There are three teams of five in the arena. Each team has a home base (coloured red, green, or blue) which they must start in at the beginning of the game. Points are scored by tagging other players, or by ‘destroying’ or ‘taking’ other teams’ bases.

Tagging another player typically gains you +150 points, while successfully taking a base can gain a player +3001 points. As there are five players per team, and two available bases (there are 3 bases but you cannot destroy your own), each team can gain a maximum of 10 base takes (+30010 points).

Game strategies therefore usually revolve around getting all of your team members their bases while preventing the opposing teams from getting theirs.

Bases are destroyed by shooting it three times in a row. If successful, this gains the player +3001 points. However, attempting to destroy a base is risky because if the player is interrupted during the base take and cannot finish, then that player will instead lose points (see base scoring table below).

Teams can employ a variety of tactics, but one of the more common ones involves sending out 2-3 players to attack the opponents’ bases while leaving the remainder of the team at their home base to defend it against others. Other typical tactics include base dumping (attack heavy), or turtling (defence heavy). 

Base point scoring:

First two shots into a base

-500 points per shot

Third successive shot into the base

+4001 points

Total points for a clean base take (3 uninterrupted shots)

+3001 points

Note that this means that if a player shoots a base once or twice and is then deactivated or otherwise interrupted and cannot make the third shot, that player will lose 500 points per shot made and will not recover any points. Players which are interrupted in this way are said to have been denied. Players can gain bonus or assist points for denying other players, depending on the gaming system in use.

The doubles and triples format is very similar to that of a normal team game, but instead of having teams of five, there are instead teams of two or three. There are typically 6-8 teams competing in one game.

There are three bases, but none are assigned as a home base and so each player can destroy all three bases. Players must now start outside the bases, but otherwise there is no restriction on starting location. Point scoring is the same as in standard team games.

This is a solo game. There are no teams, or colluding between individuals. Points can only be scored by tagging opposing players. There are no bases.

This is a solo game. In this popular game format, three players duel at close quarters in an enclosed circle. It is the only game format not played in a maze like arena.

Players cannot gain points by tagging each other, but will lose 100 points every time they are tagged. The winner is the player who has lost the least amount of points.

There are many variations of the elimination game format, but the general idea is the same for all of them. Players have a limited number of lives which cannot be reloaded and are lost every time a player has been deactivated. When a player runs out of lives, they are eliminated from the game and lose all their points.

Teams must work together to eliminate the other teams without becoming eliminated themselves.

Elimination can be played in a variety of different ways and is typically combined with other formats, for example Doubles-Elim or Teams-Elim.

The Zone Laser Tag Australasian Championships (ZLTAC) recently came up with an Triples-Elim game which included targets that randomly gave or took away lives from the players shooting them.

Elimination games have not traditionally been played in Australasian competitions but are played as part of normal competitive play in Europe and are starting to gain traction here as well.