Base Assault

One of the newest games. It used to be very commonly played as it is very easy to set up. The base rules are like team elimination as they both have the same number of lives and no respawns. The only difference is that one team starts at the first aid building (the defenders) and the other in the car park (the attackers). To win, the defenders need to have at least one player inside the building alive at the end of the game. If they don’t, the attackers win. Both teams can enter and leave the building at any point in the game as long as they do not stand in the entrance. Some player’s first instinct is to hunker down in the building and be ready for the attackers to enter but they’re advised that this is a bad idea since they will always be outnumbered (as all defenders will not be in the building) and they can be killed easily because the windows can be shot through and the light will bounce off the walls until it hits their sensors. The most common tactic is to wait until the very last minute to run in the base to win. When this game was played in easy mode, it was impossible for the attackers to win as there is a 3 second delay between each shot. Therefore, if you left cover to run to the building with less than a minute left, you cannot be killed because it would take 60 seconds to hit the same person 20 times, assuming the other players were accurate enough. Now that this game is in standard mode, the defender would need to do this with under 20 seconds to do the same strategy. The defenders still win more often than not. as they are able to get inside the building and not die if they have multiple people rushing back at the same time.

4/10 – Too easy for a defender to win, which makes the game very predictable.

Ultimate Warrior

This game mode is sometimes used when there is an unusually high amount of time remaining at the end of the session. All the standard FFA rules apply, but each player has around 30 – 50 lives and the time limit is increased to around 20 minutes. This makes the standard FFA more tactical, as you cannot reliably kill the first few players you see without taking a high amount of damage yourself due to the high HP.

7/10 – Enjoyable mode but the games can have quiet parts in the middle when some players are out and the rest are hiding.

Domination

One of the first game modes to be created, this is also one of the most fast paced. The teams start on opposite ends of the main path: one by airdrop and the other by the secondary entrance of the map. There is a domination box which has been placed in the first aid building and the objective is to shoot the box to take control of it. Once shot, a timer will start for the team of the player that hit it. If a player from the other team shoots the box, the first team’s timer will stop and the other timer will start. The winning team is the one with the highest amount of time in control of the box. The start of the game is the most chaotic as both teams will want to take control of the box first and protect it by killing anyone else trying to enter the building. A lot of strategy and communication is involved in this game as you may need to organise multiple people to retake the base as going in one at a time will be difficult. Players with larger guns will tend to go around the top of the hill (either to hawk’s nest or the top fort) in order to flank the other team and take lives off them as soon as they respawn to make it harder for them to get into the building. The team which starts at the secondary entrance has an advantage as they can easily get to hawk’s nest and shoot through the window of the first aid building.

9/10 – Very fast paced game mode with lots of different strategies.

Sniper Ghost Warrior

A unique game mode that is no longer played. It involves a sniper (on one shot kill) and a machine gun on the same team with 20 lives and no respawns. The rest of the players are all on 5 lives with unlimited respawns. The objective of the game is to kill both the sniper and the machine gunner. The start of the game is highly strategic for the sniper’s team as they need to choose a place that is both secluded, easily defendable and has opportunities for escape in case they get surrounded. I remember being a sniper in this game mode – it sounded easy as you have a 1 shot kill gun and lots of targets to shoot at. However, the other team is aware of this and will move very fast between cover to make it as hard as possible for you to hit them. The sniper is also wildly inaccurate if it is in the wrong hands. That was the first and last time I used that gun.

2/10 – Not as fun as other modes if you’re not on the sniper / machine gun team.

Team Elimination

This game mode used to sometimes be played instead of TDM but is now usually played in game 4 and 5. All players have 20 lives instead of 5, but there are no respawns. If the teams are unbalanced, the first x players to die may respawn where x is the number of players fewer than the other team. The winning team is the one with the least number of players dead. Once a player is out, they have to return to a given point (usually airdrop) and cannot leave until the match is over. As of mid 2024, 10 lives is currently being used as most people play conservativly when they only have one life. This tweak guarantees there will not be any games where no one dies and the match becomes an anticlimactic draw.

