Feast of Sekhmet

A minute in a walled banquet court with five tomatoes each and nobody going out. What decides it is less obvious than it looks: a hit is worth 10 points, but catching a tomato thrown at you is worth 25 and hands you ammo. A good catcher can outscore a good thrower, and the best players are both.

Points

• A hit pays the thrower 10 and fills a quarter of the victim's sauce meter.
• A catch pays the catcher 25 and two tomatoes, up to the limit of five. The thrower gets nothing.
• A wipeout is the hit that fills someone's sauce meter. It pays 50 on top of the 10, stuns the victim for 1.2 seconds and empties their meter. Four ordinary hits do it, or two golden ones.

Sauce never drains by itself, and only you can see your own meter, so it pays to count your hits on a rival.

Throwing

Q throws one tomato, with 0.85 seconds between throws. Your arm cocks for about a sixth of a second before it lets go, and the tomato flies the way you are facing when it does. Your facing is the way you last moved, so turn toward a target before you throw. A turn during the wind-up still counts.

Throws are flat and drop quickly. An ordinary tomato hits the floor about 9 metres out, and one that passes within about a metre of a body on the way hits it.

After your third catch your throws turn golden until your next catch, then again after your sixth, and so on. A golden tomato flies faster, carries about 11 metres and fills half a sauce meter.

Catching

E raises your hands for 0.4 seconds, with 1.4 seconds before you can do it again. Any tomato reaching you in that window is caught. From 8 metres a tomato takes about half a second to arrive, so you can catch it on sight. From 4 metres it takes a fifth of a second, and you have to raise your hands as the thrower's arm goes back. Everyone sees your hands go up and a hoop shrinking as the window closes, so a patient thrower waits it out.

Ammo

You start with five and hold five at most. Nothing refills on its own: every tomato is caught or collected. Lit fruit baskets stand on a ring around the shrine. Walk up to one holding three or fewer and you are back to five, and that basket goes dark for 8 seconds for everyone, filling back up a tomato at a time where you can watch it. A basket ignores you while you hold four or five.

Sauce on the floor

A tomato that lands on the floor leaves a puddle for 12 seconds, up to eight at once, each new one replacing the oldest. Tomatoes that hit the edge of the court just burst. A puddle does not make you slip so much as fling you: every moment you stand on one you are shoved hard the way you are facing, and you come off the far side several metres on.

Court sizes

The court is 14 metres square for two players, 26 for eight and 36 for fifteen or sixteen, with 4 baskets up to eight players and one per two players above that, up to 8. Four amphoras stand on the diagonals and a shrine in the middle. They stop bodies, not tomatoes, so they slow a chase but will not hide you.

How to win a food fight

• Face the thrower. A tomato you see coming from range is a catch, worth two and a half hits.
• Throw from close. Inside about 4 metres a tomato arrives faster than anyone can react.
• Throw just after their hands drop. Once a catch window closes there is a full second before they can raise them again.
• Finish what you started. A rival you have hit three times is one tomato from being worth 60.
• Do not empty your hands from range. Every long miss lands as a puddle and leaves you a tomato short.
• Take a basket at three. It fills you to five and shuts it to everyone else for 8 seconds.
• Use a puddle as a sprint. Face the basket you want, run across a fresh puddle, and you get there first.