"Oh my god, I blocked it!"

The second installment of A Friendly Game of Assassin starts this Thursday and I'm joyed. This weekend at the Jericho game I got to talk to a few people about Assassin, whether it was regarding the rules ("My house is OK for attacks, I just don't want people breaking my windows. Look, I have Nerf guns everywhere!"-Andrew, game participant), assassination strategies or just people they hope are on the other team. Repeatedly I expressed my desire for getting a melee kill this game. For the moment I've decided that  I'm willing to bite the bullet in the commission of getting said melee kill, but I can't guarantee that this foolish mind sate will carry over when the game actually starts.

On Saturday I said I would be continuing on with stories from the first Friendly Game of Assassin and this one concerns a player named Skylar. Up to drawing him, I was leery of and respected the skills of the people who had been my targets, especially Ben and Tyrone who I'd seen play before. But I had been keeping my eye on Skylar's progress throughout the process.  I had both played with and against him and I definitely respect his prowess with a blaster as well as a foam sword. I'd seen him shoot 5 people wearing a disguise (Skylar has a seemingly endless array of disguises) during a courier escort mission in Jericho, as well as fighting through a pretty giant group of zombies with a sword in each hand at a SF State HVZ game.

He also went to High School with a friend I've known since Fifth grade, works at Gamescape (and was allowing attacks at his job) and is an overall pretty cool dude.

I had acquired Skylar as a target through a somewhat convoluted process. I was both organizing and playing in this game and as such I had my girlfriend Courtney pick half of the original participants' targets. I picked the other half and had no clue who my Assassin was. But as the field shrank, it shrank far enough to where the person who was my Assassin became my target. When this happened, Courtney started handling the passing out of all targets to keep it honest. When this happened, a few players had their targets reassigned, myself included.

So just as easily as I drew Skylar, Skylar could kill his target, or his target could get a kill and possibly cause need for reassignment as well. Skylar had been having a somewhat rough time with his target, a guy I went to High School with named Daniel who signed on to play. Daniel both lived and worked in areas that where inaccessible to Skylar. Skylar had tried to poison him, placing a snake (i think it was a snake, but it could have possibly been some other type of plastic reptile/arachnid) inside of an envelope and mailing it, but Daniel had none of it, posting on Facebook that, after serving in the military, he had enough Counter-Terrorism training he knew enough to not open a such a suspicious package. He applauded the attempted but implored his Assassin (Skylar) to try a little harder.

On top of this, Daniel had killed Skylar's friend and co-worker in Gamescape not that long before. After looking for some games, talking to David and asking for his name, Daniel pulled out a Triad and shot David while he was working the cash register.

Based on all this, if Skylar drew another target he would move on them fast. Therefore, since I drew his name, to save my own backside, I had to move on him fast. The next day, I loaded up a Stryfe with a 6 round clip, put my jacket on over it and tucked a Triad in the pocket. I put an 18 round clip in my backpack, just in case I ran into him un-expectedly. I figured if this happened, he would be armed and shooting when he saw me. Loaded up, I headed over towards Divisadero street, walking over there in about 25 minutes.

As is frequently the case in San Francisco, the weather on one side of town is totally different from the side you just came from. From where I live around Polk street, it was maybe 50 degrees and windy as all hell. Pretty standard fare over here, so the jacket helped, but when I got near where Skylar was, it was sunny and maybe 10 degrees hotter. Coupled with the accompanying antsy feeling that  comes with expecting a shootout if seen had me sweating from head to toe. Making it to Divisadero, I walked up Page street and put a plan together.

My plan was to pass by the store a couple of times and do a little recon. Namely, how much attention was he paying at his job? Not necessarily to his job, but to potential sweaty Assassins lurking in the not so far off distance. Making sure my weapons were loaded (never hurts!) I keep my headphones on but turned off my music as I made my first pass in front of the store. The door was open and I could see through space in the front window display. Skylar had his back to the door and was talking to someone as he stood behind the counter. I kept walking, taking a left up Fell street to reassess.

