One of the cool things about the slower parts of the year is that it affords us a chance to occasionally all take days off together. During the Christmas crush or the Summer slam it's pretty rare that two of the Grand Masters are off on the same day but during late winter and early autumn we can schedule days where 3 or 4 of us all have time off together.
Yesterday was one such day. Monk, Animal, Maverick and myself all had the day off and the drizzly weather more or less insisted that we spend most of the day indoors. Luckily for us, it's pretty easy to keep four Myachi Masters entertained for a day in a house full of toys. We juggled, we had a Nerf war and, of course, we played Myachi early and often.
Now, when many fans of the game envision a bunch of Myachi Masters hanging out and playing Myachi, they probably imagine us having a massive game of MYACH or a four man Fu battle and very often that's the case. More often, however, we play our favorite Myachi game: Toss and Catch.
As simple as it is, the act of tossing a Myachi back and forth is still the most popular Myachi game at the House of Skills. More often than not, we'll all be sitting in the living room, Monk's room (the upstairs living room) or my room (the downstairs living room) talking about something of topical or esoteric importance (whether Annakin deserved it or was an innocent victim of circumstance) and somebody will pull out a Myachi and start doing a little popcorn.
Before long, someone else will give the universal "pass the sack" signal (sticking your hand out in Lotus position) and the game begins. It's basically a 1 trick and pass circle, though occasionally we'll toss in 6 or 7 quick exchanges and sometimes we'll fall into a game of "fast pass" where we forego tricks altogether and just try to catch and pass as quickly as possible.
This is the heart of Myachi. This is the game that started it all and in my (far from) humble opinion it is still the most fun. Bad tosses lead to spectacular catches, flubbed tricks turn into new moves and a group of people are all playing together.
That's why I prefer Myachi to almost any other skill toy. You can't exactly pass the yo-yo. When you're playing with cigar-boxes you're not exactly making a team sport of it. There's plenty of passing in juggling but it's all this regimented timed out stuff. It's like playing in an orchestra where Myachi is like jamming with a jazz band.
Of course, the other major advantage Myachi has over every other skill toy in existence is how easy it is to play. Animal's girlfriend was hanging out yesterday as well. Now, she's got some sick skills. She's been playing for a few weeks and she's pretty darned athletic to begin with but she's obviously not a Myachi Master.
So here's the thing: Imagine a house full of professional Ping Pong players. They're all hanging out playing ping pong and there's one person there who has only been playing ping pong for a couple of weeks. Do you think that person would have any fun at all playing with all the pros? Unless they were really dumbing down their game, odds are against it.
But Myachi isn't like that. Animal's GF (Myachi Nickname forthcoming) could step right into a circle with professional Myachi players and have fun and be part of the game right away. Sure, she didn't catch any errant passes with a blind Osis but she did make some awesome saves and earned a room full of applause with a couple of her catches.
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So here's a game for you to try. Monk, Mav, Animal and I got this one going a few times yesterday. It's a competitive version of "Fast Pass". You can play with anywhere from 2 to a dozen players and you can do it with one Myachi.
Everybody sits in a circle (more or less). It doesn't really matter if you're seated or standing. Heck, you can even have a mix of some people sitting down and some people standing up. This is a pretty freeform game. Now just start passing the Myachi back and forth.
The idea is to make "catchable" tosses but still make your opponent miss. You've got to accept sort of the "gentlemen's" responsibility to be fair about your passes because the game is no fun if you're just zinging a pass way out of the other person's reach. You want your passes to be catchable but still challenging.
When somebody misses a catch, they get a strike. 3 strikes and you're out, last person standing is the winner.
If you have more than 2 players, you can start tossing in fakes. You can pretend like you're going to toss to one player and suddenly switch to the other. You can look one way and throw the other. You can use a couple of quick hand switches to confuse your opponents. The key is to find ways to make them miss other than (a) throwing way out of their reach (b) throwing way too low to make a genuine catch or (c) throwing so hard you're liable to hurt somebody.
If a throw is deemed out of reach by the majority of the players there is no foul and the game continues. Usually a strike is pretty obvious because the Myachi will often hit their hand and then drop. If that's the case it's almost certainly catchable (the exception being if it was thrown too hard).
Count out your strikes as you go and when somebody reaches 3 strikes they simply bow out of the game and nobody throws to them anymore. The game gets especially fun if you start with 4 or 5 players and wind up in a head to head match at the end.
Even among Myachi Masters this game usually goes pretty quick so you might also want to try playing with 5 strikes or more. If you have a group bigger than 4 you can also make things really tough by using two Myachis.
(Check back in the next day or two and I'll have added video to this entry to give you an example of this game in action)
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