Capture the Flag

**Capture the Flag** is the sixth season of Jet Lag, featuring Sam, Adam, Ben, and Scotty from Strange Parts as a guest host. The season is a game of Capture the Flag taking place across Japan, which will be played in three rounds.

The season was announced on April 16th 2023. Recording for the season finished on April 22nd.

Unlike other seasons, where images of the hosts are real images (tracker images, tags, etc.), because this takes place in Japan, a lot of the animations feature chibis designed by Twitchy Sparrow to the physical characteristics of each host.

## Gameplay

The overall concept is Capture the Flag, where teams must retrieve all the flags in their opponent's territory. To capture a flag, a player must buy an item at a predetermined vending machine and return it to their territory without getting tagged. Players travel on trains covered by the Japan Rail pass or in the Tokyo Metro network. All players have live trackers on each other.

### Rounds

This season is composed of 3 progressively larger rounds. The first round is played in the Greater Tokyo Area, the second round is played across a larger area encompassing the Kantō region and parts of the Chūbu and Tōhoku regions, and the third round is played across the whole of Japan. Each side of the map has 1, 2, and 3 flags, respectively. If a team successfully returns all enemy flags or has returned the most flags at the time limit, they are declared the victors for that round. Otherwise, the victory goes to whichever team has transported their non-captured flags the furthest. Winning the rounds grants 1, 2, and 3 points, respectively.

If the points are tied after 3 rounds, the overall winner is determined using a sudden death round: 7 flags are placed around the Greater Tokyo Area, and the first team to capture 4 flags is the overall winner. Additionally, any player can be tagged anywhere on the map, and coins, challenges, and towers are no longer in play.

### Territories and Neutral Zones

The map of Japan is split roughly into north-south territories, with Tokyo Station at the center. The losing team from a given round gets to choose which side they occupy for the next round. There are neutral zones around Tokyo Station, all the flags, and a few major train stations near Tokyo (Rounds 2 and 3 only). No player can get tagged while inside a neutral zone.

### Coins and Challenges

Coins are necessary to travel in enemy territory, and also to purchase powerups. Each player starts the game with 250 coins and gets 250 more coins if tagged. Similar to Season 3, challenges may be drawn to earn more coins. For every 1 mile of transport, 50 coins (Round 1), 10 coins (Round 2), or 5 coins (Round 3) are deducted from a player's bank. Players may veto a card but incur a 30 minute penalty, during which they may not use any form of transportation. Challenges can only be worked on while in enemy territory and not on a train.

Shuffled into the challenge deck are curse cards: they grant their coin reward immediately, but make the player's life difficult in some way, for example requiring them to put their phone to Japanese, becoming Hello Kitty by wearing a bow or a makeshift bow and not being allowed to talk to or text anyone but the camera for 2 hours, carry a melon for a period of time, or getting on a late train.

Upon completion of the challenge, the coins are awarded to whoever completed it. If players decide to travel as a team, both team members earn the coin reward from challenges, but only one of them needs to pay for transport.

### Tagging

This season uses photo tags, where a defender can tag an attacker by getting a clear shot of them with their camera. When a tag happens, all the attacker's coins are given to the defender, and the attacker must return to Tokyo Station to wait out a 30-minute jail period. If the attacker is inside a flag's safe zone, the defender may transit through the safe zone but cannot tag them.

In the tiebreaker round, tagging a player allows the tagger to steal all their flags, and the player is frozen for 5 minutes.

## Powerups

### Towers

Starting in Round 2, players can buy towers for 750 coins each by drawing a random tower card. Players can drop them at their current location whenever they want, both in their own and their opponents' territory. When opposing players enter the tower's radius, they'll be subject to its effects. The player dropping the tower must immediately notify the opponents (unless it is a Trap Tower), and towers generally remain in effect until the end of the round. Players in enemy territory may only draw a tower every 5 minutes.

## References

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/wendoverpro/status/1661383013026988040
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/thewheatgerm/status/1649795413799583744/photo/1
3. ↑ https://twitter.com/dwiskus/status/1649857841606295554
4. ↑ https://x.com/thewheatgerm/status/1661383719674863620
5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZM\_hPF1hsY