2009 Zombie Post-Mortem

[kac]

We thought it would be a good idea to start a new thread on this just so people don't have to wade through everything.

I do have some stills and video from the shoot. As time permits over the next couple days, I will put them up. I'll amend this post and add them here. The first, because it was easy, is glock_45 on the pistol and shotgun stage. Before anybody complains about picture quality, remember it was shot and edited by a 10-year old.

http://gallery.me.com/kevinclasing/100016

Here are some stills Win took at the shoot:

http://gallery.me.com/kevinclasing#100024

Here I am shooting the pistol/shotgun stage:

http://gallery.me.com/kevinclasing/100027

I had a bunch of fun with everybody. Some great shooters out there! Definitely guys I would want to have my back in the case of a zombie invasion.

Finn and Mrs., congrats on your Couple win--very deserved. That pink camo is excellent! You ought to wear that Monday in Circuit.

White Rabbit, there's nobody with whom I'd rather clear a room out than you. Loved that co-ordination.

archangel, thanks for the magazine save. I found them all--in my rifle bag where I kept my spare Pmags! I appreciate your kindness.

 

[Boondock Saint]

I posted this in the original thread, but it's probably more appropriate over here:

--------------------------------------------

Alright, after soaking my toys overnight, one of the world's hottest showers and a good night's sleep, here's my take on the events of yesterday:

First, it was an outstanding time. The weather wasn't very cooperative, rain off and on for most of the day, with a few really good pours, especially at the end. However, that very much added to the experience. After all, the zombies aren't going to stay at home because it's raining! Good job by all of the RSOs, embedded, stationary and roaming. Everyone was safe, no one was hurt, and that's the important part!

The events themselves were very solid. The most practical event in my mind was the pistol/shotgun transition stage. My performance in that stage (I will see one of those targets in my nightmares for weeks) aside, it was a great event. The fact that we picked up the shotguns in an unknown condition really added to the fun/test of skill factor.

The rifle event was fun, but it seemed to be more mag dumping than actual skill given the number of rounds that we were allowed to put on the targets. Had there been fewer shooters, more targets, or less ammo allowed, it would have been a better test of the individual shooter's skills. Don't get me wrong, ~20 shooters blasting 60 rounds each all at the same time was fantastic! Sounded like the world was ending on the rifle range!

The shotgun stage was very well set up! Our platoon didn't get to the shotgun stage until very late in the day, and by this time the ground was very slick and limited what we were allowed to do in terms of shooting/reloading on the move. Safety first! Still a fantastic event, and I would have loved to shoot it again had time permitted.

House of Horrors: I could have run that event a dozen times and still wanted more. Hands down the most fun event of the day, and it was just Airsoft! The folks who designed, set up and ran this stage did an outstanding job. I would have loved some type surprise moving target in there, but that would have been extra icing on a cake that was already slathered in the stuff.

Melee stage: This was the last event for our platoon. At this point, both darkness and heavy rain (presumably) kept us from doing the whole stage. Again, safety first! We threw knives at the zombies, but I believe there was a bayonet stage that got cut given the conditions.

Gun/movie trivia: I'll be honest, this appeared to be a time killer given the large number of shooters. This was the first event for our platoon, and a slow start to what turned out to be a very fun day. Perhaps this event would have been more welcome had it come at some other point in the day, providing a nice break from the walking/standing, but therein lies the luck of the draw! I'd consider scrapping this event in the future.

Overall, a lot of fun, and I'm definitely looking forward to next year's event. If someone were to ask me to critique the event (and I know that no one has!), here are a few suggestions for improving the experience:

1. Fewer shooters. Lots of waiting! I know there's a delicate balance to be struck between getting as many shooters as can be accommodated and a fast moving day, but it seemed that perhaps a third fewer shooters would have made the day move a little quicker and would have kept light from being a problem near the end of the day. I'd be willing to pay a bit more to offset the drop in revenue from the event.

2. More pistol! I'm sure others will disagree with me, but I would have loved more pistol shooting. Maybe I'm still bitter about that one target.

