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What is a Wide Game ?. Roughly a game of
hide and seek, evade and capture etc. usually over a fairly wide area.
Apart from being good fun it teaches the scouts stalking, hiding,
navigation, moving about at night etc.. These are some of the wide
games we play.
Switzerland.
A team of intellectual property thieves attempt to
smuggle vital computer software into Switzerland. (The software is
carried on CD-ROM. You must have plenty of these ?. AOL, MSIE etc...)
Another team, the Internet Police, try to capture the thieves and
confiscate the software.
Switzerland is a small area (about 20 metres
square). It should be approachable from a number of separate routes.
At the start, the thieves have two minutes to hide
the CDs, and then they start to try to smuggle them into Switzerland.
Once inside Switzerland they cannot be caught.
The thieves can only bring one CD into Switzerland
at a time. They must wear a small patch of sticky tape on their upper
arm. The police try to remove this patch and capture the CD before the
theif gets to Switzerland. A thief must be wearing a patch of tape
when entering Switzerland with a CD, otherwise the CD is confiscated
by the state.
A thief without a patch can obtain a new one by
returning to Switzerland. A leader stays in Switzerland to supply
patches, to adjudicate on matters arising and to hold CDs smuggled and
captured.
The game lasts about 20 - 30 minutes. The teams swap
over. The winner depends on comparing the number of CDs smuggled into
Switzerland with the number captured. You need about a dozen CDs.
Wool or crepe paper can be used instead of sticky
tape, tied around the arm.
Another variation of this game using CD's is:-
There are 2 teams. The red team and the Blue team.
Each team is issued with 10 marked cd’s. Each team sets up a base in
the woods where they store their cd’s. Every member of the teams has a
coloured band on their arm. A 10 metre parameter will be made around
the base where know one is allowed in apart from the attacker.
The aim is to get to the other teams base and retrieve a CD (only one
per person) with out losing the band off of their arm. The CD then
needs to be taken back to their team base.
If you are caught by another team member, they will remove your band.
Scouts cannot retrieve a CD without a band on their arm. New bands
will be issued from the leader on your team base.
Teams will be issued 1 point for each other teams’ band they collect.
And 10 points for each cd they collect.
Extra Rules
A leader will be allocated to each team and will reside at the teams
base.
You cannot take a CD from a team member, only from the base. So you
cannot take a CD from anyone returning back from the other teams base
with a CD, but you can take their band.
Russia.
A group of Russian Prisoners is being transported to
the slave camp (in a minibus). At some stage of the journey, they are
allowed to over-power the guards and escape. They must get back to
base camp without being captured by the Nazi border guards. The
prisoners have a sketch map of the countryside, but don't know exactly
where they escape. It is expected that the prisoners will split up
into groups (patrols ?).
The Border Guards patrol the countryside between the
escape point and the base camp. They try to capture the prisoners. The
guards use radios to coordinate their surveillance. (We have a set of
Panasonic hand-held radios. Actually the noise
of the radios also serves as a way of indicating where the guards are
!.)
Some guards patrol the area in vehicles. A vehicle
cannot capture a prisoner, but can report back by radio if they see
anyone. (If a scout gets lost, he can always hail a lift back to
camp.)
Scoring : Prisoners must return to their base camp
by a specified time. 5 points for each prisoner with a patch who
returns within the time limit. 2 points if a prisoner returns within
the time limit but without a patch. Zero points for a return outside
the time limit.
Ideally this game must be played in a large, open
parkland area, but you can adapt it depending on local circumstances.
If there is plenty of cover it can be played in the day, but this is a
terrific game when played at night.
When you start to play this, the prisoners should
outnumber the guards 2 to 1, but once the prisoners get experienced
the ratio should be even. (Another twist is to let the prisoners steal
a radio.)
Gun Running (in Bishop Wood)
This game needs to be played in a large wood.
Scouts form small teams which are army search
patrols looking for gun runners. Each patrol has a radio and a
detailed map of the game's area. (A compass may also be used.)
A team of gun runners (it could be leaders, older
scouts etc.) make a drop of guns to be picked up later. Each time the
gun-runners make a drop they report clues for it's location over the
radio. The scouts can eavesdrop the report and work out the location
using the map. Choose your own object to represent the guns - we use
balloons.
The army search patrols have to get to the drop
locations as quickly as possible. The winning search patrol is the one
with the most finds.
Ideally the gun runners choose locations for the
drops such that the team finding one drop will not necessarily be best
placed for finding the next drop.
The game will probably last about 1 hour or so. A
pre-arranged signal for the end of the game is a good idea. We use an
air-horn for this purpose.
Radios.
Panasonic PalmLink TR325EXS.
Maximum range is 5km in open flat countryside. Range is affected by
trees, buildings and hills. Essentially these are line of sight
radios. They last 30 hours with alkaline batterries.
CB radios. For games
requiring a longer range we use hand-held CB radios that the group has
had for a long time.
Training. The scouts
need training in the use of a radio. When first presented with a radio
they gabble away without thinking what is going on. The result is
practically no communication. Therefore it is worth devising a
training activity to show them how to communicate effectively. Also
battery life can be conserved if you work to a schedule for passing
messages
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