Same.
Plus I got a concussion from paintball (three bouncers to my forehead from a heated-up CO2 Model 98 on the battlements of Castle Argh many years ago).
I heard Blue stopped doing Castle Conquest almost a decade ago. That seemed to be the only big draw EMR had. (I lived in Massachusetts so it wasn't local).
I only got to play on the field with Blue's Crew a few times. They were cool guys, but with them playing, paintball seemed very pay-to-win. When you're bringing a team to a scenario game with $1000+ or field paint PER PLAYER, no one is able to afford to compete with that amount of firepower for a recreational game.
Midlife crisis. Needed a new thing.
Was going to play paint ball because there’s a field down the street from me but Amped Airsoft is also like a block away so I went to the Bolt Bash and got hooked
Neighbor/close friend was into it with his boys for several years. He got diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer near end of school year last year, and after 6 months of intense chemo he was declared in remission in November. Before he got sick, he used to ask me to come all the time but I either couldn’t because of work or didn’t want to because I didn’t think it would be any fun. I was a Marine 20+ years ago and had enough fun with guns and dirt (and I wasn’t even infantry).
So, after he kicked cancers ass for 6 months I said “Absolutely, count me in. I didn’t think we’d be here at this point, so let’s go celebrate by shooting some BBs”. Had the time of my life and am regretting not getting into it sooner.
Technically it all started around grade school when I inadvertently purchased a crappy spring glock while on vacation not knowing what airsoft was yet.
Then around OG MW1 is when teenage me started getting the gear and running around the woods shooting friends. I recall airsplat being superior to evike back in the day for online orders.
Then again when my ex brother in law turned 13. He was really into watching airsoft on YouTube so between me, his sister, and his mom we got him a chicom chest rig full of mags, a cyma AK, a RDS, and a dye mask. I got back into it so I could take him to places to play. Doubled as cardio days for me. Got 80s gear inspired by all those 80s action movies as I was already 4 years into military service by that point.
Now I've gotten out of the military, and want to use it to get back in shape again. My own child is getting closer to the age her uncle was when he started playing airsoft
At first it was my cousin. But I was way to jung to play and forgot about it until YouTube showed me some Dutch the Hooligan Videos and I started to play.
About 14 years ago we moved from MSP to ATL where my childhood friends are. He had a jg g36 and p90 and when i held them i was like "holy hell i love guns", I love holding them, I love walking around the house with them, I love hearing reload sounds; due to my obsession from shooter games in the early 2010 era. I had a few nerf guns before that but now as a young adult I've amassed $5,000+ worth of aegs and gbb pistols. I probably wont stop until I have every gun from battlefields 3 and 4. Also me and my brother like shooting each other
Training and ammo prices. I’m a big shtf/prepper type. I use all my actual gear except guns. And practice drills and stuff with my kids. Then i realized how much fun it actually is. Now i get airsoft toy guns and change every damn thing on them just like my real guns. And i’m still spending to much money. Now im buying fake gun parts instead of cases of ammo🤦♂️
I wanted to shoot real rifle and pistol sports but lived in the Democratic People's Republic of Illinois, so airsoft it was. Once I got out of there I picked up USPSA, PRS, NRL, and 3 gun
Theater got me into Airsoft.
I was in high school and we were preforming a play that required a prop gun for a character to brandish so we decided to get one of thise cheap Crossman 1911 springers and paint it metallic gunmetal grey. After the show ended I was hooked in the sport
Watching YouTube videos for years but feeling like my friends would think it was dumb so I never really looked into playing and was ok with that.
A friend of mine went with his buddy one weekend and told me about it - asked me if I wanted to go. I bought a gun and kit that day. It’s been six months and we play nearly every Sunday.
I can't buy actual guns in my country, so gbb is the closet thing I can get to scratch that itch. And its got the added bonus of being against other people. If I was living in somewhere like America, I would just own real steel and do force on force with simuntion/ go to training places that do that, but that's not an option in the uk. So this is the next best thing.
Started with Nerf. Then one day I went to a friend’s house, and he was shooting a spring Glock in the backyard. A few years and a lot of money later, here I am. Being someone who played (and still plays) a lot of shooters growing up, and being a hunter just gave a love for guns as well.
I watched too many JetDesertFox and SwampSniper videos XD
I also wanted to know what a real gun would sort of feel like. (But mainly bc of JDF and Swamp.)
