BELLUM has their own website with basic information of the event in English that helped a lot with information gathering about what to expect from the event. Registration on the website and getting in contact with your own faction leaders was made easy by providing a facebook link to a group of Sparta and Legion factions and instructions on how to join your own group.

Travelling to BELLUM was fairly straightforward by getting first on a boat from Turku to Stockholm on a night cruise between Tuesday/Wednesday night. On-site check in and chrono starts on wednesday morning alongside other activities like Dynamic airsoft shooting competition and real steel shooting. The game itself started on Thursday afternoon so we had plenty of time to make our way down to Rödjenäs, which was about 360km away from Stockholm. There were good opportunities to check in and chrono on Thursday as well if needed to.

Game area consisted of good road network for players in game vehicles and a lake coastal area with islands to use boats in game too. Helicopter tickets were available to purchase before the game and the time when to use the chopper could be reserved by the kiosk before and during the game. In general the game area was a good mix of mainly forests, small hills area, fields, coastal and a quarry for a good mix of everything.

Basecamp area was shared with all fighting factions and organisers in the middle of the map and was off game. Basecamp had very good infrastructure including proper toilets, showers, airsoft vendors and a burger kiosk with free coffee. The atmosphere in the basecamp was really nice and friendly despite the both opposing factions living side by side. It was easy and ok to go and say hi to your friends on the opposite side from time to time.

Game started on Thursday afternoon at 14:30. Game was ongoing day and night until saturday afternoon for 50+ hours. The tempo was a bit more intense than a regular milsim but still tactical enough not to feel like a regular sunday game. There were plenty of different respawn opportunities like the base camp for both factions, two permanent respawn points for each faction on the field, several deployable mobile respawn stations and some vehicles and boats could be deployed as a respawn point. So no matter where you fell, there was a respawn quite nearby. Besides that; every player acted as a medic and each player could be healed once when downed before needing to go back through the respawn.

Game mechanics were very competitively structured and each faction earned points from domination points, kill cards and objectives to win the game. Each of those segments accumulated about ⅓ of the points each.

Map always had 3-5 domination points to take control and defend. Domination points could go offline and move or appear in other parts of the map and sometimes be part of some other game mechanics of objectives at the same time with different scoring. Holding on those points accumulated points for the faction.

The kill card system was a new and interesting system for us. Each player and vehicle was carrying a kill card and when the player was shot or vehicle got destroyed, they had a bleed out time during which an enemy player could go and collect their kill card. Vehicles, mobile respawns and FOB had also more valuable kill cards compared to player carried ones. Kill cards were then delivered to our own faction HQ. First the system felt very game-like but it worked surprisingly well and we realised that it prevents the faction from sending “suicide squads” in fear of handing free kill cards to the enemy.

Both factions usually had very similar objectives mirrored to them that made them fair for both factions to perform and earn points from them. Like both factions had a FOB-tent to set up and defend, both factions had a VIP to protect while trying to kill the enemy factions VIP, both factions tried to take control of the same objective area etc. Each objectives had still a nice storyline behind them that came together in the final speech from the game organiser.

Domination points were Ares Alpha boxes and their app was also in use for the game factions, game masters and players. Players could use it to find their nearest respawns, domination points and follow other friendly players movements etc.

Pregame on wednesday evening and aftergame on saturday evening were really nice sitting by the fire with a few drinks chatting to other players and going from camp to camp meeting also the enemy players before and after the game was really atmospheric. Before the game on thursday we had a big line up of all players and the welcome speech of game organisers. On the aftergame was also the grand speech of the game organiser and their associates that included the final counting of points and declaring the winner faction of BELLUM. The countdown going through each mission, objectives and kill cards points tallying up was suspenseful all the way until the end when the winner was announced and the actual aftergame party started.

All in all BELLUM was a great experience and will draw more people in for sure with its festival-like approach to an competitive airsoft game that we don’t have many in the Nordics. Despite being more competitive in nature the organised faction HQs giving out missions with real strategies in mind, Ingame helicopter flying people in and out of the field all day and explosions were there to give the game some of that milsim feel. So BELLUM in a way has a bit of this and that for everyone no matter if you’re in for an airsoft festival like camping, milsim playing or want to go for playing competitively to win the game. BELLUM has a place for you.