1. How did your team come up?
FAST was formed out of necessity because the airsoft community in Thailand, while very welcoming and friendly, is very limited in its language skills. Almost all of the information available about events, shops, fields and everything else is exclusively in Thai, and often in the sort of conversational Thai that Google Translate can’t handle.
Mostly by luck, a group of us expatriates managed to gather together for a milsim in Kanchanaburi in March 2018. The event involved about eight teams, each of about 10 players, facing off against each other to complete various objectives. Our team was the only one with foreigners on it and we weren’t aware of the fact that all of the other teams had formed into two super-teams. We found ourselves holding one side of a strategically important bridge, with one super-team pinning us against the river and the other holding the opposite side of the bridge. Despite being surrounded and massively outnumbered, we dug in and held our own.
We had such a fantastic time playing together that we agreed to stay in touch and to try to arrange to attend future milsims together. From this intention, FAST was born.
2. You can comment on how many phases the team has spent throughout history
The team started as just the few of us who had been to that first milsim together. We started a group chat on Facebook Messenger to keep in touch and soon agreed on the team name and logo. After that, we launched a Facebook page as a sort of public face of the team. We very quickly started getting attention from other players – mostly other expats in Thailand who were interested in playing airsoft but didn’t know any other foreigners they could play with.
We only attended a few milsims in 2018, but we were growing very rapidly as a team. For our first year, we welcomed anyone who asked to join us, so long as they could communicate effectively in English. I’m delighted to say that we were very lucky with the people we accepted. We quickly went from a small group of friends to a very active and enthusiastic community working to promote the sport and support new players. With team shirts and patches in production, we soon started to get recognised at events, in shops and at skirmish fields and our reputation grew in the broader airsoft community in Thailand.
At the time of writing, we’ve had FAST members at seven milsims in 2019, as well as countless skirmish days. Sometimes it’s just two or three of us, but other times it’s over a dozen. After our first anniversary, we decided that it was time to be a little more careful about who we allow to wear our patch. We have a reputation to protect now, and it’s currently a very good reputation. However, there’s still a strong emphasis on ‘community’ – on promoting and supporting airsoft in Thailand, particularly among English-speaking expats. That being the case, our new entry requirement is just that we take the time to get to know you before you join as a full member.
3. How many fields do you have and what are the characteristics of each one?
We don’t exactly have a home field, though there are one or two we play on regularly. Instead, we rotate around the available fields in Bangkok, depending on which the majority of team members want to play at on any given weekend. There are plenty to choose from, though we currently pick from a pool of about five.
The skirmish fields in Bangkok mostly follow the same sort of pattern – an open area about 50 metres wide and 60 metres long, with cover consisting of old pallets, plasterboard and sheet metal. The result is usually good for a mix of play styles, with opportunities for long-, medium- and close-range engagements. Some fields can be a bit slow, with players picking a good bit of cover and never moving. On the other hand, some fields are right at the other end of the spectrum, with speedsoft-style players moving fast up the field and games decided within a couple of minutes.
4. Recreais any unit or each of the team goes free
I’m not exactly sure what your question means, but I think you’re asking if we work as a unit or if each team member acts individually, so I’ll provide an answer to that…
The emphasis in FAST is more on being a community than a team. However, we do generally act as a squad when we go to milsims simply because few others on the field communicate in English. As some of us have now been playing together for over a year, we’re starting to see a lot more communication and coordination in the field and we’re slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with.
5. How many players are you today
We have a total of 44 members on our group chat, which is the main hub of the team. We have a lot of Filipino members, but also people from the UK, Australia, Malaysia, Brazil, Germany, France, South Africa, Denmark and a few Thais, too.
It’s worth mentioning that there’s a lot of variety in how active our members are. There’s a core group of FASTers who post messages on a daily basis and go to skirmish days every week, but there are others who have barely posted since they joined.
