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ThursdayNightMovieArchivedReportBacks2003Quarter4You are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Report back for 18 DecemberWow... what a relaxed evening. Garrick got lucky as Pat had some pizza vouchers (Thanks to Thurteem) and so took over pizza ordering duties. He even ordered a carnivour special for everyone! We then watched the movie (OK, Jason Straitham is now officially the coolest actor in Britain). Then we got around and started telling rpg horror stories... much funness ensued. Then Pat talked about his dream of increasing the number of roleplayers in the Cape. I think this is an excellent idea and will be helping him corru^H^H^H^H^H seduc^H^H^H^H^H instruct youngsters in the art of roleplaying. We must get a webpage together outlining the aims and goals of this mission, I think. Then I tried to kick everyone out to get an early night. Obviously Pat and Shelagh did not read the wiki and understand I wanted an early night because they stayed AND let me regail them about my old characters. Damn them! Before I knew it, it was 3am (and I had only told them about two of my characters, the other one I had not yet found his character sheet). ;-) Man, I really need to play in an Ars Magica game again... I so miss the system. Report back for 11 DecemberUm... yeah... now we know why I have had such a stellar love life - [quote from Moonflake's log? formally went our separate ways. no surprises therequote?. Yeah, colour me shocked and suprised. Weeks and weeks of Mondays... and I remained oblivious (I wonder how many other hints and shit I missed from other people? The mind boggles). But you guys look happy, which is hella cool and I wish you all the best.... now get a fucking room before I am forced to use the hose! Oh, and thanks for bringing an awesome movie. I dig finding these small little movies that no-one knows about and that are ten times better then the lowest common denominator crap that Hollywood seems to spew out (read: Any move starring Ashton Kutcher, for example). It has now been saved, and will be on the list for the 24hr marathon I have planned for my birthday. And I finally got time to sit and chat and hang out, which was cool (so much so, that next week will be an "all hang out" week). And next week, Garrick will be handling the pizza duties... [cue scary music? Dun Dun, Dun Dun, Dundundundundundundundundun scary music?. Eventually, we got a game of Chez Greek started. It's a cool "Beer and Pretzels" game. Thanks to Alex for leaving it so we could play. In the first game, we had Marc, Amy, Garrick, Yancke, Conrad and myself playing. The game was going to be won by Mark, Garrick or Yancke... they were on millions of slack points while Amy, Conrad and myself were languishing way behind (Damn those Finals!!). Then suddenly, Conrad pulls out Daddy's credit card, and buys the beemer, and 4 other things to get the insta-win! Wah? Damn! Game two saw Conrad and me pull out so that Ian and Michelle could get a game. And thanks to a a great roll by Yancke on his nookie roll, Amy played the "Caught on Camera" card and got the same amount of slack and won.... that was, until Marc played the "Change your major" card, and stopped her from winning. Then Mr Happy was kicked out of the gene pool, and out of her room... and then the Black Ball wondered on over... Win DENIED!!! Eventually, Mark was able to buy enough stuff and do enough activities to squeek in for the win. All in all, a cool game, and I can not wait for my Chez Geek (and it's add-on, "Block Party") and Chez Greek to arrive. Also, when my MiB? points for !SchpatCon? come through, I will be going off to get the Dork Tower board game and Strange Synergy (which people have been raving about). Chez Greek Winner 1 : Conrad Report back for 04 DecemberWell, since the Wiki was down & Lucas wants to play on Wednesdays, I decided that WednesdayNightMovieTheater3000 is now null and void, and I will be rerunning it at least once a month on Thursdays. This means that at least once a month, I will be choosing the movie (it will always be a movie I have never seen, might be a truely awful movie chosen to be MST3K?'ed and I can be bribed with sexual favours?), and the CLAW "5 second rule" for seating will be in effect. The movie chosen this week, by me, was the amatuer movie, "The Gamers". It is a simple tale of a night of gaming. Action switches between the gamers, and their characters. It was very funny. Especially the scene in the bar with the thief... first he stole a man's pants, and then he backstabbed with a ballista (I have a feeling the movie was based on a game of Munchkin the screenwriter once played... because tonight we had one thief backstab another player, and the only weapon he had in play was the Siege Weapon... hehehe). Also, I think the new pizza ordering system