My first thought was, I should pass by again and if he's still talking to the same person, I'll just go for it. I tried to think of something better, but in the end I decided it was really the only thing to do. There was  a time imperative to remember and I didn't want the roles reversed. Circling back towards Gamescape, when I came to the doorway, he had his back turned and was in conversation with them same person, this time standing further away from the counter but still behind it.

My body just kind of took over for me as I walked through the door and took the Triad out of my pocket. I held it low, waiting until I was about five feet from Skylar before raising it.

At the time, he told me his first thought was "Hey! Cool, Connor is stopping by the store!" He looked at my face and said I looked pretty much how I always looked. Then maybe a second or two later, he just happened to look over a bit and saw I had a gun in my hand.

I fired a shot.

"Oh my god! I blocked it!" He proclaimed immediately after deflecting my shot with a piece of cardboard he had in his hands.

I cocked the Triad and shot him in the gut.

"You bastard! You shot me in the gut!" Skylar declared, then picked up a Strongarm he had stashed a few feet away when I asked if he was armed.

"Im sorry." I said and then apologized to the woman he had been talking to.

"I was actually doing work stuff." Skylar said, nodding towards the woman. "It was the only thing I had to do all day and I was worried someone was gonna show up."

We talked for a minute and I told him that I was relieved for a couple of reasons. One I didn't have to worry about him coming after me, and two, now I could stop by his job and get some games like I'd been wanting to, but hadn't, due to the above mentioned shootouts on site. We shook hands and parted ways, as I had to go to work later that day, to worry if my own Assassin had done the same mental math I had with Skylar.

It wasn't that night, but death would find me soon enough. I will go into that on Wednesday, a day before the next Assassin game starts. If you were possibly getting the feeling that this blog was just a platform for me to boast or channel ego, this next blog will certainly show otherwise.

"This plan might be too smart for us"

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!

Pizza Pizza

Its not so hard to imagine. Indeed, to put yourself in the same position isn't that hard at all because you've been there plenty of times. You've spent all day at work, turning loose chunks of material into beautiful pieces of furniture (ok, that part more than likely doesn't apply) when the pangs of hunger strike. With the marvels of today's technology being what they are, your food is already ordered moments after you feel the hunger.

But lets back up a bit first.

As I said in the first couple of posts, I'm organizing A Friendy Game of Assassin II: Team Challenge starting June 20th and with the date approaching, it has me a wee bit nostalgic for the last game. This post concerns a certain player named Tyrone, who was my third target.

My second target, Ben from Jericho who I mentoined yesterday will be co-hosting the next Tactical Ops with me was taken out after a Humans vs. Zombies game I hosted in Dolores Park. The assassination itself wasn't noteworthy: I was behind him when he was looking for a fellow player named Skylar (who will be featured in the next Assassin story I do) when I shot him with my Strongarm. It was nothing fancy and we we're both kinda bummed by the process. Ben was bummed because he was dead (naturally) and because he had a really cool plan for his target that he wouldn't get  to execute, as he had been waiting to make his move later on. (I was bummed because assassinating someone after a game I hosted didn't feel right. I want people to feel comfortable and welcome at games, especially after games when we all hang out. I didn't like the prospect of people in the game either not wanting to hang with me or constantly on edge, waiting for the final, fatal darts. On top of that, the actual Assassination wasn't that cool. Id rather have a semi-epic to epic moment and die then get a regular old kill any day of the week. Gotta have stuff to blog about right?)

