by Crazy Ivan
For those of you who regularly attend our Wednesday Night Brawls, you've likely noticed that as they've gotten more popular they've become the increasing target of trolls and spammers. A few weeks ago we actually had to shut down the brawl altogether because of the overwhelming troll-presence.
This is to be expected, of course. One drawback to getting popular on the internet is that you just become a magnet for a certain bread of loser. To combat this, we've set up a new chatroom for the Wednesday Night Brawls:
http://www.tinychat.com/myachichat
This will be our chatroom going forward every Wednesday so change your 'favorites'.
Oh, and for those who don't regularly attend our Wednesday Night Brawls, you should. We get together a bunch of maniacs from all over the country and play MYACH, make trades, teach and learn new tricks and just jam out. Webcam helps but you don't need one. You're more than welcome to show up on a text only basis. It's a lot of fun, with the exception of the aforementioned trolls.
This has already been mentioned on Facebook and on the Forum, but for those people who get the bulk of their Myachi info from the blog, I wanted to make sure we were covering all of our bases. See you in about an hour!
Showing posts with label the brawl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the brawl. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Trivia Contest was a Big Success
by Crazy Ivan
Well we just wrapped our first Wednesday Night trivia game and judging by its popularity I think we'll be having another. Things worked out great and the only thing that would have made it more fun would have been more contestants.
We had four players this week but several more showed up a little late and couldn't quite make it into the game. Smaster had to leave right when we started, Rotscale and Jake showed up a little too late to make it in, Downtown was having some computer problems, Phil couldn't stay on long enough...
All that being said, even with only four players it was mad fun. MMFL, Mantis, CMC and Kickstand all went head to head. I'd written 25 questions for the night, 12 for round one, 12 for round 2 and 1 for "Final Jeopardy".
The questions were divided into three categories in both rounds. In round one we had Series, Moves & Grooves and Myachi History. Since Mantis showed up earliest we let him start things off. The questions in the first round were pretty easy so it was more about who typed fastest than who had all the answers in that one. MMFL, as it turns out, is a heck of a typist so he jumped out to an early lead.
By the beginning of the 2nd round it looked like MMFL might just run away with it. Mantis was keeping close behind him, but Kickstand was lagging back and CMC couldn't beat anyone to the punch through the whole first round.
The second round changed things significantly. The categories were Myachi Masters, Pakisacks and Myachi Stores and the difficulty level went way up on those ones. That gave everyone a chance to even up the scores so by the end of round two we had a pretty tight 4 way race. CMC managed to answer a couple fo the high point value questions and wound up in 4th place with 1000 points. Kickstand went on a late rally and got 2300. MMFL was in 2nd with 2600 and Mantis managed to sneak into the lead toward the end with 3100 points.
There were some problems along the way, of course. It was kind of weird how Tinychat wouldn't all show us the same screen so on Mantis' screen it might have looked like he answered first and on MMFL's screen it might look like he answered first. We decided that to make it fair we'd have to go with whatever was on my screen so there was a little suspense after each question while everyone tried to figure out who actually won the point.
To make matters even worse, if two people answered at the exact same time, one of the answers wouldn't appear at all. This left a few of the guys thinking they'd answered even though the only person that could see their answer was them. Made for some frustrating moments for people who probably really deserved the points but we got it all worked out in the end.
So we reach the end of the 2nd round with 2100 points separating 1st and 4th. We did it Final Jeopardy style where everyone pmed me their wagers once I revealed the category: "Myachi.com".
Took a minute to get all the pms together and once I did, I gave everyone the question. Everyone pmed me their answers and then I went from 4th to 1st and did the slow suspenseful reveal like they do on Jeopardy.
So the question was: "The first version of Myachi.com was created by which Myachi Master?"
Unfortunately for them, our 3rd and 4th place finishers got the wrong answer. CMC guessed Butter and Kickstand guessed The Deacon. Both very solid guesses, but both incorrect. Butter and Deacon combined efforts to fashion our 2nd website, but neither had a hand in the first one.
That left MMFL and Mantis, both giants in the game of Myachi. Mantis went into the final round leading by 500 so we went to MMFL first. He'd gotten the correct answer (Kid Myach if you're curious) and bet everything so he did as much as he could. His score doubled to 5200 points meaning that if Mantis (a) got the answer wrong or (b) wagered less than 2100 points, MMFL would be our winner.
Unfortunately for MMFL, Mantis is good at Myachi trivia and he's also pretty good at math. He got Kid Myach as his answer and wagered exactly 2101 which put him in the lead by one point.
It was a great game with a great one point finish and I'm willing to speak for everyone when I say we all had a lot of fun with it (even the guy who had to write all the questions!). There's no doubt in my mind that we'll be doing it again next week as well.
So if you're up for it, hit us up on tinychat next Wednesday. We'll be on from 6 to 9 but we won't be starting the trivia game until 7 O'clock. The more the merrier and remember, if you're a regular reader of this blog you're already in a good spot to win.