7/10 – Provides a good challenge for all players.

Free For All

A true classic, this game (or its variants) features in every session. In its base form, all players start off with 20 lives, no respawns and no teaming up. Once a player dies, they return back to the car park. The game usually lasts 10 minutes but is sometimes extended to 15 if the time allows. The winner is determined by whoever is the last player standing at the end of the game. However, this is very rare so 99.99% of the time the winner is the player with the highest score in that game. To calculate the score the hits, kills and lives are added up. So if you hid all game and came back with full HP but didn’t fire a single round, your score would be 20 and would have very little chance of winning. The current high score for this game is over 90 but a normal winning score would be around 40 or 50. There are 3 ways this game is started:

  • Staggered start – this is the traditional method and is no longer used. Each player is sent out one by one, usually with about 10 seconds gap. This allows each player to gain cover but has the unfortunate downside of allowing earlier players to spawn camp.
  • Chaos start – this style is very rarely used as it can be unfair. At the end of the free for all brief, the Marshall will shout “the game starts in 3,2,1” and then instantly start the game with their ref gun, meaning all players can shoot from the start. Most players will run but some will stay and try and get as many hits as possible before taking cover. This can be a risky strategy as that player will rarely be the only one to think of it, so you will get 2 or more players taking a lot of lives away from each other at the beginning of the game, reducing their chances of winning.
  • Delayed start – this is now the most common method of starting the game. The Marshall will start the game but no one will be allowed to shoot until the whistle is blown, which is usually after around 20 seconds. The main downside to this is that in almost every group, there will always be a few players who decide they don’t need to wait for the whistle and will just shoot whenever they feel like it. This can often cause confusion and cause everyone else to begin firing and be impossible to determine who broke the rule in the first place.

8/10 – Challenging game mode, great to play as it’s the only mode where you can’t rely on a teammate.

Team Deathmatch

The easiest game mode to set up, this is always the first game that is played. Both teams have 5 lives and an unlimited number of respawns. The winning team is the one with the least respawns on their box. Some players realise that if they do not respawn at the end of the game, then their respawn will not be counted. However, the number of dead players is added onto their respawn count if the scores are close enough for this to matter. This used to be a 15 minute game but is now 10 minutes to allow for 3 of them instead of 2 and to align the time with every other game.

5/10 – An average mode, very commonly played.

Infected

Another game mode that’s inspired by call of duty, it’s no longer played now due to it being tricky to set up and having flaws. 2 players start off as the zombies on one team and the rest are survivors. Their objective is to kill all the survivors. The zombies have 20 hp and can respawn at any point and the survivors only have 5 hp, meaning their only way to survive is to hide. If a survivor dies, they have to return to the car park, gain 20 lives and then swap to the other team to join the infected. The main flaw with this game is that most of the survivors’ time is spent hiding. While this can be suspenseful, there’s little to no action.

1/10 – Complicated to set up and has too many flaws.

Capture the Flag

This game mode has only been played once at Chorley and served as an experiment. As the game suggests, the winning team is the one with the flag at the end. Both teams had 20 lives and no respawns. The flag was stashed in one of the village forts and was quickly taken by one of the players. The only downside to this was that no one knew which player had the flag, making the objective pointless. Any game mode with physical objects involved will fail because players can just hide it even after they die.

0/10 – Doesn’t work as a game mode.

Ref gun

The ref gun is essential to battlefield. It can either send out radio signals or use its own infra red beam to do various tasks. Like all other guns, it has a trigger, LCD screen and 2 buttons to cycle through screens. However, it is the only gun to not have a muzzle flash.