worked like a charm. Everyone ordered, and got their pizza really quickly... it is a good addition. And then we played Munchkin. I used the rules we will be playing at the Munchkin tournament on Saturday. We managed to get in 6 games (though we did go about 30 minutes over time). The addition of Munchkin Fu definitely speeds up the game as the Fu game is very over-powered. And even in the shortened version of the game (think of it like the Night Cricket of Munchkin) there were some really munchkin moves. The best came from Pat (who really seems to have taken to Munchkin). Garrick went up against a 14th level monster that had 4 treasures. All he wanted was the level and the four treasures. But I blackmailed him by holding up a card, demanding 1 treasure to not play that card and interfere with the combat. Pat decided to get in on that action and also held up a card that he could use in the combat. Garrick decided to try and play my bluff, and made me burn my card, which I did. He then played a card to get him into a win position again, and turned to Pat... who was still holding up his card. Garrick eventually conceded, and decided to give Pat one treasure to avoid getting Pat's card played into the combat. I then pulled another card, and said that I could play this second card, so Garrick gave me a treasure as well to bribe me to not get involved again. Pat, after he got his treasure, then revealed that he was bluffing, and did not have a card he could have played into the combat! Suck It Down, Garrick! Munchkin Game 1 Winner : Michelle Overall Munchkin Winner: Pat Report Back from 27th Nov:Another well attended TNM (If I had originally called it !ThursdayNightMovieTheater? the anacronym would have been TNMT... the dreaded Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles... Splitters!) And tonight was the first night we watched an AVI from my collection... and I must admit that it looked pretty damn good. Admittedly the movie was short, and encoded in Xvid (which is superior in quality to Divx) so it had to look good, but all the same... it could have looked crap, and it didn't. Um... does anyone understand that last sentence? Anyway... that is the trouble with writing these things at 2am in the morning (and to think I wanted an early night... Muhaha). We then playtested the tournament rules for Munchkin. This is how I plan to run the tournament:
In the 2.5 hours I assigned to tonight's game (10pm to 12:30am), we managed to get in four games (2 were played one after the other, the other two were played at the same time). Garrick won the first game, Ian won the second, Pat won the third and Marc won the 4th. The eventual winner was Pat with 9 combined levels (not bad, considering he has not yet played a full game of Munchkin), with Marc, Garrick, Michelle, Ian and Amy all on 8. I made a lowly 6 and Brendan brought up the rear with 5 (we did not have good first games). Next week, I will have a few handouts which will hopefully help newbies catch onto the game faster (sorry you did not get a game Tai, you will definitely get a game if you pitch next week), and a few pages to help set out one's character so that you can see what you have easier (unless your tactic is to have the messiest "character sheet" a la Mike from Wednesday Night... and then tough!) Munchkin Game 1 Winner : Garrick Overall Munchkin Winner: Pat Report Back from 20th Nov:I take it the exams are pretty much over. Either that, or my new haircut is really attracting the ladies... How else can you explain that 15 people pitched to Movie night? Oh, and to those three CLAW people left in CT that missed the evening, you missed out on one helleva night. Admittedly, there was a scare early on. Seemed my heads on my DVD needed cleaning (its all those damn pr0n DVDs that people keep lending me...) so the movie's soundtrack sounded like a drive-thru ordering speaker. But we cleaned it up, and the movie continued. Now, even though the DVD was of a pretty bad quality (it was a pan/scan version, not a full cinema box letter screen version) the movie was still awesome. If (or should I say "when") I buy In Nominee, I will definitely be running a "Prophecy" game... Lucifer is just too a cool a character. I want to play him as an NPC. And Walken is amazing. And then we had a bit of a chat, as people sat outside while some smoked, and other chatted inside. Eventually though, I had to get the game of Munchkin started, as I knew it would take a while and I wanted to get an early night. I am such a FOOOOL. The game was long, exciting, thrilling and a joy to play. This time round we had one complete beginner (Brendan), a few newbies (Caroline, Philip and Mark) and a few old hands (myself, Shelagh and Garrick). And right from the first two or three rounds I could tell this was going to be a night to remember. And I almost won with a trick, if