3. Reactive rifle targets. From a spectator's point of view, the other events allowed you to see how the shooters were doing, whereas with the rifle stage, it was guesswork. I wonder, though, how much damage would have been dealt to the reactive targets by thousands of rifle rounds and how much time would have been added to the events for necessary repairs. Perhaps fewer shooters would offset the added time here?

4. End of the day prizes. Everyone was tired, wet and ready to go home, and this seemed pretty long. Had the weather/light been cooperative, perhaps the survivors/non-survivors should have been split up at that point to make the large crowd of folks more manageable.

Thanks again to everyone involved in the events at LRGC! Your hard work is to be commended!

 

[glock_forty5]

I have started my AAR and will post it later.

KAC, thanks for starting the new thread and posting the video (although not my best performance of the day, LOL). "Safety!

Boondock, good write up. I share some of your observations, overall a good day.

JT

 

[JeepDriver]

Long but fun day. Fun had by all.

The shoot house was the best part to me. I couldn't care less about it before I shot it. After I wanted to run it again and again. That would have been more interesting, from a training point of view, if there were no-shoot targets. But that's me wanting it all and not just a good time! I never cared about Air Soft before yesterday. Today I'm Googleing! JT and I had way too much fun in there.

The rifle stage was fun, not really training, just fun blasting. Again, my want's are changing, I've gotta remember to have some fun sometimes. I would have prefered to shoot the targets with some sort of idea of my hits. But such is life.

The second part of the stage I had ammo issues. Turns out the new XM193 is all that. I had a shit load of popped primers. But once I battled through the first mag full of problems, the second mag seemed to go fine. That part, with all the guns going at once, was fun.

The pistol/shotgun stage was good times. Through the door and taking targets was good times. Add in grabing an unknown shotty, pretty realistic. I would have liked to play with that one a little more as well. Gear limited me a little, I need a side saddle for my shotty, that would have made the loading much faster. Same goes for the final stage we shot. Shotgun reloads slowed me too much.

Rain, it could have been worse during the day, but my drive home sucked!

 

[Lastdefender]

Thank you for all the feedback. We will be sending out a survey document to all our participants later in the week. From reading the feedback on the various boards so far, it is clear that the shoothouse/airsoft stage was a big hit. We were uncertain if this evolution would be popular amoung our shooters. Clearly it was. It is our plan to keep and improve this stage in Zombie 2010.

Our challange with having four physical locations and six teams was one had to sit out the first stage. We created the Team Exercise to provide a fun activity to pass the time. If we do a Team Exercise next year, I think we will have a prize for the winning team. Unless we add more ranges, having at least one or two non-shooting activities in neccessary to accomipate the number of people who what to participate. It is clear to us that 120 is our absolute maximum. Thanks to all of you who carpooled, we were able to fit all the cars on the property.

We have learned some valuable lessons from our experiance that we will be incorporating in next year's Zombie. Here are just a few....

1. Keep and perhaps expand the shoot house/air soft stage.
2. Zombie 2010 will be held earlier in the year to increase daylight shooting
hours.
3. We will re-think the shotgun stage targets as that slowed us way down.
We may choice to fabricate them out of metal instead of wood.
4. Consider addtional tents.


When you get your survey please take a moment and fill it out. The only way we are going to get better is with your direct feedback.

Thank you again for your support and remember, for those interested in WWII, our Winter of 1944 Shoot is scheduled for Feb. 27th 2010.

Regards,
Gary

 

[kac]

One thing among many to comment on is the relative easiness/level of difficulty. I know very well that there were a lot of new shooters, and in fact this could work as an easy and inviting entrance for people into the action shooting sports. However, there were a bunch of competitive people there at the shoot who found the stage time constraints rather generous.

How do you sort of balance those two isssues? I would suggest a small award, even maybe something as simple as a certificate for the platoon that scored the best/had the most survivors, something like that. That would accomplish not only giving the competitive something to really shoot for, it would encourage team esprit de corps which is fun, and would also not put off the beginners, who could actually contribute to the overall good result despite lesser experience.

