Spoiler alert, this year was pretty shit. I barely feel qualified to call myself an airsofter anymore, certainly I’ve spent more Sundays at home being bossed around than I’d care to admit to.

I’d usually have a great deal of event stuff to talk about, certainly a few more pictures of me actually playing. But 2020 went downhill rapidly from around march time, and between march and now, I’ve played 3 games… All woodland and all at the same site. Not really much to report there.

But its not been a complete right off, I’ve managed to spend more time exploring the great outdoors in my local area, every trip out the house has been somewhat of an adventure and overall, I’ve spent a lot more time with my wife (and she’s still not fed up with me… Yet).

Let’s start with the positives…

Right, with that out the way… Let’s look at the other shit.

It’s been a year of social media airsoft for the vast majority for us, with the topic of conversation going from “wat am best gnu?” To “Why pay to subscribe to an Airsoft OnlyFans account when PornHub is free and actually has something worth watching?”

Two trade bodies have decided to appoint themselves as the saviour of airsoft, which is understandable when you think about how divisive the community is, what makes more sense than two rival trade bodies?

So what did we airsofters do? We bought shit. We bought shit we really don’t need, and we bought lots of it.

I’ve spoken to a few businesses within the tactical gear and airsoft sectors and they’ve all had several busier than normal periods. Obviously there have been certain things that haven’t sold quite as well, ammo and gas sales were mostly down overall, but gun sales? Wow, we bought as lot of guns.

Sites have obviously not had such a great time of it, with a couple of sites having to permanently close their doors and a lot of others hanging on by a thin thread. But there is a (fucking warped) silver lining to a financial downturn… and theres no way of saying this without sounding like a heartless cunt, but you might end up playing airsoft this summer in the same place you bought this years Christmas pressies.

Empty buildings means more potential CQB sites in the next few years… The Mall is a case in point of this, in-town retail shopping centres are becoming a thing of the past, they lose customers to online shopping or out of town destination estates, they eventually become derelict for a couple of years whilst the price drops and then the land is bought for development. This process is happening across the country and whilst its fucking grim and eventually you’ll have to buy EVERYTHING from amazon, you’ll be able to play airsoft in your town centre! Fucking wicked!

The flip side to this is that if we don’t start being sensible about the future, you wont have a fucking car or a house… So… all a bit irrelevant really.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, we’ve got Brexit to look forward to in the U.K. and although we do have a trade deal with japan, because I wasn’t involved in the trade talks, Tokyo Marui wasn’t even mentioned… A bit of an oversight really.

There hasn’t been much in the way of major news over the last 12 months, GBLS have released a vaguely 416 shaped DAS replica for the price of a half decent second hand car…

HAO have gone full retard on their MWS body kit line up, releasing questionable models like the french 416 but somehow not understanding that a Sig MCX or a carry handle M4 body kit would be an instant sell out and a fucking slap in the face to their competitors who all seem hellbent on keeping a close eye on what HAO are developing next…

Another year without that Tokyo Marui NGRS MP5, by now it’s become such a joke that even if they did release it, I wouldn’t believe it until it was in my hands.

So, I’ve kinda run out of material to write about on this… uncharacteristic of the guy who brought you a 6 thousand word review earlier this year, but hey… this year hasn’t given me much material to work with. A lot of gear got little use, some got zero… Although I did put my NODs to use, taking photos of the worlds fattest hedgehog on my drive.

Besides the occasional garden shoot and the near constant baking, I did manage to review some cool products. The Unity Tactical FAST micro mounts, the T.Rex Arms Sling and of course, the Tokyo Marui Mk46 Mod 0. The blog has also grown exponentially this year, big numbers from the U.K. and US, obviously. But a fair amount of growth in Europe and further afield, my target for the year has been well and truly smashed, when you’ve got nothing else to do, reading a 4K word rant about clickbait suddenly seems appealing.

The biggest moment though? Interviewing Mark Semos (Executive producer of SEAL Team and former SEAL) has to be my personal favourite.

So, next year? Well I’ve still got a pile of stuff to write about…. there’s kit sat here long overdue a review, theres always new stuff coming out (Tokyo Marui GBB AKM and Sig p320) and if all else fails, I’ll just start reviewing Airsofter OnlyFans accounts so that you can make an informed decision on your questionable mastubatory material.