New 2-Gun In Town: FAST Retro Rifle Match 2026

Shooting sports are constantly evolving, mostly. While age-old classics like High Power, Trap, Skeet, and F-Class rarely (if ever) change, the world of action shooting sports is constantly on the move. USPSA, PCSL, PRS, 3-Gun, and 2-Gun are pushing a new frontier. The newest evolution comes from FAST, the Firearms Action Shooting Trials. Long stages, lots of shooting, harder-than-average targets, and a whole lot of fun. 

2026 is the first year for FAST, and the Retro Rifle FAST match in Buckeye, Arizona, was the first full-size match held with more FAST matches coming later in the year. There are several flavors of FAST, 2-Gun matches, with more generalized divisions and rules, and specialty 1-Gun FAST matches with unique divisions centralized around a match theme. FAST Retro Rifle was one of the latter, as the name suggests.

NOT YOUR AVERAGE SHOOTING MATCH

Focusing on rifle platforms of the GWOT era (post-9/11 through the end of 2014), Retro Rifle gave shooters 4 stages to test out their cloner builds and oddball surplus rifles. Par times were 4 minutes, with enough targets and movement that a skilled shooter would use at least half of that par. I ran the course of fire twice across both days of the match and used about 300-rounds per day between an M16A4 clone build shooting in the GWOT division and a “Race Rifle” AR with a red dot, shooting in the aptly named Red Dot division.

Roughly half the targets were at 50-60 yards, a quarter of the targets at 150-200, and the last quarter from 200-400. A great mix of shooting distances without wasting time or ammo on bulls#it paper at zero yards, as so many matches tend to do these days.

4-stages doesn’t sound like much, but with the long par times, high round counts, further distance, and medium to very small targets all worked to deliver a match that felt like a 1-day major. Think of it this way, 4-stages of USPSA or PCSL might only end up with 15-30 seconds of actual time on the clock per stage. 1 or 2 minutes total. Finishing 20th out of 108 shooters with a final time of 660 seconds (before bonuses), 4 stages meant 11 minutes of shooting on the clock.

This is why I love longer par stages that make you work for it. You just get more time doing the thing you’re there to do!

Stage breakdown below, but the TL;DR is that these stages were a lot of fun. Challenging, but fun. Almost entirely steel targets also meant almost zero reset and fast stage progression. Starting at 8am, the match was finished by 2:30pm both days. Every RO was well-informed, understood their stage, and ran smoothly. 

Stage 1

Starting in a minivan with a full auto machine gun in hand (MP5 on day one, KP-9 on day two after the MP5 broke an extractor), a quick mag dump into an Infinity Target started the stage with a bang. Shooter then exited the minivan by crawling through the side sliding door or rear hatch and retrieved their rifle and any ammo they wanted on the stage. 

The stage was split into three bays. The right bay had 2 steel targets and 3 paper targets and required the shooter to shoot from the right shoulder and right trigger hand. Sweep the steel twice (no double-taps), 2 shots in the paper. Repeat from standing, kneeling, and prone.

Center bay could be shot from any shoulder, any hand, but had 3 large spools to use as props. 5 shooting positions marked by blue paint that basically resulted in 2 kneeling and 3 prone positions. 2 steel targets and a spinner, but the spinner was treated as basically 2 static steel targets requiring a single hit per sweep on the upper and lower spinner plate. Sweep all 4 steel targets once from each shooting position, then spin the spinner. Failing to spin the spinner was a 60-second penalty!

Left bay was the same as the right bay, but required the shooter to use their left hand/shoulder. 

Stage guns are often hit or miss, but when the stage gun is a full-auto 9mm, it’s always a hit. Does it take skill to mag dump an MP5 into a target 5 yards away? No, but it’s fun, and fun wins.

Left and right bays were a nice mix of quick target transitions and multiple positions. Not super hard, but a good skill check to see who dry fires and practices weak-side shooting. 

Middle bay with the spinner ate a lot of people’s lunch. Spinners aren’t hard, but they do require strategy and spatial awareness. One mistimed shot can ruin it. 

Overall, this was a solid stage. Not too hard, not too easy, fun gimmick with the machine gun, and honestly, I just like spinners. 