And btw, Charlie would definitely have won that this time!

 

[JeepDriver]

Thank you again for your support and remember, for those interested in WWII, our Winter of 1944 Shoot is scheduled for Feb. 27th 2010.

Regards,
Gary

Please, more details on that ! Wait, never mind, that's 2 days before my wife's due date.

 

[HonestFool03]

details on the winter shoot please?

 

[Lastdefender]

I will start a new thread shortly on the Winter of 1944, that way we can keep this one for Zombie Post Mortem.

 

[Lastdefender]

One thing among many to comment on is the relative easiness/level of difficulty. I know very well that there were a lot of new shooters, and in fact this could work as an easy and inviting entrance for people into the action shooting sports. However, there were a bunch of competitive people there at the shoot who found the stage time constraints rather generous.

How do you sort of balance those two isssues? I would suggest a small award, even maybe something as simple as a certificate for the platoon that scored the best/had the most survivors, something like that. That would accomplish not only giving the competitive something to really shoot for, it would encourage team esprit de corps which is fun, and would also not put off the beginners, who could actually contribute to the overall good result despite lesser experience.

And btw, Charlie would definitely have won that this time!

kac,

That's a neat idea.

Gary

 

[glock_forty5]

AAR -

This will be a rambly brain dump of how the match went (as best as I can recall). Gary pretty much laid out the scenarios earlier in this thread. This was not a for score match, it was a “survive the course of fire” match for FUN (something I have not done in a while).

The weather was perfect! Only true Zombie slayers would venture out in to the rain. HA!

The first stage was a gun zombie trivia test. It was a tough test and I lost interest pretty quickly (so did most of the squad). Archangel, KAC, and Jeep carried us here. Gary if you are reading this, my suggestion is to eliminate this from future events or maybe have it be a series of timed challanges (Field strip and AR15, 1911, GLOCK, etc...).

The second stage is where things got going. The shooter was to leave his "house" and retrieve a shotgun while addressing any threats along the way. The shotgun was placed in an unknown state. On the start signal you opened the door to your house with your handgun at the low ready, eliminated 10 or so Zombie targets with head shots (I hope someone post a pick of the targets) moved to a table, engage 4 pieces of steel with two shots each. Then you grabbed the shotgun and engaged the 4 steel with one shot each after you fixed/figured out what the ROs did to the shotgun. They got me big time with down loading the tube and the safety. I thought I thumbed the safety off, but I was WRONG!!!

The third stage was Onslaught. This was a rifle team drill. 5 shooters (my team was Archangel, Dale, Jeepdriver, KAC, and me), one standing (KAC), two kneeling (Dale and Jeep), two prone (Peter and myself, did I mention the rain?). The targets were 20 at 25yds, one swinger at 24yds, and two zombies that approached the team of 5. The standing shooter dispatched the 2 movers and the swinger (KAC smoked em). The rest engages the static targets. The drill was for all shooters to run through 60 rounds. We cleaned it easily! In fact all targets had multiple hits, so many that there needed to be 3 times as many targets or only use 20 rounds (more targets is better than less rounds). Or points could be awarded for ammunition not expended (tough to do on a mag dump stage).

The forth stage was Horde. This was a rifle squad drill. All shooters were aiming at 16 or so targets at 100 yards with 60 rounds. Our squad destroyed the Horde, again more targets would have made it more of a challenge. Note: because one of the 5 men team missed a zombie on the Onslaught stage our squads designated marksman had to shoot a paint ball (.68 cal) at 200 yds!!! Fortunately he got not one but two so we were safe!

The fifth stage, the House of Horrors, was the best of the day. I have been on the fence about airsoft for a long time and I just got pushed over on the side of airsoft! This was a two man drill with airsoft rifles. The team had to clear a house of 40 zombies in under 2 minutes. The rifles had to be set on full auto and the mag had 130 rounds in it. Sounds easy right? Negative, the high cyclic rate made it tough to make it through with out running the guns dry. Team work was the key. Two men engaging the same target would be a waste of ammo. I teamed up with Jeep and we cleaned the stage in a good time. We wanted to go back through several times, I now see the training value of airsoft guns. Now to get an airsoft rifle, find a warehouse, and …….