only Caroline had not been so observant! I was an Orc on level 7, with an effective level of 30. I went up against a Poison Ivy Kudzu Flytrap (lvl 15, worth 2 levels). Everyone was fine with me killing it and going to level 9 as they knew they could smack me down when I was on level nine. Only Caroline was shrewd enough to figure out that an Orc gets an extra level when beating a monster alone by more then 10. She managed to stop me from declaring myself the winner, and throw in enough cards to at least make me not beat it by 10. But at least I got a load of treasure from that combat. Not like a combat I had much later in the game... I was up against the Ancient (2 treasures), Undead (2 treasures) Auntie Paladin (4 treasures) and could not beat her... so I threw in my hand (as a Wizard can) to charm her and get her treasure, but Garrick played the "Trojan Horse" on me, depriving me of my treasure!!! DAMN!! It was the second best munchkin move he played that night. The first was when he went from level 3 (he had been up against the Wright Brothers and had had the potion of Cowardice played on him, so he had to run away, and he failed) to level 9 in one go. he beat a high level monster for 2 levels, one of the treasures was a Go Up A Level Card and then he sold off most of his stuff he had in play (including weapons and armour he was using) for another three levels. It was the best move of the night, and he came so close to winning. He, in fact, did open the door on the Level 2 Pit Bull, but the Transferral Potion was played on him by Caroline, so she could fight it. Eventually, we threw in ALL our cards to try stop Caroline from winning (including, right at the end, The Deux Ex Machinegun card, to end the combat) that we had no more cards to stop Marc from winning. Some other cool Munchkin moments: All in all a good night. AND... in further news, I finally got the RCA cables I needed to play movies on my PC on the TV... so my AVI collection is now also open to be watched on Thursdays. A COMPLETE list is available here. I will update it soon with all the new movies I have. Munchkin Winner: Marc Report back from 13th Nov:OK, having now watched Full Metal Jacket and Ghostbusters close to each other, I can say that FMJ does have more classic quotes... like 2 more. Man, I love that movie! And we almost did not even watch it, as it only had one vote, so I threw open my entire collection for consideration... Maybe next week we will have one of the Indiana Jones movies (I am picking up the 4 Disc collection tomorrow). And Munchkin was amazing. Playing, we had Shelagh, Ian and myself who were very experienced players, Conrad who had played once before and Amy and Caroline who were absolute beginners. And it was a long, hard fought game. Since I have taken out a number of cards, and we were playing with 6 players, so the game lasted a long time (3.5 hours). And although I eventually ended up winning (at one point, I had a combined level of just a touch over 50, with a backpack FULL of items due to Shelagh trying to SMACK ME DOWN earlier by piling on the bonuses to a particular wandering monster which only made it worth more and more treasures, which I then used my magic lamps on to get 9 treasures), I came very close to losing. Amy was up against a level 9 monster, and she was on level 16. Shelagh backstabbed for 2, and no-one else seemed to be able to do anything to her combat (well, except for me, as I had loads of cards still to play). So I used my Dwarf Tossing card and threw Shelagh's Dwarf into the combat to get the monster to 15. Whew, I thought, that stopped her! And then she played the Restraining Order on me. Disaster!!! I was the only one who could stop her combat. I had even forgotten that I had the Annihilation card, when Conrad (brave enough to risk sleeping on the couch) threw in the Mate card. Whew! The monster was now at 18, Amy was at 14 and she had to run away. And two turns later I went up against the undead Mr Bones (Level 2) and no-one could do anything to stop me. Some other cool Munchkin moments:
So... what can we learn from this evening? Play the cards, not the man. And I must admit that I prefer winning when the combat at the end is the major one, not just a "No-one has any cards to play, so you win" kind of combat. There has been a request that next week we have a Chez Dork game before Munchkin, so if people could PLEASE get to my house early so we can watch the movie, play Chez Dork, Munchkin and still get home before we hear the birds twittering... Munchkin Winner: Reuel Report back from 6th Nov:"Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?" And Munchkin rocked. Taking out the cards has definitely helped as we had loads of people on level 9 getting the smack down. Eventually, Marc (with a "C", word up brother) avoided the final smackdown to emerge victorious. He