There’s a battle raging two miles outside of Haines.
Ten masked young men carrying M4-style rifles storm up a hill under the mossy canopy of Sitka spruce, dodging behind tussocks and climbing over slippery fallen logs to get closer to their enemy.
They’re trying to capture the top of the hill from their outnumbered opponents. From the top of the hill, snipers train their laser sights on the masked fighters, but each time they hit one, the fighters regenerate from a moss-covered block of granite a hundred yards away.
The scenario has been playing out nearly every weekend this summer, but the guns aren’t real: instead they shoot biodegradable six millimeter-diameter plastic pellets with compressed air. And the two sides are in on the same game, organized by 21-year-old U.S. Army specialist Emmanuel Hansen. He said the idea to play war games with airsoft guns came as a teenager, when some friends decided they were tired of playing their Game Boys.
“Kids are sitting working their thumbs or whatever. I was like ‘Why don’t you experience it for real?'” he said.
He and a few friends spent $25 on Amazon for their first airsoft guns and the idea was born. Now, Hansen hosts weekly games at his family’s property on the side of Mount Ripinsky.
He’s spent hours clearing brush and fine tuning trails on the one-acre playing field to include obstacles like notched logs and a fort made from cleared brush. He’s upgraded his gun to a battery-powered rifle that cost hundreds of dollars. It shoots up to 22 pellets per second and comes with a laser sight.
The weekly games Hansen organizes sometimes attract more than a dozen people who arrange different scenarios that come with their own rules.
In one scenario, called King of the Hill, three players stand atop a hill from a glacial erratic boulder covered by moss. They shoot at attackers – sometimes 10 or more – who try to “kill” them by hitting them with a pellet. The attackers themselves regenerate if they are hit, but have to go back to a different boulder, or “spawn point,” in the language of the game.
Defenders have just one “life.” The attackers have 10 minutes.
Team DeathMatch, another scenario, is a timed battle where teams fight against each other and vie to have the fewest deaths.
The lean, energetic 175-pound Hansen said the game is about more than just having fun.
For one, he said the game has helped him with his physical fitness and leadership. He said when he started basic training in Missouri two years ago, he could already do 100 pushups at a time.
“My basic training was a cakewalk,” he said. At just 19 years old, he was chosen by his 40-person platoon as the platoon sergeant.
“It was humbling to have that many people vote for little Hansen sitting in the corner just trying to be a good soldier,” he said.
Competency with firearms is another goal of the airsoft league. He requires a safety orientation and a waiver. Other than when they’re in a game, players follow all gun safety rules and wear safety glasses, and optional face masks and helmets. The pellets can travel 400 feet per second and leave dime-sized red welts on the players’ skin.
He also said gun safety is more important than ever.
“We just had 3,000 guys go over to Ukraine. That’s not a joke for them. If I can do my best to make sure that people are somewhat fluent in the use of weapons to engage human beings,” that’s a good thing, he said.
Being deployed in combat isn’t abstract for Hansen. He’s expecting a surrounding area Middle East deployment later this summer or fall, though he doesn’t know the details.
Still, he said, he’s planning on keeping the airsoft league going long term in Haines. Several of his siblings are enthusiastic airsoft players, including a 16-year-old brother who he said “is just as much into it as I am.” He said he hoped his brother would keep organizing the league if Hansen is deployed.
Eventually, he wants to return to Haines and secure more sites to have games, including an indoor hangar. He’s also hoping to organize a trip to Fairbanks, where airsoft is reportedly popular.