Nerf Wars Rundown: Episode 2, Protect the President

Hello again, Redshirt fans! This is Elena (Panda Hat Girl), here to give you the rundown on yet another one of Skiffy’s infamous Dart Gun games. This week, I’m going to tell you about a little game we like to call “Protect the President”.

Compared to most of the games we play during Nerf Wars, which involve tons of team-switching and general paranoia and backstabbery, Protect the President is relatively straightforward. Two team leaders are selected, one of whom is the President and the other is the Terrorist Leader. Once the leaders have been chosen, even teams are picked playground-style – the Secret Service versus the Terrorists.

In this game, the goal of the Secret Service is to get the President safely from their starting point on the third floor all the way down to the building’s entrance on the first floor. The Terrorists’ goal is to either kill the President or prevent the President from reaching the endpoint for 15 minutes. In this game, the President is armed, but not with a weapon of their choosing. The President is oh-so-charitably presented with a small one-shot gun, the kind that one would find attached to a keychain in the $1 section of Target. (Therefore, I use the word “armed” very loosely.)

Once the teams have been selected, the Secret Service team goes up to the third floor to wait as the President chooses a Secret Agent from the Terrorist team, in the same way that the Necro is chosen in Necromancer. (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Read my last game write-up here: Nerf Wars Rundown: Episode 1, Necromancer) This Secret Agent’s job is to remain undercover within the Terrorist group, usually up until they seize the moment and shoot as many of the Terrorists as possible. Once the Secret Agent is chosen, the President joins the Secret Service members on the third floor, informing them as to who the Secret Agent is before the game begins.

Once again, I have explained this game to you in an effort to help you understand the hilarity that ensues weekly during Nerf Wars. Yet again, these events tend to revolve around our resident King of the Redshirts, Chase. (Maybe I should just start calling this segment “Funny sh*t that happens because of Chase”…)

In this week’s game of Protect the President, a fellow redshirt had volunteered to be the President. Not knowing too many of the people in Skiffy, she decided to stack her team with people whose names she knew. Unfortunately, this ended up forming a team comprised almost entirely of redshirts, including Chase, Jason, Kyle, and myself, aside from two veterans, Reland and Alex. As we Secret Service agents trekked up to the third floor, we discussed how incredibly screwed we were for the upcoming game, seeing as how we were pitted against the most elite of the vets, including Mack, Watson, Lenny, Follett, and Greg. (You’ll learn about all of these awesome Skiffites soon in our upcoming series “Skiffy Spotlight”.) While waiting for our President to select the Secret Agent, we frantically attempted to strategize. When she finally came up to the third floor, she was bombarded with questions, all of us wanting to know who our potential savior was. When she finally told us, we all saw a glimmer of hope.

She had chosen Watson.

Watson is one of the higher-ranked veterans, in my opinion, and he most commonly arrives at Dart Gun dressed as a cowboy or a CIA agent or something similar, usually wielding multiple revolver-type weapons. More than slightly intimidating. He’s also a master at strategizing and can easily be trusted to come up with the best of sneak attacks. Having him on our side would be more than just a little bit helpful.

However, not a split second later, all of our hope turned to panic and dread. Upon hearing the name of the Secret Agent, my good pal Chase, who was relieved beyond belief, excitedly shouted “OH THANK GOD, AT LEAST WE’VE GOT WATS-!!” Within seconds, every single one of us was shushing him and at least five of us had guns trained on him. Now, you’ve got to understand, we were a group of mostly redshirts who clearly felt that the odds were stacked against them. We had one ray of hope that we could make it through, and Chase could have just blown his cover. As Greg called “Game on!”, Chase got shot at least four times and the rest of us just prayed that his voice hadn’t carried right down the main staircase into the lobby full of waiting Terrorists who could have easily killed our Secret.

In the end, a fellow redshirt and I managed to kill two vets as they attempted to come up to the third floor in the elevator while most of the others attempted to slowly sneak the President down one of the side staircases. The other redshirt and I called the elevator up and down between the third floor and the first, hoping to at best catch a few more vets and at the very least cause some sort of distraction. Down on the first floor, our distraction plan had actually worked, as it allowed Watson to go active and kill at least four of the other vets who were waiting in the lobby.

We had managed to turn the tables and actually win! After we led our President to the front door, celebratory and more than a bit surprised, we all shouted, “Redshirts win!” After a short, “hey!” from Watson, we amended:

“Redshirts and Watson (and Reland and Alex) win!”

Later on in the night, Chase managed to redeem himself during a game of Necromancer. As the game commenced, Chase, Watson, Mack, Kyle, and I were among the humans. Chase asked me if I wanted to head towards the catacombs (a maze-like section of the building, filled with professors’ offices) with him. We members of the crew tend to stick together during these games, so I agreed. As the humans prepared to fend off the zombies from any angle, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see Chase flash me the ‘rock-and-roll’ sign. He was the Necro and he had just turned me into a secret zombie. But at least we were surrounded by veterans!

After a few minutes, Chase went active as the Necro, shot Mack, and ran into the catacombs to join the zombie horde, effectively leaving me as a secret zombie in a field of highly-trained humans. Just down the hallway into the catacombs, Will – a vet and a zombie – was shooting into the lobby of humans. 


Desperately seeking an escape route for my plan, I leaned around the corner, flashing him the ‘rock-and-roll’ sign as covertly as possible to get him to stop shooting at me. Once he understood, I turned back around to find one of the most terrifying sights in my Nerf Wars experience: Watson standing barely two feet away from me, eyeing me suspiciously with his gun fully loaded. I knew I had at best about 30 seconds to make my move and escape, so I did what any loyal zombie would do. I shot Watson and a few others and ran for the catacombs. A minute later, the zombies in the catacombs planned a rush into the lobby to kill the remaining humans. Running out and shooting wildly, I managed to down three more humans before I was shot. The game ended after the rest of the zombies killed the remaining humans.

This week’s Nerf Wars were made all the more interesting due to the fact that this weekend is Halloween weekend. In Skiffite-speak, this translates to an opportunity to dress up in costume for every possible occasion. I was a zombie apocalypse survivor, complete with war paint and fake battle wounds. Jason was a redshirt (legitimately. He’ll have to post a picture of himself wearing his shirt for you guys), Mack was a pirate, and Greg was Jesus. (Yes, you read correctly. Jesus.) All in all, it was another fun night of shoot-outs and bad-assery, aided more than slightly by the fact that 90% of those there were wearing some sort of costume.

This has been another Nerf Wars Rundown. Expect more concentrated awesome next week.