What the game is

Players are on one of seven teams. The map is divided into squares roughly 300 meters across. You claim a square for your team by being in it and hearing the mesh from it. Teams take squares from each other. A season runs six months and the team holding the most squares at the end wins — but every calendar month inside it has its own winner and its own honors, so there is always something close to play for. See the results.

How scoring works

You claim a square by reaching the mesh from inside it. Each mesh node your ping reaches is worth a tenth of a point, up to one point per ping — and a ping that reaches nobody claims nothing, because being somewhere is not enough.

Squares change hands when a team matches or out-scores whoever is holding one, scores fade over time so held ground has to be revisited, and a square that just changed hands is protected for fifteen minutes.

The exact numbers, the cooldowns and every other mechanic are in the rules.

Net check-ins

There's a weekly net on Wednesday evenings, 17:00 to 23:59 Boise time. Checking in during that window earns your team 25 points, on top of any ground you hold — a check-in before 17:00 or after midnight doesn't count.

You can check in once per net. Posting five times doesn't earn five times — it earns once, same as everyone else.

Turn up week after week and each check-in is worth more, from 25 points up to 50 for a run of six nets or longer. Miss one and you start again — though a week where the net doesn't happen at all costs you nothing. The rules have the full table.

Points count toward your team's total alongside squares, so a night on the net is a real contribution whether or not you ever leave the house. Wardriving and checking in are two ways to play, not two kinds of player. People who take ground are Wardrivers and people who work the net are NetOps, but that's flavour, not a class you pick — do both and you'll show up on both leaderboards.

To be credited, your radio has to be registered to you. On Meshtastic that's your node ID. On MeshCore it's your contact ID, which MeshMapper binds for you automatically if you wardrive, or you can pick your node from the list when you join.

Places worth going

Summits, parks and landmarks are real destinations, not squares picked at random — summits from Summits On The Air, parks from Parks On The Air, landmarks from OpenStreetMap. Reach one with a scoring ping and it earns your team Explorer points on top of the square itself.

What a place is worth depends on how far it made you go, not what kind of place it is. Somewhere inside a town's own limits is worth a nickel whether it's a park or a landmark — step outside and it's worth more. A summit is scored on its elevation instead, wherever it stands, because the climb to the top doesn't change depending on where a town line was drawn around its base.

There's a weekly cap per person, so a town's worth of easy visits can't out-earn one real trip. Landmarks and small parks also rotate week to week, so what's worth chasing near you can change — summits and the bigger parks are always live. The rules have the full point table and how the rotation works.

Points go to your own Explorer Score as well as your team's total, the same shape check-in points already have — and each month hands out three honors for whoever visits the most: Tourist for landmarks, Park Hopper for parks, Peak Tagger for summits.

Every month has a winner

A six-month season is a long time to wait to find out how you did, so each calendar month closes with its own result. A month is judged on that month alone — ground held and points earned between its own dates — not on the season standings, so falling behind early never puts the next month out of reach.

Alongside the team standings, each month hands out honors — for taking the most ground off other teams, winning the most back, touring the most landmarks, hopping the most parks, tagging the most peaks, and claiming the most ground out past the towns. Every one of them is defined in the rules.

The two protocols

How to join

Registration and MeshMapper setup happen on the join page. Join MeshWars to get started.

Where it's played

MeshWars is currently scoped for the western US and Texas. If you'd like to join the fun or need help, please reach out to malice in the Intermountain Mesh Discord.

The two boards don't work the same way here. MeshCore territory can be painted anywhere you can run MeshMapper — it isn't limited to a community, only to the play area below. Meshtastic territory is pulled from FreqMapper's coverage instead, which is rolling out community by community, so it only reaches where that coverage already does. What the communities below give you, on either board, is a home net to check in with.

• FREQ51 — Intermountain Mesh Meshtastic: the one community FreqMapper currently covers, for both painting and net check-ins.
• Mountain West Mesh MeshCore: a net configured for check-ins, and the directory both check-in identity and the join page's node picker draw from.
• Colorado Mesh MeshCore: another net configured for check-ins.

The outline is the live play area, read from the server — pings outside it are not scored. Open the board.

Links

The open source projects MeshWars is built with. For where you can actually play right now, see Where it's played above.

• Meshtastic The open source mesh radio project the Meshtastic board is built on.
• MeshCore The open source mesh radio project the MeshCore board is built on.
• MeshMapper The wardriving app that sends your position to MeshWars.
• FreqMapper The Meshtastic coverage-mapping app the Meshtastic board is painted from -- its help site covers installing it, enrolling in a mapping region, and your first mapping trip.
• MeshView Where Meshtastic check-ins and node identity are resolved from -- not what paints the Meshtastic board; that's FreqMapper.
• GitHub MeshWars is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. This is the complete source code running this site — not a related project.