And in case you're curious, unlike Jeopardy, Mantis doesn't actually get $5,201 and MMFL, Kickstand and CMC don't get any fabulous parting gifts. Mantis did win a 5.0 of his choice, though, and not even Watson won one of those on Jeopardy.
Well we just wrapped our first Wednesday Night trivia game and judging by its popularity I think we'll be having another. Things worked out great and the only thing that would have made it more fun would have been more contestants.
We had four players this week but several more showed up a little late and couldn't quite make it into the game. Smaster had to leave right when we started, Rotscale and Jake showed up a little too late to make it in, Downtown was having some computer problems, Phil couldn't stay on long enough...
All that being said, even with only four players it was mad fun. MMFL, Mantis, CMC and Kickstand all went head to head. I'd written 25 questions for the night, 12 for round one, 12 for round 2 and 1 for "Final Jeopardy".
The questions were divided into three categories in both rounds. In round one we had Series, Moves & Grooves and Myachi History. Since Mantis showed up earliest we let him start things off. The questions in the first round were pretty easy so it was more about who typed fastest than who had all the answers in that one. MMFL, as it turns out, is a heck of a typist so he jumped out to an early lead.
By the beginning of the 2nd round it looked like MMFL might just run away with it. Mantis was keeping close behind him, but Kickstand was lagging back and CMC couldn't beat anyone to the punch through the whole first round.
The second round changed things significantly. The categories were Myachi Masters, Pakisacks and Myachi Stores and the difficulty level went way up on those ones. That gave everyone a chance to even up the scores so by the end of round two we had a pretty tight 4 way race. CMC managed to answer a couple fo the high point value questions and wound up in 4th place with 1000 points. Kickstand went on a late rally and got 2300. MMFL was in 2nd with 2600 and Mantis managed to sneak into the lead toward the end with 3100 points.
There were some problems along the way, of course. It was kind of weird how Tinychat wouldn't all show us the same screen so on Mantis' screen it might have looked like he answered first and on MMFL's screen it might look like he answered first. We decided that to make it fair we'd have to go with whatever was on my screen so there was a little suspense after each question while everyone tried to figure out who actually won the point.
To make matters even worse, if two people answered at the exact same time, one of the answers wouldn't appear at all. This left a few of the guys thinking they'd answered even though the only person that could see their answer was them. Made for some frustrating moments for people who probably really deserved the points but we got it all worked out in the end.
So we reach the end of the 2nd round with 2100 points separating 1st and 4th. We did it Final Jeopardy style where everyone pmed me their wagers once I revealed the category: "Myachi.com".
Took a minute to get all the pms together and once I did, I gave everyone the question. Everyone pmed me their answers and then I went from 4th to 1st and did the slow suspenseful reveal like they do on Jeopardy.
So the question was: "The first version of Myachi.com was created by which Myachi Master?"
Unfortunately for them, our 3rd and 4th place finishers got the wrong answer. CMC guessed Butter and Kickstand guessed The Deacon. Both very solid guesses, but both incorrect. Butter and Deacon combined efforts to fashion our 2nd website, but neither had a hand in the first one.
That left MMFL and Mantis, both giants in the game of Myachi. Mantis went into the final round leading by 500 so we went to MMFL first. He'd gotten the correct answer (Kid Myach if you're curious) and bet everything so he did as much as he could. His score doubled to 5200 points meaning that if Mantis (a) got the answer wrong or (b) wagered less than 2100 points, MMFL would be our winner.
Unfortunately for MMFL, Mantis is good at Myachi trivia and he's also pretty good at math. He got Kid Myach as his answer and wagered exactly 2101 which put him in the lead by one point.
It was a great game with a great one point finish and I'm willing to speak for everyone when I say we all had a lot of fun with it (even the guy who had to write all the questions!). There's no doubt in my mind that we'll be doing it again next week as well.
So if you're up for it, hit us up on tinychat next Wednesday. We'll be on from 6 to 9 but we won't be starting the trivia game until 7 O'clock. The more the merrier and remember, if you're a regular reader of this blog you're already in a good spot to win.
And in case you're curious, unlike Jeopardy, Mantis doesn't actually get $5,201 and MMFL, Kickstand and CMC don't get any fabulous parting gifts. Mantis did win a 5.0 of his choice, though, and not even Watson won one of those on Jeopardy.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
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...
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...
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Wednesday Night Brawl
by Crazy Ivan
For most people Wednesday is the day to dread. They call it hump day because it's right in the middle of the week. The lingering feeling of relaxation from last weekend has already left you and the relaxation of next weekend is too far away to see. I was unable to find any hard numbers, but I'd venture to say that on the average, Wednesday is the second most hated day of the week after Monday.
If you're not a Myachi Master, that is.