It was too bad he didn't get a chance to make it happen, because it really was a good plan. Tyrone originally had designated work a safe area from attacks (like most players, though a few of us opened up work for attacks), but after spending a couple of days fairly on edge about being ambushed (including almost shooting a couple of innocent people on the first day),  Tyrone hopped on Facebook and emphatically said screw it, come and get some at my job. He said that shooting through the fence, shooting him in the lobby or shooting him in the parking lot were OK now, just to try not to shoot him while he was welding. He gave his work hours and even a description of his vehicle. Ben's plan was to dress up in a delivery man's uniform, saying that he had an iPad for Tyrone that he needed to sign for. When Tyrone came to get it, it was kablamo, end of story.

Instead, the kablamo at hand was not to be Tyrone's, but Ben's. I learned two things from the experience: that if i'm possibly going to screw up good feelings people have, mine included, after a game by assassinating them,  then it better be pretty cool. Also, if I have a pretty cool way to do it in mind, I shouldn't wait any longer than I have to.  With Ben's passing, I inherited Tyrone as a target.

Originally, when I saw that he had signed up for the game I was happy and hoped to draw him as either a target or my Assassin. Tyrone is a very energetic guy and at the time I had played a few games with him. Tyrone definitely gets immersed in the experience, is surprising agile for being a pretty big dude and isn't a bad shot on top of it. I felt that when the game started, he was going to get similarly immersed and live the game. As an organizer, more than anything else I love to have people who get so excited about playing any game I do, that they forget its a game to an extent and just move through that alternate reality. Tyrone had clearly demonstrated such a level of excitement even before he became my target.

I swung by his house a few days later, searching around for his car in vain before pulling up a seat with my girlfriend Courtney across the street from his place. With a quick scan of the environment, I decided that where I sat was where I would wait for him any time I came looking. Given the placement of his house somewhat to the center of the block, from where I sat I could see him walk up from either direction with time to react and cover to shield to me (there were a series of bushes and a couple of big trees). He lives on a one way street, so if he drove by he would likely miss me but I would have even more time to react. We sat around talking and waiting, and while a dude in a passing car randomly yelled that we were a "beautiful couple" (???!), Tyrone didn't make an appearance during the time we were there.

A couple days later, I came back around, approaching his house from a the side streets, once again looking for his car. Once again, as in the fateful case of Ajesh in the first post, Tyrone had given away exactly the information I needed and this time I spotted his car. He lives near a very populated area, so after finding his car I went around looking for discarded parking tickets on the street or at worst really long receipts  After walking for 6 or 7 blocks I found what I was looking for and took out a pen from my  bag. I wrote poison about that big in the center of the receipt and headed back towards Tyrone's ride. When I got there I placed it under his driver side windshield wiper, just as DPT would. Then it was back to camping.

I didn't hold out too much hope for Tyrone coming back outside once home from work. I know I don't.  I was OK with it, because at 6 in the morning when he had to leave for work, in that dark, foggy mind state, who wouldn't say "Holy crap! How did I get a ticket?" and grab at the offending piece of paper. But since I was in the neighborhood, I figured why not wait it out for a second? As I was sitting across the street reading a book, or even before that when I was poisoning his windshield, Tyrone made the fateful decision alluded to the opening paragraph.

The decision to order a pizza.

Perfectly understandable. I ordered a pizza a couple of days ago. Pesto with garlic and other stuff, pretty damn good. As I was reading, I saw a delivery car pull up and a guy in a green uniform jumped out with the Pizza in question. I started freaking out a little bit as he got closer to Tyrone's place, ultimately stopping at his front door. I had a Stryfe with a 6 round clip in my backpack, placed off to the side of me to go along with a Triad in my jacket pocket. I stood up and inched towards the curb, anxious to see who came out.

It was Tyrone. He stepped outside and said hi to the pizza man while taking out his wallet. I forgot about the Stryfe in my bag and bolted.

Everything seemed to be moving really slow as I ran across the street, pulling out the Triad when I was about 10 feet away from his front door. I raised the Triad at about 5 feet and Tyrone didn't notice me until after I shot him in the gut.

