other thing that maine has an extremely high rate of in the cat population I know this is why you wanted to interview me um is a feline fiv, which is like they have a different immune system. We do, but that's like their version of aids. Um, they can live quite a long time with it. They don't get aids like humans do, but that's like their version of aids. Um, they can live quite a long time with it. They don't get aids like humans do, but it's a similar uh syndrome. But, uh, most shelters in the in the country will kill an animal with fiv and maine won't. So you go from one percent of the cat population nationwide to like 80 of the shelter cats in maine. Yeah, it's, it's weird, that's wild. In the eventual fallout, when cats uh rule the earth, they'll all have AIDS.
Speaker 1:
I don't know well you know, what's funny is like uh, doctors ask sometimes like if you have some kind of symptoms, they'll ask you have you been around cats? Do you have a cat?
Speaker 2:
and you know, yeah, mostly because yeah scratches, for sure bites, but mostly for their waist.
Speaker 1:
It's like a parasite.
Speaker 2:
right, there's a parasite that ironically makes you love cats more. It doesn't quite take over your brain like in Last of Us, and obviously it doesn't affect your eye. But a pregnant woman shouldn't be changing cat litter because most granulated cat litter, besides exposure to the pathogens a cat might be carrying, also there's a percentage chance it's more radioactive than the ambient around you. So yeah, but we can get back to Airsoft in a second. Oh no.
Speaker 1:
Dude, this is cool. No, these podcasts are. They're Airsoft in name only, because the conversations they literally are probably 10 minutes of Airsoft and then the rest is about life. Oh good, yeah. So the way this started, too, was like as far as the podcast, like talking with people through Discord Me sitting here on this part of my desk, I had a big tool. I had a peg wall tool rack over there where I was teching on guns.
Speaker 1:
I wasn't trying to beef them up or nothing. I was just, when these guys would break theirs, I would fix it. So when I started doing that, uh, people on our discord, people that followed our YouTube channel, uh, would ask questions on there and I would just, you know, like, hey, a video, call me and show me what you're talking about, Right, and so we would fix the problem in a couple of minutes, end up talking for an hour and I was like, you know, I'm going to start recording these and put them up on it as a podcast. So there's actually a handful that, um, I didn't record properly or whatever. You know that it was like we did a bunch of them before I even officially called it a podcast. Right.
Speaker 1:
So the format? Uh, because of how it started that way the format stayed that way. So when somebody gets on here, I don't have a format, I don't say, well, tell me all about your Airsoft stuff and that's it. Like no, it's like wherever it goes man, Like we start out with cats, I don't care. Like we're good man, We'll start out with history.
Speaker 2:
I got history man, I've barely started my introduction. I got history, man, I've barely started my introduction. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:
The Milsim thing. I assumed it was short for military simulation.
Speaker 2:
That is correct, was being run by two of those SOCOM JSOC guys, plus this older gentleman who still runs events in Connecticut at Ground Zero Airsoft. We call him Jolly Green. I won't out his real name, but he was, he's always been, jolly Green. He's like. He's like the godfather of organized airsoft in the Northeast and for many years when we had the NEASGorg, neasag we called it, you know, the Northeastern Airsoft Group.
Speaker 2:
It was, you know, one of the top posters and TOLCOM TOLAND, which is about 40 minutes up in the mountains outside of Springfield Mass. It's very remote but it started as a private farm owned by a quasi a semi-famous regional DJ from the 60s who settled down there, by a quasi a semi-famous regional dj from the 60s who settled down there. It's a two, three hundred year old farm and the forest canopy is about 150 200 feet up because the trees are that old and um, that's cool. It's all stone walls, boulders. It's actually an aquifer. So if it rains too much that year, it will be wet at the top of the mountain and wet at the bottom and there's nothing you can do about it. Holy cow, um it. It used to have this tremendous. It's got enough parking for like 800 people because it was an old field you can ultralight on. But the playable, the playable portion on the West side we get the cross the road. It's about 50, 60 acres. It has a pond, but over the years it's like you got to cross, like kneedeep marsh, 100 feet to get to it now, and then going back to the parking lot, orchard area, there's a whole other property that's even bigger on the other side, but it takes a 20, 30-minute walk down steep hill into this valley and then the entire terrain is like a giant hand with steep vertical cliffs. So it gets used once every 10 years by somebody who's really ambitious, uh, and everyone loves it and hates it like I love this so much but I'm never doing that again. Yep, but it was a very rugged. It's a very rugged place.
Speaker 2:
The national guard used to come and do some quick stuff. Okay, not. Not far away from there, um is an air force base where they do. They do depot repairs on airframes, so it is not uncommon to be like, oh, you roll up, you get out your tent and there'll be like a two ship of f-15s. Go by, there'll be, there'll be the black hawks with the long drinking tube in the front. If you're familiar with those yep, you know the stuff you don't see in this part of the country because those are very specific units. Yeah, I mean f-15s are up here, but like you know right. So, um, we start.
Speaker 2:
I wasn't involved at that point, but they start running games there every month, like twice a month, a casual game and a serious game. The serious game might start thursday night. You'd arrive thursday night, you camp out, you'd spend all day friday and then saturday, sunday, you'd be out in the woods, you know out of your mind, doing commando stuff with, like current and former commandos at that point. And so they raised a very high bar of of training and the first organization we had to come out of that would be the milsim, milsim, airsoft and training, training and operations, which was a retired major and his filmmaker, I think, cousin. I think he's a pharmaceutical rep. He's done a lot of things. He's really cool. We call him crossfire because you know fake names, um, and msato is the organization and msato was the. I don't get spanked for saying this like the john lou of the northeast.
Speaker 2:
So they were doing stuff. They do stuff in factories, they do stuff in that nuclear power plant, jails, state hospitals, malls, anywhere that he can get lots of hospitals, anywhere he can get an industrial property that's decayed. You got basically three to four weeks warning. Once he gets it, it's a one-time only thing. He's been doing that forever. His cousin was Major John Buccarelli, who years later would break off his own company and do Black Sheep Milsim. Oh wow, we would get Fort Drum, which Fort Drum's combat city we refer to up here as Pine Plains because that's the region it's in.
Speaker 2:
So Operation Pine Plains became like the Northeast's Irene, and Tom's gone and done different things. He's still doing events periodically. He did some small. He did some like I wouldn't say B movies, but like you know, he did movies for a while. One of the Scorseses was involved on some level. I wasn't personally involved in that, but I've worked with him a bunch of times. I've gone to MSADO events, I mean for the last 20 years, you know, and somewhere around 2005, I was sick of going to my local field and being split off from my friends. So we formed a team. The team is called Irregular Operations or IROPs because at the time one of my friends was working in the airlines and an IROP is when you know everything's all f*cked up, basically, and I came up with this patch, which was a hyper caffeinated squirrel, the green beret and you know little acorn flash in 2005.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and 2006,. I was contacted by a member of a. Do you remember the Sunni awakening during the surge in the Iraq war? Yes, okay, so this is one of those. I don't mean this as a sort of like a dick-measuring contest, you know kind of clout-chasing bullsh*t. But the patch? Because there was only like five companies in America that would make patches back then. Really, yeah, they all knew each other. So I made this out of a company in Texas I think Color Tech was their name I'm not sure if they're still around or not and, of course, on their website was a wall of all the patches they got.
Speaker 2:
And a Marine unit reached out. They wanted my permission to use the design, but the way they wanted to change it, I was like, well, I don't care, but do whatever you want. And they didn't. Well, this Army guy reaches, reaches out and says, hey, can we use that patch? I'm like, yeah, as long as you give me one and a picture of you guys wearing it, right, being a warner that I am, and it comes in as Task Force Platinum, which will be difficult to find online, and I'm wearing that patch once in my day job which was a delivery guy at the time and I walk into one of my customers' shop and there's a new employee there and that dude was like where the f*ck did you get that patch? I'm like I made it, sir, you know, like instantly.
Speaker 2:
I'm reduced to a two-year-old. I'm like, yes, sir, he goes bullsh*t, you made that. I'm like, no, no, I made this. This is terrible Photoshop skills. It's a circle, another circle and a rectangle and a hat, you know.
Speaker 2:
And it turns out that after 20 some odd years in naval special warfare, he went into intelligence and was part of those joint groups that formed together for these tasks and so concurrent with the surge, when we were throwing a lot more infantry and ground troops and more effort into the Iraq occupation, because it was three or four years on at that point. Concurrent with that, we were going to Sunni militias and saying look, you were an asshole to us yesterday. Here's a suitcase full of cash, don't do it again and call us if you hear anything. And if they took the money and they popped their head up, they got dropped. And if they called the phone and said you know my friend, you know I'm not going to pick an ethnic name my friend down the street is doing a bad thing, you should look into it. They had a system where they would hit a house at like dusk While they were in the building. All the phones, all the computers, all the hard drives would be already uploaded through different technologies On the bird or truck back home. They were getting that them or another team were getting tasked to the next safe house. They'd roll whole networks in a night and it was I'm sitting there like trying to deliver my product to the customer.
Speaker 2:
Once he saw the patch and there was some bona fides being established at that point and he starts telling me all this stuff and I'm like there's no way. I'm just like a regular dude doing a day job that has nothing to do with this world. But I was also, like you know, immersed in the Airsoft stuff. I'm like I don't want to tell this guy that I pretend to do his job world. But I was also, like you know, immersed in the airsoft stuff. I'm like I don't want to tell this guy that I pretend to do his job on the weekends. You know what I mean. So, uh, we were acquaintances, we exchanged stories back and forth and, um, I kind of skipped to the middle there. So I get involved. I don't know where to start. I feel like we're kind of telling this out of order, like. But basically I was from a military household. It was never like required, but it was just in the mix. You know you could do it or you could not. That was always our choice.
Speaker 2:
And my particular relative went to like the last six months of Vietnam and as their first tour, and during that tour they were working in an intelligence support apparatus supporting, um, the last efforts of Mac V Sog. So they weren't in Vietnam, they were in Thailand. Um, there's a number of air bases. Uh, if you're familiar with the map, basically you know cambodia, laos and thailand. I mean, um, vietnam are very thin countries with thailand and you just fly over them or in them, if you're, you know, sneaking around. So they were doing stuff with the qrf, like if sh*t went bad, or they were doing stuff with, like, sensors, um, so teams, I think by that point they were dropping them out of planes, but like they would seed the trail with sensors and then that data would come in and say, oh, you know, this sounds like there's a lot of trucks, that grid, you know whatever. And you know you'd send in the A1 Sky Raiders or some artillery or a team or whatever asset was appropriate for what they were.
Speaker 2:
And then I don't know all the stories, don't get me wrong, and I don't know all the stories, don't get me wrong. But basically once my family started growing they gave up the full-time stuff, came back stateside and started working with different defense firms on behalf of the DOD. So when I was growing up we had a model of an AIM-54 Phoenix on the wall. We had the cluster bomb, a plastic model that came apart and all the bomblets, and it was just like oh my God, that's cool. Stickers and patches from everything from new radios to new radars, just Raytheon, just anything. Southern New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts has a lot of defense companies BAE, raytheon, lockheed, et cetera. So in the 80s they would have to go away for a couple of weeks a year.
Speaker 2:
Maybe they were out in the desert adopting mobile warfare techniques that the Marines had already kind of outpaced the army on at that point, and then kind of like learning how to do that more, because everyone's lived experience at that point was a 10 years old and be jungle related, um. So if the percentage threat was the eastern plains of europe or the middle east, you got to be able to be mechanized more than you could in the jungle. So they were involved in developing a lot of those tactics, techniques, procedures, stuff like that. And then there was a tour with a construction battalion in Honduras that happened to be adjacent to a covered air asset that would fly over Nicaragua to gather intelligence on. Is it the Contras? Yeah, the Contras, the Contras.
Speaker 2:
And then one of the cartels at that point in time, okay, and then they came back stateside and were imprisoned for bad crimes and it kind of messed up the whole trajectory of everyone's life and I kind of went from like a you know a student, whatever, to I was in a metal band and that was my personality for a couple of years. All my bandmates go to college and I'm like, well, now I'm just this weird sad townie and me and my friends write a script and some other friends of ours had just finished a movie that they filmed in town, black and White, and we were two, three years after Clerks came out at this point. So we're like that's totally possible and we bought these airsoft guns as props, and so our movie, I'm going to pitch it to you and you'll probably see the punchline before I get to it. Pardon me, the cat hair is still everywhere. Oh, you're good dude, yeah.
Speaker 2:
And imagine four losers who live in an apartment no bigger than the room that I'm in right now, which is now? Which is to say like 10 by 10, 10 by 12, right, and they all hate their jobs but they're terrible at it, so they're never going to go anywhere and they all have major glaring personality problems that they're not going to fix ever. And one of them decides one gets in a girlfriend fight and they break up and he's like you know what, I'm going to be as immature as possible and they go out, they do some pranks and in the flow of the movie they's a lot of conspiracy stuff. This is 1999, when we wrote this, a little bit ahead of its time.
Speaker 1:
But also I cringe when I see parts of it still it's like a mix of uh, pump up the jam with christian slater, you know, starting to insurrect well, kind of a radio insurrection, right, okay, yeah, yeah, I, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I hadn't, I hadn't made that connection. But no, you're onto something there for sure, and also people of our certain age will get that reference.
Speaker 1:
Right, no, this sounds really cool Okay.
Speaker 2:
I'm glad you think so, I'm sure you would.
Speaker 1:
Well, it intrigues me because I did pranks in high school yeah, who didn't? When you couldn't get caught back then you know right, yeah, there's still some that, uh, nobody knows who did it to this.
Speaker 2:
Yes there is. I have a photo album of statute of limitations though I'll be very clear about that all pranks, nothing, nothing, uh, serial killer, um. But so we got these airsoft guns. And you, you know, I grew up with BB guns and rifles and real guns. And you know like these things weren't accurate, like I could shoot a can from a mile away, but these things you can't hit a can point blank. And I'm like, yeah, it's a metal BB, you wouldn't shoot a person with that, but this thing, just it hurts, it's like a bee sting. I don't understand these things, but they look good on camera.
Speaker 2:
So we have filmed all of the interior shots of the movie, all the dialogue. It's taken us about a year. It's now the summer of 2001 and we had gotten in trouble with the police doing one external shot that involved a SWAT team, real and simulated. Our SWAT team got surrounded by an actual SWAT team and, uh, so at that point four, we we learned a lot about being filmmakers at this point, like a, you have to have insurance and b you need to have. The police need to be like, not just you don't just call them in advance and say we're doing this, you need to like they need to be there, you know, and um, it happened across the street from a police substation that we were in contact with for days, but somewhere along the line someone drove by and called a different police office and it got wacky.