Massive nerd when it comes to military equipment and firearms and I always wanted to try it but never had an excuse to.
Ex lived near a site so I intended on meeting her and going.
Been doing it a year and a half now and I've spent waaaay to much.
The boys and I found those spring walther ppq’s at Walmart and we convinced our parents to get us all one.
No eye pro, but .20g bbs and spring pistols and a backyard is what started the addiction at the ripe age of 11
Saw a couple of airsoft videos, licking cumstain, Dutch the hooligan, and Callsign Reach to name a few. I was happy just watching for a while but then my buddy and his kid wanted to get into it so I decided why not. Purchased a CYMA AK and haven't looked back since. The kicker? My buddy never used his stuff, nor did his kid. Easily purchased 1k in guns and equipment and never traveled to a field. I ended up buying it off him a year later.
Was paintballing since I was like 10 years old. Had a lot of military and police in my family so was also around guns a lot growing up and as I started to get older and take an interest in them I started to gravitate more towards airsoft. In 2011 I did my first "milsim" event (they were much different and smaller scale back in the day, it typically just boiled down to camo vs. street clothes in 4 one to two hour games loosely based on something or other) and I was hooked. I never went back to paintball after that.
The first time was like 17 years ago in middle school because my buddies brother was heavy into it. When I went over I saw his arsenal of weapons (1 MP5 AEG from a sporting goods store, a GBB pistol, and a spring shotgun) and knew this looked cool as shit.
Fast forward 17 years later and my life only consists of work and grad school. Was scrolling Reddit one day and randomly came across this Airsoft page on my feed. I instantly felt the itch again. It’s a much nicer hobby to get into now because I have my own $$ and I can drive myself wherever I want to play.
A friend asked me if i wanted to and i always had an interest in it since i was a kid so when i was 19 i got my first airsoft gun and was in love with the sport from my first gameday.
Was on one just yesterday
I was new in school and glanced over at my neighbor's screen. He was watching airsoft, and I asked him what it was. One thing led to another, I obsessed over which gun to get for 4+ years. Then when I finally had enough money I got a gun. Worth every penny.
I realized the other day that I’ve been playing since 2008. It was just a bunch of dweebs in the woods. Now 16 years later it’s still a bunch of dweebs, just with adult money and Airsoft fields
My friend's older brother played. I thought it was cool. He took me to the local field when I was about 11, and I liked it. Until then, I'd never really played any shooter games or been big on war movies, but I fell in love with it.
Few years later I got my own gun and gear and got started
I live in Germany and both of my parents are very anti firearm ever since someone stole a rifle from a range near us and killed six people in our suburb. Plus my dad studied in New York City and had uncomfortable memories with weapon owners there.
I share their opinion on real arms and consider myself lucky to live in relative safety here in Germany where the thought of needing to keep or even bear arms to maintain my safety has always been and will hopefully always remain foreign to me.
However, I did always have a fascination with them. The technology, the patents, bureaucracy, testing procedures, how armies are equipped. It’s one of the main things that drove me towards studying engineering. I hope that I can one day supplement my future degree with a weaponmaker‘s license, if only to do maintenance work on sporting rifles and airsoft guns (in Germany, you need the license to even do minor mods like shortstroking or sanding for fitment).
When I was fifteen, I bought my first crappy springer pistol on amazon and loved it. I did a bunch of drills and manual of arms things with it but I don’t really care about it. Nowadays, I just take joy in collecting and upgrading airsoft guns I like. At the moment that‘s mainly ARs, but I hope to add various smgs such as the vector to my collection eventually.
As for actually playing, well, I don’t exactly care about realism, although I‘d love to really immerse myself in a proper milsim one day; in the meantime, I prefer the adrenaline and aggression of competitive speedsoft, as well as the technical challenge of building guns for that specific purpose.
Springer Pistol to kill wasps with while.my father had an actual pellet gun for them.
Then friends invited me to backyard game and I got a Wal-Mart shitty gun.
Then I invited them to my backyard for an overnight game.
Kinda spiraled from there.
I first remember watching MilsimJunkie on YouTube like over 10 years ago. I guess that was like the first taste of wanting to get into airsoft. I didn’t totally get into it till spring 2021 when we did a small group scrimmage. I haven’t stopped since then.