The Pizza Man on the other hand saw me as soon as I pulled out what looked like a pistol, handed Tyrone the pizza without taking payment and bolted in the opposite direction. After shooting Tyrone, I called back to him, showing him the Triad wasn't a real pistol, that I knew Tyrone and that he wasn't dead. After seeing that something completely awful hadn't just happened, he started laughing and said it was pretty funny. He gave me a thumbs up and told me it was a pretty good shot before leaving.

In a way Ben's delivery man plan for Tyrone came to fruition: I just didn't know it was going to happen or involve an actual, unwitting delivery man.  The next day, Tyrone posted on the Facebook page that even if I hadn't shot him the day previous, the ghastly early morning poison ticket scenario I envisioned happened, thus he was now double dead.

Check back tomorrow as I will be blogging after Ben's Jericho game at 1pm in Hayes Valley with a write up of the games happening, and who knows, I might actually take pictures at this game like I keep planning to do.  Until next time!

Turning sh!t to shine

I've never owned a car. I'm almost 30 years old, but I only got my driver's license a few years ago, well into adulthood. When I tell people this, its not un-common for people to be a little surprised, which is understandable. In a lot of places in the world, most places rather, if you don't have some wheels you're kinda screwed. Want to get some food? See that big ass mountain or long stretch of desert standing in the way? Feel like walking? If you answered yes, god speed and give me that $20 you owe me because I don't think you'e making it back.

San Francisco, where i've lived for my entire life, is not such a place. Its pretty normal for someone to not want to do something because the activity at hand is "too far away." "Too far away" ranges anywhere from having to take the bus more then 20 minutes to simply out of one's neighborhood. As such, for the totality of my life, I've been rolling like the big shot that I am in my BWM: BART Muni Walk. With no other option but to zip around the city in my BMW, in particular the W aspect of it, I've gotten somewhat familiar with the finer points of the city's architecture and lay out.

During a recent conversation about Nerf game planning, I came to a realization of sorts. Most, if not  all the activities I enjoyed most as a kid and teenager (before the internet sucked me into its dark abyss, some time around 1997) were activities that were influenced and almost reactions to what I had at hand outside. This ran the gamut from bird watching, playing war games in the park up the street, riding bikes and skateboards up and down the giant hills near my house, breakdancing on concrete and writing graffiti on buses and walls all around the city.

Though  maybe not the most morally respectable hobby for a youngster to pursue, in retrospect writing graffiti influenced how I plan Nerf games more then any other factor or facet. It didnt give me  an early start at stealth training or some super Parkour climbing skills. It taught me how to look at a piece of real estate and evaluate its worth towards my pursuit in less than a minute. When I was writing graffiti, I would find a spot that I thought was cool (in the opinion of many at the time, hitting up [writing] in a really cool spot was almost as good as hitting up with a cool style, ie. "Yeah, that looks wack but damn, he did it off the side of a freeway"), figure a way to get there or write without being seen, write my name and try not get caught. Every time I wanted to write. Standing around just staring at something was bad news, even if I was just a kid. Thats obviously not a concern today, as I don't have to worry about Johnny Law or getting kicked off the bus for planning games.

But the mental process is pretty much the same. When I have a game or concept I want to do, I go to the general area where I want the game to take place. Then its a matter of just walking around the neighborhood, taking in my options. If I say "Oh! Damn!" a couple of times before I even get to where I want the game to start, I know the area is special.

followed by "What the hell is that thing?"

I still don't know what it is, but I used it for my first game of Tactical Ops: Squad vs Squad and will be coming back to it for the next game as well. I was walking around China Beach, near the new ballpark (As Candlestick will always be "the ballpark" in my dictum) when I came across this structure. As stated this was the first game,  so I wanted to push the envelope a little bit with the concepts. One mission in particular was called "Meth Lab." The goal in this mission was for the team on the offense (known in the game as the Special Operations Force, or SOF) to clear a particular area of rivals in an allotted time. If they failed, the defensive team, the Insurgents, would finish their batch of proverbial meth. Sounds simple enough, right? Walking along the boulevard, I had the aforementioned oh damn moment when I saw this beauty. 