Speaker 1:
That's kind of epic though.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, it takes a turn, though, hold on. So we were in negotiations with this minor filmmaking insurance company that our friends use. When two plain loads of assholes crash into their office, yeah, holy sh*t. So we're sitting on three quarters of a comedy about terrorism and then nine 11 happens, whoa, and we're like, yeah we're not, we're not.
Speaker 2:
This was a joke. You know what I'm saying Like and and growing up I'm 46 tomorrow, right, and growing up, yeah, thank you. So the invasion of Iraq, I mean, sorry, the liberation of Kuwait, if you will, the first Gulf War, yeah, that was over in 40 days, you know? Yeah, right. So, and then you know, I had friends that went to Bosnia, I had friends that went to.
Speaker 2:
You know all the different Haiti, all the different hotspots and stuff throughout the 90s and, fun fact, which I'm going to skip around like Christopher Nolan, this gentleman who recognized my patch as part of a unit that not only drove a stealth Trans Am, blacked out night vision, armor everything throughout Bosnia which they incidentally tested in Texas, louisiana but also captured 13 Bosnian war criminals without firing a single shot. Whoa, and the tactics that they came up with are so wildly bonker balls Like. They're just like. How do you capture someone in an ethnic conflict conclave that wants to protect them and kill you, when they're surrounded by professional bodyguards who are all hopped up on terror and you're going to somehow get in there, surround them and walk out without a shot? Yeah, there's a guy I don't.
Speaker 2:
We just moved my library out of this room like a week ago. There is a I'm getting a steam invite. There's a book by a former delta force commander called the men, the mission and me, and he goes into some detail about that and I'm going to let your listeners chase that thread. I'm not gonna go too far into that, but anyway. So, going back to 2001, we're like what the f*ck you know, obviously, and um, we figure this will be blow over by october right november maybe.
Speaker 2:
Well, you know, and now it's the new year and there's this whole axis of evil thing going on and they're talking about iran and north korea and iraq, and I'm like we got one of our. One of the actresses in the film got pregnant and, um, you know, I had really long hair at the time and I needed a job, so I'm like I kind of need to cut it, so like, basically, we were, and still, you couldn't go to an airport without, like, the search, you couldn't go. We couldn't do anything with the police protection, because the police were tasked 24, 7 for like right for six months or so after 9, 11. So we kind of had to abandon the project. And of course, you know, a year or two later, when the global war on terror is in full steam and we're looking at the footage, we're like, okay, these jokes about how the internet is a fad, well, that's not going to work.
Speaker 2:
You know these, all these jokes, you wrote in like 2099. That was like, yeah, this release is dated already and it's only been two years. But then, of course, there's this elephant in the room is all this terrorism stuff and I'm like we just can't do this movie. Um, so I broke one of the airsoft guns. In about 2000 2000 actually, so it was during filming before 9-11 I broke one of the guns, okay, and google didn't exist yet, so I I don't know if I like host it, or I asked jeeves or whatever the yahoocom crawler.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly a netscape, so I searched the internet as it existed and found the northeast airsoft group and all these guys were like, yeah, I painted my face and I came up out of the water and shot a guy. I'm like you can't do that with paintball or laser tag. And I was. So I start getting involved in these conversations and everyone's like oh yeah, it's 500 bucks from the gun and if you want a plate carrier it's 300. Each pouch is 50 bucks Because this is, you know, molle was brand new and at that exact point in time we hadn't launched the war on terror.
Speaker 2:
So there, everything was. There's no surplus. Surplus was still the old alice clips and, you know, nylon pouches from the 70s and 80s. Um, so, like I know, I just kind of put the back burner. I was in these chat groups because there was interesting people and I knew some of them and I didn't realize they were in it. I was like, uh, aspirationally, I want to get involved.
Speaker 2:
These guys were like, hey, we got this container factory. Like you know, they built a city out of it and played one night. Or this guy had a storage facility in Lynn Mass and we called it the Lynn Mount Because it was like you know, once everyone went home and the gates were shut, we could fight in the alleys between the storage containers and buildings and stuff and the power lines which are along a river next to the christmas tree shop. So at one of the games I was kind of pinned in the corner like people didn't know I was there. But I was like there's two teams looking for me or looking for us in general. So I just climbed this cliff and then I kind of pushed through this brush and step out onto concrete and I'm full battle dress like in the parking lot of a uh, christmas tree shop on route 28. So I'm like hi, and this lady's like what the f*ck? Hey, we're cool, I'm just gonna back out over here.
Speaker 1:
You know it's like uh, what die hard, what is going on?
Speaker 2:
yeah, yeah it's like, hey, this is all paintball, don't worry, don't ask questions, always blame paintball. Um, but so I start playing in like 2003, 2004 era, and I start going to these games and so these guys were like trying to make regular, like make ops a regular thing. Well, a lot of the guys who started them originally went back to work. The guys who started them originally went back to work. Um, in fact, if you ever see the that famous uh, pink hair dyed beard video of blackwater guys on a building in iraq who were just raining hell all every city block around them, one of those dudes was one of the guys that airsofted with us, like that was he had retired from the army, yeah, but then when ira rock kicks off, he's like make rock star money, let's go.
Speaker 2:
You know so, um, it got weird. Like you know, I I just, uh, I had a job, had a career, I I settled down at that point in my life with somebody. I had gone back to school and you know I it just didn't. I'm asthmatic and it just didn't. It wasn't really my lifestyle, but I again, I was kind of like I had those early experiences. So, as I started going out in the world and people start coming back, like that gentleman customer I was telling you about with the you know background, like where'd you get that?
Speaker 2:
patch. Yeah, I made it in Photoshop, it's actually terrible. The T-shirt's way better, bro, and he's like no, he was you know, drill sergeant eyes, knife hands kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:
And so I start going to these games and no offense intended to anybody who was producing them, because we were all making it up as we went along but I'm like you'd have this six-week buildup period where the whole community, everyone from New Jersey to Maine, was going to converge on New Hampshire and do an eight-hour game that had all these features like this props and actors and stuff. And you get there and you know the guy with the props had a fight with his mom and she changed the locks on his house, so he didn't have those props. Um, you know the objectives. Well, that guy didn't show up and he's not answering his phone and I'm like, don't get me wrong, it's 20 bucks, it's 20 bucks, but like at that point in time, 20 is like 50 now. So, yeah, I paid 20 bucks for this man. And it's not the cost of the money. It occurred to me, it's the fact that, well, the Buddhists say you don't want, you know, expectation is the cause of all suffering. Right, it's that people want their weekend like decorated, they want their time to be something different than they were gonna experience otherwise, and so that clicked for me.
Speaker 2:
I'm like okay, everybody that I talked to for the prior four or five years, online and in person, fled paintball when it became speedball. Like you go'd go to your local paintball place, you pay your 80 bucks, you pay, you play for two hours. Every 15 minutes you switch sides, you re-air, you put more balls in, you run out, you go to the store and buy more, you know, and it's a huge cash grab. You're spending 80 to 150 bucks minimum to play for two hours, but you get your adrenaline rush, you eat a slice of pizza, maybe they serve a beer and you and your bros can head out and you get what you want. Yeah, but when they turned it into a sport it became really corporate. Yep, and nothing against the sport of paintball. It is a sport and people who do it or do it well, right and excuse me and people who like to watch it like to watch it and then none of that's bad squeezed out the the little bit of what could be nelson out of paintball that was possible that time got squeezed out.
Speaker 2:
So like airsoft in the northeast was like refugees from speedball, anti-corporate. Let's build it like this punk rock build it from the ground up. You know we were blessed with some subject matter experts that were. You know. Let's be very clear airsoft tactics will get you killed in the real life every single time. Oh sure, this is why I always cringe and laugh about the whole, you know, oh, my uncle's more special than your friend or what.
Speaker 2:
None of that matters, man, because this is dumbass sh*t and anybody who, someone who dropped out at the end of bootcamp is still a better warrior than airsoft at scale, like hands down so, and people we like to enjoy, like these hollywood like scenes, the feeling of being behind any lines and, like you know you, there is some tactics to it, but they're all cqb tactics. Even in the woods, at the ranges, we play and we're not like waiting in somewhere for four hours to see a glint and a bush before we move up over the next ridgeline. We're. You know I got 15 minutes, I'm gonna go play, you know. So, like I'm sitting there, these gaming chairs, have those like rotating.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:
I know, so I'm sitting there. I started out in one of those gaming chairs like that. I did the same thing. Yeah, how many times, oh chairs like that.
Speaker 2:
I did the same thing, yeah, much times. Yep, oh, during the pandemic they're blowing these out for like 40 bucks, yep, um. But like I'm sitting there as essentially a frustrated customer in a very new market that nobody really knows what they're doing, even the subject matter experts, you have to break your knowledge of the real tactics, the real world, down to scale and forget. Like, hey, we don't have armored vehicles. Very often we're not going to have air cover. We don't have, you know um, intelligence networks who are hacking into the enemy's communications. We all speak english, we're all using m4s for the most part.
Speaker 2:
Like you know, there's there, there are parts of the simulation breaks down and you get those gaps right. But I'm like we can do stuff with this. We can tell a story we can get. We can do stuff with this. We can tell a story. We can isolate and try to get the feeling. This goes back to my music thing, this goes back to my movie thing.
Speaker 2:
It's like what are you trying to accomplish as a storyteller or an event producer? You're trying to gather people together. Obviously, money exchanges hands because we have to pay for things, etc. Our time is all valuable, but the player's time is valuable. What memories are we helping them create? Right, and so I got, I spent about five or six months and it's like all these different games come out and they're like oh, super awesome, wilson, wow, you know now with more up for, and there's like each one of them was like failed to deliver on some core promise.
Speaker 2:
And it wasn't always the producer's fault, sometimes it was weather, sometimes the audience just wasn't into it. But I'm sitting there, I'm just like watching and learning and I'm like what if we did the things we said we're gonna do and then some more? What if? Okay, uh, games break down an hour in after so many people on this team die and this people's time? They? What if everyone had to work together in a squad like they do in real life? Like, even when you die, you can't leave your people and you can't be left behind, okay, so what if? All? Right, okay, yeah, we have.
Speaker 2:
You go to an Airsoft game and we have role players. Okay, what are the role players doing? They're going, ah Durka, and they're just trying to pull your hair and otherwise distract you. And maybe, if they're, if they're doing something that has real training value, one or two of them might be trying to encircle you or create like they're trying to f with your situational awareness and that has some value, but it almost always deteriorates into a borat impression. Somebody's sisters for sale, someone banged an animal, it's. You can't put this stuff on YouTube because it's ethnically just un-PC. You're going to get so many people like, hey, I'm from that country, jackass.
Speaker 1:
You know what I mean. We don't f*ck animals over here. What are you talking about?
Speaker 2:
That's the guys on the other side of the river. So I put together this dream up and my local field at the time was a Rockingham paintball club or RPC, had gone full airsoft in like 2000. And they're one of the two original airsoft fields in new England. I think they're the longest continuous. They've never stopped running games and it's 2001 to modern day, whereas, like Tolcom, the town shut them down in 2013. We reopened it in 2020, not knowing that covet was about to happen.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, um, and on a special event only basis. There's no walk-ons, so there's not a lot of familiarity with it. And it's we. We help build stuff there, but it's not. It's not a field, it's not a business, it's just a place we can airsoft. In fact, I used to have several crashed airframes. I had a bunch of cabins. People would bring their own cabins down there because that whole community of staying there the whole weekend and stuff. So multiple airsoft teams had cabins in the orchard and wood section. Like you just go down, oh, I'm just going to go to my other house this weekend and go to fake war. You know, this weekend and go to fake war. You know, um, but a lot of the buildings and aircraft and other large-scale props were actually trucked over to ground zero in connecticut and they have since done an awesome job building even more stuff than that. But tolcom is essentially a bunch of boulders in the woods at the moment, um, with some structures in it. Yeah, as a result, but, like um I.
Speaker 2:
So I put this dream op together and it was very um, it was operation tandoori furnace and it was a simulation of of managing the conflict between india and pakistan, and every two hours there was like there was three concurrent missions at all times and every two hours we flipped to the next, we flipped to the next and it was. It started at in November at like 5. Pm. Yeah, so it was pitch black till 11. Ooh, I mean it was pitch black after 11, but it went five to 11, zero night vision. No one had night vision back then, or at least no one admitted it. Yeah, no one admitted it. Yeah, it was really expensive and it was really old usually, yeah, um, so I, I know I had it as as an event runner guy, I bought some um for myself like cheap russian gen one stuff, but you know, in the land of the blind, the guy with one eye is king. So absolutely. But we. And then it was all day eight to five.
Speaker 2:
The second day and this is november, which, in the northeast, is winter no snow yet, but it's cold, the ground's frozen, everyone's miserable and the internet went absolutely bonkers for it People just were like, oh my effing God, this is amazing and I'm like, well, I'm proud of it. But I just kind of did what I said I was going to do. So I'm starting to learn and that field. There was some turmoil for a while and they had guest producers come in every couple of days or just players run a game for them, because they had a lot going on, and so me and a couple other guys would rotate. Every month We'd do a different chapter and some casual walk-on game.
Speaker 2:
But it gave me more experience and I get to see how dynamics of people work together or don't work. That got me to meet a lot of people. Then I became like an admin on NESAG and within a year or two people started calling me the guru, in part because I was also working with the homeless as a mentor for youth 18 to 21. So I had this apparently guru slash dad energy that people glommed on to, so they started calling me the airsoft guru or whatever for a while and I kind of resisted it for like five years, yeah. And finally I'm like you know I'm not gonna go full influencer bs on this sh*t, but right when people chant it, I I think I can own it right. So I created a facebook so I could separate my dating life from my Airsoft life. And a lot of people went Abe sh*t, like you can't call yourself that. Like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh my God Like dude.
Speaker 1:
Do you even know? I didn't come up with this myself, okay.
Speaker 2:
It's just like any other in-joke Once you're one step removed, you don't know. And.
Speaker 2:
I can totally be an arrogant prick. So you know, some people put two into that. Arrogant prick call himself a guru. It must be some some jacket, um, so I I tend to worry furnace. I took a year or two off cause I was finishing college and working with the homeless and have a day time job. I was kind of busy and I just got a hair across my ass. I got this idea what if not Operation Red Wings? What if sequences from Operation Anaconda were airsoft? Yeah, um, if you're not familiar, it was october 2001.
Speaker 2:
Um, the cia and fifth group were working with an afghan force. They had trained up and they had kind of cornered the taliban in the shaiyakot valley and there was a battle plan. Essentially, you know, basic anvil and hammer stuff. Anvil and hammer stuff. You're right. Your jsoc guys, um, were already in the mountains several days, camping out like with suppressed four-wheelers and dirt bikes. They hiked up there. They didn't just helicopter drop. The Taliban had no idea they were there. They're radioing everything, they're gridding everything for JDMs. They got the soft lamps, the giant laser designators. They're just waiting for the anvil force to come up.