The sixth stage was all shotgun! I cannot remember the name but the scenario was a highway of trashed cars with zombies and un-infected (read – no shoot targets). You had to navigate the wreaks while eliminating the zombies (sparing the un-infected) to get to a car that has supplies you “need to continue to survive”. This was my second favorite stage, my heart was pumping at the end. With permission from the RO, I shot and reloaded on the move. This was another stage that I would do over and over if I could.

The seventh stage was the Melee stage, no firearms. I cannot be fair with my opinion here as the course had to be shortened due to extremely slippery conditions (you could barely stand let alone do a bayonet charge). You started down a path and bayoneted about 8 zombies, at the end you threw axes at wood zombies (2 points for a head hit, 1 point for a torso hit, you needed two points to clear the stage). We only got to throw the axes. I would have rather had a dedicated handgun stage but I understand the limitations of the facility. I would suggest eliminating this stage (and the trivia stage) to shorten the day (yes this would mean fewer participants) or add an outside handgun two man airsoft stage.

The food was good and hot, very welcome on a rainy day.

It was a long fun day. I will attend a future zombie match but would bring guns I do not usually shoot for fun. Archangel and I have spoke about swaping sidearms for a match, maybe next time.

I wore my madmax leathers in the spirit of the match. I will not do so again. The leather kept me dry but they were designed for motorcycle operation not dynamic shooting. Next time I will wear a suit and tie.

KAC, did your son get to run through the airsoft stage? I hope so. He was a real trooper. You should be very proud of him. I see an airsoft gun in his (and your) future! LOL!

Gary's staff was on the ball from early in the morning to the bitter end. They put on a heck of a good match. Job well done!

Everyone from MD Shooters did great. It was great to meet some of you for the first time and see some faces from the Tom Perroni’s class. We had quite a mix of hardware ranging from the standard AR/Remmy/Mossy/Glocky/Sigy to a 20 gauge single barrel (and more X5 Tacticals than you would image). Good stuff. We should have been recognized for the most motivated/distance group! Maybe next year we can have enough shooters to have our own squad. It was my honor to shoot with you guys.

JT

 

[kac]

Airsoft gun??? He's already got a CZ Scout 22 he's shooting the heck out of! You're right though, I might see TWO airsoft guns in his and my future.

He didn't get a chance to run the houseclearing stage because some groups ran late and they were cleaning up and leaving when we went back (which we were invited to do). He'll get 'em next time.

You're right about the X5 Tac thing. Probably more there than anywhere except Sig Germany! A bunch other Sigs as well.

On the too many rifle rounds permitted issue, you're right in my opinion. I was patching some of our targets, and our fire team had as many as five and six hits on some of the targets. With all due modesty, however, our fire team were fairly good shots. Maybe one full mag for each guy? Reminds me of when the RSO from the pistol stage said I'd need about 30-40 to clear it. Ummmm. No.

Might be fun to do this same shoot with lever actions, Colt SAAs, and coach guns. Deadlands/Rail Wars anybody? Pretty sure I could get it done with the current time limits.

Do it in a suit, heck! How about Frock Coat and bolo tie!

 

[kac]

I did forget to mention one thing.

Big kudos to our (Charlie's) Precision Shooter. A paintball (.68 inches) at 200 yards with a mild crosswind and rain is a nice shot indeed. Our RSO said the guy did it on the third round, which is a heck of a lot better than I could have done.

I talked to him a couple times, but he never mentioned his name. Gary, I'd appreciate it if you mentioned our appreciation to him.

 

[Lastdefender]

Will do! Remember I told you he was good!

 

[Boondock Saint]

And he shot two of them!

 

[Archangel]

My thoughts on the shoot, which may not agree with others':

I had fun, but overall, I left with a sense of disappointment.