The third thing I thought after oh damn and what the hell is that thing was that if you boarded it up, somebody could really cook some meth in there. Might be a little tough in the middle of the UCSF college campus, but if you take that weird three-quarters shack thing up on the side of a mountain you'd be in business. That qualified enough in my opinion, but since you can't run a game on story line alone it needed a closer look. Stepping inside of it, the immediate defensive advantages for the Insurgents were apparent, especially the fact that they could fire out of the spaces between the wooden planks. The  disadvantages were apparent too, considering that aside from some cars in the parking lot, the Meth Lab was the sole cover available to the defensive side. 

Meth Lab was the second mission of the game, but since the first mission lasted less than 10 minutes, it was the first mission in the game where the two teams heavily engaged each other. I was the team leader for the Insurgents and before the mission started, a player named Arthur (who had played once or twice at the time but since has become a mainstay) asked if he was allowed to climb on top of the structure. I said sure, go for it man. Then I saw that he was armed only with a Strongarm. I asked him how much ammo he had and he replied in an admirably nonchalant manner "just whats in the gun." On the other team, there were numerous people armed with Stryfes, a guy named Alex dual wielding Vigilon Disc guns (which is what he brings every game) and a few people with Retaliators. I wanted him to shoot from up there, but the advantage would be negated if he only had 6 darts. I handed him a bag of ammo and said have fun. 

Arthur ended up getting more kills than anyone, didn't die or even get shot and in the end keep it safe enough for the Insurgents to cook their batch of sweet sweet ice. With the lab so secure at points in the round, the defense was able even to go on the offense a few times, charging forth across the street and pushing the offense back, though we always had to retreat. 

One player on the other team was Ben who runs the weekend games for Jericho, San Francisco's Urban Spy Game. After the mission, with an exclamation of "Dude! That was intense!", Ben asked me how I found the structure and what it was. After a quick back and forth about the quarter-shack's benefits and flaws, he said that he wanted to do a mission there himself.

And now we are.  On June 29th, we're co-hosting the third installment of Tactical Ops and in truth I'm honored. The first nerf game I ever played was a Saturday game of Jericho hosted by Ben. It was during the first mission of that game that I was bitten by the Nerf bug, a bite thats been left completely un-treated and now is pumping a steady stream of nerf toxin directly into my heart. I couldn't be happier, because that game wasn't all that long ago and we're already working together. I'll definitely be blogging about it in the lead up to the game and afterwards. 

In the mean time, i'll be hitting you tomorrow with another story from the first Friendly Game of Assassin in my countdown to the game's start on the 20th. 

First Blood!

Hi!

I'm Connor McCann and thank you for checking out my first blog! As you will come to see, I am into Nerf guns and games (understatement), whether as an organizer or as a player. I first got interested int outdoor/real life game at the start of this year, and I'm striking my first blood now as far as the blogosphere goes. As such, I have a story about first blood that I feel is appropriate given the circumstances. 

In a little more than a week, I will be kicking off A Friendly Game of Assassin II: Team Challenge , a 5 week, 24 hour a day game taking place in the real world. Players are formed into teams, assigned targets and aside from a few places that are off limits (insides of homes and jobs/schools), take them down where ever they catch them. To enter the game, players email me their home and work addresses, as well as a recent picture. This story takes place during the first Friendly Game of Assassin, which concluded in May and was won by Trevor Holminski (a past collaborator, very frequent team mate at games and my eventual Nerf murderer in Game 1). 

My target was a guy named Ajesh, who with his wife Ami, had attended the first game I had ever run back in February. I hadn't gotten a chance to see him play, but I had talked to him and his wife for a bit between games and they were very friendly people. He was my first target in the game and I was excited to draw him, mostly because he lived about 10 minutes away from where I grew up in the Mission. I had a strategy: rent a Zipcar, find a place to park near his house (which were he lived wouldn't be easy), let him walk by me and jump out behind him. In the passenger seat next to me sat a Rough Cut 2x4 and a Strongarm. 

