That's what the Association of Competitive Airsoft (ACA) wants you to do. If you're based in California, want to go into competitive airsoft games, then form your team to join in the planned 2012 season of ACA. The ACA will be holding a league in which teams, composed of 5 players, with team members at least 15 years of age, in a team versus team competition.

The locations for such competition will be varied, ranging from CQB venues to MOUT locations. Teams  will either be in elimination style games, or scenarios with objectives such as defusing a bomb, or gathering intel. Almost like a Team Fortress video game, and this time it's for real.

This reminds us here at Popular Airsoft of the Filipino Airsoft (FAS) Nationals in the Philippines where there is an ongoing competitive league now on its 2nd season. The difference for between the FAS Nationals and the ACA is elimination portion, where teams go through the stages in regional and national levels before one can be declared the National Champion. The ACA is an open one, where teams do not have to go through elimination stages like in the FAS Format. Though we cannot say for now how exactly the ACA evolve until the 2012 season starts.

The similarity between FAS and ACA is the team versus elimination style, in the case of FAS, the style is akin to Paintball's speedball and venues are temporary ones erected for the each stage whereas ACA relies  on existing airsoft skirmish sites, which as of now, three have been accredited according to their website.

Also in the ACA, they have a class system, in which teams can choose individual roles or class and adjust the loadout accordingly. The different classes are the Captain Class, Medic, Assault, Scout, Sniper, and Engineer. Each class will have distinct allowances in use magazines, type of airsoft guns to be used, respawn time, and roles and capabilities.

While individuals in a team are assigned classes, the guns have their "Tier" levels, which is fast becoming a term used nowadays when "Tier 1" denotes a high level of skill which special operations forces have. This is a weapons ranking system and there are 5 tiers for airsoft guns:

Tier 1 - Pistols and Shotguns

• Any form of gas/electric/spring powered hand gun OR shotgun. No full auto capabilities allowed. All Tier 1 weapons must be semi-auto only.
• If using a shotgun, you may carry 10 shells for your shotgun.
• NO C02 guns allowed.
• Hand held grenade pistols do not count as a grenade. They count as a hand gun and must adhere to the same rules.

Tier 2- Field Guns

• Airsoft guns that are not sniper rifles, support weapons or Tier 1 weapons.
• May be gas, spring, or electric.
• No under barrel attachments are allowed (unless using Tier 5).

Tier 3 - Support Guns

• May be a Tier 2 weapon with an attached box/drum extreme capacity magazine.
• May be a support style gun with an attached box/drum extreme capacity magazine.
• If the player chooses to utilize a box/drum extreme capacity magazine, they forfeit the use of any mid-capacity magazines.
• May be gas or electric.

Tier 4 - Sniper Rifles

• Any sniper rifle style airsoft gun.
• May be spring, gas or electric.
• Must be semi-automatic only with no full auto capabilities.

Tier 5 - Grenades

• Grenades must be store bought. No home made grenades will be allowed
• Noise making grenades that do not expel BB's are allowed. They do not count as a hit.
• Grenades must expel BB's for it to count as a hit.
• Players may substitute hand held grenades for under the barrel grenade launchers with 2 rounds.

The issue in such competitive leagues is the "honor system" which gets undermined in tournaments. This is also an issue on why other airsoft players avoid such leagues and would rather be in scenario based games such as milsim of weekenders. The ACA will be strict in the implementation of the honor system and will immediately kick out teams who violate the honor system

Checking at the website, there's not much movement in terms of discussions and updates for the upcoming ACA season as the last news posted was almost a month ago. Perhaps they are still refining the rules and classifications, while teams are formed to join in the 2012 season. We hope that this takes off for the US to start having competitive tournaments on their own.

So, if you have a team and raring to go head to head with other airsoft teams, then the ACA is for you.