Stage 2

4 targets at 50ish yards, 6 positions. While the positions were about 15 yards apart, the stage design was such that positions 1 and 2 were on opposite sides. From left to right, the positions went 1-3-5-6-4-2. The first movement from position 1 to 2 was the longest, with each subsequent movement being shorter than the previous. 

Each position required two sweeps on the steel for 8 hits total. After those 8 hits, there was a bonus moving target that could be hit once for a -5 second bonus.

This was the “easy” stage of the match. While it required the most running, the props used were spools in different orientations, a log pile, and sandbags. This gave good positions to brace off of for mid-distance shots on mid-sized targets. Transitions for the sweeps were only a few yards for the steel targets, but about 80 yards to the opposite end of the bay for the bonus. This gave a bit of strategy since it wasn’t always worth it to go for the bonus target. Depending on the shooter, where the mover was, and how quickly you could get on it. 

Get the heart rate up, get your hits, try to remember the bonus target. Not a stage to be remembered in 5 years, but a good stage nonetheless. 

Stage 3

Stages 3 and 4 were shot from a Conex box tower, with stage 3 being shot from level 2 of the tower, and stage 4 being shot from levels 3 and 4. This meant that there is literally a shooter and ROs above you (or below you from stage 4), and that came with the extra safety precaution of needing to keep your rifle muzzle down or parallel with the stage at all times (Stage 4 required muzzle up or parallel). Not a hard safety precaution to follow, but important to remember. The ROs on both stages were totally on the ball and watchful the entire match. Props to them for keeping a novel stage design safe and flowing smoothly!

This stage worked differently than most, with every shooter getting the full 3-minute par time as their score, but with every target hit deducting time from that score. If a shooter was fast enough, it was possible to get negative time. 

The wall of the Conex box was filled with ports for shooting, at least 20 of them. Many were cut like a VTAC barricade, but there were other ports as well in the shapes of squares, diamonds, circles, and more. 

Three steel targets: a 4”(ish) headshot target at 100 yards, an 8”(ish) square at 180 yards, and a USPSA torso steel at 200 yards. 

The two further targets were -2.5 seconds per hit, and the headshot was -10 seconds.

Each target could be hit once for one bonus per port. No ports could be repeated until every port was used.

Throw in the surprisingly strong wind that most shooters faced, and this quickly became a challenging stage that required good positional shooting, some wind call, and great follow-up shots. Shooting this in GWOT using the 4x ACOG was pretty quick and easy, but with a red dot became a lot harder. Great stage for highlighting different equipment strange and weaknesses. 

Mechanically easy, this stage was more of a challenge than expected and a ton of fun. Precise shots, shooting from a tower, pick your battle for what ports work best. Finishing 12/108 shooters with my GWOT rifle proves the ACOG and a mil-spec trigger can still get it done.

Stage 4

The long range stage. 200 yard torso steel, 300-yard square, 400-yard gong. The 300 and 400-yard targets had a wind flag and flashers to help make it easier to find and call wind, but they were still challenging targets. While the 200-yard targets were inside the bay, the farther targets were not, and this created very different wind calls at each target. For both of my runs, the 200-yard targets actually required significantly more wind hold than the 300 or 400.

Starting on the 3rd level of the tower, shooters had 6 positions on a railing to shoot from. Each position was one sweep of the 4 targets (two at 200, 1 at 300, and 1 at 400). After all 6 positions, shooters dropped their magazine and took one clearing shot at the 200-yard steel for a possible bonus. Once the rifle was clear, shooters moved outside the tower, up the stairs to the 4th level, and took a prone position behind sandbags. Reload, sweep the 4 targets twice for 8 hits total to finish the stage.

It was clear from just looking at that this stage was going to be harder than average. 108 shooters, ~77 parred out before finishing. More than half of GWOT shooters with magnified optics still parred out. Only 1/3rd of Red Dot shooters finished, 1 shooter in Heavy Irons, and 3 shooters in Irons were able to finish before the clock ran out.

Strong wind, 7 positions, and distances that many shooters don’t practice at combine for a hard stage. Some stages are hard because of bad reasons, but stages like this are hard for good reasons. The stage was entirely doable, it wasn’t complex to understand, and it presented a difficult level of shooting. Failure to complete the stage was a matter of skill and understanding your chosen rifle system.

