Total Defence card game tournament held virtually for the first time

An annual card game tournament held since 2017 that promotes the importance of Total Defence was held virtually for the first time on Wednesday because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Organised by Singapore Discovery Centre, the Guardians of the City (GOTC) tournament where players use action cards representing the six Total Defence pillars to deal with security crises, was held via the Discord application, a teleconferencing tool.

A total of 198 students from 27 schools and one team of three lower secondary homeschoolers, aged 13 to 14, took part.

GOTC is a strategy card game launched in 2017 to help students understand the complexity of security threats and how they can do their part in Total Defence (TD) to keep Singapore safe.

After Nexus revamped and launched it as GOTC II last year, it now features new illustrated cards and logos.

This year's awards system gave prizes to students based on a tier system of gold, silver and bronze, which differs from previous years' awards where the prizes were handed out only to top placed teams.

Eleven out of 66 teams clinched the gold award in this year's tournament.

They include teams from Fuhua Secondary School, Juying Secondary School, Marsiling Secondary School, Nanyang Girls' High School, and Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School.

Each participant who won gold will get cash vouchers, a medal and an e-certificate.

The school will also get a trophy.