Speaker 2:
Fifth group and the Afghans come in, and basically there's a bunch of different accounts of this. Not a Good Day to Die is one, sean Naylor's Relentless Strike, which I highly recommend. In general. That's like the oral history of JSOC and SOCOM and then that Mission Men and Me book I was talking about the Delta Force Commander all touch on their perspectives of that. But at some point the recon teams are no longer their information about enemy locations no longer making it to decision makers. New units that weren't originally in the plan are now getting involved and they're airdropping on top of mountaintops that are occupied with anti-aircraft guns.
Speaker 2:
So predictably we lose a Chinook. The next one comes in. That one gets peppered and leaves At some point an Air Force combat controller. Like they land and the Rangers are running out and they're running. It's like D-Day. They're running right into a machine gun nest. The Chinook takes off with everyone that can get back on it, but they left an Air Force guy and some SEALs behind and unfortunately in the chaos they get split up and, depending on the accounts, the Air Force guy either charged the machine gun nest and took it but wasn't rescued in time before a counter attack force came in, or another accounts didn't make it. Um, I'm not really equipped at all to delve into that. That's not the scope of this conversation or my experience.
Speaker 1:
But um, I'll just say that if did they make a movie or a documentary on this? Um, because it sounds familiar there are.
Speaker 2:
There's several books cover it. Um, there are a lot of podcasts right now that were 20 years out, where people who were there or in adjacent units are outing all the dirty laundry of who who covered up what gotcha, and that's also that's again. I'm not in that world for real, so I'm just gonna push it back and, yeah, you guys read your own sources and figure it out. Um, because it also ties in with other famous people and other famous events over the last 20 years and cast some people in in some lights that aren't positive, but anyway. So, like bb guns, I'm like what if?
Speaker 2:
what if the players, yeah, think they're going on one mission, experience a helicopter crash and are completely unprepared for the next two days of mountaintop warfare in again November? I have a thing about the dark in winter. Okay, I've always had night stuff in my games, going back to 2006. If you don't have night vision, adapt. You know what I mean and I haven't run a lot of winter games because I'm not that much of a sad*st or masoch*st. But a lot of my early stuff started in November and most years we do one November event. We call it a tier one. It's an invite-only thing and it's usually miserably cold but not too cold. And it's usually miserably cold but not too cold. Um, so, basically, like, the players at dusk walk up the mountain.
Speaker 2:
So this is a new, new at the time field called feel good farms and we have been playing there for like a summer time. Just on their casual games. They had a couple themed games that were entertaining. They had a really fun crew um, it was all former infantry guys who called themselves the Broke Dicks because they were all middle-aged at that point, yeah, and they wanted to entertain people, relive the fun parts, whatever. And I'm like, yeah, well, we're already doing this in America. You should come, let's merge.
Speaker 2:
And none of this was from my perspective. None of this was official. Like the first game I did with Tendori Furnace, I just wanted to experiment what's possible, let's get creative with this. And so, in 2008, we launched Actually I should have walked back a little bit that RPC was going through some issues at the time. Feel Good Farms had just opened up and they're about 30 minutes from each other on the highway, so there was a lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty and hostility and people were separating. I'm like, no, no, this is bigger than everybody and let's, let's have a community here, guys, let's not make it weird.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot of early um, it's all influencing sh*t now. But, like you know, you remember like when you have reality shows were like still new and there was always like one, they were creating conflict because that's great drama, like nah. But that's, we're shooting at each other, we don't need the hostility, yeah right. So, um, me and a couple guys got together and we wrote a game called october surprise and it was about um, a taliban, like almost like a tal offensive, timed with the US election, with the idea that it would just have a spillover effect. And the sequel to that was Autumn Justice. So we did October Surprise at RPC and then two weeks later we did Autumn Justice at Field Good Farms. So in the intervening time we convinced the owners of field good farms. They had this old scrap bus. They used to like follow the grateful dead or something when they were kids and it didn't work anymore. So we basically had a tractor pull it up the side of the mountain yeah and built this little ramshackle village around it.
Speaker 2:
So at dusk we march. Some players are broken into two basic groups taliban cobra unit.
Speaker 2:
You know, gi joe, throwback was one and they had to go basically about a mile down the woods along a river, across the river on a bridge. They had one mission build a base and defend it from us attack. Right, that was their first mission. The us side was side was broken into JTF, cougar and Task Force Hammer I think I forget that was a long time and these do blur together. But Cougar had to go to the summit of the mountain and wait to link up with the helicopter insertion that Hammer was doing. So we marched, all the Hammer players up to this bus that they didn't know existed until then. There's a pilot, there's red lights by the windows and doors, but it's dusk. They can't see a series of cables that go out into the woods or blast pots that we have under the doors and under the windows. We also got these strobe candles that are designed to basically be like stun grenades, but they're candles. Strobe candles that are designed to basically be like stun grenades, but they're candles. And those blast pots were full of diesel black powder, very noxious smoke generating. So all right, guys, game is on. I press play on this CD player because you know it's that age, and I step back into the woods and so they're hearing this audio play of this helicopter going through the motions. They hear the aircrew talking they got, you know, ground control talking to them and, like you know, two minutes out, guys get ready whatever. And all of a sudden, as they go past a mountaintop simulated of course, because the bus is stationary, but now pitch black and the only lights are inside the bus, not outside, so it's like even darker when you look at the window, lights are inside the bus, not outside, so it's like even darker when you look at the window. Well, op 4 had snuck up to the sides of the bus and, as the ground fire sounds in the audio, kick in bb start coming in through the window sporadically. Whoa, yes, which includes, you know, some tracers, sh*t like that. Yeah, then, as they are flaring to land air quotes, those cables have I don't know if it was the small ones B or C rocket motors on them. So, 100 feet out of the woods, rpgs come slamming into the bus. Time it with the blast pots. Now the entire bus is full of smoke, everything outside is strobing, flashing lights and noxious smoke, and they have to get out of the bus under attack. So they're completely not the game they thought they were playing and now they have to adapt the ground.
Speaker 2:
Commander of that force is a teammate of mine and a great personal friend Was an army ranger previously to retirement and he was like I don't know what's going on. I don't mean to out him like that, but it was enough to unnerve everybody and once the smoke clears and the immediate threat is canceled, they now are in a village and we have actors in the village. You shot my goat, you shot my brother, you crashed on top of my house. So they have to do all this human interaction stuff, non-kinetic problems. Well, the Taliban have completed their fortress and have decided to come over the mountain and attack the village for collaborating with the Americans. So now, instead of going proactive to destroy this base, they are now under assault for the rest of the night.
Speaker 2:
Basically, at some point guys were down on the ground and people were leaping over each other between the buildings Like it was house to house, absolute bonkers, chaos and um, this next day it was. It was all force on force. We had missions that were themed, but it was grand scale battles there, but the first night was all. What is the emotional impact that we can do in airsoft? That?
Speaker 2:
is amazing dude. And again, you can't lie or misdirect the players every single game. But there are spaces where you can over-deliver on a promise and create an emotional impact if you bring the right factors together.
Speaker 1:
Right. Give them something they didn't expect.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and so maintaining the sensation of organic surprise is hard, because your players go to a game thinking I'm going to play a game.
Speaker 1:
The game has parameters. It has parameters, it has rules. It has. Like you know, when you up a, an op, like as a producer we've all seen these where you go to sign up for the ticket or something like that you've got to read all this. You know they have all the rules right and yeah, so you've got I mean you, so you've got to have a really good balance of right.
Speaker 2:
There's a fine line we were very what you can put in there without you know, kind of overstepping the yeah we were very blessed at that point in time because it's 2008 and a lot of guys had participated in afghanistan, had participated in iraq and already gotten out and the community was still mostly word of mouth. I mean you could, but now at that point in time, you could buy stuff on websites and it wouldn't get confiscated. And it wasn't 500 bucks, it was like 200. And, oh my God, there's more than one BB weight. That was a whole revolution right there. The schism. People were so committed to .2s that when .23s came out they lost their mind.
Speaker 1:
It reminds me of when I was building my own computers back in the 90s, you know when, uh, when the 100 megabyte uh zip disc came out. It was a big, blue, thick, really thick hard plastic zip disc.
Speaker 2:
Me and my buddies were freaking out bro, 100 megs, that's the only thing you could put some pictures on, like if you were an artist, that was your portfolio. It was like a box of those discs we'll never run out of space man.
Speaker 2:
Um, so autumn justice got a big pop too. Like people like were like just publicly, like, hey, we regret not going to that. Like it was, it snowed that night too, so people had no plan for staying overnight. They slept in their cars in the snow. Some guys slept and like, uh, there was when feel-good farms first opened. There was like a circus tent in the middle of their lot, and so under that had a bunch of chairs and wickers and people were sleeping with their, their guns and batteries in the sleeping bag and yeah, you know, but it was like it was crazy, man, that was our.
Speaker 2:
That was really my second op game that had a theme that I spent a lot of time and energy on, and even at that point, we had actually attracted a bunch of people from New York City, many of whom would later become Russian, russians, afghan clothing, like in 2008. Some of them were pakistani, so it was like there was a level going on, like I didn't bring this, but this actually works. This is, yeah, this is great, and our, you know, and our early acting stuff was still kind of borati for sure, but, um, in fact, it's funny, like the, the village elder that they encounter on the fire. They kind of coordinate all the human efforts and chastise them for crashing the house. It was a goat herd. We called Pasha Ubs. Pasha means like elder or father. Ubs was it's an acronym. I forget what it stands for, but it's one of the guys on our team. We just call him that right Spend 20 years. You can't undo it. And Pasha Ubs at that point in time in real life was 18 years old, but he's like a 60 year old afghan man. So that all shakes out. And pasha ubs was now locally known as the hero that stood up to the bad taliban.
Speaker 2:
So we, we went on. It's like wait, we can work with this. There's a loose end here that we can pick up. Let's do another game. So we did another game in the spring and it was called spring offensive. So spring offensive one was 2009, autumn justice. One was 2008 and covid, we had to delay spring offensive to the fall and the. A lot of members of the audience refer to spring offensive and autumn justice the series as seasonal violence, because at times these things do may blend together after a decade and a half, um, but we we called that one seasonal violence quarantine edition because it was october surprise, spring offensive and autumn justice, all rolled into a two-day extravaganza of nonsense and um, wow, I don't know. I feel like I've just been rambling, but no, dude, it's not.
Speaker 1:
This is not rambling. This is like I'm enthralled. You're a great storyteller well, thank you yeah, absolutely, that is, uh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:
So I mean, so you're, you're, uh, definitely your events, um, I, I mean this scene that you set up for this. You know where these guys are, in the bus, all this sh*t's going on the smoke, the rockets hitting the gunfire, like, uh, the audio that you had going on a CD player, uh, I mean that is amazing, dude. So these guys had to have like some really good feedback. Like, dude, that was amazing, you know.
Speaker 2:
Like, yeah, we didn't know what the hell was going on well, it definitely set a bar and we had to keep improving on it, and it depends who you're asking. We don't always land the plane, you know. Um, excuse me, but like in that transition from october surprise to autumn justice and then, on justice, to the spring offensive, we kind of started to get a feel for, like the core things that make our events, and so at the time, the team irops were the only people that I trusted to do this and a lot of the issues we had in other people's games and this is not I don't mean to slight anybody was that.
Speaker 2:
Anyone who's a producer is usually an airsoft player, and which means they usually have a team. Yeah, and so the they become the home team, and maybe the home team gets intel. The players don't, right. Maybe the home team gets buffs, the players don't yep. But when you're a player and you pay your 20 or 50 or it depends on the event, it could be $100 or $200 now and you want to spend your weekend, that's time away from your wife or your kids or your family or your job. You're in travel, you're doing this, you're committed to this experience. Pardon me, you're going to have some expectation. Well, the last thing you want to do is have somebody win through a. The storytelling version is a deus ex machina, or oh yeah plot armor, hero armor, you know modern
Speaker 2:
terms for them. But like having certain teams win just because they're the good guys, it's predetermined. Well, that sucks if you're on the bad guy team having and that's an interesting story, like in the way that star wars is entertaining but star wars is not. I don't pick on star wars but like, just just be honest yourself and look at the dialogue. You know. What I mean is, this is not, it's, it's all backdrop, it's all flash and the good guys always win because plot armor. Contrast that with game of thrones and whether you like game of thrones or not, there's some themes in there that really disturb people. But every character does human things. And so we pulled from history and recent history and the anecdotes of friends and family who were in that world at different times in history and we're like what if we would mix and match it? So I was like, yeah, what if? You know? Like I said, the autumn justice example is what if that anaconda, which was seven years old at that point, happens in wydenboro, new hampshire, with a bus?
Speaker 2:
you know what I mean yeah, what is what is the feeling of stepping off that helicopter? And it's the wrong place in time? How do you do that with airsoft, when people show up? And it's a game. I'm going to play this game and yeah, I'm going gonna be the hero, no matter what. Yeah, like that's, everyone kind of walks in with this basic I'm gonna do some hero sh*t for a weekend, you know high five and go home.
Speaker 2:
But like we had this community of the time where it was so dense with talent like everybody you take you'd have 100 people every week for a walk-on casual game, and of the 50 and 50 teams, you'd have 30 on here that were either former military or took multiple training courses or law enforcement, and you'd have 30, 35 of the same level of talent here. So the community could absorb that extra 20% of new players and in three to five games those guys were on the level of everyone else.
Speaker 2:
So as the sport kept growing, as long as it grew slower than the audience already existed, then you could integrate people, but by like 2010, 11, it was skyrocketing Because now, if you look at the big picture 2010, I think AMS started around that time I'm not sure we didn't hear a lot about them, but you had um, and sato, of course, had been around for 10 years.
Speaker 2:
John lou was doing stuff for years and I mean you just had it was out there in the in the world and you it was now legal to import these things and not have them confiscated, so everyone and their brother could buy um. I think echo one came out. So now you had less expensive clones of like the tokyo marui's and the classic armies and you didn't have to take a marui and spend twice as much to make it. Good, you know that kind of stuff. So it was growing so fast that we started to have to like manage the crowd dynamics because, like we started with 100 people with autumn justice, then it was 120 for spring offensive, then it was like 150 for autumn justice 2, you know, and by like 2010, 2011 would have been like the three and four era um, for those events we were like we got like 100 people from who've never played in new england coming because of youtube, who've never played in New England coming because of YouTube.
Speaker 2:
By 2012, there was a guy, dan Hohen. He's a filmmaker now. He works in advertising and marketing stuff, but his master's in fine art is cinematography. He cut his teeth as a teenager filming our events. He made his own gimbals, he experimented. He was doing color Sony A7X footage of our special missions in like 2011. That's wild, bro, like you think of all those pictures you see now on instagram where you can see the milky way and the green glow or blue glow yeah, yeah, some guy's silhouette yeah, we were doing that stuff with bb guns 12, 13 years ago.
