Can't wait. Great value too, for a weekender, even more so with the member's discount, makes membership well worth while.

I will be there!
whats the deals with teams etc,
ive also get a rental coming on sunday

y do we need sleeping bag. were not sleeping remember!!

i mite not be goin cus i just found out 2 of my toes r broke but i mite be down ill try

any uniform requirements

Thanks to Sam, the Foxtrot 58 staff and all the players at Balkan Backlash for a great weekend.

I have never missed a Foxtrot 58 overnight event and hope I never will. A daytime skirmish is great but a Foxtrot 58 night game is just a whole new level above "great". It's not just the extra excitement and tension of operating in darkness (with or withought night vision!), it's the way it's done at F58, that makes the most difference.

A couple of years ago, I went to a night shoot at Predator, and it was a pretty tame and mostly frustrating experience.

Tame, not just because it was short, but also because it was organised just like a day shoot in terms of the mission: not very imaginative, not terribly realistic, and it gave the players little or no insight into how soldiers operate at night.

Frustrating, because many players childlishy brought the most powerful lamps they could and reacted to being fired on, by shining them in your face. I mean, seriously - what is the point of dressing in combats with realistic weapons and all the rest, looking like you mean business - and then acting like you're in the playground instead of on a battlefield?

At F58, instead, playing in a night shoot feels like the night exercises I used to do in the Army. It's all about patrol skills. Planning routes in and out. Thinking about your action on the objective. Moving tactically, maintaining light and noise discipline. Using cover. Pausing often, to observe and listen. Playing cat and mouse, hit and run. Above all, playing as a team. It's not just a skirmish in the dark, it's a whole different experience, the tension high, the concentration great, and the sense of achievement - and the fun - second to none. I didn't get that at Predator - I got it at Foxtrot 58, and still do, in spades; every night shoot is the same thrill ride.

The Balkan Backlash night operation was no exception. And it fitted into a coherent storyline, with daylight battles the afternoon before and the whole day after, for those who signed up for the whole thing!

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend, one that will give all who were there a buzz that will fade only slowly, things to chat and smile about for weeks to come. Example: we in the RM Commando patrol are attacking the more numerous Balkan Baddies, and as the light begins to fail, we've finally got them pushed right back onto the SF base. But final assaults are being caught in a withering crossfire at the sangar door. Nothing else has worked, or looks like it is going to, so though I don't usually like such tactics, I grab a light corrugated sheet about four feet square as a shield and crouch behind it, as I nudge it down the last few yards towards the enemy. Nothing to hold onto so its bottom edge is on the concrete, and it's leaning back against me. Stay crouched. Keep the head down. Nudge it a bit more. Then a bit more. Try to keep it from tipping forward in the process. Bursts of enemy fire whack into its thin surface with scary force. I'm expecting that sooner or later, rounds will penetrate or worse, the whole thing will tip forward and I'll be well and truly in for it. The slightest sign of my head or fingertips draws more fire. Crouched down, nothing to hold onto but my rifle, it's all I can do to keep nudging the bl***y sheet forward without knocking it over, when Sam chips in with some advice, "Over to the right! Move to your right!" So I ask him "What do you think this is, a f***ing hovercraft?" Laughs all round, me included. "Where are you going, anyway?" he asks. "No idea!" I reply. "And before you ask, I've no idea what I'm going to do when I get there, either!" Priceless crack!

Brilliant. Unmissable. And though there were a few "incidents and accidents" (like me getting a bit testy with Sam when I got myself "hasty ambushed" in the dark by the wily Colm trying to follow Sam's orders, when my instinct was just to break contact cleanly after a successful shoot at the enemy camp) it has to be said that everybody played with commendable fairness and sportsmanship, even when tiredness must have been setting in. Every player played fair and hard, all the way through. They kept going, maintained their sense of humour and were a credit to both the sport and to the site. Well done guys! Can't wait till the next one!