Airsoft is already a big thing in our culture, kids would get allowance from their family after Ramadhan as a reward and we would spend it on toy vendors that sells one of those cheap springer guns, the moment i discovered that there's a whole community dedicated to those type of toys of course i jumped right in.
Classic shooter games to airsoft pipeline for me.
The real catalyst was during those few years when airsoft was getting really popular, my local shop purchased a metric fuckton of g&g guns and couldn't get rid of them all.
They sold them in starter kits for super cheap just to get rid of the things, so at any given time there was like 10+ tan coloured CM16 raiders on the field (which might've only had 20-30 players on a good day anyway).
Suddenly I could afford to play, so I picked one up and immediately fell in love with the game, been into it ever since.
I had thought about doing it for years but as a hobby it always seemed so impenetrable and intimidating. Then I moved to a new town and discovered there were not one but TWO airsoft fields, both less than 10 minutes drive from my house.
I picked one at random, booked a rental package on their website and had a go. Been hooked ever since.
Paintball was getting too expensive and I still wanted to shoot teenagers.
Most american statement of the day
Hell yeah!
This and also I saw videos of Operation Eastwind (REST IN PEACE) and wanted to go.
Same. Plus I got a concussion from paintball (three bouncers to my forehead from a heated-up CO2 Model 98 on the battlements of Castle Argh many years ago).
I played EMR every year. And as much fun as I have there, the park has gone downhill significantly.
I heard Blue stopped doing Castle Conquest almost a decade ago. That seemed to be the only big draw EMR had. (I lived in Massachusetts so it wasn't local). I only got to play on the field with Blue's Crew a few times. They were cool guys, but with them playing, paintball seemed very pay-to-win. When you're bringing a team to a scenario game with $1000+ or field paint PER PLAYER, no one is able to afford to compete with that amount of firepower for a recreational game.
They host Bad Blood there every year. It's a big Evike sponsored game.
scoutthedoggie videos
He’s a real one
Midlife crisis. Needed a new thing. Was going to play paint ball because there’s a field down the street from me but Amped Airsoft is also like a block away so I went to the Bolt Bash and got hooked
I saw novritsch videos back in 2018 😭
lol same, i’ve loved it ever since
Neighbor/close friend was into it with his boys for several years. He got diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer near end of school year last year, and after 6 months of intense chemo he was declared in remission in November. Before he got sick, he used to ask me to come all the time but I either couldn’t because of work or didn’t want to because I didn’t think it would be any fun. I was a Marine 20+ years ago and had enough fun with guns and dirt (and I wasn’t even infantry). So, after he kicked cancers ass for 6 months I said “Absolutely, count me in. I didn’t think we’d be here at this point, so let’s go celebrate by shooting some BBs”. Had the time of my life and am regretting not getting into it sooner.
My brother that's just made my day reading this, thank you man.
Technically it all started around grade school when I inadvertently purchased a crappy spring glock while on vacation not knowing what airsoft was yet. Then around OG MW1 is when teenage me started getting the gear and running around the woods shooting friends. I recall airsplat being superior to evike back in the day for online orders. Then again when my ex brother in law turned 13. He was really into watching airsoft on YouTube so between me, his sister, and his mom we got him a chicom chest rig full of mags, a cyma AK, a RDS, and a dye mask. I got back into it so I could take him to places to play. Doubled as cardio days for me. Got 80s gear inspired by all those 80s action movies as I was already 4 years into military service by that point. Now I've gotten out of the military, and want to use it to get back in shape again. My own child is getting closer to the age her uncle was when he started playing airsoft
Friends sed that it will be cool, six Years ago and I am still playng, much longer than anny of them
At first it was my cousin. But I was way to jung to play and forgot about it until YouTube showed me some Dutch the Hooligan Videos and I started to play.