Speaker 2:
oh man, those youtube videos were getting like 100,000 hits. There's comments in Russian, like we don't know what the f*ck's going on. I'm doing two to four events a year as a hobby, between jobs and because I have this weird like voice in my head that tells me these stories, you know. And.
Speaker 2:
I want to get them out, I want other people to enjoy them and like we're just doing this homegrown backyard thing and then we're gonna hundred thousand views on youtube, right. So it. We started having to come up with these like dynamic shifts to keep humans together, and so we started working with um major bucarelli, which was black sheep, nilsson, um irops and green mountain not Green Mountain Rangers, because they were players GM SOG, which was a Vermont team. Green Mountain State is Vermont. Even though most people associate GMR with New York, new Jersey, the original guys that formed GMR all came from Vermont and upstate New York.
Speaker 2:
Anyway, there's a lot of long stories there and I'm not here to to gossip or anything like that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, um, but the gm, sog and irops were the semi-permanent op for unit for major bucarelli's early black sheep milsim events at the cove at um pine plains. Of course there's a campground called belbrground, called Bobrica in Connecticut. That was a big property you had access to and we would go and we would wear black tops, green pants and somehow we weren't the green team and we would just mess with everybody and we would be the speed bumps on these different fragos and there were a couple different concepts being played with at the time and I was already running 400 person events in the woods in new hampshire and he's like I got fort drum over here, I got these military bases and sometimes it's 200, sometimes it's 500, so like we work together to kind of like bring a larger portion of the community of the northeast into this. And he was, he was getting military bases as far as, like wyoming and missouri, um, and so the needs of my organization, the needs of the organization, kind of diverted around 2012.
Speaker 2:
But yeah in that time frame. Now we're like okay, squads are a definable thing, but we noticed that when people die in a squad, their squad keeps fighting and in real life that's a thing you might have to do you know, there's csar and there's there's recovery efforts for bodies and stuff, and then to grim with it.
Speaker 2:
But um, we don't have just one life in airsoft. So it creates these weird dynamics where the command and control, both factions, will fall apart at some point because teams are no longer cohesive and the there was a philosophical difference between what I was doing and what the major was doing. His perspective is valid, but I know what works for me. I was like what if you had to stay with your unit when you died? You're not allowed to move when you're wounded. Once you've bled out, you have to get up and walk around within a 7,500 feet line of sight with your unit so that that unit integrity is preserved even as the natural churn of airsoft chews down your unit's capabilities.
Speaker 2:
So you start thinking of it in LACE. Okay, I depart the CP, I'm full of calories, I'm full of water, I got ammo, my gun works and all my dudes are with me, right? So we're at LACE 100% and we're going to go charge that hill and, like a World War, I idiot, I'm running up against a machine gun and now we have 50% casualties. My LACE is 50. Well, my mission's on the other side of the hill. So, from call a command like yeah, we're like lace 50 and there is no way we're getting up this hill, um, can you send help? And commands like yeah, we got some fresh dudes, just ate some subway and they're gonna head right there. Or the answer is no, but if you can hold on long enough, we can tie up that machine gun nest until a unit's ready.
Speaker 2:
So you, we started introducing this idea where you weren't dead because you were shot. Necessarily, it is artificial, it's more like a military training exercise than a military simulation per se. But the idea is, if you always stick together as a force, your cohesion over two days, three days, doesn't evaporate Absent a medical issue or if you just go too hard too long. And so all of a sudden we're seeing the team that can manage their unit. Replenishment is going to win that weekend it has. Fighting still happens. That's wild yeah.
Speaker 2:
Two, three, four hundred person battles still happen. We're still doing scenes. We had this one story arc. I'm going to pick that for a second second. You still have all these big battles. You still get the visceral adrenaline rush. You can still tell a story. But now you have a context and this is where a lot of other producers and us kind of divert. We run four types of events. Training is training right, and I I mean when I say training we pull in people with infantry experience, op 4 experience and we pull in people who do SEER school. We are training.
Speaker 2:
Everything you do in Airsoft will get you killed in the real world. But within the space of Airsoft we will fire, harden you into a living fake plastic weapon. All right, that's a very confusing message, right?
Speaker 2:
that's great, yeah, but yeah you're, you're gonna be able to pick the time and in manner of engagement, in any terrain, any lighting condition, any weather condition, um, and that's just as a player. That's how I think too. So I'm like just trying to help people understand that, yes, being tired is a thing, physical. I got asthma, man, I can't walk upstairs much, but for some reason, if you put a backpack on me and a gun in my hand, I'll be out there for three days.
Speaker 1:
I'm never gonna run more than 100 feet in a straight line yeah, it's, it's so.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot of it as mindset, even when your physicality doesn't reach, and it means to be honest. I mean, the airsoft is a hobby for some and a sport for others and sure no, no one in 20 years has ever come up with the right answer for that divide. Right well, it's a balance. Yeah, exactly, I mean if you're. If you're on the athlete side, you're going to nerd out about something, and if you're on the nerd side, well, just breathe harder.
Speaker 1:
I guess I don't know that's what it's gonna be there's cool stuff over the hill.
Speaker 2:
There's cool stuff after dark. You don't want to miss it. You know um. But uh, yeah. So we discovered early on the um, the blood sugar and hydration drop slash exertion. Everyone starts getting loose and happy and if you are using real countries, people sometimes get real edgy with their humor and it makes for like a real stiff editing job for people who are filming it. It's like you can't put that on tv or radio or whatever, and I'm wrong. We're not like a giant pile of douchebags, right, maybe a small one, but yeah, but it's just. It's. It's kind of human nature and in what you think is humor between friends, becomes a different thing when it's filmed absolutely.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of inside joke stuff that happens with when, when you're, you know, you've known someone for a while and you've got that. You're out there in that. In that environment, it's like the military, you military, it's like a sports team or whatever. When you all get together as a group, certain things are said that might be off the cuff or whatever. They could definitely be taken out of context if you just post it.
Speaker 2:
You're trying to edit two days of footage down to a 10 minute video.
Speaker 1:
Oh, dude, and like something cool happens, but this guy says something like whoa yeah, uh so how do you cut it out like dude come on, yeah, so um by 2012, 2013?
Speaker 2:
um, black sheep went in their direction, we went in our direction, but the team irops was no longer large enough to staff the events that we were creating. And plus, we all were, I mean jesus christ. I turned 30 in 2008, so like we were all getting to middle age then yeah and so, uh, pardon me, um, michael, how do you?
Speaker 2:
we had a certain recruitment style that was very, um, specific, it was invite, only there was no hazing. You didn't know the criteria by which you were judged and it was a unanimous you were in before you were patched like. It was very sf in that respect, or I should say sof, but regardless, um, how do you export that to grow large numbers quickly? You really can't. And we didn't want to sacrifice quality, but we did have a lot of friends and other teams that we thought, well, this guy's got the integrity we need, that 36 hours of being awake and exhausted, he's not going to cheat that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:
So we created two things operations StagOps, which is my company, and I guess I'm going to lean the other way now. Red Team, which is there we go, yeah, there you go, and it's acid wash, but there's quite a lot of cat hair on it now too. So that's why, yeah, a grainy effect. And so Red Team didn't displace anyone's airsoft team and it's kind of like a volunteer basis. Like you don't, you're not a permanent member, red team, you don't want to be, but you have to meet this criteria of you know integrity, teachable proficiency and tactics, small unit and large scale, or at least the willingness to learn.
Speaker 2:
Because we do training events, so we need to do that. Um, I also kind of diverted there. So we do training events, right, we do large-scale strategic events. We call StratOps, which is like your autumn justice, your spring offensive. We do one called Clawhammer that's now. We just did Clawhammer 6, I think a few weeks ago. Yeah, it was 6 because it was a diamond. Um.
Speaker 2:
And then the field deployment exercises, which are continuous and there's no contest. Every single player is in the same unit and you're up against. So if there's 60 players, our goal is 45 red team. Right now we're about to do midsummer nightmare seven, which is in a weeks, and we have a little bit less than that on the OpFOR side, but we have plans. We're not worried about it yet.
Speaker 2:
The field deployment exercise is you arrive by sterile vehicle at 5 or 6 pm on Friday. You get briefed by somebody who is a member of an intelligence support apparatus unit fictional of course, dressed like a local with US equipment on that kind of stuff. You put all of your snivel gear, your sleep gear, your food, your water, everything except for your combat load goes on a truck and it goes over the mountain and you're not going to see that until you finish some multi-stage cinematic series of events. That might include a boat insertion under moonlight. It might include scaling a cliff or rappelling down a cliff. It might include all kinds of stuff we use blanks. When we use blanks they're only blank firing like purpose-built blank weapons for movies.
Speaker 2:
They're only handled by staff and they work like suppression.
Speaker 1:
Gotcha.
Speaker 2:
So if someone's blanking at you, yeah, if you're dead to rights 20 feet away, you should call it. But realistically, all we want you to do is dive to the ground and hide to the blank stops. We use airburst firework. The idea is, if they go overhead, everyone under that sphere has to hit the ground and just kiss the dirt. You cannot move. That gives our ops floor the ability to move under that walking barrage. Now we're hitting you with World War I tactics. We're hitting you with World.
Speaker 2:
War II tactics and stuff, the Midsommar Nightmare stuff, because there's no contest. The Strat Ops are contests. There's four or five different missions every few hours, at all times. You have to defend stuff, you have to take stuff, you have to hoard items. Those are all scored periodically with a number that reduces down to this team won by this factor or that factor and there's a whole spreadsheet. If you like spreadsheets, you'll love the way we do it, because we measure a lot of factors. But at the end of the weekend we do it two ways. Either your team won 50 points, the other team won 100. Sorry, try again. Or what we've been doing the last couple of games, because they've been three-player factions plus a fourth or fifth role-player faction. What we've been doing with that is every two hours you start with 100% but if you don't do all the goals, so that way you can. We're trying to help people improve.
Speaker 2:
We're trying to help people keep churning that strong backbone of tactics and culture that the influencer culture slash stream social media has kind of displaced yeah I probably am the old man shaking my face to the cloud, but you know, I know what's possible and I know what's what we've done and I'd love to integrate it with the new stuff. But you know, people would help each other out a lot more than they do now. Everyone's an enemy, you know, right? Um, so we're trying to like just keep people involved before, during and and after the event. Hey man, remember that time we took the hill? That's a great memory. Remember that time we didn't take the hill but we watched like the objectives just sail away. If only we did this differently the next time.
Speaker 2:
We're trying to reinforce, through incentives, the strategic and tactical nature of it. Through incentives, the strategic and tactical nature of it. And then the fourth type of event we call either TACOPS or Tier 1, which are invite-only. And they're invite-only not because we're snobs, not totally but the idea is we will take five or six-man teams, we will divide a property up into five or six lanes and each team does every single lane once, and then we'll have the same number of Op4 cells and they will counter rotate. So everybody is fresh on a scene having no oh, this corner is the magic corner advantage. And once you've participated in all of those scenes, your unit has gone through a eight hour exercise. That condenses a counter network operation. So if you think of like the first three seasons, or first two or three seasons of a Narcos where they're going after, like Pablo Escobar, yeah, okay, condense that into six missions.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:
And so you're. You're. You're having shoot missions, you're having direct action, but you're also having intelligence gathering, you're having disinformation operations. You're doing a lot of this unconventional stuff in miniature against an op for that in some scenes might be op for and other scenes they may be villagers. There's some non-kinetic problem. Solving that you have to do they may be villagers.
Speaker 2:
You know there's some non-kinetic problem. Solving that you have to do. Airsofters are hilariously bad at that because it's a gun game and guns should solve everything, and they don't yeah, they're like I can't shoot you uh, oh, no, no, no, you can.
Speaker 2:
You can, there's just consequences. Okay, um, and then at the end, once all the teams have done the rotation, we tally up a rough estimate of how the story ended, because you know some versions, some alternate timelines. So basically at the tier one. So everyone does all the missions and then we level set. All the player cells become one jtf, all the op for cells become like the big bad guy and then whatever that network is, whatever who, who your bin laden figure?
Speaker 2:
or your escobar figure you've been chasing this whole time, or your bosnian war criminal yeah then they go into a compound and you're doing a zero dark 30 rate on that compound. And so in years past we had this fantastic venue. Um, it was a dirt bike park bordered by cape cod's uh canal whoa a high school that had amazingly bright lights at all times. Joint base cape cod was the next property over, so there was, you know, interceptor jets, there was army helicopters there was what thing and then a traffic circle that was a nightmare nine months out of the year, like this dirt path.
Speaker 2:
Off the traffic circle you go up over the hill and it was kind of rectangle. It was kind of shaped like a hatchet head. It was like square here and it got broader and they had a football field size city with street lights, multi-story structures and drivable roads. And then the city had concentric rings of drivable roads all the way out to the entire property with bases every like everywhere yeah I mean bases like a castle that's 100 feet on a side, or two stories with towers on each side.
Speaker 2:
I mean these guys were went all out and it's some of the best games we ever produced there. Autumn Justice and Spring Offensive moved from Feel Good Farms in 2013 to that location and it was time for artistic and business reasons, but it was also the best move possible because that facility is deep in everyone's hearts. It was kind of like the balahack of the northeast. It was like this huge facility.
Speaker 2:
It was a destination people went to. But, um, there was some dispute between a small business that was on the property and the corporation that bought it and basically said pools closed, so we lost it in 2019. And then I oh damn work at the landowners at tolcom to reopen tocom. But regardless, what I was getting at is the tier ones have that counter network leading into a facility raid. So last year we did one and the tier ones do not connect to any other storyline. We never do the same one twice.
Speaker 2:
They're always a joint task force put together for one task. It's all, like you know, hush, hush, whatever. So last year was operation scapegoat and the idea was that there was a terror attack in a nato country, um, allegedly perpetrated by a? Uh. So I'm gonna work back. But I said earlier about people's personal strong, uninformed opinions come out sometimes, makes for awkward youtube moments, also makes for awkward role play, and so we decided we didn't decide it consciously at first, we kind of backed ourselves into it as an alternate current timeline. So when you come to a stag ops event, you are technically entering this stag averse and while you don't, there is a lore there. You don't need to know that, you know right it's on.
Speaker 2:
It's on our website. If you ever want to like go through the lore stuff, it's.
