It has increasingly come to my attention that not enough people are aware of the Australian Bin Chicken.
This game is an ode to the average Bin Chicken. The fight for survival. The thrill of a freshly-captured bin. The malodorous bouquet unique to these wonderful examples of the Avian Aesthetic [with the possible exception of Year 8 boys dorms].
You’ll Need
- A largish outdoor space.
- Some youth or other humanoids
- A reasonable number of cones, or other way to mark circles (rope)
- Some chairs or other object to place in the centre of your circles.
Setup:
You cannot play Duck Duck Bin Chicken without some bins. However, unless you are fortunate to have a high bin entitlement, you probably have to settle for chairs.
We like to play this game with three teams, and six bins. Arrange the chairs in a big circle:
x x
x x
x x
Then put a circle of cones around each bin chair.
/-----\ /-----\
| | | |
| x | | x |
| | | |
/-----\ \-----/ \-----/ /-----\
| | | |
| x | | x |
| | | |
\-----/ /-----\ /-----\ \-----/
| | | |
| x | | x |
| | | |
\-----/ \-----/
Rules
The aim of this game is to control as many bins as possible at the end of the round. Each round will take about three to five minutes.
- Obtaining a bin. To capture a bin, you run into the centre of the circle, and tag the bin.
- Taking care of your bin. Once you have a bin, you’ll need to defend it from the other roving tribes of Bin Chickens. You can do that by tagging them when they come inside your circle, before they tag the bin. You can’t tag anyone outside the circle.
- What if I’m tagged? Thankfully, Bin Chickens are durable little beasties. If you are tagged, you need to go back to the respawn point. Just pick any random object. We often put an extra chair in the centre of the field.
- The really important rule. It’s just like Duck Duck Goose. You can only move around the field in one direction. This is why the bins are arranged in a circle. You can only try and capture the next bin in the circle. Pick a direction. Clockwise is easier to spell, so I recommend it.
- More Bin Maintenance instructions. Two small rules to make the game faster. Firstly, set a maximum amount of defenders allowed around each bin. Three is a good number. Two makes it very hard to defend, and four is almost impossible to attack. Secondly, if a defender touches the bin, it’s a fowl [sic], and they lose their bin to the attackers. This stops defenders just standing on top of the bin and not letting anyone in.
- Team Elimination. It’s possible for a team to lose all of their bins. This happens most rounds with three teams. If so, they are out for the round. Short and sharp rounds (a few minutes) means that nobody is sitting out for too long.
That’s it. The teams all run around capturing bins until the timeout. The team with the most bins is declared Victor. After a few rounds, everybody is nicely tired out.