won due to some amazing rolling (at least three times he needed to roll a 6 to avoid level and bonus losing bad stuff and he always managed to roll the damn 6!) and some bad play on our side... and a damn fine tinfoil hat. There is an old Poker adage which is totally wrong for Munchkin which goes: "Play the man, not the cards". In Munchkin the total opposite is true... "Play the cards, not the man". In other words, if some-one has just laid a smack down on you, don't throw in a card to f*$k with him, just to f*$k with him... make sure that card counts. Especially when you were saving that card for some-one else, who ended up winning the game. Also, avoid grudges, they will not help you later on. Attack those who deserve (or who are vunerable) to be attacked. Don't keep attacking the same person once they are no longer a threat. And for goodness sake, avoid those Redneck Trees! And, since I was only needed at work 6 hours later, we decided to break in my Chez Dork. It was very cool, as we each chose characters who had obsessions similar to our own (well, we did, until Garrick flip flopped all my obsession cards, bastard!). Ian ended up winning, and I came stone last... oh well, maybe Chez Dork is not my game... Next week, we will definitely need to include the Space Munchkin. Munchkin Winner : Marc Report back from 30th Oct:Since only ArchAngel and BabyAcid pitched up (Lucas... what happened???), we decided to save the classic movies for another evening and watch something we could MST3K? to shit... Enter Rollerball. Was the movie bad? Does a bear shit in the woods? But it was bad to a whole new level. Besides being a complete trashing of an original classic, it's own internal story, script (in a non-military movie, they managed to say the word "klick", to denote kilometers, 48 times in the space of 2 minutes A slight overexaggeration, but pretty damn close - ArchAngel) and film techniques were soooooo bad, they have to be seen to be believed. There is one 20 minute section of the movie which is filmed on video in green lowlight vision. That was soooo ass-grabtastically bad! But there was gratuitous nudity and mindless and viscious violence, so it had some redeeming factors. And it made fantastic MST3K? material. I am actually willing to play the movie a second time during a movie evening if other people want to glory in it's atrociousness. All in all... money well spent ;-) I must agree that the green "night vision" 15-20 minutes was an...interesting technique that can only be properly appreciated by experiencing it (and man is it an experience). Less action and cool skating moves than expected all-in-all and not nearly enough male bare-chested buffness on display. Awesome soundtrack though !!! And some cool costumes. - ArchAngel And then we played some Munchkin. Since I have now got both the add-on packs, the games actually ran a lot faster (you do not get to the "Sorry, combat is over and you get no level" cards as easily, so there is sometimes no way to stop a level 9 from winning). We were able to get in three games and still leave before 12:30. There were a few classic Munchkin moments... One was a particularly brilliant move by Garrick. He was playing a Warrior and had the Unnatural Axe (useable by Warrior only). During his turn, he unequipped his warrior card, and put the Unnatural Axe into his backpack. He then equipped Thief, successfully stole my +4 Sword against everything except Squid (which I had stolen fair and square from Shelagh), and then unequipped the Thief card and equipped a second warrior card from his hand and put the Unnatual Axe back into play. Brilliant!! In the second game, I went from level 1 to level 7 in the first two rounds. This is how it went: We were using the fast rules, so we got 4 of each type of card at the beginning. Two of my 4 treasure cards were Go Up A Level cards, so I played them (Level 3). I opened my first door, and went up against a level 1 monster, who ass I kicked and took it's level (Level 4) and treasure... which was a GUAL card, which I played (level 5). My next turn, I went looking for trouble against a level 1 monster and kicked it's ass and took it's level (Level 6) and treasure... which was another GUAL card, which I played and found myself on Level 7, with no class, race, bonus or anything. That actually messed up my game, because for my next 2 combats I won and got two items (due to a curse I had lost a level so those victories took me level 8) and then went up against King Tut, who <duncan mode engaged> 0nw3d !!!! </duncan mode> me and took all my items in play, and all the cards from my hand... and since I was of such a high level I could not get into enough combats to get some items back. But kudos must go to Shelagh for winning 2 out of the three games. When not playing a suicidal thief, she is actually a damn good Munchkin player (Thanks :) - ArchAngel)... though we have agreed that the Thief is a cool class to play. Next time, we need to blend in Star Munchkin... or play it by itself. I am also playing with the idea of removing some cards from the mix to be able to get to good cards easier (like removing the all Halfling and Bard cards, and all Halfling and Bard specific cards, some of the lower level monsters, some of the GUAL cards and a few other arb cards)... Game 1 Munchkin Winner: Reuel Report back from 23rd Oct:" If I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word, my word is 'poontang'."