Speaker 1:
It's just not I clicked on that tab actually on your website.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, okay, did it work um, I'm not the best web guy. So I don't know let me see here, um, but uh, let's see it does work. Yes, so in in Sagaverse we don't have ISIS, we have the extremist state of, and the of is whatever part of the world they're trying to take over. So the extremist state of Europe is currently trying to mess with our fake version of the Balkans. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And so because when you're going to do a Balkan conflict, you have to have two ethnic groups that don't like each other. And if you're going to do a Balkan conflict, you have to have two ethnic groups that don't like each other. And if you're going to do an ethnic conflict, you have to make it clean. Oh my God, you have to be really careful. So we have the Begridi in this particular storyline, who are red fez hats, white and red gold shirts, and they're the majority and they have one orthodox Begridi faith. We don't go into details, it just exists, yeah. And then you have like this kind of um traveler kind of they move there in the middle ages but they weren't originally from the area and they're the minority and they have a different culture. They are the zaganoi, silent t zaganoi and the bagridi and zaganoi. Different chapters get along or they totally don't, and the players have to navigate that mess.
Speaker 2:
Eso extremist state of Europe saw the weak political structure as an opportunity to install their caliphate in fake Macedonia or whatever fake Bulgaria. So that's where we get our third faction. So it's tan versus green versus black and it's ESO versus a European-themed NATO-like organization called Task Force Tier and a Blackwater slash USSF-themed group called Atlas is the short version, but it's. Atlas. Global Partners is the corporation that they work for, but it's not Global Partners is the corporation that they work for, but it's Security Partners or ASP.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, asp, those are the player Atlas.
Speaker 2:
Security Partners. Yeah, so those are the current player factions for our-.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Well, so ESO, the big bad was the profit of ESO. So after Autumn Justice last year, we did Scapegoat where iso claimed responsibility for a terror attack and the west, as it exists in the stag averse, blames fake iran karzim. For hey, you've been paying these guys forever. Side note we had no idea that that whole attack was about to happen in israel like we had.
Speaker 2:
We wrote this like right yeah so, but the idea of scapegoat is fake or wrong. Karzim goes listen, we did not sign off on this. We don't get along, but we didn't want that to happen. So we're going to give you 24 hours. If you just magically walk into our backyard and take care of the problem for us, we'll look the other way. Yeah, the six or five or six missions that were on rotation happened at a field in maine called harris farm in dayton maine, and two and a half miles away is a new airsoft facility called cole's family farm. They're run by the same people, they're different farms, but the guy runs airsoft at one, also runs it at the other.
Speaker 2:
Gotcha, it's a great community um. So what we did was the daytime missions. Were all these?
Speaker 2:
the coal um harris has been around uh, 10 or 13 years, I forget, so they have a decade of construction we did all this like infiltrate buildings, steal information or unlock, hack into computer terminal or excuse me, oh sorry, interrogate this guy but his bodyguards can't hear you kind of mission stuff. And then it became time to go after the prophet. He's in some mountain fortress that we have to drive to another location to, and it's this big christmas tree farm, like an open field about the size of a football field, yeah, and there's a hill on one side and there's a mountain on the other and there's bases on both. So they leave the small hill, have to like d-day across this open field of like chest high christmas trees in the oh wow, that's cool tracers, smoke it's a mess spotlights.
Speaker 2:
They finally cross into the tree line at the fight, uphill into this fortress and then they basically frag the room and it's all chaos. It was also like 20 degrees out with a wind. Everyone was miserable and it it broke down a little bit at the end, but it's resolved, except that it was the prophet's twin brother, so iso is still alive oh man that's awesome.
Speaker 2:
But uh, yeah. So we've been doing that kind of thing where this spring offensive always leads to autumn justice, which also leads into spring, right, yeah, and every couple years, if it's an election year, we'll do an october surprise. But I'll tell you right now we are not doing one this year. It's just too crazy.
Speaker 1:
But because we don't want that, that energy you know what I'm saying well, yeah, I mean as of right now, like whatever kind of cool storyline you would think up, might freaking happen. It might happen or it might be weirder you know yeah, and like yeah, who knows yeah?
Speaker 2:
There's been several times over the years that we came up with something that we thought what if? And then, within a timeframe, it happened in real life, usually right, either immediately before or immediately after the event, yeah, um. So I'll give you the most recent example, because some of them are quite tragic and I don't want to make light of stuff that actually ended up happening. But, um, the guy that helped me form the company was also a tax guy and he moved out west and he does all bitcoin stuff with billionaires now, but it used to be just a small-time tax guy who also airsoft, and he's got a whole Instagram presence about crypto and smart investing. He's on the level, he's legit, but it got me thinking about crypto and it's like I personally have a little bit of background in finance and I'm just like I just don't see it. A lot of people do and they're making money at it. God bless them. I'm just sitting here like what are the implications? Money is already a philosophical abstraction.
Speaker 2:
A dollar bill is worthless. It's worth about 30 seconds of flame. You can't eat it. You don't want to wipe with it, you can't, but it's worth a dollar of the idea of currency to someone else.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's a portable way that, hey, you need cabinets in your house and I need stairs done, but those don't line up. Well, okay, I'll do your cabinets and then you give me a buck, or actually it's going to be more expensive. So it's a method of trade. But because money is already an abstract concept, that's where you get all this weird corruption that comes from money. Absolutely, people aren't trading value, they're trading the symbol of value. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So I'm like what if in this third world country that just doesn't work and the economy is broken and we've tried elections, and religious leaders are involved and they get suicided? It was just bombed, it was a mess, right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah leaders were involved and they got suicided. It was just bombed. It was a mess, right, yeah? What if tiktok influencers come into the country and convince people to trade gold bars for a 3d printed coin? So it's a bitcoin, but it's the 3d printed, uh, physical manifestation of it, right, right. And then, after players are fighting over the mountainside trying to collect these wooden crates full of gold, which are obnoxious, and then they're confronted with oh, it'll be worth more to take two bars of gold for one of these plastic coins.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Like neon yellow, they're not remotely convincing as currency. They're the size of, like you know, coasters. You put a beer on, yeah.
Speaker 1:
It's like Mario money, it's Mario.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there you go so day two comes around and we have a guy in character as some, I don't know, fake Latvian or fake Eastern European, as polite as we could make it, but with an accent and the costume, and he's filming TikToks in the battle space with players about investment tips. Guys are like I need more ammo and this guy comes over and says, hey, bro, it's your boy, me, and this is my favorite stock tip. I'm out here in Hambatsu or whatever. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:
Hambatsu is a different country. In the Sagamore I get them mixed up sometimes, but we're in the fake balkans and you know what? When you get home, are you going to invest in you know stag coin. And it was like, yeah, sure, dude, get out of my face, whatever you know. And actually in the video of the event there is like the little tiktoks with the little logos bouncing around and sound effects and stuff, and so his, his game was to sell players at the cost of two stag coins or four bars of gold, a printed jpeg, yeah. So, um, I said earlier, people used to call me the guru. It's kind of gone by the wayside, but a local artist made a guru design that we have in our shop.
Speaker 2:
I'm okay and basically I'm sitting here, I got the as above and below hand, but it's got a glock it and I'm reaching out and there's a carbon across my chest and it's, like you know, fake mystic geometry. The background is a joke. And so it took that core picture and replaced the body and background on like 50 different versions like those board apes, and so players could actually make rare collectible exchanges so we we did all of this because crypto is big, it's huge, everyone's getting rich it has a lamborghini covered in dogs.
Speaker 2:
you know the dog from the meme yep and uh. You know we plan our events about four or six months in advance and the tickets go on sale usually six to eight weeks. They usually sell out in a few hours. Sometimes they drag on Depends and we had this event in the bag. In fact, in order to get some of the gold bars or free stag coins, you actually had to solve a series of color-coded blocks chained to trees. You actually had to solve the blockchain in game to unlock oh my god, that's awesome unlock these safes.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, a week, two weeks, before every event, we give the players an op word. So you have a warning order that tells you everything you need to know what you have to wear, what the npcs will look like. Here's the map. Here's the cost. Bring your own food, whatever who the vendors are like. Just a basic, what you need to know before you go to the event, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And then, two weeks before the event we give this goes back to reinforcing the community piece we give the players about 80, 90% of the game's content in the form of an operations order, commander's intent, mission, enemy terrain, tactics, time, right, roe, like it's a 20 page thing and yeah, that sounds like a lot of reading, but you're you're dealing with two to three hundred people who are self-selecting into task groups before the event so at our game, 90 of the players show up.
Speaker 2:
They already know who they're with, where they're going, and the first two or three moves after that they got encrypted maps. They have encrypted call signs and radios. They Everything's all prepped. So the 10% that weren't going to read all that nonsense roll their eyes at it. They at least aren't suffering from it. Yeah, and that allows us to then. So here's the baseline's higher of what the player involvement is. That allows us to build more cool stuff on top of that, but anyway, so we dropped the upwards two weeks before the event, the event the week before the event the crypto market crashes.
Speaker 2:
Oh, not one blockchain was solved. Oh god, all the gold was collected. Yeah, it was hoarded, and nobody trade anything for the, the stag coins, and certainly no one traded stag coins or gold bars for the 3D-proofed JPEGs.
Speaker 1:
Oh my god.
Speaker 2:
We basically flung them into the crowd during the raffle at the end.
Speaker 1:
Isn't that wild, though, how currency like that, these kind of things, they lose value in an instant oh yeah it became the meanwhile or anyway, this right here. Well, this mug, this coffee mug, is useful. Okay, correct, yeah, like, uh, this is the only thing I got. I don't have a water bottle, I don't have any way to. I got my hand. I could cup in a river to drink or I can dip this in, right? Right Like it's valuable Like currency. Just poof gone, bro, value gone.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that value is adjustable, but we're probably going to veer into politics which we can totally skip, yeah. So a lot of people come up to me during these games or after the games. They're like oh, you must have such strong opinions about this political thing, or strong opinions about that politically. I'm like no, I create tragedies that I turn into comic relief and I hope you enjoy them.
Speaker 2:
Like I recognize in all the dimensions that it exists, that politics is a factor, and I will try to make the least political expression of those factors. I'm not making a statement about this candidate or that candidate, or this regime or that regime. It's a parallel universe because we're trying to avoid bringing people's. We want people to have emotional experiences but we don't want to have people bring their tribal emotions into it. Yeah, exactly. And I don't mean to talk down about people.
Speaker 1:
We all have. No, but you want this to be an experience. It's a getaway, yeah, especially nowadays, like we're, and especially nowadays, like back in the eighties and nineties. Like you, you walk out of your house and you go outside, which we did all the time. And you, you know the way I grew up in the seventies and eighties. You know you go out and you're detached. Like you have the occasional conversation with, like my parents would talk to the neighbors. Oh, you know this going on kind of thing whatever, but we're inundated with nonstop. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:
Bro, like you can't even get away from it. If you try, right, it's a. Even if you never followed anything like that on your socials, all it takes is, uh, you're on your phone, or you got your phone on you all the time you're with a friend and they bring it up, or it doesn't even take that. You just go to somewhere that has the tv turned up and it's on cnn. Your phone picks it up. It's going to be somewhere in your feed, somewhere, like you can't get away. So your events, uh, you want them engaging and exciting and some of this unexpected kind of bullsh*t to like just blow up like right in your face kind of thing happen.
Speaker 1:
But it's uh. But yeah, you're creating this idea, you're making it a getaway, and you know, with these stories. So I but you got to draw from real life like, mean, okay, there's human, you're not fighting aliens.
Speaker 2:
So it's uh, we don't we don't do science fiction, but the tier one this year is actually nest related. So, we're doing? We're doing a nuclear thing. We've always stayed away from nuclear because it's easy, it's big, big and nuclear is a real thing. Sure, but it it seemed like everyone was doing it all the time. So we all shunned away from it.
Speaker 2:
So the, the five or six missions of of radiant dawn will be the event's title uh will revolve around different nest tasks, whereas last year it was basically, um, well, scapegoat. We didn't really base that on a specific special mission unit, but you could argue it was probably like a SEAL Team 6 or a Delta, like a CAG Kind of, like a only hitter, heavy hitter kind of scenario, because you're going into another country, you know that's only ever going to be a national scale SMU, right? So then the previous one we did before that was called J jtf manticore, which was a. It was a counter-narcotic operation, but it was themed like a seal team. So the manticore logo was, the tail was actually a golden trident, gotcha, um. And then the original tier one for us, um, was called copper green and that's just a reference to, like you know, acid on on bronze and brass, like you know, patina. But um, the logo was a dagger with four lightning bolts and two night vision eyes, which made a dragonfly. So it was jts dragonfly, um.
Speaker 2:
And if you invert that triangular shape now you have the triangle dagger of the original like uh, not original in the sense there is official, but the unofficial delta logo from the 80s, 90s, yep um. So yeah, we always try because they're tier ones. We always try to have some smu or tier one like those event patches look like unit patches, whereas the event patches um. So if you're on the website, it's those past events. Yeah, there's a logo for every event, except for one or two.
Speaker 1:
Well you, scroll down those are all the patches from it.
Speaker 2:
And each one of those patches tells a story or clues you into something that might happen in the event. So yeah, clawhammer 6, that was the diamond one, and we introduced the Los Penteros cartel into the San Pateo Civil War. It was also subtitled the Conquistador's Sword, pateo civil war, and it was also subtitled the conquistador sword okay, um, whereas spring offensive 16 was sins of the fathers.
Speaker 2:
It was both a callback to the religious conflict that was going on between the three teams but, also to cold war era experimentation, and you know that's why the prayer bead is all like wmd and stuff like that yep, if you go, you go back one. It's Skategoat, which that was just my excuse to do a Slayer-style logo. That's awesome. Autumn of Justice 16, that was when ESO first became a playable faction for players. And then also the Orthodox Pope of the Begretzian religion had been wounded during a peace conference, was wounded in a suicide bombing and it went full. Let's do a crusade about it.
Speaker 2:
Oh wow, and I'll tell you what. We bought like 20 hoodies in tan colors, green colors and black colors for players to buy for that event and if you see that logo, no one's going to wear that to an airport. So most of those hoodies are in a bin waiting to go to a homeless shelter, to go to downtown portland, maine, and see like three people with my face on it or something right midsummer, nightmare five. Uh, that's the grim reaper in a coffin. That's also a boat um the claw hammer.
Speaker 2:
Five had a crystal skull in it nice and basically players had to well navigating a civil war. Uh, literally do like indiana jones level puzzles, like they had to open these ancient like containers and stuff like that. Oh, that's cool. Spring offensive 16 was a joint operation between the two previously opposed enemies trying to keep the ethnic conflict down that's why it's an international support balkans.
Speaker 2:
It's like a un thing. Yeah, um autumn justice 16, that logo. There was the original iso logo from like 2015, when we first did our isis stuff yeah, that's cool. We kind of brought it back as a hint yeah and and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:
So like each patch either tells a story or has to do with the story in some way, I love it, dude thank you if I'm gonna ask if you just at your leisure when you get to autumn, just stand, I'll tell a story about it do you do a lot of the writing yourself?