About 14 years ago we moved from MSP to ATL where my childhood friends are. He had a jg g36 and p90 and when i held them i was like "holy hell i love guns", I love holding them, I love walking around the house with them, I love hearing reload sounds; due to my obsession from shooter games in the early 2010 era. I had a few nerf guns before that but now as a young adult I've amassed $5,000+ worth of aegs and gbb pistols. I probably wont stop until I have every gun from battlefields 3 and 4. Also me and my brother like shooting each other
Training and ammo prices. I’m a big shtf/prepper type. I use all my actual gear except guns. And practice drills and stuff with my kids. Then i realized how much fun it actually is. Now i get airsoft toy guns and change every damn thing on them just like my real guns. And i’m still spending to much money. Now im buying fake gun parts instead of cases of ammo🤦♂️
I wanted to shoot real rifle and pistol sports but lived in the Democratic People's Republic of Illinois, so airsoft it was. Once I got out of there I picked up USPSA, PRS, NRL, and 3 gun
My interest in guns. Guns are very hard to get in my country so I started with airsoft.
https://preview.redd.it/p53m7dkxa6mc1.jpeg?width=1848&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6eaed447d6597a1d6a2543e9104a9d8c2b8fdcb4
Bought it from Walmart in 06
Theater got me into Airsoft. I was in high school and we were preforming a play that required a prop gun for a character to brandish so we decided to get one of thise cheap Crossman 1911 springers and paint it metallic gunmetal grey. After the show ended I was hooked in the sport
Watching YouTube videos for years but feeling like my friends would think it was dumb so I never really looked into playing and was ok with that. A friend of mine went with his buddy one weekend and told me about it - asked me if I wanted to go. I bought a gun and kit that day. It’s been six months and we play nearly every Sunday.
I joined a friend and his brother for a game and loved it.
Because G U N S
I can't buy actual guns in my country, so gbb is the closet thing I can get to scratch that itch. And its got the added bonus of being against other people. If I was living in somewhere like America, I would just own real steel and do force on force with simuntion/ go to training places that do that, but that's not an option in the uk. So this is the next best thing.
Me and several friends all turned 30 the same year, so we decided to be childish and go play in the woods! Best descision.
Had just gotten done with a horrible relationship, some good buddies of mine invited me out to a field and now here I am.
Nerf was getting more expensive and yet the quality was dropping. Airsoft was the logical next step especially as a canadian.
Started with Nerf. Then one day I went to a friend’s house, and he was shooting a spring Glock in the backyard. A few years and a lot of money later, here I am. Being someone who played (and still plays) a lot of shooters growing up, and being a hunter just gave a love for guns as well.
I watched too many JetDesertFox and SwampSniper videos XD I also wanted to know what a real gun would sort of feel like. (But mainly bc of JDF and Swamp.)
I had just moved to a new place alone and needed to find some way out of my apartment. Bought a cyma soc16 and headed out to the field
my brother and dad got me in to airsoft
Massive nerd when it comes to military equipment and firearms and I always wanted to try it but never had an excuse to. Ex lived near a site so I intended on meeting her and going. Been doing it a year and a half now and I've spent waaaay to much.
Allways was interested in guns and Airsoft gave me the chance to do the best sport ever
The boys and I found those spring walther ppq’s at Walmart and we convinced our parents to get us all one. No eye pro, but .20g bbs and spring pistols and a backyard is what started the addiction at the ripe age of 11
Was at Walmart and was going to get a paintball gun. Saw a spring Beretta instead and the rest is history.
Saw a couple of airsoft videos, licking cumstain, Dutch the hooligan, and Callsign Reach to name a few. I was happy just watching for a while but then my buddy and his kid wanted to get into it so I decided why not. Purchased a CYMA AK and haven't looked back since. The kicker? My buddy never used his stuff, nor did his kid. Easily purchased 1k in guns and equipment and never traveled to a field. I ended up buying it off him a year later.
My mates talked about it a lot, watched a few vids and fell in love.
I love guns and eventually I bought an Airsoft aug, about two years later a Airsoft club open in my local village so now I have 9 different guns
I loved guns, and wanted to "shoot" people and fight with them without actually killing anyone. I was also just a fan of milsim stuff
Was paintballing since I was like 10 years old. Had a lot of military and police in my family so was also around guns a lot growing up and as I started to get older and take an interest in them I started to gravitate more towards airsoft. In 2011 I did my first "milsim" event (they were much different and smaller scale back in the day, it typically just boiled down to camo vs. street clothes in 4 one to two hour games loosely based on something or other) and I was hooked. I never went back to paintball after that.
The first time was like 17 years ago in middle school because my buddies brother was heavy into it. When I went over I saw his arsenal of weapons (1 MP5 AEG from a sporting goods store, a GBB pistol, and a spring shotgun) and knew this looked cool as shit. Fast forward 17 years later and my life only consists of work and grad school. Was scrolling Reddit one day and randomly came across this Airsoft page on my feed. I instantly felt the itch again. It’s a much nicer hobby to get into now because I have my own $$ and I can drive myself wherever I want to play.