GEAR USED

GWOT

This M16A4 build has been kicking around my gun safe for almost 10 years. Built on a PSA “Mad Dog” lower with a PSA/FN M16A4 upper, with a Knight’s Armament M5 RAS quad rail. While not “clone correct”, this is pretty close to what the USMC invaded Iraq with in 2004.

Trijicon loaned me a TA31 ACOG for this match to complete the build and make it the best it could be.

Over 20 years later, and the M16A4 with an ACOG is still a kickass rifle. Totally reliable, this rifle has never had an issue of any kind. It just runs. It shoots about 2 MOA, much better than MILSPEC, and making hits at 400 yards was point and click with the ACOG BDC reticle.

It’s a little heavy, it’s kind of long, but it gets the job done.

Red Dot

This is a “PCSL Race Rifle” built, as the name suggests, with more of an eye to PCSL-style matches than anything else. Everything about it is pushing the ragged edge of reliability because that’s what is required to really squeeze every drop of race performance out of an AR.

But if you want to race, sometimes you have to crash. This rifle did not perform nearly as well as I hoped, but it was entirely my fault. 4 weeks before FAST Retro Rifle, I broke my ankle. It was against the doctor’s orders that I even shot the match at all, as my ankle really wasn’t “healed” yet.

The rifle got built halfway through my convalescence, but between the broken ankle and some bad weather, there wasn’t a chance to actually shoot the rifle before the match. This gun was zeroed on 50-yard steel the Saturday afternoon after my GWOT run, so I could shoot it in Red Dot starting Sunday morning.

The first two stages had a lot of bolt bounce and failure to go into battery. This cost a LOT of time working through the malfunctions. Stages 3 and 4 only had 1 malf combined. I fully believe the rifle just needed some breaking in to get all the race tolerance parts to agree with each other.

When it was running, this was a magically smooth and easy rifle to shoot. The reticle doesn’t move in the slightest. Barely 7 lbs unloaded, it’s fast and snappy to get on target with ease. Even at 400 yards with an unmagnified Vortex UH-1, hits were just easy.

This rifle is still “under construction” and will have a full build article coming soon.

• Wilson Combat barrel
• Unrevealed Defense buffer spring
• Unrevealed Defense AR grip
• Stoner CNC Hollywood Gen 3 Brake
• KE Arms Rekluse trigger
• Griffin MK2 lower
• Midwest Industry Lightweight handguard
• Walker Defense Ti BCG
• Walker Defense NILE rail panels
• Vortex Optics UH-1 Gen 2 Holographic sight

G-CODE Sync 4Zero 2×2 Chest Rig

Since the Retro match was rifle only, a belt really wasn't needed. For both courses of fire, a simple chest rig was more than enough. Mine was the G-CODE Sync 4Zero with 2 rifle Scorpion magazine pouches and 2 pistol Scorpion pouches. The pistol mag holsters went empty all weekend, but the rifle mags were perfect. Sync Suspension pouch under the main placard was great for storing hydration packets and some spare mags to load up with at the stage of stages.

This harness was comfortable even in 100+ heat and across a lot of shooting. Something really overlooked if you want to shoot matches is keeping your load-bearing gear as simple as possible.

FUTURE OF 2-GUN

FAST won’t be everyone’s favorite flavor of match, but it’s definitely one you should try. Long par time stages make for more shooting, even with fewer stages per day. The themed FAST matches, like Retro Rifle, are a great way to test the waters of FAST and get to try some non-standard loadouts you might not want to bring to a larger match.

The next match is FAST West Virginia, June 12-14. This will be the first 2-Gun FAST match and looks to be shaping up to be everything Retro Rifle was, but on steroids. 

Two more FAST matches this year, the Intergalactic Small Arms Championship will be a 1-Gun FAST match in Flagstaff, Arizona. FAST Idaho in Parma, Idaho, is another 2-Gun FAST match with targets to 600 yards!

From beginning to end, the FAST Retro Rifle was a great match to shoot. Huge thanks to the crew at Independence Training for helping RO and host, and to Range 21:31 for outstanding range facilities. Retro Rifle was the title sponsor of the match and provided a ton of great shirts for the prize table. 

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