Like I said before, I wasn't familiar at the time with Ajesh's playing style. I was also a little antsy on the drive over, as I had never jumped out of a car and tried to shoot somebody before. This was both my first time organizing and playing in a game (to keep things honest, my girlfriend did the actual target selecting, ensuring I didn't know my Assassin), so I didn't really know what to expect. However, Ajesh had already, unwittingly, helped me out. Ajesh is a fairly avid user of Facebook and in the week that transpired between when the game started and when I went on the hit, had checked into 3 or 4 places on Foursquare. If you're trying to assassinate someone, not much is going to help you more then knowing where they are. Sadly, every time he had checked in somewhere, I was at work, un-able to pay him a visit. 

Still, the information helped me out in another way. I saw that he checked into places at around 5:30 or six clock monday through thursday. On Friday is was earlier, which lead me to believe that if he was able to get off work early, he would do so around 3:30/4. Friday was the only day our schedules synced, so to speak, so I headed over to the Mission in the never ending search for a parking spot at around 3:45. 

Without saying where he lived, I knew I wanted to find something on Mission street itself, halfway between his house and the BART station. I knew he had a car, but I didn't know what it looked like, or if he would chance using it on a Friday afternoon. Before looking for parking, I wanted to swing by his pad and have a look around. Luckily, I found a parking spot 20 feet from his house. I turned my music down, un buckled my seatbelt and waited. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes had passed and I gave my girlfriend Courtney a call, saying that I would hang around for maybe 30 minutes more, but I doubted any longer. 

Maybe a minute had passed when Ajesh walked right infront my car. It was weird, because I saw him but it took a second for it to actually make sense to me. When I released I needed to get off my hind-quarters and take a shot at him, I saw the look on his face. Any one who's lived in The City would recognize it: narrowly drawn, glazed over eyes placed a top an responsive, stone face, a face that says its been a long ass week and I'm tuning every thing out until I get home. You can frequently find me walking around here with such a face. 

I knew he didn't see me and as I crept up to within half a foot of him, I knew he didn't hear me either. He was about five feet from his front door, while holding my rough cut, I debated with myself whether to barrel tap him or just shoot him with the darts. 

I shot him with the darts. 

He had the same reaction to getting shot as I had seeing him: he looked down at the darts on the sidewalk, recognizing them for what they were, but unable to make a connection. Then it hit him, and after a quick burst of profanity, he shook my hand and said "nice kill!" I asked him if he was armed and he told me he wasn't. He wasn't even planning on coming home: he was just going to go straight to a bar (it was Friday after all) but he decided he didn't want to carry all of his work crap with him. I said I had figured if he was going to be coming home at any time before 9 or 10 it was then. I said I was surprised he hadn't walked up from Mission, instead coming from the opposite direction and likely contributing to my momentary inaction. He then told me that he "hated me now", was bummed that he didn't get to try out his plan for his target, but would be coming to my Humans vs. Zombies game the next day (which he did).

I was happy to take him down, but the experience was still a bit strange. As noted above, I'd never ambushed someone infront of their house before. Prior to the hit, I had a semi-grand plan of what I was going to do, where I was going to take cover if needed, what angle to attack from, if i should run back to the car to get another weapon etc. I didn't have any clue that it was as simple as finding a really good parking spot and quietly walking behind someone. This proved to be the case in later hits, which I'll talk about as the June 20th start of Game II draws closer.

In the meantime, thank you if you're still reading (its a bit to commit to the first time you meet someone, I know) and here are the links to my groups if you're in the Bay Area and what to play Assassin, Humans vs. Zombies, Tactical Ops or more traditional games like Capture the Flag and Team Death Match:

Foam Action Network on Facebook

Meetup.com Group