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| No Photo's Tour debut event at Camp Sparta |
For those of you not in the know. The ICS Captain program is a sponsorship run by ICS to bring like minded,
knowledgeable players with a love for the brand under the ICS Captain title.
The goals are to increase brand awareness, promote and use the latest and greatest ICS lines and
generally be an all round nice person. (We all know the game needs more of those!)
I have been an ICS Captain since January 2017 and Since becoming a Captain, I have spoken to
hundreds of players at events all over the place. A lot of people ask how I ended up becoming a
Captain, and what being a Captain entails, or what adventures I’ve had whilst representing the
brand. I figured, as I have a platform to talk about this sort of thing at length, now might be a good
time to address some of these questions.
Stand by. LONG POST ALERT.
This is going to be a long one (that’s what she said)
Being a part of the Captain program has been an amazing experience so far. I have met many new
people, both in the form of fellow Captains
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| The first Captain I met... Riddick outside IWA17 |
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| The Captain's table after day 2 of IWA |
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| Fellow Captains at IWA17 |
and as other “big names” in the industry, whether that is fellow sponsored players from other brands,
social media wizards or people who work for the companies I’ve looked up to throughout my time in
the game.
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| Marck of RedWolf fame |
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| Manuel of Airsoft Worldwide |
I have been to events I would have never dreamt I’d end up at - IWA in Nuremberg springs
immediately to mind, (that could be another blog post in itself!)
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| Arriving at the ICS booth at IWA |
AI500 and all those concept store events and the “No Photo’s Tour” with Paul from ASG.
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| Safety brief at AI500 The Gathering |
I’ve had the opportunity to field and demo new guns and help players learn about the brand. It has
been an experience that has changed the airsoft side of my life. Rather than being just a game I play
at the weekends with a bunch of reprobates (CBMPC!) It’s now almost a career. With a brand
behind me and a small community slowly building around my Youtube channel.
I would be selling it short if I said “Becoming a Captain has changed my life”
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| Peeking the roof at Camp Sparta |
The responsibilities of a Captain are very simple. Promote the brand, play the game, have fun. We
don’t get paid to do what we do, but sometimes we do end up with awesome benefits, like heading
out to games and events or receiving the latest ICS lines to review and demo. All the Captains do
this because of their love for the brand.
Let’s take a look at how I ended up becoming a Captain and what I have been up too in the past
year whilst representing ICS
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| Defence duties at Camp Sparta with Will Greenwood |
A lot of people assume that I was “headhunted” by ICS and asked to come on board. And that I only use ICS aeg’s because of my role as a Captain. Both of these “facts” are incorrect. I originally heard
about the Captain program when ICS were taking applications for the 2016 intake. At that time I was
incredibly busy with work and didn’t have time to fill in the form, which meant inevitably, I missed the
cut off date. Fast forward twelve months and a post about the Captain program appeared on the
ICS Facebook page. Within thirty seconds I made a start filling it in.
Luckily whatever craziness I spilled out into that document translated well to the ICS staff
responsible for the Captain program because they asked me to come on board as the only 2017 UK
ICS Captain. I can still remember the morning of November 21st 2016 when I received the
confirmation email. After just waking up I was checking the mornings emails and spotted the ICS
logo followed by “Congratulations, you have been selected” Best start to a work day I’ve had in a
long time!
The reason I decided to apply for the position is simple. I believe ICS is the best. I have been using
ICS AEG’s as my main skirmish rifles for over a decade. (Occasionally I would flirt with other brands
to try different weapon systems that ICS didn’t offer - the AA12 and bolt action rifles etc. But an ICS
gun would always find it’s way into my hands.
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| CS4 Para "Elinor" at Saighton Camp |
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| CS4 Para "Elinor" at Saighton Camp |
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| CS4 Para "Elinor" at Fortress |
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| CS4 Para "Elinor" at Fortress |
I started off with an ICS MP5 somewhere around 2005 if I recall correctly. (I remember running it at
Parkgate in 2006/7 and I had it prior to that)
I have always been a fan of the MP5 and after getting
rid of my long lived Tokyo Marui, I missed having one. So I picked up an ICS MP5A4 second hand.
(I still have it to this day - although it is in a sorry state of affairs currently, due in part to some heavy
use and mishandling. - I’ll have it back up and running eventually, maybe with a bit of a surprise
inside it!)
From the MP5 I moved onto an M4, a team mate had picked an ICS M4A1 (or CS4A1 as it would be
known today) up and while he was running another gun he let me use it for a game. I was
immediately impressed.
The last M4 platform I had was a G&G GR16 (Or whatever it was called
back then) which with all the issues I had with that, left a sour taste in my mouth for the platform. The
ICS performed amazingly, even as a stock rifle and really reached out and touched people. When it
came time to upgrade it, I had my first experience with the split gearbox. I was sold.
I set about finding an ICS rifle of my own, and in 2007 one appeared for sale on one of the forums
that I couldn’t resist. An ICS 2006 anniversary M4 Para.
It was a limited edition rifle to celebrate,
I believe the 25th anniversary of ICS. It was a folding stock M4 with a heavy duty RAS kit installed,
full length M4 outer barrel with a PEQ box battery and a carry handle sight. Nothing overly modern
by today’s standards, but back then… It looked great!