... Ahhh... the dulcet tones of a quote from Full Metal Jacket. As a movie, it's plot is not much to talk about, but it's classic quote quotient is the highest of any movie I have ever seen (with the possible exception of "Ghostbusters", but I'd have to check). If you made a drinking game for every time you heard a swear word, everyone would be pissed out of their bracket before they left basic training (hell, I wouldn't even like to try get through the Drill Sergeant's first speech). But then everyone slacked off. No-one stayed for Munchkin (Adam, I blame you. If you had been here, people would have stayed... I hope you are enjoying Israel, you slimy little communist shit, twinkle-toed cocksucker (and I say that with all love and affection)). Next week we will have to have a major game. I suggest we choose a shorted film, and then combine ALL the different munchkin packs. Of course... that does not help me now... I now have to find something to do for FOUR hours, as I wait for Game 5 of the Baseball World Series to start.... Go Yankees! I'm NOT twinkle-toed. - Adam Report back from 16th Oct:Before we started watching, Chelle arrived with pepers she was marking from the test she just gave... I really do wonder about the youth of today. Some of the answers were just not intelligible. The sentences just did not make sense (well, to be honest, even if they did make sense, I have a feeling I would not have understood them anyway... at least not without taking the course first). And Shelagh explained to me what she is doing in the lab. Don't ask me to repeat it, but at least now I have a basic understanding of how she is saving the world... or is that taking over the world? And so onto the movie: Man! What an awesome movie! I have no idea why they cut out some of the deleted scenes. One was a dream sequence with Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), another was a classic scene where John is trying to teach the Terminator how to smile (it was better than watching Wednesday Adams trying to smile), and a scene where the T-1000 (after being frozen by the liquid Nitrogen, exploding and then reforming) starts to malfunction, and can not turn off his ability to become items by touch, and so his hands and feet start turning into what ever they touch. Awesome effects. And then onto Munchkin. Playing with Simon the game is completely different than playing without him. His philosophy is to mess with combats all throughout the game, so that when near the end, people do not have enough cards to stop the level 9's from winning. I must admit, that this method does ensure a much more enjoyable game, as nothing is predictable. And Ada came up with a new Curse... check the ClawMunchkin page for details (see Typecast). Also, playing with Garrick and Adam also makes life more unpredictable, as they are willing to throw away vital cards for little gain (like tossing in a Polymorph potion for 2 levels... yay, you get two levels, but you can not stop some-one winning... um... doh). Well, I shouldn't really complain... since I managed to win and all I had left were my levels (9), my classes (Super Munchkin Warrior/Cleric) and Race (Halfbreed Human/Orc). That was it... I had no other bonuses... no weapons, armour, titles, dragons... nothing... just me an ma levels, dangnabit! Wheee... Munchkin Winner: Reuel Report back from 9th Oct:OK... before I tell you about Thursday night, it behooves me to tell you about my state of mind, which means I need to tell you about Wednesday night. Wednesday was supposed to be a simple night. Watch the comedies on Mnet, then watch recorded TV from Monday night with Adam and Michelle. So they came over, and we watched one of the hour long programmes we had taped (there were three in total). Then they went off to go watch the Fire Dancing which their own blogs can describe. The Fire Dancing ended at 23:00, at which point Adam arrives to watch the second of the hour long programs. After that, he suggested we play a game of Munchkin while he downloads his mail from Israel. Since Munchkin is my current drug of choice, I could hardly say no (what addict can?). So we finish at around 2-ish, which is when we start burning CDs?, and looking at crap I have downloaded. He finally leaves close to three. I then