Speaker 2:
I do most of it, but for the last couple of years I've made it a point. So, like every wednesday night, from for about two to three hours, uh, we have a red team meeting where we collaborate. That way um, you know I can't come up with everything. Yeah, there's jtf manticore right there. Um, so note among the many things that we do in New England, slash, new Hampshire, if you've ever heard of Nocturne Industries, the night vision company. Yeah, those guys grew up playing these games, got their engineering degrees and decided they wanted to make their own night vision, and they just debuted a night vision device earlier this year, which is a binocular with digital controls on it, which is the Manticore.
Speaker 1:
Oh sh*t.
Speaker 2:
They have not said that they got it from this, but everything else they make is named after a Japanese weapon Daisho, the katana and so on and this is the only exception.
Speaker 1:
Really yeah Interesting.
Speaker 2:
They are Full disclosure. We sponsor each each other, so they sponsor our events, we sponsor them. I don't really need our help at this point. They're their own company and all that stuff. Sure, I am taking no credit for what they've built.
Speaker 2:
They're awesome right, I gotcha um, but they, they will tell you, and they've said it in public on instagram, that they are very much inspired by their experiences, our events, and I'm like there's, if I stop, tomorrow, at least I. That's one of those things that you can achieve and take home absolutely man well for all.
Speaker 1:
Not only that, like all these years of putting on these uh cool events with these cool stories and I feel like, dude, the story you told uh with this bus and all this stuff happening, it's like it is really like a scene out of a movie and some of the events that I've seen and been to, uh just as press, uh, I feel like they're. I don't want to, I'm not putting it down, but I feel like they're watered down a little bit. So there's a helicopter, it's awesome, okay, it's cool, but that's kind of like a separate thing. Yeah, I know the event coordinator had to coordinate that to be there.
Speaker 2:
They're about $1,500 an hour.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I understand, yeah, they're expensive, I get it and you have to buy a separate ticket for it and stuff, but the pilot's doing the work, you know. Um, I understand that the coordinator the company is is is doing that, you know, making sure it's there and everything. But as far as like, so, as an example, like the um, what do you call it? When somebody, when a team calls in a strike okay, a lot of these events, even though the big ones there, it's an admin that walks down and throws down a red flag and says, oh, you're all dead. Like it's really really, really really bland and boring with all this technology and drones and kind of all kind of sh*t. Like you can't come up with a firecracker or something to scare somebody.
Speaker 2:
like I don't know so I'll give I'll give away a trade secret to anyone who's still listening at this point. So we've been doing a mortar or fire support mission not as often as I would like, um, but we have been doing for about six or seven years, and we use two things. One, we use the Predator sorry, chaos International 37mm launched shells. They're about $11 to $20 each, so you have to budget that, of course, but they are basically. It's so f*cking cool, it's an M203, but it's basically a bolt-action pistol that fires fireworks, and so we'll do that over a position at events that we've prepared the players to say hey, what happened?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, see, when you were talking about that. That was cool as hell man.
Speaker 2:
So we also use. They make these .22 blanks and they have these little orange pistols and it's a double barrel and you co*ck it with a hammer and the first shot, the hammer, hammer hits and there's like a hook on the hammer. So the second shot, the hook hits and so the top barrel will be a shrieker round and the bottom barrel will be an air burst round. They're just for scaring birds. You can get them at agricultural stores, maybe tractor supply, I'm not sure, but you can get them online.
Speaker 2:
Um, you have to fill out a piece of paper saying that you're just using it to scare birds yeah um, and so what you do is what we do is, when we're using fire support missions which we usually we haven't done in a while, I'll be very clear about that. But, um, the players have to earn rounds and then the commanders have to choose when to use them, and what we found doing it that way is they never use them. So then we're stuck with a staff member who has nothing to do all day but wait for the call. That might happen. So, pro tip, if you're going to do this to your own events, uh, put a time limit on it so you're not tying up a guy to just walk around, do nothing, um, but so, whether it's the chaos launcher, which I have set people on fire, but so you know, grain of salt, or the bird bombs, which is way safer um, what you do then is you have red caution tape and red tape and a marker.
Speaker 2:
So, okay, I'm a commander and I've earned one round of mortar and I'm going to blow up a structure. All right, I'm going to blow up one floor of structure. B game command, make it happen, yes, sir. So we run over and we don't tell the players. I mean, the players will see our vest, but we're not telling the players anything until it happens. Boom, all right, everyone in the structure is dead. And then we tape over each doorway and we write don't enter until one hour from the time whoa launch so that building is on fire and inaccessible for one hour and those guys are straight to dead.
Speaker 2:
they have to red car, they have to readiness condition withdraw. There's no bleed out, they're just legs and arms and sorry. Yep.
Speaker 2:
And so that's how we've done it. We haven't done it since moving from UBG to Tolcom, because the tree cover in Tolcom is just so thick, because it's a primordial forest. It was cleared in the colonial era as a farm and then they just stopped maintaining that side of it. And so now it's. We had a tree snapping, a windstorm mid-game, whoa. It took about 15 20 people to just barely be able to drag it across the road so truck could drive by holy cow and I'm standing there refereeing.
Speaker 2:
And here's me and it falls it. It actually broke 30 feet above, like there's still a trunk. It snapped in the middle and it fell over me like like a roadrunner cartoon and I'm just standing there like like I got branches in my goggles and stuff, but the limbs did not hit me. I didn't get the adrenaline dump until 20 minutes later. Then I'm like, ah.
Speaker 2:
It was totally delayed, but yeah, that's just. We have drone rules, drones at our events because we film with them. You can bring your own drone that includes a remote-controlled car with a camera on it. It doesn't have to be aerial. You can bring your own drone, but that includes a remote control car with a camera on it. It doesn't have to be aerial. You can bring your own drone, but you cannot arm it and no one can shoot it, because you're the player. You don't know if that's my staff drone filming you or not, and I ain't got that kind of budget to replace the drone.
Speaker 1:
No dude.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's not cool to shoot a drone anyway? No, but In a game, right. But up until two years ago, drones weren't a infantry problem. They were a force problem and now they suddenly are. It's some weird combination of World War One beats the opening to Terminator two, you know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:
I mean Jesus, war is never pretty, but I feel like right now we're looking at legitimate hell divers Nonsense.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah we really are legitimate hell divers nonsense. Yeah, yeah, we really are now. When you were growing up, when you were a kid, were you, uh, were you always into like writing, reading, like storytelling, what? What was your influence with all that? Um, did you love movies and just got hooked on that?
Speaker 2:
yeah, we were like a no tv, no video game household, but I absorbed everything I could and I went. I went hard into any media I could, any books I I read voraciously. Uh, when I say I have a library, we have four of these bookcases in another room that are floor-to-ceiling stacked books and it's all stuff I've read and I drive for a living now like I work on the road as a salesman and, um, I listen to probably two to three audiobooks a month. Um, almost never fiction. I. Almost always I just pursue stuff I don't already know. I'll read one book and go okay, I didn't know that about the Mongols, and so I'll go on like a three-book dive of Mongolian history or whatever, and then that will open up like well, I really didn't understand how Bronze Age Koreans lived.
Speaker 2:
What's the resource on that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
You know what I'm saying. So I bronze age koreans lived what? What's the resource on that or no? Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So I just I chase stuff I don't know right, and that's my default. When I want to write, I'll usually revisit, like a war movie or or book or I will you know, try to like, uh, maybe hit a glass of scotch. Think about conversations I've had. Um, I didn't want to lean too too hard into the this part of it, but I've made several references, but we had a lot of campfire stories growing up that were like stuff that you can now hear about in books that have been declassified, and so at the time I had no understanding what any of this stuff meant yeah but if you or your listeners know what prairie fire was from mac vg, prairie Fire was my family's contingency code.
Speaker 2:
If an adult in my family said Prairie Fire, you were to leave the structure immediately, take nothing and go to a predetermined place. We had a contingency as a family. So I grew up in Westside, manchester, new Hampshire, westside.
Speaker 1:
I don't know.
Speaker 2:
Never a gang guy.
Speaker 1:
It's not obvious, I'm not very intimidating.
Speaker 2:
It was either seven or eight years old, got woken up in a blizzard in February about 4 am, winter hat, winter jacket. We're going to lock you out of the house and you're going to be picked up at the nearest fallout shelter, just to make sure you know how, as a lone child in a blizzard, navigate in the dark. So 03102 is my area code, growing up, and there are four fallout shelters there, three within walking distance of my parents house.
Speaker 2:
my girl, holy cow they were never gonna abandon me no right, but but kids, kids today, don't know kids today don't know what it's like to have the kind of tough love slash. Yeah, scary like sh*t, like that, you know yeah if you think about it today, this is essentially child abuse, but and I'm not justifying child abuse- no, I mean not really they're. They wanted you to be prepared, man, it's yeah, well, because the possibility of a nuclear strike in a major urban area where we lived was still on the table even if the percentage was less than one, you know.
Speaker 2:
Um so uh, st edmund's parish rectory had to follow a shelter that was closest. You had to follow the Piscataquag River, go up over a terrain feature, through the woods. And. I lived here, I am.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, they wouldn't have left you out there to die. They know, they knew you were going to make it. Let's talk a big game.
Speaker 2:
But so in my junior high years I'm in the Boy Scouts you know Cub Scouts, weeblos, boy Scouts, that kind of stuff and all the fathers of that era were Vietnam vets or otherwise working in those southern New Hampshire defense firms like BAE, your Raytheon, you know PPG&E, etc.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And so our scout troop listen man, I know how lame this sounds. Boy Scouts is not only in Wolverine. They're not tactical.
Speaker 1:
Yeah no.
Speaker 2:
So once a month our Monday meetings would move from the rectory at Sacred Heart Parish in Westside Manchester to between Manchester and D and dairy. There's a boy scout camp called camp carpenter. It's got a lake and we would meet. You know, you give canned goods to the drive of the week or you tie a knot for the week skill set and then we'd break into squads and under the that one week would be timed to the full moon and we would then navigate around the lake and conduct ambushes and attempt to kidnap each other. And it was essentially a flashlight tag. But like that stuff, I'm like what if we do that in airsoft? Like you know, what if?
Speaker 2:
like? That's where, like I, I grew up in a different direction. I went into art and music and storytelling and the fake war stuff would come afterwards but, like for most of my development, I didn wasn't going to be my life. It was just this thing that happened around me and where I grew up. It's a dead-end street but it has miles of rail trails that Manchester is now connected to downtown and to Goffstown and next town over and whatever, but back then they were just footpaths and, with Gen X being what it is, I was free to just leave the house and walk around the woods yeah because there were trails and uh, there wasn't.
Speaker 2:
I may have made, who knows, maybe I would have ended up on a milk crate but like a milk cart, but uh, you know, I didn't. And yeah, so being comfortable in the dark is is a big part. So when I brought that with me to the airsoft world again back, when one guy had night vision because he worked for BAE or something, you know what I mean, like it wasn't, it wasn't normal. Now everyone can rent and buy and own it. I mean, jesus Christ, I have some nocturne tantos right here.
Speaker 1:
I was going to ask you about some of the stuff behind you on your bookshelf there. You got like a is that like a mini amp? Guitar amp right there?
Speaker 2:
Yes, so it was functional at some point in the nineties. He has a belt clip. Oh, dude, yeah, yeah. So like you, you know you play electric guitar. Right, it's just twangs unless you plug it in, but you can't always jam with amp. So the full size quarter jack here and there was a. Yeah, there's a headphone jack out and it's a studio headphone jack too, like a real okay, yeah, we're rich.
Speaker 2:
Um yeah, you just clip it onto your belt, you can play. There's a distortion switch on it. You can mix how much distortion lights, dude.
Speaker 1:
you know what's funny about that is, uh, when I came back from overseas uh, in the military, I came back my last duty station was, uh, pendleton, california. Oh, okay, I get there. Yeah, marines.
Speaker 2:
What's your four digits, if you don't mind?
Speaker 1:
Oh the.
Speaker 2:
MOS.
Speaker 1:
I was a truck driver.
Speaker 2:
There's more than I've ever done. I was just curious, oh, I don't mind, it's 3511,.
Speaker 1:
I think, yeah, it was in the 3500 group. Yeah, it was basic, so I drove, delivered ammo, water, troops and yeah. So I didn't choose that. I chose a combat engineer. I wanted to build stuff because I was doing construction when I went in and they said the school's full, you can wait for a few months and do you know maintenance duty or whatever, or you can pick another thing.
Speaker 1:
So there was about 20, 30 of us that you know chose that. So we all picked something different. And actually there was a handful of us that chose Amtrak. So Amtrak are the ones that they're troop carriers that go in the water from the ship to the shore and all you see is the little smokestack sticking out, right, okay, so it's all submerged. Well, you got to be a class one swimmer, which is like the highest tier. So in boot camp you go, you know Marines, part of the Navy. You have to do a swim qualification. So you do S3 or whatever. It's like the real basic one. So you have to be the top tier swimmer. And a handful of us failed the test there. I about drowned.
Speaker 1:
I made it to and I was a damn good swimmer, bro, but um, so anyway. So my, my choices were limited. So it was a admin cook, truck driver. I'm like, I am damn sure, not sitting in an office. Okay, I didn't join the Marine Corps for that. I hate cooking. Okay, uh, even to this day, uh, just keep me out of the kitchen. And then, um, uh, yeah, so truck driver. But yeah, I drove trucks and uh had, you know, wild experiences, uh, but yeah, so my first time in southern california, uh, outside of base, we go to uh, the, the buddies I, you know, made friends there. I got station there, um, they took me to venice beach, okay, okay. So you've, everyone's seen it in movies. If, um, you know big scene and blast from the past, uh, if y'all haven't seen that, go check it out.
Speaker 2:
but, um, it's been about 30 years, but yeah, yeah yeah, I think it has been 30 I think it has been 30 years.
Speaker 1:
Bro, continue, take another drink. Um, so we go to venice beach and there is, uh, this guy. You know they had a lot of street performers. Okay, yeah, right, it was. It was a culture shock kind of thing going there. I'm like man, this is cool, you know, like there's girls walking around topless, nobody gives a sh*t. Uh, girls walk around breastfeeding, you know, just, it was packed Right. And uh, street performers. Are you originally from South Carolina or, uh, no, from Cleveland, ohio.
Speaker 2:
Oh, no way, All right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so uh, I, and there's this guy on rollerblades, which we weren't really used to seeing rollerblades back in this is 1991. Yeah, they're brand new. Yeah, they're brand new. So this dude on rollerblades looks like an Arab, dressed in a white robe that they wear, with a swami thing on his head. Okay, you know what I'm talking about, but he's a swami yeah, and he's got an electric uh.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and he's. He's got a uh electric guitar and he's playing. He's a street performer, he's rollerblading through the crowd playing and he has one of those that you have on your shelf. Yeah, it's a little bit bigger but it's yeah, it's hanging on his front, you know, like with a guitar strap and he's playing guitar, or maybe it's on his hip or something, right?
