Two can do more – G&G World Cup and Camo Festival
A true airsoft festival in Taiwan is over. This year, for the first time two separate events – Camo Festival and G&G World Cup Finals, were combined and during the weekend of 9-11 June at Expo Park Taipei prepared a true airsoft fest. Its not wonder as Taiwan is the place where most airsoft manufacturers of excellent and renowned brands come from.
This years festival was overshadowed by the recent events in Taiwan where the Court, after two years, accepted the findings of police experts and at the beginning of June ruled that the local guns an ammunition act has been violated by G&G, the fact we informed about earlier on WMASG. Mr James Liao, CEO of the company said he will appeal from this ruling. He is not alone in this battle. Besides obvious support of the airsoft community, G&G World Cup and Camo Festival has been visited by many excellent guests and official, including members of the Taiwanese army. In Taiwan airsoft replicas are also perceived as a training tool for the army.
The organizer of the event accompanying the championship - the Camo Festival was TWAAA (Taiwan Airsoft & Airgun Association). The association is strongly supported by G&G. Its initiator and chairman is James Liao. Therefore it is not surprising that in many places at the venue stickers with the „Airsoft is a sport, not a crime” slogan could be found, which quickly gain popularity both in Poland and in other parts of the world thanks to social media sites, including our own. The sticker itself is the idea of Mr. Liao and who knows, maybe the Taiwanese protest will be the beginning of an international movement.
James Liao - CEO of G&G and chairman of TWAAA
G&G CQB 2017 World Cup Extreme Shooting Competition
We went to Taiwan on a special invitation from G&G, to make a coverage of the second finals of the G&G CQB 2017 World Cup Extreme Shooting Competition. The competition is held every two years. The formula of the event can be best compared to IPSC, dynamic sport shooting, with the exception that here you must shoot to flashing and beeping copulas placed in different configuration on quite elaborate courses. The target cannot be just shot at and forgot as it can reactivate at an unpredicted moment again. Therefore one must stay vigilant and has his eye and ears open until the very end. The copulas also have special modifiers that simulate the distance and make scoring a hit harder. During this years finals in Taipei, the contestants had show good fitness, speed, reflexes, excellent eyesight and hearing. The prepared coursed were very demanding.
The man behind the competition is James Liao – the CEO of G&G, and G&G stuff is responsible for the organization. The Expo Park Taipei hall was divided into two parts. One half was occupied by the festival events, the other half by G&G together with the courses, the stage with the podium podium, the zones for contestants, the media, the VIPs and all the logistics of G&G World Cup. We know about the previous event, we saw the photos and videos. Yet what we encountered at our destination, starting from the way we (the media and the contestants) were greeted and accommodated, through the registration process, the way the competition itself and the accompanying events were conducted made and astounding impression. It looked as if it was not an event for "just" 30 teams (60 people) from 25 counties from all over the world (USA, Canada, South America, Asia, Europe).
The organizers had a constant eye on the competition
The event started unofficially on Friday, 9th June, with the registration of the contestants and the media until 14:00. Then the trial runs for courses no. 2 and 3 started, and also for the „frames”, the basic M.E.T. system, 5x5 targets attached to a metal construction. This was also how the preliminaries in Poland looked like. The order of calibration of the replicas and the scopes was dictated by order of registration and everyone had 10 minutes to do it.
The next day started earlier. From 9:30 the people late had the last 30 minutes for registration. The opening ceremony started at 10:00 and was held in a guise of a small Olympic games. The contestants carrying the flags of their countries came to the stage led by hostesses. Many faces were filled with pride. After a speech by James Liao and invited VIPs everyone watched the shows prepared for the ceremony. Not accounting for the lunch break, the qualifications were held from 11:00 until 17:30. The day ended with a grand reception in the exclusive Grand Hotel. Here came time for official integration, with which the contestants had to be especially careful as the next day was the decisive day of fighting for victory... and very attractive prizes.
Commemorative signatures during Saturday's reception
The winners of individual courses received 1000 USD, first three pairs in the general classification won respectively 2000, 5000, and the world champions 10 000 USD. So there was something to fight for. Moreover, the contestants could but the replicas they shoot with with a steep discount. At their disposal were G&G CM16-SRS, GR25 Sniper with a dedicated scope and also the GPM92 pistol. The helmets they received were theirs to keep so many of them collected commemorative signatures on them. Replicas accessories owned by the contestants were allowed but only those of the G&G brand.
The competition was won by a team from Chile (Team B), who were the best in the CQB category and collected two prizes. As they later said, they trained very hard to achieve this. THerefore they were moved by their success. Their result was: 0’28’’93, 0’25’’72 and 17 points (M.E.T. 5x5), 0’15’’50 and 11 points (Humvee Sniper), 1’07’’46 and 17 points (S&A), 1’39’’32 and 30 points (CQB), together 75 points.
The second place went to Taiwan and the third to Hong Kong. Before the leading three were announced there were some mishaps and protests. During the decisive run the replica of the Taiwanese team jamed and the referee allowed the team to start again, which was against the rules. In the end they received a penalty which moved them to the second place.
