01
Overview
Turf War is a GPS-verified territory game played on real municipal boundaries. Players physically travel into playable cities, towns, townships, boroughs, or villages and use the game page to claim them.
You may claim anywhere on the board; your new territory does not have to touch land you already own. Connectivity matters for scoring: only your largest connected group of territories earns base points.
02
Entry and eligibility
- Entry is free.
- Players must register with their name, email address, Discord username, and home address.
- The submitted home address must be verifiable and located inside the playable area.
- Each person may participate through one player identity and must agree to follow these rules.
03
Season and game hours
- The 2026 season opens Monday, October 5 and closes Saturday, October 24.
- The game is open Monday through Saturday from 6:00 AM until 10:00 PM. Claims and card plays are unavailable outside those hours.
- Sundays are rest days. Everything pauses on Sunday.
04
The playable board
The board consists of the municipalities shown on the official game map. Broadly, it includes New Jersey north of Interstate 195, New York City’s five boroughs, Staten Island, and southern New York along the New Jersey border (Orange County, Rockland County, and lower Westchester County). Long Island is not included this year.
- The map shown in the game determines whether a location is playable. Written regional descriptions are a guide; the displayed municipal boundary controls.
- Territories connect when they share a qualifying municipal boundary recorded by the game.
- Ferry routes, corner-only contact, and incidental map artifacts do not create a scoring connection.
05
Claims, ownership, and steals
- Open the game page while physically inside the territory you want to claim.
- Allow the browser to share your current location. The server checks that point against the official territory boundaries.
- If the game confirms the claim is allowed, you can submit it!
Daily allowance
Each player receives one standard claim per game day. A claim may take unclaimed territory, steal eligible territory from another player, or re-claim territory you already own to work toward fortification. Action cards may change the allowance.
Ownership and same-day lock
- A successful claim immediately gives the claimant ownership. If another player owned the territory, ownership transfers and the move is a steal.
- After one player makes a normal claim on a territory, a different player cannot normally claim that same territory again until the next game day.
06
Connectivity and scoring
- A cluster is a group of your territories with municipal boundaries that touch.
- Each territory in your single largest connected cluster is worth one base point.
- Territories in smaller clusters remain yours, but are outposts worth zero base points until they connect to a larger cluster.
- The game recalculates clusters after ownership changes.
- Your final score is your base score plus any side quest bonuses you win.
largest connected cluster+side-quest bonuses=final score
07
Fortification
Claim the same territory on three consecutive game days to fortify it.
| Stage | Result |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | You claim or steal the territory. Progress begins at 1 of 3. |
| Day 2 | You claim it again on the next game day. Progress reaches 2 of 3. |
| Day 3 | You claim it again on the following game day. It becomes fortified. |
- Sunday is skipped and does not break a streak. In other words, Saturday followed by Monday counts as consecutive game days.
- A fortified territory cannot be stolen for the rest of the season.
Fortification shenanigans
- A steal starts the attacker’s progress at 1.
- Trading a fortified territory is allowed, and its fortified status travels with it.
- War and Mulligan restore both the territory’s ownership and fortification state.
- Using Mulligan to interfere with another player's fortification attempt is considered a dirty move, but explicitly allowed under this ruleset.
08
Action cards
Drawing and keeping cards
- At the beginning of each game week, hands containing fewer than three unused cards are topped up to three.
- On each remaining game day that week—Tuesday through Saturday—every player receives one additional random card.
- All seven card types are in the random pool. Each card has an equal probability of being pulled. Duplicate cards are possible.
- Unused cards remain in your hand. There is no maximum hand size.
- Cards may only be played while the game is open. A card is consumed when its action successfully takes effect.
❄ Freeze
Choose one territory you currently own. It cannot be taken by another player on the next game day. A scheduled Freeze may be cancelled before it becomes active; cancelling returns the card to your hand. Freeze cannot be scheduled if no future game day remains.
🛡 Blockade
Choose one rival. On the next game day, that player cannot take any territory you own. They may still claim open land, their own land, or another rival’s land. A scheduled Blockade may be cancelled before it becomes active; cancelling returns the card. Blockade cannot be scheduled if no future game day remains.
⚔︎ War
After another player steals your territory, you have five game hours to play War. The territory immediately returns to you with its previous fortification state. The attacker then receives an exclusive 16-game-hour window to return physically to that territory and reclaim it for free. That reclaim does not use the attacker’s daily claim.
During the reclaim window, nobody else may claim the territory. Game hours count only while the game is open, so overnight closures and Sundays pause both timers. War cannot be played unless the full 16-game-hour reclaim window fits before the season ends. If the window expires, you keep the territory; later attempts follow the normal claim rules.
×2 Double Trouble
Raises your normal claim allowance from one to two for the current game day. It may be played only once per player per day. Any unused extra claim disappears when that game day ends.
⇄ Trade
Offer one territory you own in exchange for one territory owned by another player who also holds a Trade card. Sending or declining a proposal uses no cards. If the other player accepts while both cards and both territories are still available, the territories swap owners and one Trade card is consumed from each player. Fortification and progress stay attached to the territories.
↩ Mulligan
Undo an eligible normal claim you made today while you still own the territory. The territory returns to its previous owner—or becomes unclaimed if nobody owned it—and its previous fortification state is restored. You receive one replacement claim for that same game day.
Joker awards, War reclaims, claims already reversed by War, and claims already undone by Mulligan are not eligible.
★ Joker
Choose whether Joker should select randomly from all unclaimed territories or from unclaimed territories bordering your largest cluster. If multiple clusters tie for largest, Joker first selects one of those clusters at random. If you own no territory, a cluster-edge request automatically uses the whole board instead.
The awarded territory needs no GPS visit and does not use your daily claim. It begins with fortification progress of 1. If no eligible territory exists, the card is preserved.
09
Endgame side quests
Every territory you own counts toward side-quest totals, including outposts outside your largest cluster. The statistics presented in the game are final and cannot be contested.
| Side quest | Awarded for | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Lord of the Seas | Owning the most territories marked as bordering qualifying water. | +3 |
| Hungry Hungry Hippo | Owning territories with the greatest combined land area. | +3 |
| Social Butterfly | Owning territories with the greatest combined population. | +3 |
10
Final results and prizes
When the season closes, ownership and scores lock. The live leaderboard may show base cluster points and side-quest standings separately; official final results include both.
Prizes for ties
- A two-way tie for first results in an equal split; $25 for both players in first.
- A two-way tie for second results in $25 for both players in second. Third place gets $0.
- A two-way tie for third results in an equal split; $12.50 for both players in third.
- Three-way tie for first? $33.33 for each of them.
- Three-way tie for second? $16.66 for each of them.
- Three-way tie for third? $16.66 for each of them.
- Anything else follows the same three-way equal split logic.
11
Safety, fair play, and official rulings
- Obviously, do not interact with the game while driving or moving in a way that makes phone use unsafe. Pull over, park legally, and make the claim safely.
- Location spoofing, shared accounts, automation, tampering, exploiting bugs, or otherwise misrepresenting your physical location is prohibited.
- Be decent to the other players. Strategy, steals, blockades, wars, and trash talk are part of the game; but harassment and genuinely harmful behavior are not.
- The organizer may investigate and correct invalid claims, technical errors, mapping problems, duplicate accounts, cheating, or obvious scoring mistakes. Corrections may include reversing a move, restoring prior ownership, adjusting cards or scores, disqualifying a player, or taking no action when the available evidence is inconclusive.
- For an unaddressed edge case or a conflict caused by a software bug, the organizer’s ruling controls. Any material rule change during the season will be communicated to all players.