Today we’re going to be talking about the most common type of gameplay style seen on the field and that is the role of a rifleman. What makes you this type of player as opposed to a sniper for example? Well, that is defined by equipment and play style.
First let’s talk about the guns. AEGs come in all sizes and styles and are generally built to suit CQB and outdoor fields. For classification purposes in airsoft, wee tend to lump everything into this category of rifleman regardless of what the real counterpart was designed for. Most places will keep it rifleman, DMR, sniper, and even support. This keeps it simple for fields to chronograph and enforce rules for. Our field, FAF Airsoft is an outdoor field with mixed terrain and maps. This gets you exposure to different playstyles and different ranges. In airsoft, most of your guns will be categorized as rifle. They will tend to have semi auto and full auto and can shoot up to 400fps on .20g BBs. For FAF, it’s very much the same but we measure in Joules and we chrono with .32s, which equates to 1.5J = 320fps with .32. Full auto is acceptable except on the smaller maps or if you are within 15 feet of the player. The availability to play other classes will depend on the field or event organizers, particularly in milsim aisoft events. If you play at an indoor (CQB) field, all these classes are irrelevant and all guns regardless of shape, style, and modifications, must adhere to the indoor limits which are much lower.
If you should decide to keep it simple and play the role of a rifleman, modifications to the gun are pretty open in this category as long as you adhere to FPS limits. You’ll remember in our previous DMR video that some places differentiate roles and how you play based on upgrades and performance. Let's take a look at an example set of rules, this one being from our local airsoft field FAF Airsoft in Parker, CO.
The nice thing about playing your general rifleman class at a field is that you are flexible to do a lot of things. AEGs have pretty good range already so you can be at a distance and lay down some good fire using full auto for great effect. You can run up on the objective or other players and get in their face if you are an aggressive enough player. Getting a good AEG and playing the game from this role is often enjoyable for most players.
Where people get it wrong is they try to start in a specialty role and then might not enjoy the gameplay as much because it is very limited. I see that a lot with new players who go on Youtube and see a sniper cam video and get excited to play that first only to realize they hate it. That’s usually a bummer for those guys because they already spent their money and are locked in a more specialized type of gameplay. It’s in my experience that the variety in gameplay you get with a regular AEG is more satisfying to new players than a role of a sniper which is a lot of waiting and being slow and methodical. My advice is doing some heavy research before purchasing so that you’ll have a better time out there, That should cover the gist of the rifleman role in airsoft. We will do more segments like this with the next one focusing on the sniper next time at Fox. Thank you guys for watching and we will see you next time.