Couple of reasons I like Wednesdays more than most. First off, my weekend isn't on Saturday and Sunday. I'm always at the office all weekend and when I take days off they're usually on Monday and Tuesday. So in a sense, Wednesday is my Monday.
Of course, by the normal standard, this means that I should like it less than most people, but I like my job more than most people so I'm usually pretty stoked about going back to work.
But there's another reason I like Wednesdays and that started pretty recently: The Wednesday Night brawls.
Most of the regular readers here already know about this weekly ritual we do, but it occured to me this morning that I've yet to mention it here on the blog. So for those who just said, "The Wednesday Night what?", allow me to explain.
The Myachi community is pretty spread out. Sure, there are hot spots here and there. NYC is kind of the hub of Myachi activity (probably related to all the Myachi Masters living there), but there are die hard fans all over the country (and other countries) so the only way we can really get together is online.
We've done that over the Myachi Forum for years, but last year we also set up a video chat and we would occasionally hop on and play games of MYACH, show off our collections, make trades and teach each other new tricks. This was all pretty haphazard at first so you'd hop on and sometimes there would be one other person there, sometimes there would be eight.
Then about four months ago we made things official and started the Wednesday Night brawls. We even put it on the schedule so that every Wednesday night between 6 and 9 pm (est) there would be a couple of Myachi Masters hanging out, answering questions, judging MYACH games and just generally showing off. In fact, on the Myachi schedule, it actually says "brawl" under somebody's name every Wednesday.
I always look forward to these nights, but I'm particularly looking forward to this one. Last week's brawl was something of a disappointment. I was battling a cold (and losing), Maverick was stuck at FAO for an event and didn't make it until mad late and not many Maniacs showed up.
If the brief history of the Wednesday Night Brawl is anything to go by, that means that this week will be awesome. The slow weeks always seem to be followed up by busy ones. I'm back to 100% (okay, 93.2% but that's as much as I get these days) and I've got Monk scheduled to rock it out with me tonight. I'm even hoping for a surprise visit from a few unnamed Myachi Masters that may or may not be there.
So if you'd like to help make my prediction come true, hop on tinychat between 6 and 9 tonight (that's East Coast time). If you've got a webcam you can jump in on some MYACH games but if you don't you can still text chat with everybody and watch a few of the games best throw down in epic tournaments.
Hope to see you there.
For most people Wednesday is the day to dread. They call it hump day because it's right in the middle of the week. The lingering feeling of relaxation from last weekend has already left you and the relaxation of next weekend is too far away to see. I was unable to find any hard numbers, but I'd venture to say that on the average, Wednesday is the second most hated day of the week after Monday.
If you're not a Myachi Master, that is.
Couple of reasons I like Wednesdays more than most. First off, my weekend isn't on Saturday and Sunday. I'm always at the office all weekend and when I take days off they're usually on Monday and Tuesday. So in a sense, Wednesday is my Monday.
Of course, by the normal standard, this means that I should like it less than most people, but I like my job more than most people so I'm usually pretty stoked about going back to work.
But there's another reason I like Wednesdays and that started pretty recently: The Wednesday Night brawls.
Most of the regular readers here already know about this weekly ritual we do, but it occured to me this morning that I've yet to mention it here on the blog. So for those who just said, "The Wednesday Night what?", allow me to explain.
The Myachi community is pretty spread out. Sure, there are hot spots here and there. NYC is kind of the hub of Myachi activity (probably related to all the Myachi Masters living there), but there are die hard fans all over the country (and other countries) so the only way we can really get together is online.
We've done that over the Myachi Forum for years, but last year we also set up a video chat and we would occasionally hop on and play games of MYACH, show off our collections, make trades and teach each other new tricks. This was all pretty haphazard at first so you'd hop on and sometimes there would be one other person there, sometimes there would be eight.
Then about four months ago we made things official and started the Wednesday Night brawls. We even put it on the schedule so that every Wednesday night between 6 and 9 pm (est) there would be a couple of Myachi Masters hanging out, answering questions, judging MYACH games and just generally showing off. In fact, on the Myachi schedule, it actually says "brawl" under somebody's name every Wednesday.
I always look forward to these nights, but I'm particularly looking forward to this one. Last week's brawl was something of a disappointment. I was battling a cold (and losing), Maverick was stuck at FAO for an event and didn't make it until mad late and not many Maniacs showed up.
If the brief history of the Wednesday Night Brawl is anything to go by, that means that this week will be awesome. The slow weeks always seem to be followed up by busy ones. I'm back to 100% (okay, 93.2% but that's as much as I get these days) and I've got Monk scheduled to rock it out with me tonight. I'm even hoping for a surprise visit from a few unnamed Myachi Masters that may or may not be there.
So if you'd like to help make my prediction come true, hop on tinychat between 6 and 9 tonight (that's East Coast time). If you've got a webcam you can jump in on some MYACH games but if you don't you can still text chat with everybody and watch a few of the games best throw down in epic tournaments.
Hope to see you there.
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