Radio functions:

  • Start / stop game
  • Pause / resume

IR functions:

  • Set HP – can be from 1 to 99 (or even invulnerable) with set intervals such as 5, 8, 10, 15, 20 etc
  • Set difficulty
  • Change emulation
  • Interrogate – find out the current HP, hits and kills of a user by shooting at them
  • Shooting mode
  • Killing mode
  • Jam weapon
  • Revive – only works if the player has started the current game and has 0 lives.
  • Reload – fill up a user’s magazine allocation, useful for when guns have a glitch and are set to only 6 reloads
  • New mission – completely resets a user’s score and HP. Can also be used to start a player’s gun if it does not respond to the mission start radio signal. Also used when a game mode requires one team to be started before another (e.g border or base assault)

Medbox and repeater

The medbox revives players. Before covid a red button would need to be pressed to revive but an update in early 2020 allows the box to fire a revive signal every second with an effective range of 1 metre and maximum range of 10 metres. The black button can also be used to restore ammunition.

The repeater is deployed near the entrance before the first game, it extends the range of radio signals sent out by ref guns (start and end). Used to be used as a domination box.

SAW (machine gun)

When you just want the biggest gun with the biggest magazine, the machine gun is the best option. Its large magazine allows it to be one of the most versatile guns; it can be used at close range to kill enemies while they are reloading (as they’ll always run out of ammunition before you do) or holding down an area at long range. This gun has gone through the most emulations – at the beginning it had 200 rounds to fire before having to reload and at another stage it had the fastest fire rate of any weapon. Its current emulation is well balanced with 100 rounds and easy to use. It has the slowest reload so the user has to be very careful when they press the red button.

Currently the SAW does not have a bipod but before 2014 it did, giving the weapon great stability. This image is from 2013 showing it in use. It looks like the other player is using a P90 because of the stock shape and how forward the sight is. The P90 player is on the black ops team (they used to have bright red headbands but now have black ones, the camo headbands are now a much brighter green). They must be playing Hunger Games since there are 2 players on a different teams next to each other.

02/11/2024 – The number of machine guns has been doubled after 2 snipers have had their scopes replaced with new red dot sights. This is possible because the machine gun and sniper have the same body, just a different sight and emulation. The scopes have been placed on a couple of M16s.

Handling: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reload speed: ⭐️

Accuracy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Appearance: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mag size: 100

Effective range: 200m

Overall Score: 8/10

Honey Badger

With the greatest accuracy, a foregrip and sling, the Honey Badger is by far the best weapon at BFL. With a manageable fire rate, this gun is deadly at all ranges as long as the user is aware of the slower than average reload speed and can plan around it. Currently emulating the AK74.

Handling: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reload speed: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Accuracy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Appearance: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mag size: 30

Effective range: 250m

Overall Score: 10/10

Sniper

This is the most unique weapon by far as it is the only one to feature a scope, rather than a red dot. This makes the weapon the most difficult to use because the horizontal and vertical lines need to be perfectly aligned in order to make a hit. Its accuracy is fully dependent on the user, as some players can instantly make full use of the gun, while most will struggle to hit the target even once. Traditionally, the sniper would be set to one shot kill for the games in which players have 5 lives. This makes the gun devastating in the right hands. Currently the weapon is rarely used as it’s so hard to balance – it can either be too under or overpowered.

In this image the sniper does have a bipod but I have never seen any of our snipers fitted with one.

02/11/2024 – The scopes from the snipers have been moved to M16s, making them the new snipers. The M16 is lighter than sniper, which would give the user greater mobility. However, this is cancelled out by the weight distribution being too far to the front, making it harder to aim down the sights for longer periods at a time.

Handling: ⭐️

Reload speed: ⭐️

Accuracy: User dependant

Appearance: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mag size: 10

Effective range: 300m

Overall Score: User dependant

M16

Similar to the Commando, this gun’s accuracy has decreased over time, making this weapon have no clear advantages over any other weapon. Most of the weight is at the front, meaning the offhand has to carry most of the weight. This makes the gun more difficult to use the longer you are holding and aiming it (although some do come with a sling to help alleviate this).

02/11/2024 – 2 of these have had their red dots repaced with scopes from the Sniper.

Handling: ⭐️⭐️

Reload speed: ⭐️⭐️

Accuracy: ⭐️⭐️

Appearance: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mag size: 30

Effective range: 180m

Overall Score: 3/10