If you ever played capture the flag, you know the game can be played on any kind of terrain, but you need a well defined area to play in, and a clear boundary for each team's field. This can be difficult to find, and in general the game is just slightly different on different terrains. No matter where you play it (a forest, an empty field, or urban areas), the faster a person can move the more chance they have to win. In our game other skills are also involved: teamwork, communication, good eyesight, and unique ideas can come handy, and change the game every time you play it.

The game goes the following way:

You need to prepare shields what you can put on the forehead of everyone. (examples) This can take a long while, if you do it for the first time. We will describe later how and what to do.

How to play:

You need to make 2 equally sized teams, and have at least one referee at a central post.

Both team gets a flag, and the task is to bring back the flag of the enemy team to the base (with the referee).

At the start the teams go to different direction and search a hiding place for the flag. Once placed, the flag can not be touched by its defenders. Everyone puts on the shields with the numbers and the game begins. If someone's number is fully read out loudly, the person is dead and needs to go back to the base. Here after some penalty time or even some penalty tasks like pushups they can get a new number, and return to the game. If a flag is back to the center, the team has a score, everyone removes their number, so that it is not visible to everyone when they are close to each other and a new round begins.

How to wear a shield:

• It is forbidden to hide it with any of your own body parts. E.g. do not put your hand or arm in front of it.

• it is forbidden to put your hand on a teammate's number

• One must wear it the right orientation (up side up) on the forehead. it is forbidden to wear them on the back or turn them up side down.

  • Alternative version of the game with slightly higher preparation cost: you can create numbers to both mark the forehead and the back of the head, like license plates on cars.

• You need to clarify rules around the following easily discoverable tactics based on the terrain:

  • "Praise the sky": one looking up to the sky hiding their number with this.. a taller person can have some advantage on open areas, but not that useful in forests

  • "Praise the earth": drop yourself to the ground, and put the number on the earth, and as such make it impossible to read it

    • can lead to physical conflicts, if the enemy tries to move the person

    • or a guessing game if some part of the number are already known by the enemy team

  • "Praise the woods" same as before but putting the number against a tree, letting the person "shoot from cover"

  • "Team praise": "Praise the woods" but using a teammate's body as the tree. Using arms or hands this way is clearly a no go, but this, if the given teammate needs to turn their back to the enemy can be a valid move in fields, where open and closed areas are mixed. Turning back or moving the head quickly as a protection is always something you can do, but tactics can be developed against all of them.

  • "The tank": 3 -4 people pushing the shields against each others' and move in this protected formation

    • the movement will be slow, but if they are strong or if you do not let physical contacts happen during the game, this can be an overrated feature.

    • You can make a rule that if anyone still part of a tank (shields are touching) is killed, all of them dies.

Most of the above formations, can be done statically. If you allow them the camper might be eliminated or forced for movement if counted on until 10 or 20.

How to create the shields:

Size: half of A5 (but along the longer edge, not A6, 74*210 mm) is usually working well, but this is not set in stone, as long as you create uniformly sized shields

Color: pay attention to have equal contrast to both the background to the shield and the environment around the people for both teams, but still make them distinguishable. usually dark blue and red on white background works well. alternatively make the numbers with the same color, and have a different team marker color at all edge of the shields.

Selection of the numbers:

• up-side down wearing should be avoided, so e.g. 9999 is not the best idea, because one might wears it as 6666 and claims to be still alive

• do not use the same number twice, not even across teams, having the same set of numbers for fairness might be a nice idea, but participants will figure this out quickly, and use it to call numbers they have never seen on enemies yet.

• do not use numbers with just 1 digit difference, misreading or guessing parts of a number can lead to accidental kills, but if there is a misunderstanding a participant with an already revealed number can not be revived on the spot, so the situation should be avoided. If you play with older participants, a longer number with 6-7-8 digits can make sure that you have the freedom but still can create the proper amount.

Material & layout:

• you can plan for just a single game or multiple, in both cases the material should be strong enough that it does not break after a few minutes of wearing them. Usually even thicker materials have a weak spot around the point where you mount the band. if you use a thicker paper, holes should not be directly at the edge, and the stripe/band used should actually go around the full head of the participant, not leaving an empty space and relying on the papers strength in the middle.

Count:

• you should create at least 3 lives for everyone, but if the group is small, this can quickly lead to an exhaust situation. Participants learn numbers quickly, and will remember them for the day at least, but usually even longer. If you want something reusable, make sure, that you can either create new numbers on the spot, and not tell them when you recycle a few of the already used numbers, so that they will not think of reusing the already existing knowledge. If you have less than 10 people, you should create more per person, so at the minimum have 30 per color.