Jericho creator Shannon in front with black hat/white shirt. Weekend Game Host Ben Ersando to the left pointing a stockade at Shannon. I'm right below him in the green jacket. (from Jericho's meetup group page)
Today I played a game of Jericho hosted by Ben Ersando who I've mentioned in previous posts. The basic gist of Jericho is as follows: Jericho is a nerf blaster based Espionage game, encouraging stealth and outside the box planning in the execution of missions. These missions place one team (with selections done at the start of the game) on offense and the opposing on defense, with the offense needing to send a courier to a pick an item up or take a photo of something. They can also kill all of the defense They win by bringing the item/photo to a drop off location or killing off the other team. The defense wins by killing the courier or by preventing the offense from making the drop within the time limit. Its one shot, one kill and the dead have to make the walk of shame to the drop zone with something covering their heads.
I always have a great time playing Jericho and as I've mentioned before, it was the game that introduced me to the current obsession that is powering this blog. Though my work schedule prevents me from making most weeknight games I try to make every weekend Jericho I can. Special to the weekend games, Ben has a ban on magazine fed and battery powered blasters.
I like the prohibitive rules a lot. To be clear, I like the looser rules of Shannon's games (stock weapons only but you could bring a Vulcan if you felt like it) just as much. The games I plan are definitely overt affairs (nothing stealthy about 30 people with guns battling zombies in all directions and running off), but the environment that limits players to pistols produces, combined with the rule set is something that can't be duplicated. Even with allowing all weapons, there is a sense of your own mortality so to speak, because you could have the aforementioned Vulcan and letting off the belt, meanwhile someone can run up behind you with a Jolt and you're just as dead. However, take away the comfort that your Vulcan belt or your 35 round Raider drum gives you and it makes you even more so aware. If you have any inclinations towards stealth or cunning, having only a Firestrike or a Triad will induce you to use them.
After packing my kit (I'm a pack mule of sorts: I brought 5 pistols and 50/60 rounds. When I'm not running a game I bring all kinds of crap. When I'm running a game, I bring all kinds of crap and whatever I need to run the game) I walked over to Hayes Valley where the game was taking place. When I got there, Ben had just showed up and as we talked more and more people trickled in. Once we had about 25 players or so, Ben got things rolling: selecting the teams and passing out the game sheets for the first mission.
I personally had kind of a funky game, so this post isn't necessarily indicative of gameplay in general. But thats what I like about Jericho: no two games I played have ever followed the same path. There were four rounds, which i'll break down as follows:
Round 1
We drew teams and of note were the fact that two people I had been teamed up with were almost always on the opposing team from myself and in fact we both could be considered nemeses. Definitely not in the personal sense, or in any sense but a Nerf one: being constantly on opposing teams and going for the same objectives, Greg and Yoshi have spent a decent amount of time shooting darts at me and vice versa. (After the game, I decided that I liked it better when those guys were shooting at me. Sounds weird, but the experience is just more fun when Greg is charing at me from across the street and Yoshi is hiding behind stuff, popping out of nowhere and scaring the hell out of me.) We started the game as the defense and our team killed the courier, but the only part I played was walking in the opposite direction about a minute before the Offense showed up, missing the engagement entirely.
Round 2
It was our turn at to take a crack at Offense. We needed to take a picture of the courier holding a key and a blaster, taking it to Alamo Square in 30 minutes. Never the less, I was on the team going to do the pickup, escorting Yoshi acting as the courier, to a Mural on a wall at Ida B. Wells High School. Yoshi said he had a secret weapon and when we were off he pulled out a wig ( I won't describe it as to blow the cover on Yoshi's disguise for future benefit). From a distance, I couldn't recognize him. I figured that we could hide him with his disguise behind someone more recognizable who didn't mind drawing attention and possible death. Naturally, I volunteered for the role I just described, with no objections from anyone else. We headed out, but almost immediately, we spotted an enemy across the street.
The enemy in question is another person I have functional Nerf rivalry with, a guy named Andrew, who was cool enough to open up his house to us after the game. He was armed with a Longshot/strike (forgot which one) modded to fire a single shot at a time. Though he was across the street from us, he leveled his gun and took a shot. And another, both of which tragically flew about 5 feet. After saying, possibly aloud "Wow! That gun sucks!" I decided to run down the street, then across, flanking him as fellow players approached him from the other side.
His next shot went off, the dart flying about 80 feet and just missing my head. Figuring that the gun didn't suck after all, I decided to be a little more cautious. I almost ran into another enemy, who was killed by a team mate. I looked up the street and saw Yoshi calmly walking away, by himself. I caught up to him, as did another player named Usha and we continued our escort. Across the street from the pickup location, I spotted Ben on his phone and he spotted me right after. I started to chase hm, but he had a teammate in reserve. I tried to draw them away from the mural and while initially successful Ben, almost intuitively, turned his head to the right and spotted Yoshi, knocking him off soon after and ending the mission.
Round 3
Before this round started, I realized that I hadn't gotten any kills, in addition to not getting Yoshi to the pickup. I thought, "What the hell am I going to write about?" I was hoping other people were having interesting games. Maybe I could overhear them talking about it and include it here!
Like I said above, this was a funky game for me. In games of Jericho, I've been on teams that have said "screw the pickup, lets all go to the drop off and just shoot everybody." This was the first time I've been on a team where we sent everyone to the pick up and said forget the drop off. As fitting the occasion, coming after two rounds of nothing, I got more Jericho kills in a round than every before with 5. The strategy worked, as our large body of people blocked the pick up location well. I ran around on the flanks of this group, shooting at the clusters of rivals bunched up on the corners with my Triads and Strongarm. With the above stated, with 15 people at the pickup, we still almost missed the courier, clipping him as he ran towards the location. We got him, but sweet Jesus, we had 15 people!
Round 4
After the win, we were back on the Offense for the final mission. We decided that we were going to completely avoid the pickup at first, sending the entire team to secure the drop off before sending a team to the pickup for a quick grab. We were able to do this fairly easily, mainly before like us in the last round, the defense flooded the pickup location. So our main group missed their main group and our small team got slaughtered. I spent the remaining time in the round standing at the drop off, very safe and alive, but with no pickup team to root for. In discussion about our strategy with Nerf Nemesis Greg, he dropped the gem that became the title of this post. Needless to say we lost the round.
All in all, both teams tied 2-2 for rounds. No team that was on the Offense won a round, and I only got kills in the third round, which was the most kills I've gotten in a Jericho round.
It was a funky game, but it was a blast as always. We got to grab some grub and hang at Andrew's place afterwards (like 10-15 people, which was super cool of him) for a few hours, talking and having beers. Andrew said that he wanted to do more non-nerf stuff with the people at the games, something I definitely agreed with.
I'm taking a day off tomorrow, but on Monday I'll share Assassin story #3 in the lead up to the game on the 20th! Have a nice weekend folks!
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