November 7 2020

Airsoft in Poland!

teamblacksheep Airsoft 1 min read, airsoft blog, Airsoft in Poland, airsoft news, Poland Airsoft, Poland ASGARD, team blacksheep 762, team blacksheep airsoft 0

Poland is a 38 million nation located in the center of Europe. We are a young democracy that was over USRR influence over 40 years, due that we have developed some strange behaviors and manners that translate to airsoft. Why the title? As airsoft in Poland is a rather young hobby that I’m involved practically from the beginning it already has its own unique style that sometimes is hard to understand for people from other countries. Airsoft isn’t regulated here by law by any means – there is no law that would regulate the usage, sales, import, export, power of airsoft replicas of all kinds. There is only one small regulation that all airguns over 17J have to be registered with the Police – if somebody will be persistent he can go ahead and pull an airsoft replica to an airgun category, but we all know that 17J is just not possible. This made Poland a great country to play airsoft as the community isn’t really prohibited in any way to conduct our hobby. We play in forests, in abandoned factories, military bases etc. The Possibilities are endless – real promised land, right? No…

The sad reality is that the lack of any regulations made our community very lazy. Sometime ago there was a place where practically all of the community could hang out and exchange knowledge. WMASG.com was a portal only for airsoft players, but sadly it was handled in a bad way, the people were very hostile to new players and with increased reach of Social Media, Facebook in particular, WMASG died off. Now it’s a ghost of its former self – but when it worked… Golden times of Polish airsoft were for me sometime about 2006-2010 where there were many local events that could gather at least 150-200 people at the same time. With the team that I was a part of then, we traveled almost the whole country playing in many events where the head count was about 500-800 people. But something broke… The airsoft community with lack of direction and guidance from a “power above” drifted apart where people got stuck behind a huge communication wall that was Facebook. People start to play in their own “backyards” with their own set of rules. WMASG had something that was called “ASG Law” that was a set of guide rules for players and event organizers, but very fast it became very outdated. The years about 2015 till 2018 were the dark ages of airsoft in Poland where getting 20 people to a small local event was a success. Players were just tired and we thought that airsoft would die in Poland but something changed – I call it the change of power. The old “forest farts” as we call them, people around 35-40 years old, that could accept the young generation, just left – probably with the changes in the Polish law regarding owning firearms that made it more accessible. The younger generation started to organize events – with this came introduction of typical skirmishes, simple CTF and event speedsoft events.

Now we have 2021 and it’s getting really, really better.

In the background of that all there were two powers growing that would dominate the airsoft market in Europe. In Poland we have one of the biggest stores in Europe, in fact, we have two of them.

First one is located in Wrocław – Gunfire.com

Started from a small barback grown to a huge store with its own warehouse. With a very aggressive marketing and sales politi they dominated the market in a very “blitzkrieg” type of way. You can hate them, you can love them – but they are huge. In their offer you will find good brands like E&L, LCT, EMG and also some mid range OEMs – in fact their offer is so huge that I would take an hour to just spill this out – go and check them out.

The second one is from Krakow – Taiwagun.com

They started with dealing premium brands like Classic Army but suddenly about 2005 they switched to A&K and other chinese brands. From this point they build up their strength based on a huge, very good thought offer – I like very much browsing them as I always find what I need.

Both of the stores had their ups and downs and also some controversy – but the fact they are able to function here is amazing.

You want to visit Poland and play airsoft? Sure thing – we have also two great events.

Misja Afganistan – Mission Afghanistan – 100 players, advance LARP type game. Praised by the players for its extremely fun game play. For two days you have Afgan viligaies, market places, borders, borders partrols, ISAF units, bases, vehicles – the only thing lacking is a working and flying helicopter – then it would be perfect.

ASGARD – not a milsim, not a skirmish. It’s something in the middle, about 24h of non-stop game play with vehicles, a very dynamic experience far, far different then on the MA. The focus here is put on action.

https://asgard.events/

A small movie from ASGARD on Navvy Hippo’s Instagram

Ok, but… so there are no law regulations regarding airsoft in Poland so what are the FPS limits in Poland? This is a hard topic as every community, depending on the city, on the region, has their own set of FPS limits. So, there are small CQB events that you can play with a 400 FPS, but currently with the bigger events showing the way and starting to measure in Joules the situation is getting more… normal you can say? Typically what you can see on events are limits as flows: CQB – 300-350 FPS Assault – up to 450 FPS Support weapon – 500 fps DMRs – 500-600 FPS Snipers – about 600 FPS Engagement distances? Sometimes, yes. I have played for over 14 years now and I never really got hurt. For about 4 years I have started to play with a mesh mask as it really allows me to play a little bit more aggressive. It’s really safe to play here as everybody here is very respectful. They don’t overshoot, they don’t shoot to close, people with really hot replicas use their sidearms. In the end it’s all about fun and getting back home in one piece.

To sum things up – no law restriction, huge stores, great events and a not so good working community. But, as I stated, I see the change coming, the old are leaving this hobby and they are infected with their passive-aggressive or even all out aggressive behavior other type of activities. The young generation is taking over providing more quality fun for all the people. The land of absurd – but we love it here, I love playing here and I would change a bit of it.

Written by Navy Hippo on Instagram

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