“She” was christened “Elinor” after the seller asking me to pay him through his girlfriend, Elinor’s
paypal account. Elinor went through several external changes over the years, but in the ten years I
ran “her” as my main rifle, the internals for the most part where entirely stock. (I had to change a
tappet plate after failing to reset the gears before closing it one time and snapping the original)
Eventually I decided to install a madbull hop rubber and tight bore barrel. But again, the “worky
parts” were all stock ICS parts that lasted ten years. It was this rifle that sold me on the brand and
through it’s example I convinced nearly all of my CBMPC! Team mates to own ICS rifles at one point
or another, including fellow ICS Captain, Foster.
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| Scott at Saighton Camp with a CS4 SIR |
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| Sam at Saighton Camp with a CS4A1 |
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| Standin at Area 51 with a CS4A1 |
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| Standin at Area 51 with a CS4A1 |
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| Alan at Area 51 with a CS4 RAS |
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| Scott at Elite Firezone with a CS4A1 |
So the TL:DR is my love for the brand has been forged through years of using an unstoppable ICS
rifle and seeing my team mates buy their own and have similar experiences. Not solely because I
am sponsored by ICS.
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| murdering a player who charged me with a bayonet using my MP5 at Fortress |
The first exciting thing to happen after becoming a Captain was having a box land on my doorstep
one morning wrapped in ICS tape…
This was the ICS Captain Welcome pack. A tradition that
happens with every new intake of Captains. ICS send out a small box with a variety of patches,
t-shirts and other fun stuff, including a personalised dog tag.
Seeing my name engraved onto a silver
dog tag along with “ICS Captain” made the reality of it all sink in.
Shortly after unboxing all that exciting ICS “swag” I was asked to attend the IWA Outdoor show in
Nuremberg on behalf of ICS. For those who aren’t familiar with IWA, the easiest way to imagine it is
the “Shot Show” of Europe.
The Nurnberg Messe is taken over by firearms, airsoft, outdoors and
other general shooting paraphernalia companies for a long weekend.
New lines are announced, all the industry people are there and everyone has patches and stickers
to give you! It’s pretty great.
I flew out on the Thursday and returned on the Monday, I spent every
day at the show demoing guns, making videos, networking with people and causing mayhem with
the other Captains.
I also fell over things quite often, tried and failed to catch Novritsch, had an
awkward high five with Kelly (Femme Fatale) and ejected an XAE slide fifteen feet across the ICS
booth. (And that’s just the mischief I got up to at the show… I won’t go into the hour and a half walk
to the show on the first day where I was lost in the woods thinking I was going to get murdered!)
It
was in the airport on the way to IWA that I bumped into Paul from ASG, who became a big part of
the 2017 ICS push in the UK. With ASG becoming the European distributor for ICS Paul started
heading out to all the big events in the country demoing both the ASG and ICS lines. I went along
with him to as many as I could to show off the ICS guns and spread the word.
The first of these was the beginning of the “No Photo’s Tour” a collaborative tour with ASG, ICS and
Viper Tactical, along with a plethora of others. The tour stopped at many of the big events
throughout the year up and down the country. The premier was at the debut game at Camp Sparta
over at RAF Kirton in Lindsey. A massive urban airsoft site which went on to become one of my
favourite sites which I have returned to a number of times since that event.
The next big event was AI500 the gathering, a massive force on force game run by the folks at
Airsoft International magazine over at the former Pleasure Island theme park.
This was another
amazing event which had me sleeping in the back of a rented Fiat Doblo van for three days
whilst
heading out into the field and shooting green team as often as I could, aswel as creating videos and
photographs of players using ICS products and demoing the extensive line of guns we had on
display at the ICS booth.
There were many other smaller scale games and events where I had the ICS tent, or a small scale
ICS demo setup and handed out patches and stickers to players with ICS guns.
Then came the Concept store openings, to coincide with the UK release of the MARS and XAE
pistols where alongside Paul from ASG I demo’d both guns and talked at length to as many people
as possible about ICS guns and products at JD airsoft and Urban Airsoft Megastore!
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| The team at JD Airsoft |
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| My MARS SBR and an XAE at JD Airsoft |
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| On the range at JD with the XAE |
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| Some of the ICS range at JD Airsoft |
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| The ICS range at Urban Airsoft Megastore |
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| Urban Airsoft Megastore |
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| A customer testing his brand new CXP16L at Urban |
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| The XAE stock at Urban |
It was these events that led directly to my team mate Coup buying his first ICS rifle - the MARS
Carbine, from Urban, Which he has been putting to good use at SWAT KYLN and All Arms Airsoft.
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| Coup and his Carbine at Urban Airsoft Megastore |
And eventually my team mate Foster picked up his MARS SBR from JD and then went on to be a
2018 UK Captain…
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| Foster and his XAE on the range at JD Airsoft |
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| Foster and his MARS SBR at JD Airsoft |
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| The first time two UK Captains rolled into action together - Labyrinth Airsoft, Bury |
That, for all intents and purposes brings us up to the start of 2018. It’s been a crazy year. It’s been
amazingly fun and 2018 is set to be bigger. With many new ICS releases on the horizon and a whole
heap of new events to attend. Not to mention the team of UK ICS Captains we now have to help
spread the good word! The future looks bright and exciting.
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