Let me preface this by saying that I think Gary and the staff did a great job running and promoting the match. The staff was well organized, had their red shirt "uniforms" so they were easy to identify, and kept the match running smoothly throughout the day. The "acting" at the beginning of the day, the scenarios, and the awesome custom zombie targets did a great job of upholding the zombie theme for the shoot.

My disappointment stems largely from my expectations for the shoot.

Biggest disappointment: Number of stages. Spending 11 hours on the range to only shoot 4 stages + an airsoft stage. Not that I didn't like the airsoft stage. That was actually the best part. But even for 5 stages, 11 hours on the range is a looooong time. I've shot local club monthly matches with anywhere from 5 to 9 stages, and even the 9 stage ones don't run longer than 6 or 7 hours. 5 Stage ones are over in 3.

Other disappointments:

Round count. Usually, matches advertise the round count as the approximate # of rounds it takes to shoot the match clean. Of course, you plan to bring extra. In this case, the advertised round counts were 50 pistol / 150 rifle / 40 shotgun. Actual needed to shoot it clean = 18 pistol / 120 rifle / 15 shotgun. With the exception of the rifle, that's a very low round count. Sounds more like a single stage than a whole shoot.

Quality round count. The only saving grace in the shoot's round count was the rifle. Now, when I go to a match, I don't necessarily expect to be competitive, but I do like to know how well I've shot. With 5 or 20 other shooters all unloading on the same targets at the same time as me, I have no idea who shot what. I could just as well have been doing a mag dump into the berm. And I can do that for free a lot closer to home.

One of the things that got me to come to the shoot was the video from last year of the runnin-n-gunnin with the rifle. I was really looking forward to that. Comparing that to what I actually got to do with the rifle = major disappointment.

I liked the zombie head targets on the pistol stage, and would even consider building something similar for myself. But the targets on the shotgun stage were another story. I found myself thinking "I paid how much for an entry fee, and we're shooting at blocks of 2x4? Really?" Some steel plates would go a long way toward making the shoot seem more professional and polished.

All of this would have made for a disappointing local match, but add in the 3 hours of driving (each way), tolls, gas, motel, etc, and it just didn't seem worthwhile to me.



That being said, I don't want you to think I'm just complaining, so here's what I'd recommend to improve the shoot:

Definitely keep the airsoft stage. Make sure the sights on the guns have a good zero. Make sure the guns are a reliable as you can make them, because it would suck to get ripped because of someone else's gear failing.

More stages. You can easily have at least 7. You already had 7, two of them were just duplicates. And the shotgun area looked like it could support one more. Consider running a morning and an afternoon relay. Do that, and run things efficiently, and you can get 120 shooters through there, no problem. But limit the number of shooters based on what you can provide them. If you can only do 5 stages and a single relay, maybe you can only have 50 or 60 shooters.

To run side-by-side stages, you can have both (or three) shooters load and make ready simultaneously, then all but one step back, put their hands on their head, and one shooter shoots. When done, the second shooter shoots, and so forth. When both (or all) the stages have been shot, you score and paste them all simultaneously. It's not ideal, but I've seen it done on other ranges with similar space limitations.

Have a shooting order for the squad / platoon, so there's no wasting time going "ok, who's next? Anyone? Are we done? Bueller?" Have the on-deck shooter ready to LAMR as soon as the range is clear from pasting and resetting.

For shotgun stages, let the on-deck shooter load the tube (but not the chamber) under the supervision of an RSO, to save time during the actual LAMR. Less time standing around = more time shooting.

Bring back the run & gun with the rifle.

Get steel plates for the shotgun.

If it's just a fun shoot, have the prizes be a random lottery for all shooters. If you want them to be distributed to the best shooters first, come up with a more competitive scoring system. Or at least, base it on individual performance. Shooting as a team is great and all, but the prizes are being given to individuals, not teams. Getting ripped because of someone else's actions, when there are prizes at stake, is a recipe for disgruntlement.

For distributing the prizes, give everyone a list of the available prizes at the start of the day (rather than having people try to crowd around to look all at once). Keep a master list at the prize table, cross off the list as they are claimed. Have people pick from the list, not from the pile. Announce the ticket numbers all at once and have people queuing up in line, rather than waiting for one person to come up, pick, and be photographed before calling the next.

