A clip of the Japanese game Bo-Taoshi (Which translates literally to “Pole Toppling” in English) has surfaced on Reddit and peaked the interest of many around the world.

The game is described as a “capture-the-flag-like game”, but watching it, it’s more like a real life version of Clash of Clans or any of those other mobile games where you send people to destroy a fortress. The game is made up of two teams of 150 people. The teams are then split into two groups, attackers and defenders.

Then, this happens.

 

 

Eventually the goal of the people in orange is to drag everyone off of the pole and then pull it down to a 30 degree angle, relative to the ground. You can see a better example below, in the most recent playing of the game.

 

 

While this game is played by several different schools across Japan, the largest and most well-known games are played at the National Defense Academy of Japan and are held once a year. While the game looks like chaos, there is an actual strategy to it and there are even positions.

 

Defense

  • Ninja: This is the person sitting on top of the pole. If they don’t get knocked down, you can often see them pull the pole in the opposite direction of the attackers.
  • Pole support:  They are around the base of the pole and try to hold it steady.
  • Barrier: This is the outer ring of people around the pole.
  • Interference: They are meant to disrupt the attacking strategy once they get within the barrier.
  • Scrum disabler: These people try to stop the scrum from acting as a platform for the attackers to access the pole.

Offense

  • Springboard/scrum: You’ll notice in the beginning of the video, people run into the pile and bend down. These people are meant to act as a platform for others to jump off of and get closer to the pole.
  • Pole attacker:  This is the designated person to jump to the top of the pole, bring down the ninja and start pulling the pole down.
  • General support attackers: Basically just be a nuisance, and pull opposing players out of position.

With all of the talk that surrounds concussions these days, this sport is pretty wild, so it’s a good thing they only play it once a year.

(H/T /r/sports)