6. You belong to a larger macro organization, and that is the relationship with them and with the other independent teams
FAST is an independent team and does not belong to any larger organisations. If anything, we are the macro organisation since most members of FRAT (Filipino Ratchaburi Airsoft Team) are also members of FAST. Since English-speaking players are always in the minority at milsims, we tend to work closely with other English-speakers in the field. As a result, we have informal alliances with Delta Team and Euro Force.
7. How many games do you usually organize per month and what type are they
We don’t currently organise our own games, though some of our members have been invited to help out with organising milsims. With that experience, we are planning to arrange our own events in future.
We do arrange among ourselves to attend events and game days together. Some of our members play at skirmish days every Sunday and one or two members play even more often. We also attend as many milsims as we can, which occur about once or twice a month in Thailand.
8. Do something that is annual. Tell me more about her
FAST only recently had its first anniversary. By good luck, the date was pretty close to the date of a milsim, so many of us attended that event. We then had a party at our hotel afterwards, which included a sort of Annual General Meeting where we discussed various administrative topics. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but add a couple of bottles of premium whiskey and it makes quite a fun discussion.
9. You have some kind of sponsor
FAST does not currently have any sponsors.
10. How do you see the future of your team?
The team started as something very casual, but has now grown to a size and a degree of respect that many of us really didn’t expect. One result of that is that we’re finding that we’re having to start to evolve from a group of like-minded friends into something more like a professional organisation. However, our objectives remain the same – to support and grow the airsoft community in Thailand, particularly among English-speakers and expatriates.
That being the case, I think the future of FAST will be to expand the awareness of the sport. We’ve already launched an English-language website that focusses on providing information about airsoft in Thailand and we’re hoping to launch a team YouTube channel soon. Naturally, some of this will cost money and it can’t all come from our own pockets, so we would be interested in working with sponsors in future.
11. As you can see the airsoft both in your region and in your country
I’m not sure what the question is here. It sounds like you’re asking me to describe what I think of airsoft in Thailand, so that’s what I’ll do.
Airsoft in Thailand is starting to get quite exciting. Event organisers are getting more and more ambitious and milsims are starting to get very sophisticated. They’re beginning to evolve from basically giant skirmishes to mission-based games. Of course, it’s a learning process and there are a lot of faults and flaws, but progress is definitely being made.
In terms of skirmishing, Bangkok naturally has the most to offer and the most variety, but there are small communities as far south as Phuket and as far north as Chiang Mai, with plenty in between. Broadly speaking, most fields and their communities are very welcoming and friendly, though some are perhaps a little too intense and protective of what they consider their ‘home ground’.
The speedsofter community in Thailand is highly competitive. There are fairly regular three-man tournaments and teams train very intensively for them. These communities tend to be the least welcoming of outsiders since they’re so focussed on winning.
The one concern I have is that the airsoft community as a whole isn’t growing very quickly. Some fields and shops close and they’re usually replaced, but the number of them rarely expands. There’s a fixed level of interest in the sport, so there will always be a fixed level of facilities to accommodate them. I would really like to see airsoft becoming a little more mainstream in Thailand to attract more players.
12. You are a team that moves outside the region or you are faithful to play in your region
As the name suggests, the Foreign Airsoft Shooters Thailand play exclusively in Thailand. Since most of our members are based in Bangkok, we tend to only attend milsims within a few hours’ drive of here. To be honest, though, there aren’t that many events organised in other parts of the country.
13. Do you have any type of support: institutional or business support and what is it based on?
The team has no external support of any kind. Everything we’ve achieved has been done by our dedicated members, in their own time and at their own expense.
14. As you see in the medium term. And in the long term
In the medium term, the goal is to organise FAST into a more professional outfit, but mostly in the sense of our behind-the-scenes admin. It would certainly be great to see us trained and drilled to become a more effective force at milsims, but our first priority is supporting new players and the broader community.
In the longer term, it would be great to spread our attitude of fair play and support internationally. I would love to see new teams in neighbouring countries – perhaps FASB in Bali, FASM in Myanmar, FASV in Vietnam, and so on.
I’d also like to see FAST continue to grow in Thailand. Within a year we grew from less than a squad to more than a platoon in numbers. I’d love to see us at company and maybe even battalion strength!