If you run a morning and afternoon relay, consider having prizes awarded after each relay.



Those are my suggestions. I know you have some limitations based on the ranges, but I think with the motivated staff that you have, you can work within those limitations, and make the zombie shooter even better in the future.

 

[Lastdefender]

For those who participated in Zombie 2009, I sent out our survey form this evening to your email address. I'd ask you to spend a few minutes completing it so we can improve on our 2010 Zombie shoot.

Thanks,
Gary

 

[glock_forty5]

For those who participated in Zombie 2009, I sent out our survey form this evening to your email address. I'd ask you to spend a few minutes completing it so we can improve on our 2010 Zombie shoot.

Thanks,
Gary

Will do!

JT

 

[VooDooTango46]

I answered the Questioneer but wanted to give my two cents to the crowd.

First, I wanted to say, it was a pleasure to meet everyone and put faces to names. I had a great time in the platoon and look forward to future events.

About the shoot:
The range staff and event planners were amazing and i can only imagine the amount of prep work required to pull off an event of this nature and my hat is off to all yall for taking on this endeavour. I had a good time at the shoot but thought there was a good deal of room for improvement. I have been shooting since I was 10, but this was actually my first shooting "event" and i was thinking it was going to be more of a competition with varying difficulty and using different weapon skills.

I was immediately disappointed with the 9am questioneer about movies I had never seen and gun knowledge that I do not possess. I was impressed with the knowledge that the rest of you have aquired on these subjects and was vastely out of my league in the gun talk. I know that 1) I can typically hit what i am aiming at and 2) if anyone tries to take mine from me, ill revert back to #1.

The pistol/shotgun stage was what i thought the entire event was going to be and should have been in my hunble opinion. The time gave some room for error (my 17s reload was a testiment to that) but gave the shooter a sense of urgency that caused these errors and made it seem realistic.

I agree with most every on the forum with the rifle stage. With 300 rounds going down range at 30 yds and 1200 at 100 yds it left little room to feel a sense of accomplishment in feeling that i made a difference. Other then being the standing shooter in my group and knowing that i hit my two rollers, i doubt my 25 bucks worth of ammo made a difference, and i surely have no idea where my rounds hit. By the time i got to the targets they were already taped up and I told we destroyed them.

The Airsoft event was sweet. Enough said

Melee wasnt worth standing in the rain, thought I am glad i could entertain yall with my "double play" wrister that went "just a bit outside"

The shottie event had potential and was ruined by the rain. With no time limit and unlimited ammo, it was nothing but target practice with the only bad result possible coming from trying to actually take the event seriously and shoot quickly and go for long shots. Being able to take the course without reloading (thanks BDS) made for a walking turkey shoot, where the turkeys were tied to posts. I did get a good laugh at my self when i reloaded thinking i had anouther target just in the nick of time for the RSO to tell me to clear the gun.

In summary, I had a good time at the shoot, and i think that my disappointment in the event came from taking it too seriously. If I had known the legistics of the actual events, I would have prepared differently and came with different guns and a different mindset. I would have loved to have seen what my AR10 could have done to a zombie head at 20 yards, and i would have enjoyed trying to take out paintballs from 200yds with a 13x scope and 60 rounds. Either that or break out the lever action 30-30 my father takes hunting and go wild wild west style on the zombies with a 357 mag revolver. I also would enjoy run and gunning through the shoothouse, no scoping zombies.

Overall the 1000 miles of driving and high expectations left a sour taste in my mouth. Not to mention my wife leaving her laptop in the hotel room and not finding out til we were home (thanks for calling Comfort Inn, A$$es). But i cant wait to see what improvements they can come up with. I am also thinking we pull of a group theme with a full company from MDshooters and challenge the rest of the platoons with actual quantifiable results.

PS i cant spell to save my life.

Thats all I have. Peace

 

[glock_forty5]

Gary,

I did not get the survey.

JT