At individual course the best team were: M.E.T 5x5 (Germany), Sniper (Hong Kong), Search & Destroy (Chile – Team A, a well known guy in Poland going by the nickname of Xerxes who reenacts GROM and representing the Fundację – Sprzymierzeni z GROM (Allied with GROM Foundation) at the competition), CQB (Chile – Team B).
The Polish team, Łukasz „Pisarz” Pasiut and Łukasz „Łukim” Mućwicki achieved the 14th place in the general classification, so in the middle, with the following times at each course: 0’28’’01 i 0’27’’05 and 15 pts (M.E.T. 5x5), 0’19’’43 and 1 pt (Humvee Sniper), 1’21’’80 and 6 pts (S&A), 2’11’’51 and 8 pts (CQB) with a total of 30 points. They were excellent at the „frame”, where they get to the fourth place. This fact can be attributed to the support of Gunfire which gave them much support before the event, made G&G replicas and the M.E.T. 5x5 system available to them for training and also supplied proper clothes so that they could proudly represent our county.
The award ceremony was held on Sunday. After, the contestants made a group photo with James Liao and gathered at the hotel.
What could be evidently seen was a very positive atmosphere. All the people we talked to said they were here for fun, sport, sometime adventure, a opportunity to visit Taiwan, but mostly to meet new friends from around the world with a similar passion. The rivalry was purely on the sport level, loud applause could be heard after every run. The emotions were plentiful. The event is worth promoting. All over the world airsoft is perceived negatively by both civilians and the military. Here we have an example of a very positive event thanks to which the core idea if airsoft is presented in a very friendly and attractive form to outsiders. It is worth mentioning that airsoft in the sport, non-military version is not very popular in Poland. In 2012 the Action Air League, the airsoft IPSC, was launched, but airsoft sport shooters are few and far between. Maybe G&G World Cup will popularize this kind of airsofting. In other parts of the world this branch of airsoft is much more expanded.
Camo Festival
Apart from G&G World Cup the second edition of Camo Festival took place. The previous edition was held in October last year. It is also an initiative or TWAAA, to promote airsoft as a sport. This has to be reminded even at the cradle of airsoft (next to Japan and Hong Kong). This is undoubtfully also the promotion of our game and the manufacturers that take part in the event. Therefore it took form of a fair and a quasi expo. We found there booths of renowned manufacturer such as LCT Airsoft, Modify, Action Army, VFC, ICS, KWC, WE, Ra-Tech, Armorer Works or Bolt and King Arms.
Action Army presented their interesting proposition for sniper, though still in prototype stage. Will it be a new true stock sniper rifle?
Modify, besides presenting new replicas models, showed their interactive targets at a course they built, where one could win attractive prizes on a shooting competition, such as a Novritscha sniper rifle - the SSG24, Holosun HS510S collimator sight, RC model of a Tiger I tank by Heng Long, which fired BBs. There were more courses at other booths. All had prizes to win, such as replicas and other valuable ones.
LCT Airsoft showed 10 different versions of the upcoming LC-3, the G3 replica. We could personally find out how its made and also, for example, the original butt stock and forearm will fit the replica! The LC-3 will be released in July. The booth also showed, still in prototype stage, the PKP replica announced last year. The company is focused on LC-3 right now therefore the release of the PKP is speculated to take place at the end of the year. Raptor has also presented their version of the PKP.
We also met out friend from Vipertech, who we wrote about in March, while visiting IWA. Promising gas powered replicas with strong recoil that are still unavailable at any Polish retailer. During Camo Festival they presented the newest version of their VI-46 GBB pistol, which increased the already powerful recoil, thanks to the increased diameter of the cylinder group. A noteworthy aspect were the Rare Arms replicas, which some of you had already found on Youtubie during the last three years. The replicas are also unavailable in Poland, but surely they would found their enthusiasts – they have a working casings ejection system. The replicas presented were their 3rd generation.
We were especially pleased to visit two other manufacturers - HFC and UHC, who's replicas are now considered toys but back in the day were one of the very few available in Poland. We talk about the times when spring powered replicas were the most common, the more welthy arisofter ownnig gas powered ones and an AEG owner was counted as five regular players. The replicas presented were the Walther P99 HFC and MP5 SD6 UHC which I still keep in my closet for sentimental reasons.
Many Asian celebrities come to Camo Festival. A sigh uncommon in our part of the world, and if so, not on that scale. By the G&G booth one could meet a Japanese celebrity - Misa Misa, who was the face of G&G at the fair, supported by Boss Gerira, who is also Japanese.
According to the organizers the Taipei Expo hall was visited by 5000 people. On an area of almost 2800m2 there were 50 booths of manufacturers from Taiwan, and on the second part of the hall the competition gathered additional spectators.
We wished we had more time to be at Camo Festival. The time spent in Taiwan will be long and well remembered. We met many friends, got to know new ones and received new invitations to various parts of the world. This was an opportunity to get a glimpse at the Asian airsoft market. We think that in Taiwan they have more distance to it. How it is in other parts of the world? We will find out!
