Why I'm not fond of WSG

Or Capture the Flag, 4-H camp style.

When I was a kid, I was in 4-H (obviously), and each year, all of us in the club sold horrible candy bars and awesome beef jerky so that we could afford to go to 4-H camp for a week.

4-H camp had little going for it. They ran out of all the cool arts and crafts supplies two days in, which meant that we spent half the camp making keychains or postcards. The horseback riding cost extra, so that was out. There was swimming, but the lake was filled with snow runoff, and usually there was still snow on the ground. Who wants to swim in 35 degree water when it's only 65 out? Underwear was stolen every year and run up on the flag pole. You had to do chores, including cleaning the latrines and washing the dishes, every single day. And we were not allowed back in our cabins (or tents, if we drew the short straw) between clean-up and bedtime/bear roaming.

Yes, there were bears.

By the last two days of camp, capture the flag became our main activity (except that one year where there was enough snow that we toboggined the whole time instead, leaving the precious woodburning and leatherworking supplies untouched).

Here's how we played:

1. Dress down. Your clothes were going to be ruined. If you were lucky, they'd just get dirty and not ripped.

2. Paint your face with the color of your team, pick the appropriate colored flags (remember flag football? we wore those belts) and tie a handkerchief of the appropriate color around your arm, head, or whatever — as long as it was easily visible from front and back. With 150 campers every year, teams were enormous. ENORMOUS.

3. The camp was about 15 acres or so of woodland, and for CTF purposes, it was divided down the middle (the middle being the possibly-still-underwear-bedecked flagpole). The cleared area around the flagpole was a sort of no man's land, where anything went. If you were stupid enough to walk through this area, whether you were playing or not, you deserved whatever you got.
3a. Your side chose a flag guard. More than one person could guard the flag, but only one could hide it or move it. The flag could be hidden ANYWHERE on your 7 acre side, as long as it was not inside any structure.
3b. Your side had to also create a jail. It was a 15-by-15-foot space that could not move. Anyone you caught from the other side had to stay in the jail until they were busted out.

4. Guerilla warfare was the rule, not the exception. Once we were let loose, all bets were off (I'm convinced that CTF and not the abysmal food was the true reason there were two nurses on staff). And people were vicious about catching you, too — if you got spotted, they'd chase you down like a dog and tackle if they had to. This was awesome because every member of a team could be captured but one, and all it took was that one sneaky bastard busting the jail and the game got a whole new start. (Jailers wore flags of a third color, and if you got one of the jailer's flags, everyone in the jail went free.) You could only be captured in enemy territory, though, so if you managed to lead your unwitting chaser into your side's camp, you could turn the tables.

5. There was none of this quick, pansy three captures b.s. You went until everyone was too tired to go on, and whichever side had the most flag captures won. Games often went on for 4-5 hours at a time, until the counselors forced us into the lodge for dinner. Some games had 10+ caps per side, and some finished without a single cap — it all depended on how sneaky your flag guard was.

6. Cheating was expected (much like in our nightly games of Bullshit, a card game where cheating and not getting caught was, in fact, the entire goal). No matter how well the counselors searched, kids managed to hide in cabins, sneak in flags/bandanas of many colors so they could swap out as needed, and bust themselves out of the jail. Occasionally, a point was forfeited at random, just because the counselors KNEW we were cheating but couldn't catch us at it.

7. Bruises and cuts were cared for with rubbing alcohol (and that shit hurts, by the way), and there was always at least one kid on crutches by the end of camp due to a bad tackle. Sometimes someone would trip or run into a tree while being chased, and end up looking like raw hamburger. We had no spirit healer who rezzed us at full health.

Despite all of that, every year we all looked forward to camp specifically for Capture the Flag. Oh, we'd pretend it sucked, and grumble about making lanyards or whatever as we signed up for it, but we also spent the weeks before camp gathering supplies, practicing, and wondering why, even when we played on one of the dairies or out in the fields (where there were lots of places to hide), we could never get a game going that was half as fun as it was at camp.

After that, Warsong Gulch? It's kinda dull.