clean up, and try get the cats inside before locking up. Well, that was actually the plan. Unfortunately, the "locking up" happened slightly before the "get cat back inside". I had accidently locked myself out of my house. In my pockets were my wallet, and cell phone... but no keys. So I tried for about an hour to try break into my own house. I failed miserably. I disbelieve D&D's "You take twenty minutes to do an action and get an automatic 20" rule. So I phoned a friend to help me out (she has keys to my house, I have keys to hers). She was too bombed and asked if I could ask my folks first, as they live closer. So I phoned my dad, and he eventually came to let me in (I have a spare set of keys at my folks place as well). The time was then near 4:30. I get up at 6:00. So I figured I might as well pull an all-nighter, because you feel worse after 2 hours sleep then if you do not sleep at all. So I get to work bright and early, and want to die. The work day streatched on forever (and all I had to drink was Tab... no caffeine!). It took me 2 hours to update a website (I had to add 7 photos, and make a page for each photo). But I could not take a nap, because my dad (with whom I work) could walk in at any moment, and since he was awake, I should be awake. I finally got out of the office at 4:30, and dashed home for a quick nap... which never happened. People started arriving for the movie evening. We decided to watch Mists of Avalon, because no-one had seen it, and Nadine was told she had to see it. No-one told me it was a three hour movie. After 80 minutes, it had out-stayed it's welcome... and the MST3K? comments started flying. I have never seen such a homo-erotic movie since Top Gun. Lancelot had never loved any man the way he loved Arthur. And after having a threesome with Arthur and Guinevere he did not know how he could kneel before him... And it was sooooo Redneck Soap Opera-ish. It needs to be seen to be believed. Not that it is a bad movie, just overly long (It was actually a miniseries) and open to innuendo. The movie finished past 10. Did I kick everyone out and get some sleep? Hell no, there was Munchkin to be played... and if you give a junkie some money for food, he will just go out and by more smack (in this scenario, I am the junkie, the money is time, the food is sleep and the smack is Munchkin). So then started an Ubergame of Munchkin. Adam, Garrick, Ian, Michelle (the younger), Lucas, Claire and myself. the game finally got started at 22:45. It ended just before 2am. I am starting to hallucinate. At least, that is what the pink elephant keeps telling me... but I don't believe him. I am sure the elves are real. At least I hope they are real... what was I saying? The damn buzzards are circling, waiting for me to make a misstep and fall down the dune. But I gave them the bird. hehehehe... I gave the birds the bird... If I were Larry Bird, I'd be the bird, giving the birds the bird... I have said bird so many times now, that the word bird is losing all meaning... bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird ... If i was larry bird, watching the movie the Birds, I'd be the Bird, giving the bird to the birds in The Birds.......... Should I stay up for another night? This shit is awesome... lack of sleep is the best drug (cos it's free... and you can get stuff done at the same time)... I think I will stay awahbgnyjynnnnnn Munchkin Winner: Garrick Report back from 2nd Oct:Although technically Batman had won the online voting, since most of the people had never seen Hudson Hawk, we convinced them to give it a try. And It seems that everyone loved it, Shelagh especially (I hope that kinda makes up for us watching Se7en without you). With lines like "I'll tortue you for so long, you'll think it's a carreer" and "Bunny... ball ball", it is indeed a CLAW Classic (when I went to go see it originally, I went with a huge CLAW contingent to see it at Maynard Mall... where we laughed so hard, we broke the row of chairs we were sitting in). Then came the first full game of original Munchkin. I must admit that I think that Munchkin Fu is a tad funnier, but the original Munchkin is a lot more balanced. We had loads of people getting to 9th level and then being beaten back down (notably Garrick, who went back to level 1). I managed to get to level 9 and then never go any higher (or lower) for the remainder of the game (to my embarrassment). There were many combats that (had the person won) they would have gone to level 10. but cards were played, fortunes were made and lost. And finally, past 1 o'clock, Adam finally fought a monster we could not stop him from beating. whew... Next week, let's all get to my place earlier, so we can start the movies earlier, so we can go home earlier (there will be no pizza ordered for next week, just everyone must bring a snack) Munchkin Winner: Adam |