In marked contrast to 2020, 2021 was actually a pretty good year for the UK Nerf scene. Granted, indoor lower energy games only started to come back in the later quarter but our nascent higher energy scene was able to thrive. Outdoor settings are inherently safer for COVID than indoors ones on account of aerosols being blown away by the wind so Foam Flinging Skirmish and Games of Foam were able to provide me with a near monthly diet of games to up my game at.
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Winter DPM Equipment at a chilly November Splatoon
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The net result is that my high velocity load out is a great deal more bulked out and refined than it was at the start of the year. Key developments include the full expansion to 27 Talon magazines in the ready state, further refinement of the Skirmish Belt concept to allow me a versatile engagement order for shorter rounds and the addition of the Tempus dual stage which should give me a theoretical reach somewhere around 220FPS.
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Reloading under fire and smoke during a sunny Invicta Battlegrounds in September
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I feel this puts the hobby at an important departure point overall. What started as playing with souped up kids' toys is rapidly turning into it's own adult orientated skirmish sport. I've alluded to this in previous posts but the breathing space given to the scene by COVID removing the lower energy games for a bit has begun to build a critical mass. Various Game Organisers (GOs) I speak to agree that adults are starting to take notice and want to attend only the high energy stuff so as to have a play space away from younger players.
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"Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?" - With enough WP40s? Yes...
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That's not to say that Nerf as a hobby won't continue to have a large player base that is youth engagement orientated. A lot of our GOs are youth workers, teachers and folks used to working with young people. It's an area of the hobby will always be larger and more dynamic in it's turnover than it's higher energy counterpart. I am a proud Foam Fest organiser and we've always had the mantra of ensuring that we use Nerf to promote exercise for kids that might not engage with traditional sports. The hobby offers young people the option to engage with the best bits of sport in a style of their choosing: leadership, team work, problem solving and more. For my part, as a masculine presenting presence, it's also important that our GOs and older players present positive masculine role models for younger people that seek them. Good sporting conduct goes beyond just taking tags, it can help shape outlook for those that are new to the hobby or look up to us. Being back in the field after a long break in 2021 really reminded me of the potential of the hobby for this and more.
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Assaulting a fort under a smoke barrage, one of my fav shots from 2021
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For higher energy games, we'll see adults of all ages begin to form cohesive communities and it falls to all of to create the community we want to see. We are early enough in the creation of this thing that there are a lot of us that can shape that future. We often joke about Airsoft's toxicity and attitude but we have to take the hard steps to make our own spaces inclusive and welcoming to new players and those seeking to try it out. It's not easy, it takes real work but I'm proud of my fellow players over the past year. We've seen the best of the community as the game has come back together. From new players turning up with nothing and being lent piles of kit to folks grabbing people's magazines and filling them to get them in the game to just simple lifts from rail heads to sites, it's the little things that matter. At the end of the day, we play with heavily modified or derived toys and if you can't sit down and laugh at yourself and the silly hobby that brings so many of us so much joy then you're not doing it right.
Life will mean the hobby taking a little of a back seat over the next couple of years. I've got my training starting very soon. My ability to attend events will be limited by money and resources. However, I still have the machine and I will still need hobby time to use my hands when my brain and heart are occupied by the day job and study. I've got big plans for a combat jacket of some sort to replace the 18 pattern and maybe come 2024, I'll be back on scene and painting with smoke again. Here's to 2022 and whatever it brings...
