DEFCON

2005-10-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

Scenario
You are part of an elite force whose mission is to locate and steal a top secret disk which contains the names of all enemy spies working in your country. If this disk is recovered your country will win the war.

Objective
To locate the disk and bring it back to your team's starting area. The disk location can only be discovered (unless you get really lucky and just find it) by capturing the opposing force’s general.

Game Play
Starting Positions: A new game is started with teams on opposite sides of the field and standing out of bounds.
Fighting: In order to fight someone you must first tag them. Both players (or a group of players) then show their cards and the highest total fighting value wins the fight. Also, if someone thinks they know who the double agent is on their team and tags them the person tagged must show their true card. However if the person tagging is incorrect in their assumption they are out of the game.

Life Cards: Each player receives 2 Life Cards at the beginning of each game. Each time a player looses a fight they are to surrender a Life Card to the opposing team. When a player looses a fight and does not have a Life Card to surrender they are eliminated for the remainder of the game.

Team scoring: many times it will be necessary to fight as a team rather than individually. When you fight as a team your fighting values are totaled together. To do this the team must all be holding on to the team tank (i.e. the piece of rope) when the tag is made.

Positions
· Sniper (4 fighting value): The most powerful fighting force in the unit.
· General (3 fighting value): second most powerful fighting force, has vital information about location of disk. Can’t be the Double Agent’s false cover.
· Sergeant (2 fighting value): a mid-level fighter
· Infantry (1 fighting value): the main group of fighters.
· Double Agent (0 fighting value): An undercover spy for the opposite team. Can be the most important position if used correctly. When tagged the DA must show their DA card not their false ID.

Weapons
· Sniper Rifle (adds 1 to fighting value)
· Pistol (adds 2 to fighting value)
· Rifle (adds 3 to fighting value)
· Machine gun (adds 4 to fighting value)

Other Rules
· Ref whistles: 1 blast=game start/resume game; 2 blasts=timeout (stay where you are); 3 blasts=game over (return to staging area)
· Radios: you can try to pick up on the other team’s frequency. Channel 1 is reserved for referees, only use it to contact referees.
· Equipment/position swapping: switching positions or equipment is not allowed.
· Boundaries: no going outside of the assigned boundaries.
· Each team gets 1 team tank. 2 if there are more than 11 players on a team.
· The only time a Double Agent must show their true card (the double agent card) is if they are tagged by their own team (see Game Play above).
· When a player is eliminated for the game they may give their weapon card to another player on their team although that player can only use one weapon at a time.
· Referees have the right to penalize cheating by taking one or more Life Cards from a player.

Hints/Strategy
· Consider breaking into at least two squads with a radio in each squad.
· Watch for people running off on their own– they might well be the double agent trying to make contact.
· Pick one person to coordinate the entire team.
· When team tagging try running without holding onto the rope until the moment before the tag. This will increase your speed.
· When team tagging, have the lower value players show there cards when a tag is made. This way if you may not have to show all your cards in order to make the capture thereby allowing the ID of some of the more powerful players to not be known to the opposing team.
· Consider having someone write down the fighting values of the opposing team’s players as they become known. This will allow for you to calculate if you can win a battle and perhaps even who the general is by process of elimination. Announce your findings over the radio.
· Have one radio operator monitor different frequencies in order to intercept enemy transmissions.
· The general is the only guaranteed safe person on any team (anyone else could also be the double agent).
· Consider hiding the general.
· Use the tank to create a “base” where you can meet as a team without concern for being captured.

How to Host a Game

2005-10-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

1. Mark off clear boundaries

2. Break up into teams with equal amounts of athleticism and brains on each team.

3. Give the captains their team’s cards (minus the Double Agent Card, see #5). Captain’s should then let players choose from the position cards with cards facing down. After all positions have been given out the players may choose from the weapons with the cards face up.

4. Hide the two disks while teams are meeting

5. At some point before the beginning of the game you need to meet with each player for just a moment in order to assign the Double Agent position to someone. We usually had the teams file through a room one by one and then just choose someone to give the Double Agent card to on each team.

6. Playing
· One or all of the refs need to know the location of the disks. When a general is caught you will tell only the person or group who caught him where the disk is. Don’t walk them to it but rather describe the exact location.
· The basic rule breaking policy is to take a life card for each infraction.

How to Not Suck

2005-10-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

1. Make sure the playing field is big enough. We usually had 20-30 people playing the game and would use an area made up of 4 city blocks full of alleys and the like. The key is to make the area big enough that people can hide.

2. Make sure you have enough time to play. The game takes time to setup (making teams, explaining the game etc.) and even longer to play. We usually set aside a minimum of 2 hours for a game.

3. Hide the discs before people are watching you hide the discs.

4. Supplies you will need: 1. Game cards (available as PDF downloads on this site), 2. Two 3-6" pieces of rope (the "tanks"), 2 discs of some sort.

5. Supplies that are nice to have: 1. Ref whistle 2. Radios for the teams and refs

The Double Agent Explained

2005-10-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Double Agent position can be confusing to newbies so I thought I would explain it in more detail.

For this example I will use a ficticious player named John who is playing for the blue team. Before the start of the game John was given the position of Sergeant (i.e. he has a blue Sergeant card). However, as the players were passing one at a time by the ref (see "How to Host A Game" #5) he was given the Double Agent card for the red team. This means that John is now actually on the red team but undercover as a Sergeant on the blue.

The Double Agent has 0 fighting value. He may have picked a good weapon up at the beginning which will give him some fighting value but he will still get worked by almost everyone once he is discovered. The point of the low fighting value is that the Double Agent's real strength lies with intelligence gathering rather than fighting.

Here are a couple of Double Agent thoughts to keep in mind while you strategize and play the game.

1. The Double Agent becomes almost entirely useless once their cover is blown (Their fighting value is low and they can't gain access to any more information).

2. The only time a Double Agent must show their Double Agent card is when they are tagged by someone on their cover team (in the example above John's cover team would be the blue team). This means John could conceivably use his Blue Sergeant card to attack the red team even though they are his true team. Why? To keep his identity secret and avoid the doubts of the blue team until the time is right.