A Brawl For the Ages

by Crazy Ivan

Consider this a brief follow up to yesterday's post about my hopes for a great Wednesday Night brawl.  As it turns out, my prediction was right on and we had an epic turn out.

Over the last few weeks there has been an interesting development on our brawls.  We do the video chat from 6 to 9 (though it ran way long this week!) and I've noticed a trend where mostly the younger cats get on earlier and then the older players start showing up later when some of the younger guys are heading off to finish their homework.

That's certainly how it was tonight.  When I first got on at 6 there were already 6 other jammers there waiting for me.  Several were making their first appearance at the Brawl but there were a few familiar faces there as well.  By the time Monk showed up about a quarter after we had picked up a few more players.

I had to hop off for a long break to drive home but when I got back there was a big game of MYACH going on between 4 dudes.  I was in and out through the game and was pretty anxious to get into the next one.

My first (and unfortunately last) game of the night came when my boy Jake threw a challenge my way.  Before we could get started the game had swelled to include two other players; my boy Blaze (who officially changed his nickname to the much cooler and more appropriate "Final Cut" tonight) and CMC.

Jake took an early lead on all of us but CMC seems to be twice as good at the game every time I see him.  He put on a clinic for several sets and I had to reach pretty far into my bag just to catch up with his lead.  Everyone earned at least a few solid jabs but after a while it came down to me and CMC.

If you know CMC you know that this is no cakewalk.  Some people are reading this and thinking "didn't you say it was mostly younger dudes early?  And aren't you supposed to be some kind of professional or something?" but those who know CMC are saying "I bet he made you do 30 Crazy Legs back to back and a bunch of crazy juggling combinations, didn't he?"

See, in Myachi age is no real predictor of skill.  I've seen 20 year olds lose to 10 year olds, I've seen people who've been playing for years lose to people who've been playing for weeks and I've every single person who's ever beaten me at MYACH has less experience at the game than I do.  Now, clearly I hold back against a lot of opponents and I always kind of play to the level of the person I'm playing against.  I don't pull out tough foot tricks on people who don't have toe stalls down and I don't do juggles against somebody who can't juggle.  All that being said, CMC isn't one of those people I go easy on.  He's legitimately good enough to beat me so he earns my really tough sets.

It was one of those sets (a Brainfreeze combo) that finally earned me a victory in redemption.  I wanted to hit the reset button and start another game.  In the interim a lot more onlookers had shown up including Mantis and Rotscale and Jake had savored the promise of victory when he jumped out to the early lead in the last game so he was rearing to go as well.

Unfortunately a piece of furniture too big for Pinky to move on her own intervened.  I hopped off for 10 minutes to help her move a few things and by the time I got back there was already a game going.  It was early enough that I could have hopped in by doing a few tricks but I was kind of beat from all the furniture moving so I bowed out.

I spent the next hour watching an epic battle unfold.  Mantis and Monk are quite possibly the two best MYACH players in the game so the other valiant participants were seeing set after set that they'd never seen before.  Both of them were pulling out juggling variations and 7 surface foot stall combos right out of the gate.  We're all watching on kind of glad we're not in the game.

Mantis caught a break and earned an unusual 2 letter lead on Monk when Final Cut earned a letter with a Wing/In-Wing combo that Monk hits 99 times out of 99.25 or so.  This put Monk on the defensive so he called upon a few of his guaranteed letter tricks and quickly tied it A to A.

Mantis never let up and kept the momentum all the way into the first redemption.  Monk pulled out the same trick he nailed me with the last time I had him to redemption (I'd describe it but I'm not sure if there's enough room on the Internet) and tied it up H to H.  Mantis missed a few behind the backs in a juggle and forfeited the momentum.

I figured Monk would probably earn a quick kill and though he earned a letter, Mantis battled back with a second redemption shot (4 Myachi juggle, 20 catches).

Now I hate to leave everyone hanging, but by then it was 9:30 at night, the Brawl had officially been over for half an hour (though a half dozen people were still on witnessing the match) and I had stuff to do.  I honestly still don't know who won.

In fact, I didn't see Monk on my way out this morning.  I guess it's possible that he and Mantis are still at it...