Speaker 1:
And I was like whoa, this is wild. He's got a can for change, you know, for people to donate, while he's like zinging in and out of people. I mean, it was really talented, but anyway. So seeing that little thing on your shelf really reminded me of that time, because it was memorable, obviously. Yeah, yeah, going to Venice beach my first time and, by the way, we take three. We had took three hits of acid before we went there. Okay, so we got the full experience. Yeah, full experience. But, yeah, so it's fun.
Speaker 2:
So I'm looking in the camera now to see what you can see. Yeah, so right here, feel good farms. One of the best things that we they had as as a vibe back then was they had this guy. We called him rancid or nh. Ransom is his screen name. Um, I think his name is tom. I'm forgetting his last name. I I'm sorry to the universe for that. It's been over decades since I talked to him.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, he was a fantastic photographer and you go to a casual walk-on game, just no, you know, armband versus no armband, just like nothing serious, and you'd walk out of there with some 8 by 11 print. You could make that looked like an absolute rock star and uh, so on the bottom shelf behind the goggles, I don't know, you really can't see it. Um, we were interviewed like four or five times for airsoft international. Um, and this one is actually like a team profile. It was. I think it was their first team profile and, uh, it was in my team. I see the logo. That's like I said earlier, the logo from the t-shirt was way better than the patch, you know yeah and so there's a bunch of that's.
Speaker 2:
It was like a 10 page article, but I just framed the first page. That is cool, man, but the picture above it actually mess this up. Um rancid took a picture. He used to use these amazingly just huge lenses and a great sense of timing and composition. He was a great photographer. And so there was this event where we had to move an HVT from the village to this whole terrain, feature across the entirety, and again we had a former 0-3-11 from 1st Marine. Did you ever see the movie Severe Clear? I don't think so. It was like a VHSC camcorder of the invasion of Iraq by these guys. It may not be First Marine. I feel like I might be getting that wrong.
Speaker 1:
Call sign for the unit is Pale Rider this guy's call sign online is Pale Rider.
Speaker 2:
This guy's call sign online is Pale Rider. He's not in the movie, he's in scenes of the movie off camera. It's not a movie, it's literally a guy's video journal of his marine unit invading Iraq. Oh sh*t.
Speaker 2:
Like the 03 invasion. So anyway, pale Rider, we had a guy SEAL Team Zero was the Army Ranger. We had a couple guys SEAL Team Zero was the Army Ranger. We had a couple of guys with real-world instruction, so they kind of fire-hardened the rest of us BB gun nerds. And so the village of Feel Good Farms used to be so awesome we literally would hang laundry out.
Speaker 2:
So there's a situation where we're we're on one side of this village, there's sons behind this or whatever, behind up to the left I think, and then basically there's people coming up and it's we're. We're doing this at extreme, at the extreme range. We can't. This is not a wait till you see 70% of a guy in fire, this is, there's a, there's a movement, there's a hand in a window, kind of thing, and so I'm pying a corner, I go high, I go low, I come back out high and I punch through the laundry and as I do that, apparently I dropped the guy that I saw, but apparently the look on my face was sheer, abject terror, and Tom captured that in a photograph that later Jared Stone, a local artist, converted to a charcoal pencil drawing Whoa.
Speaker 2:
So there's a full-color photograph that you can see the individual hairs in the original photograph on the Nomex gloves I'm wearing. That's how detailed the photograph is, and so when Jared drew it side note there is a time-lapse video of him drawing this picture because it's the night that he drank a bottle of something and taught himself how to charcoal whoa. Like this was his experiment of hey, I think I can do charcoal, so oh my god this is obviously a metal print of it.
Speaker 2:
My wife got it for me for Christmas one year.
Speaker 1:
That's awesome.
Speaker 2:
But you can see like individual threads on my patches. Yeah, the photograph was taken from easily 150, 200 feet away. You can see with the sun I was backlit. It was just a freak photograph and I don't remember my emotion of time being terrified, but obviously I can't deny what my face says. Yeah, and yeah, that was just an epic picture. Jared drew it about a year or two after the photograph was taken. He actually put it up on his site as a piece of art you can buy.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I need to look him up.
Speaker 2:
That is cool. Does he have an? Instagram. I believe it's Brutus the Cutest. That might be his personal Instagram. I may not. Let me just look that up before I out somebody's private.
Speaker 1:
Thing.
Speaker 2:
Why do I have 10 more followers all of a sudden? So, side note Jared Stone, call sign Stone or Jar, sorry, call Sign Jar. I'm going to catch hell for that. Not the most embarrassing thing I've done in public for Airsoft. We once had people come to Autumn Justice 10, we had people come from Brazil, like flying from Brazil. People come from Ireland, britain and New Zealand and the New Zealander and the guy from ireland. The guy from ireland lived in australia for a while and so he actually he kind of brought them with him, but by way of two sides of the globe. According to 23 and me, I am 99.2 percent irish and the 0.08 that's not irish is a sardinian, I assume, sailor or trader that snuck into a great-grandmother at some point.
Speaker 2:
I don't know the story because nobody has this story in my family, right, but I'm sitting there and my genetic evidence being what it is, and my grandmother still spoke with the, with the accent of the brogue. You know, my, my extended family's, boston, irish. Um, fun fact, one wing of the family. Uh, the guy was the first tavern in the colony of massachusetts and after that first or second winter where everyone died, he just went back to england and said f*ck it, or back to ireland. So there was one mayflower guy but he didn't last. Oh, that's funny. But uh, yeah, so, anyway, so, so Irish is kind of a thing in my family. It's simple and I'm like, hey, guys, we're all here. It's like a 500, 600 person game. But give it up for our New Zealander friends, our Kiwis. Everyone's like hey, wow, cool, give it up for the Brazilians. Yeah, wow, cool, give it up for the Irelanders is what I said.
Speaker 1:
And I'm like, oh man, I, I need to be excommunicated but uh, yeah, your uh family tree just like frowned upon you yes, that they squeeze it and cheddar comes out, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2:
But so, uh, jar is a member of a team called corsair and corsair and there's another group called core, which was a whole nother team, that kind of left, and they're this big conglomeration of guys who are all f*cking red. And when I have the privilege of going to other people's games and I fanboy over other producers Will Belknap, also known as Sax Lim, and Ben Trask, also known as Frowny, who has the most death metal voice, his speaking voice sounds like he's on a Testament album. You hear him across the field. Let's go. I can't even do it justice. It hurts me, but they're awesome people and their games were some of my absolute favorite Airsoft memories in all 24 years that I've been involved, and that shout out is also to try to get them to start doing games again.
Speaker 2:
But, anyway, a lot of those guys help us out on Red Team for several events a year. They're just absolutely phenomenal. Dude and Jar is a. You know you can see a very talented artist and that's where that came from.
Speaker 1:
For sure, man, that's awesome. Yeah, I would love to see that, uh, that time lapse. I mean, that's a cool story, though, that he, uh he cut his teeth on charcoal drawing with, uh, your photo.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, I mean, I had no idea that was going to happen. It was kind of right it was like I woke up the next day. I was at work, like hey, you see that video about you, like oh, no what, and uh yeah, but no, there's like sh*t.
Speaker 1:
I don't remember last night what happened no, there's.
Speaker 2:
Uh, I say I wish I had some materials prepared. I didn't really think ahead, um, but, like, like you showed the website earlier, all of our events have a patch. You click on those patch. It'll bring you to videos and pictures and storylines and scores from that event. Really, um, some of them rely on a website that is now down, the northeastern airsoft group. Um, we used to put all of our material on that, but I didn't own the rights to. Yeah, so if you click on ar, it's not going to work. Yeah, it's going to link to nesag, but, um, there wasn't a lot of pictures from that one.
Speaker 2:
There are some videos. Um yeah, I mean you got. We're at 54 events in 18 years or 19 years now whoa dude, yeah, that's impressive right, and I mean, like I said earlier, we don't land every plane, but we do put all the work. Yeah, oh. So every year we do a different version of our logo too.
Speaker 1:
I'm not getting the audio, but who does the uh hold on a second? Who does the um editing right here?
Speaker 2:
So we do. We. We work with a bunch of different people. The guy that did um videos for us for the last couple, like two or three years is um. Orange cat studios is his business, or ocs, um, samson f*ck on. Yeah, um, and he's a. So we have a lot because we're in the northeast. We have a lot of guys who graduated from norwich, both on irops, on our red team, and're in the Northeast. We have a lot of guys who graduated from Norwich, both on IROPS, on our red team and just in the community in general. Norwich has an airsoft unit, nuad, norwich University Airsoft Division. They're all fantastic guys. For a while we did bring in the what is their rival school in New York, the big military school that's around forever.
Speaker 1:
Oh, good lord, yeah right, it was TAPS. Wasn't TAPS filmed there?
Speaker 2:
Maybe it's not the Citadel. There's only so many military schools. It's in New York. This is embarrassing, we're going to find out, but they have a paintball tournament every year and they switched to Airsoft for a couple years. They used to send two or three squads up West Point. I don't know why that was so hard to remember.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, right, alright, let's see here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so NUAD and West Point used to come up, but NUAD still does Only extreme to an apostate. A new ad in West Point used to come up, but new ad still does.
Speaker 3:
It's only extreme to an apostate, a faithless person, a traitor to all that is good and true In this state, our brothers know, this to be true, all people will have a place and all places will have people. The place for the hypocrite, the infidel, the apostate will be the fire for no. On To the fire. Atlas to the fire, here to the fire, infidel, to the fire. Who is with me?
Speaker 2:
This has been Bro, so that either is the cringiest thing you've ever seen, or it goes hard and there's no middle.
Speaker 1:
I think it goes hard as f*ck bro, what so?
Speaker 2:
I wrote that speech, speech to text on my phone at a red light after.
Speaker 1:
Get out.
Speaker 2:
I was so mad at traffic that day. Oh, that is awesome. And that is Matt Coots, who's also a member of Corsair Okay, frequent Red Team guy. Also, they produce their own events. That were fantastic. So Matt and his brother, mike, are also former pro wrestlers oh what. And every once in a while, if they have the ability to throw each other in an arena, they will do it. Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:
So so they're already used to performing like that anyway. Yes, big, big performance.
Speaker 2:
I gave him that speech like two minutes before he filmed it. What? And he's like what are you f*cking doing to me right now, man? Oh, he did amazing, exactly, yeah, but still, he can sell anything. He's awesome. Oh, that's great. Like I said, dude, that Corsair group, they're all fantastic. So, yeah, sometimes we put our pictures in drives, sometimes they're on Facebook. Yeah, dude, that's good, that is cool. If you scroll down just a little bit. This is what I was talking about.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:
That's right. If you scroll down to the little bit more right there on the right, that is the patch wall on the door of my trailer under UV, because a lot of the stuff glows and everything okay. So about two-thirds, these are all teams, basically.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Teams and organizations. Until you get to our StagOps logos. There's three of them in the lower left. Everything from there down is events, so, like you'll see, a lot of the events glow in the dark and right right there over one, left one more down one.
Speaker 1:
That is actually the tattoo that I have I was gonna ask you about one of your tattoos.
Speaker 2:
Okay, None of them are simple. They're all just as overlappingly obnoxious or cool as all this stuff? What is this patch? That is, frank Kaminsky and his teammates made a patch of his face 2015 to 2016. He's totally alive. He's in the army now. Okay, okay yeah I don't know why they did it, it was just hilarious, and so every time I take a picture, my patch wall photoshop's always like do you want to tag this person?
Speaker 1:
I'm like right, it's recognizing its face. Yeah, it does. That's hilarious.
Speaker 2:
Yep, oh man, that's funny but yeah, that's a little bit of uv light I had in the in the show off. As you can see, the pictures before it are with the lights off and the patches still glow. So the Cross Swords one is 12 years old and still glows, really Yep.
Speaker 1:
That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:
One to its left, which obviously you really can't make a lot of detail. That was an angel and a devil wrestling, and one is green and one is tan. So, depending on who won that event, that's the person on top. Oh wow, actually, quite a few of our patches rotate. That's cool. For a while we were doing four ways, where two of the factions are players, two of the factions are role players, and so, depending on who you were, you would rotate the patch to have your faction on top.
Speaker 1:
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:
Dude would rotate the patch to have your faction on top. Okay, um, but dude, immersive man, we try, yeah, and you scroll down you can see the costumes. It's like, okay, you know it's in the mix, but at the same time you can tell that's not a player. But is that really authentic as a costume? Maybe, maybe not, you know. So we're trying.
Speaker 2:
Um, unfortunately, uh, we discovered too late in the process that if you want to go and do stuff like at GTI or Pantera or, in our case, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, you need special mobile event insurance. What were not doing those events by ourselves prior to COVID? Yeah, so after COVID, including companies who have Airsoft and paintball in their name are not writing new policies. So everybody who's doing that Nilsson West, ams, tca tier was doing it before COVID, and everyone who isn't or wasn't then either has to piggyback on a larger organization's insurance or can't do it. So we had an Island lined up on the off the coast of Massachusetts. Some guys did a one-off game there in 2013. It was. It was an awesome climate. The game was fair, but they were. They were new. They know what they're doing. But you know, sometimes location can over. I'm like what if we have that location and we bring our sauce right? And the owners of the island were 100% on board. They could not wait to do it. It's a major national organization that everyone's heard of I'm just not going to out them here but they needed us to co-sign them on our insurance and I'm like like, well, that's a funny thing, because we always partner with a venue that has insurance. Yeah, we don't have insurance for this activity. You're gonna drown in the middle that bay and it ain't gonna be on our bill. So, because we do have a fleet of boats side note, um, they're just little john boats, inflatables, but anyway. So, um, so we start, we start talking to all the the, the big names in the industry. We talked to their insurers and they're like, yeah, cool, uh, no, not happening. Um, we revenue, uh, a good amount over the year. It's still a hobby.
Speaker 2:
I don't do it full time, but yeah, um, it's immediately before COVID I thought about quitting my job, getting a part-time job at like a Rite Aid or whatever, and then doing this full-time. And I'm glad, because COVID was around the corner that I didn't. But at the same time, the potential to do so much more is there but we don't have that coverage and I believe it would be very upfront. I haven't talked to anyone in the last, in the last six months about it, but I mean all of 22 and 23 we were trying to get coverage. We had a hospital in maine, we had a former asylum slash campus in new hampshire, there was a castle slash racetrack in new hampshire and we had an island off the coast of massachusetts and all we needed to do was get someone that says if someone gets gets hurt, we'll cover you. No, we'll do it. Oh gosh, I'm sure that will change in time, but you know I'm working with what I got.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I don't. I don't understand the. I just don't understand that this concept with insurances, right, how it's changed over the years. Like, I have my own personal insurance, right, I sign a waiver when I go to your event. What, what? Where's the hang up? Okay, right, yeah, like I don't get it. Um, yeah, it just. I understand legal, but to me it doesn't make sense, man, I think it's BS, it's like you know, whatever. But yeah, somebody that fell down, tripped on a sidewalk in front of your house 20 years ago and sued you or whatever.
