With less than two weeks until Operation Bad Blood, we sat down our regular Popular Airsoft contributor, Moondog,  the man behind Moondog Industries, the man behind NYC Airsoft, and now the man Evike.com chose to create their first East Coast game series. We ask him what kind of planning goes into special events like this one.

Popular Airsoft: Sir Moondog, whilst we have been covering your Bad Blood event since the beginning and now has become the official Evike.com East Coast Appreciation Game, can you tell us more about this for the purpose of our readers understanding how this annual event came into being?

Moondog: Operation: Bad Blood is an annual airsoft game I created to benefit the Leukemia Society of America. My wife's a leukemia survivor and this was the first airsoft game I created as the founder of NYC Airsoft and Moondog Industries. Bad Blood was conceived of as a MilSim game set during a fictional civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I wanted to create a game that wasn’t your typical Green vs. Tan big game, but a game where 5 or 6 enemy armies fighting each other for the same objective. Each organization or faction is identified by their uniform type. In the backstory, I wrote that a major outbreak of Ebola caused so much chaos that the government collapsed and we’re left with multiple warring factions.

Hence, the name “Bad Blood”?

Yes, “Bad Blood” works on multiple levels: Ebola is a blood-borne disease, it’s a euphemism for long standing grudges, and because leukemia is a blood based cancer.

It soon became my most popular and well-attended game series. Part of the reason was that it allowed the gear whores to have their own teams in a believable way. The Soviet-Com impressionists had their Marxists faction, the guys with S.W.A.T. loadouts could play on the Black Shirts (the secret police), the guys in MARPAT and DCU had their own team separate from the MultiCam team, and so on.

How did Evike become involved?

Evike’s been a sponsor of my games for many years, including Bad Blood. Two years ago he told me they wanted to hold a customer appreciation game on the East Coast. He asked me if I would be interested in producing it and I said yes.

Evike wanted to make sure it was well- attended because they were flying out their video crew to film it. So I suggested we use my largest game, Bad Blood, and then Evike.com promoted the hell out it and things really got crazy. Bad Blood went from being a 75 player game to a 300 player game last year and we still had to turn people away. So this year we increased the player cap to 500 and all those slots sold out in two weeks. A month later we added more slots and capped it at 700 players and it still sold out!

700 players! Are East Coast games usually that large?

No, this is very unusual. The Tantalum Contract, which is more Milsim than Bad Blood, has a more typical 60-90 player roster. Usually the largest East Coast games are 150-300 player sized MilSim games held at real military training facilities like at Ft. Drum or John Lu’s events in factories. In contrast, Evike.com’s Customer Appreciation game in Southern California attracted 1,000 players last year! Evike really is the draw and they can pull a lot of younger players, which is what we all need to do to keep this hobby growing and healthy.

With less than 2 weeks until the game, are you busy with planning?

I’ve been planning this game since last December—actually that’s not quite true, I started planning immediately after last year’s game. I gathered as many of the game staff together for a post game meal last year and we went over what worked and what didn’t. That formed the basis of many of the rule improvements this year.

We held two practice games with the game staffers and some invited players. The last one was held two weekends ago when we did a walk through of the field, PSI, and had a chance to play and test the “Triage” mobile respawn rule I developed for this game. Getting to play and inspect the field with the game staff is key in planning a such a big event. Based on what we learned, we spoke with the owners of PSI and they agreed to expand the AO for the game by 50%, that’s over 200 acres of playable area for the game.

So do you have more plans to produce games for other sponsors?

I get invitations all the time, but believe it or not, producing airsoft games isn’t my full-time job, though sometimes it feels like it. I’ve got a 9-to-5 job for a major advertising agency in Manhattan and I barely manage to squeeze in planning and producing games on the weekend. Now with 2 young kids, that free time is a lot more scarce.

Well, you sound even busier than we thought. So we’ll leave it there then. We wish you much luck and success on the 18th.

Thanks.

About NYC Airsoft and Moondog Industries

NYCAirsoft.com is a website portal to information about airsoft events, cultural events, historical reenactments, tactical sports and entertainment. Featuring the NYC Airsoft forum and Facebook group, it facilitates social networking among airsoft players and teams in the New York City area.

Moondog Industries LLC. is a boutique developer of unique tactical products created for airsoft, paintball, law-enforcment, and military use. Moondog Industries produces airsoft games benefitting such charities as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Wounded Warrior Project, the USO and the American Diabetes Society. http://www.moondogindustries.com/.