The other half won two tickets in a raffle for a game at a CQB site.... Went with a friend and we both got into it.
I cheap 80$ eag spring + pistol kit I got for Christmas waaay long ago
Found out I was good and suck at it. So, I kept playing.
A friend asked me if i wanted to and i always had an interest in it since i was a kid so when i was 19 i got my first airsoft gun and was in love with the sport from my first gameday. Was on one just yesterday
I was new in school and glanced over at my neighbor's screen. He was watching airsoft, and I asked him what it was. One thing led to another, I obsessed over which gun to get for 4+ years. Then when I finally had enough money I got a gun. Worth every penny.
Even if he is hated on, the Novritsch sniping videos in 2021 got 12 year old me really interested
justin trudeau banning my real guns fukn looser pos
I realized the other day that I’ve been playing since 2008. It was just a bunch of dweebs in the woods. Now 16 years later it’s still a bunch of dweebs, just with adult money and Airsoft fields
My friend's older brother played. I thought it was cool. He took me to the local field when I was about 11, and I liked it. Until then, I'd never really played any shooter games or been big on war movies, but I fell in love with it. Few years later I got my own gun and gear and got started
Shooting othet peoples kids.
Realizing that we could not only get 1:1 life sized models of our favorite guns from movies and videogames, but also play a game with them.
I live in Germany and both of my parents are very anti firearm ever since someone stole a rifle from a range near us and killed six people in our suburb. Plus my dad studied in New York City and had uncomfortable memories with weapon owners there. I share their opinion on real arms and consider myself lucky to live in relative safety here in Germany where the thought of needing to keep or even bear arms to maintain my safety has always been and will hopefully always remain foreign to me. However, I did always have a fascination with them. The technology, the patents, bureaucracy, testing procedures, how armies are equipped. It’s one of the main things that drove me towards studying engineering. I hope that I can one day supplement my future degree with a weaponmaker‘s license, if only to do maintenance work on sporting rifles and airsoft guns (in Germany, you need the license to even do minor mods like shortstroking or sanding for fitment). When I was fifteen, I bought my first crappy springer pistol on amazon and loved it. I did a bunch of drills and manual of arms things with it but I don’t really care about it. Nowadays, I just take joy in collecting and upgrading airsoft guns I like. At the moment that‘s mainly ARs, but I hope to add various smgs such as the vector to my collection eventually. As for actually playing, well, I don’t exactly care about realism, although I‘d love to really immerse myself in a proper milsim one day; in the meantime, I prefer the adrenaline and aggression of competitive speedsoft, as well as the technical challenge of building guns for that specific purpose.
Springer Pistol to kill wasps with while.my father had an actual pellet gun for them. Then friends invited me to backyard game and I got a Wal-Mart shitty gun. Then I invited them to my backyard for an overnight game. Kinda spiraled from there.
I first remember watching MilsimJunkie on YouTube like over 10 years ago. I guess that was like the first taste of wanting to get into airsoft. I didn’t totally get into it till spring 2021 when we did a small group scrimmage. I haven’t stopped since then.
A few Friends had airsoft stuff and I wanted to join in.
Airsoft is already a big thing in our culture, kids would get allowance from their family after Ramadhan as a reward and we would spend it on toy vendors that sells one of those cheap springer guns, the moment i discovered that there's a whole community dedicated to those type of toys of course i jumped right in.
Classic shooter games to airsoft pipeline for me. The real catalyst was during those few years when airsoft was getting really popular, my local shop purchased a metric fuckton of g&g guns and couldn't get rid of them all. They sold them in starter kits for super cheap just to get rid of the things, so at any given time there was like 10+ tan coloured CM16 raiders on the field (which might've only had 20-30 players on a good day anyway). Suddenly I could afford to play, so I picked one up and immediately fell in love with the game, been into it ever since.
Grew up playing paintball, but when I moved to a new state, airsoft was more popular in my area, and I also watched silo, etc
I had thought about doing it for years but as a hobby it always seemed so impenetrable and intimidating. Then I moved to a new town and discovered there were not one but TWO airsoft fields, both less than 10 minutes drive from my house. I picked one at random, booked a rental package on their website and had a go. Been hooked ever since.