Speaker 2:
That was a real fear for people, our age.
Speaker 1:
You had to shovel that walkway immediately, absolutely, otherwise the bailiff might retire early on your case, I'm saying the judges that ruled on these cases. They did a disservice to humanity and to the legal world. They really did, yeah. So now everyone's living in fear. Now you can't go have fun, okay, cause you can't get insurance.
Speaker 2:
You can't drive a tank tread over someone's foot, it's no big deal, right? I mean, you have to. You have to be so. If you haven't spent a lot of time on the website, that's fine, and I'm not trying to. I mean, I'm trying to average over-advertise, but on the front page there's a slideshow of pictures from our events. They're on that stage.
Speaker 2:
If you scroll down, there's a one-minute advertisem*nt teaser video business card we made in 2019. And so that was before we lost that property that held the drivable roads. So we partnered with GMR Rovers Again, not the Green Mountain Rangers, but it's an importer of British military vehicles. They also airsoft. In fact, they have a whole British infantry-themed or mechanized infantry-themed team. So some years they've had six-wheeled armored personnel carriers, they've had the amphibious ones, they've had ferrets.
Speaker 2:
They've had for my favorite block of time, for like three years, they brought a saber tank, which is a three man reconnaissance tank, which actually has a tea kettle inside of it, because they don't go nowhere without the ability to make them and dude, you walk into an airsoft game and there's a f*cking tank. It's game changer. Yeah, so, like, not having access to some of these locations, yeah, um, is a huge liability when it comes to like convincing people. We're a real company and we do this. But, right, I would also point out that we don't advertise like, like this, this. Obviously, people will probably go to our site or they'll say this guy's obnoxious, what the f*ck I?
Speaker 2:
don't care we don't advertise like I'll put one or two things on Instagram a month. Yeah, everything's word of mouth. It's always been word of mouth, and when I, when? I lose the audience interest, that's when I know to quit, and uh, because it's to me, it's always been about building the experience and building a community. Right and I and I hate that influence culture makes building your community a marketing thing. But right, you know um Influence culture makes building your community a marketing thing, right, you know? I mean, yeah, it's not always.
Speaker 1:
I mean you're genuine.
Speaker 2:
You know, people know that Some do yeah, yeah, yeah true, some do, but again, you're always one or two steps from moving somebody and you don't know how they're going to take you, you know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's true, and it's just. It's the inverse too. I don't know everybody at these events. So, like 10 years ago. So I also wrote two articles every issue in Airsoft Insider Magazine from the start to the magazine went under. I want to be very clear about that. The magazine was the only profitable brand that Maple Gate Media had. The other magazines took it under with them and we would still have it today if it wasn't for the otherwise general collapse of the years of publishing. Yeah, airsoft insider magazine 2013 to 2017 uh, that was by jimmy bones. Uh, beckett, who plays there? He used to play airsoft. I don't think he does anymore. He's in real estate now, he's an adult. But uh, yeah, he made a magazine and I wrote at least two articles every really every issue.
Speaker 1:
Yep, how did you?
Speaker 2:
get. How did you meet? Oh, we've been playing games together since. Okay, we were both younger, you know, yeah, grew up in the same area and so, no, but because we could only there was only two or three fields in new england for many years. You had to go to the field. Yeah, there was um being in manchester. I could go a half hour east to rpc, a half hour west to field good farms. But you want to go to these big events that everyone was going to from New Jersey to Maine. That was all. Tallinn, massachusetts, yeah, and Connecticut has its own fields too, and they pull in from New York and you know upstate and you know southern New York.
Speaker 1:
So you guys wrote a game one day and he's like hey, I'm going to make a magazine, I want you to write.
Speaker 2:
Well, the Northeastern Airsoft Group. I was the admin of it. Yep, not just an admin. But the other reason that people thought I was a guru at some point is because I just took a very scientific approach to like oh, people think twos are the devil and two fives are going to save the world. Let's measure this with data Right. Can I hit this target how many times with this weapon, that weapon, that weapon, mind numbing, spreadsheet, bullsh*t then publish it. Of course, it proves that greater mass has greater accuracy. That's, I could have just led with that, but you know what I mean Like. And then, of course, now we're into like threes and three twos and all that.
Speaker 1:
I still play with two fives like an old person, the guy I was talking to, uh a few days ago or last week I guess, um, he, uh, he's a sniper and we were talking about he's shooting, you know 0.45s and yeah, I, I had a couple guys on uh from canada that their whole group is called elR Extreme Long Range for Airsoft.
Speaker 2:
Most of Canada is the planes, if you think about it.
Speaker 1:
Oh, yeah, dude, yeah, so they're shooting like they're trying to get as far as they can. They're talking about they only use like four fives and they're trying to get to five O's to shoot like a football field in their sniper rifles. You know accurately. So it's crazy, bro.
Speaker 2:
I feel like no, I mean, the 300 foot shot is not out of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1:
I mean no, not at all. But I mean with that heavy of a BB. You know that thing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, You're going to have some definite, some airflow behind that BB, you know that thing?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, they're going to have some airflow behind that. We had somebody come to an event a couple years back. Oh man, I painted myself in the corner. This is one of the stories you don't talk about in public. We just realized some real sniper limits. Somebody had an entry and exit wound. Whoa, not like through but around structures, I gotcha. They didn't know that the bb was still in them until like a week later.
Speaker 2:
Like, yeah, man, I guess it's. It's really, really obnoxious. What come in and went in the face and went down the neck, what? And when we interviewed the guy that shot and we interviewed the guy that was hit and we looked on the gps map, it was beyond a safe legal kill. And then in the conversation it turned out oh yeah, I've been using these new silicate PBs and I'm like what You're shooting? Holy sh*t, yeah, so we just don't do those anymore. That's wild. Okay, yeah, no one was at fault, but it's no. Yeah, it's one of those things where this is why we have insurance or something. I don't think anyone called down a policy or anything, but still, you never know.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that's crazy dude. Yeah, yeah, well, listen, it's been great talking with you, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I didn't realize how fast time flew, man. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
Doesn't it? I know, yeah, I mean two hours, two hours and 40 minutes.
Speaker 2:
I get up in about five and a half hours anyways.
Speaker 1:
You get up early, huh, yep, I'll be fine, you get on the road early.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I get on the road early and I get mad at traffic, and I just speak to text events.
Speaker 1:
I hear you.
Speaker 2:
It was great. It was great. Thank you for letting me vent for two hours. No absolutely man.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, give everybody you know, tell everybody where they can find all your stuff.
Speaker 2:
And okay, yeah, so stag opscom strategic tactical adventure gaming operationscom, stag opscom, and that is, we will do every event we do. We do about four or five events a year and the events will have a warning order. In the warning order will be your ticket link. The ticket link is never in there before eight weeks. It's never live before six. People are always like six months down the road. I want to buy tickets now. I'm like nah, and there's a reason for that. It goes down to we're building a community. I I happily welcome people from all over the globe, as we have. You know we haven't gotten anarchy yet, but you know people don't live there permanently. But the idea is we require more participation of you, the participant, rather than you as the audience member or you as the player.
Speaker 2:
You know so you are coming to us as a customer. We care about that, but the attitude of I'm a customer F, you entertain me does not work with us. You will have to do some homework, not a lot. So the warning order has all the information and the current data we have. We do update it time and time. Then we drop the tickets and then everyone gets an email to join a planning Discord and we hope for 100% participation. It doesn't happen, but we'll usually get like 70, 80%. Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:
Those 70, 80% guys almost never complain about the events. People who are like oh, I'm just here to shoot sh*t with my friends. Hey, I love that and I know that's why people go to games. Yeah, you might have a bad time and you might write an angry review about it for sure. Yeah, um, we do actually enforce our rules. So like.
Speaker 3:
We want everyone to know what they are in front in advance.
Speaker 2:
You know we will no refund to send you home if it's a problem, right, which we've only had to do a handful of times, I'm sure you know, because again, we're trying to get that message out, um, but the goal is fun, so it's. There's a lot of fun stuff on there. So there's absolutely all of our past events, um, where, where possible, player reviews of them, but that's again that website's down. Uh, pictures, videos, storyline, that kind of stuff. Um, we do have an apparel store, like everybody this age time, but it's all related to the events.
Speaker 2:
So like, if you know, whatever the event pad, this particular shirt is a staff only thing, but stuff like this, um by myself and other local artists, um, so I do a lot of the designs, but not all of them, and you'll see who does designs in the different stuff is about I don't know 200, 300 things in there over the years. So like what team you're on or what event you are, what fake country you you're in, you want a hoodie, you want a koozie, you want a yoga mat, it's all in there. Really, it's just there because some people want a souvenir, but I will tell you that most people don't. If you're looking to open an apparel store, I wouldn't do it as a source of income. It's just cool stuff you can have a tangible memory of. Upcoming events are worn orders. Past events are in there lore if you want to understand what the weird nerd sh*t we're talking about is yeah um stag opscom.
Speaker 2:
awesome man, I don't know I do my best selling products in my day job that I do selling. What do you sell? Truck and trailer parts actually.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
So I go to probably 12 to 15 different industries a day, or fleets within those industries. I might be talking to some guy that handles garbage trucks. I might be talking to the CEO of a grocery company and everything in between, so it keeps me flexible. Awesome.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's it, man. Thank you so much, gordon, it's really yeah, it was really nice meeting with you. I apologize for a couple nights ago, oh, yeah or no. Last week it was pretty hectic here. You can see, my background is still.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's been all blurry the whole time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's been all blurry because I'm still missing my wall. Yeah, it's been on blurry because I'm still missing my wall, so I'm going to do that this weekend and get my other wall finished, all this stuff back on this side, put back up and I usually have this whole get up, you know, with American flag back here and all kind of you know logo.
Speaker 2:
And so anyway, we're a year or two of logo. So anyway, we're in the year two of a six-week renovation. So this is the upstairs office. You can see a lot of its cat pictures and cat furniture and stuff, because my wife used to work in the office and she does cat rescue so they'd hang out with her when she worked. We have a gear room that rivals a locker for, like you know, a team. You go in there with a band rifle off the wall, uniform off the slide. You're gone in five minutes. Yeah, that's full of appliances and all the stuff that would normally live in the room that's being renovated so, yeah, this one, this one, uh, had to be done before this.
Speaker 1:
We had this big party planned for like three months. Okay, this for our granddaughter and our grandson, so our granddaughter, you do not look your age man.
Speaker 1:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, one of our granddaughters just turned six this past week and the other one, one of her younger brothers, turned one. Okay, so our grandson turned one, she turned six, so we had the big party here and, um, it was, uh, my wife's like when I ripped everything out of the house and then discovered a ton of water damage and a ton oh yeah, and black widows like everywhere. Yeah, bro, like yeah, as big as my thumb and black widows usually get are small.
Speaker 2:
No, they get mad.
Speaker 1:
The females are large, dude, these things were feasting. They were like there was ants everywhere, there was water damage, there was a black mold, black widows, like it was a. It was a nightmare. It was one of the and I I flipped houses for a few years and you know, whenever you do demo, you're always, you know, like, oh sh*t, okay, we found this and this went bad and this crumbled or whatever. But this was probably the biggest like clusterf*ck I've seen. Okay, I mean, I'm ripping out. Yeah, like when we got done ripping all the water-damaged walls out. I'm standing in my bedroom, me and my wife's master bedroom, in our bathroom. You could see out to the front yard. Inside and outside walls are gone. Okay, I ripped everything out because there was black mold everywhere. Sorry, go ahead. Oh no, it was huge, huge. Uh, you know, project Um just, and man, last week I was finishing up because this past Sunday was our big party. Oh, okay, so you?
Speaker 2:
already had it Wow.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we just had it. So this didn't get done, but everything else got done. So, uh, I had, uh I have some before and after pictures on my Instagram. I'm about to update it and put a new one in, because tomorrow our shower is getting installed. So we took out a bathtub and we redid the whole bathroom but we put in a walk-in shower, a big one, oh nice. So that's getting installed tomorrow. So once that's done, then I'm going to put a before and after picture of the bathroom, but there's some on the bedroom in there. But anyway, majority of the time I was working by myself and I'm old and out of shape and I have the tools and the supplies. But, dude, like I'm slow, Okay.
Speaker 2:
We're not doing this work. We brought people in. But the housing the housing market blew up during covid has never gone away up here because it's all factory towns, lots of factories. People are renovating these houses. They were eighty thousand dollar houses going for four hundred grand. Now it's wild. You just can't get contractors.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, we have a really good carpenter and he's been pulling people in, but we had someone walk out with a deposit. Yeah, it's a mess, but we'll live and eventually we'll have a finished basem*nt. Yeah, it was funny to say black widows. We I used to get product from a manufacturer in Atlanta and, uh, there are break drums for for trailers and, um, they would come in occasionally to and there are brake drums for trailers. They would come in occasionally to New Hampshire with a black widow in them.
Speaker 2:
In New Hampshire you have to capture them, freeze them and submit them to the state. Excuse me, since it's a dangerous animal, you can't let it be in the ecosystem. sh*t, it's also a dangerous animal. You can't just smash it, because if you smash it and it had an egg sack in it, it will still spread out. So it's like this is a dangerous creature that we have to then f*cking trap. Oh, these things are quick too, bro. Yeah, and they are not happy and they bite for the fun of it. Yeah, so we would capture them in these plastic containers and put them in the fridge at work on a Friday and you come in Monday and they're just tapping on the glass like really pissed off. You're like why won't you die? Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:
That's insane.
Speaker 2:
Anecdote, but I don't want to keep you all night at this point, man.
Speaker 1:
No, that's cool man. Yeah, it's great talking with you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
I hope you guys have a good night. Yeah, you too, brother. Yeah, everyone listen. Go to stagopscom and check out all this stuff. Man, it's cool.
Speaker 2:
We are on Instagram, we are on Facebook, of course, we do have our own YouTube now, but it's only the last couple events. But if you go to our website and you want other events all the other people who ever filmed for us those videos are linked in the event as well.
Speaker 1:
So Dude, yeah, your website's set up really good. I like that Well. Thank you, I just got through this together.
Speaker 2:
Squarespace does all the hard work, you know. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, really enjoyable talking with you, man. Thank you so much, matty Mo no-transcript.
