NNW Reunited (and it feels so good!) 03/07/21

 We finally, after 16 and a bit very long months, were able to reunite in person again!

It wasn't the physical event full of competitions that some might have been hoping for, but the hosts were mainly missing the social contact! 

Jen now collects certain leggings, so after holding a vote on her socials the day before, those who voted, chose Tetris, so Tetris it was! (Thanks Tikiboo :) )

Since people used to come from all over to our events, we decided to hold an outdoor meet in Llandudno, as that's generally a more accessible place than Bangor. 

We met from 2-4ish and it went like a dream! 

The night before it'd had been a very risky decision as the forecast had suddenly decided we were due downpours and thunderstorms! 

We promised to check the forecast one last time at 10am on the day, and by then it said cloudy until 4pm then maybe rain... so we took the gamble, it was ON! 

We met by the cenotaph, and waited until everyone we were expecting had arrived and found us, then we headed up to Happy Valley. 

The views up there are simply fabulous!

Handily the big rock in the middle was "free" so we pitched up there. Half of us sat on the rock, and the others sat on the grass. We had a great catch up with old friends! And a couple had brought their lovely dog "Jasper", so of course he was the star of the "show"! He definitely wasn't short of attention! 

He was very excitable, loved all the attention, barked at other dogs, and was nearly responsible for knocking a poor lady over! She blamed tripping over a hole in the ground, but that was a dramatic few moments, complete with audible gasps! 

A member turned up a bit later so we waited for him, had a quick catch up, and got a group photo in!

Photo taken by Amy.

Just after we left Happy Valley it started to rain, and as we head to our favourite place (The Looking Glass Ice Cream Parlour) the heavens opened! 

Some had to leave earlier so said their goodbyes.

Thankfully there was an undercover bit just across the road, so once everyone had grabbed their ice cream combos of choice, we sheltered under there and continued chatting. 

By then it was time to go, so everyone parted ways as they had parked at opposite ends of the town!

We parted ways somewhat gradually....

It was great to catch up with everyone having not seen anyone in so long! 

We hope to do it again next month, so keep an eye on our socials for updates! 

Virtual Event #5 22/08/20

We timed our event to coincide with the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Bug Off again. It was pure coincidence, but we made the most of it, and started the first hour with a few of us on Jen's island racing to catch the bugs!

Next was a Tetris competition between 2-3.30pm, of which 7 people took part.  Points were awarded similar to the online Grand Prix Events, with a slight change:

• 1st: 100 pts
• 2nd: 50 pts
• 3rd: 30 pts
• 4th-10th: 20 pts
• 11th-30th: 15 pts
• 31st+: 10 pts
  (the online Grand Prix has fewer points below 50th place, but we felt it was fairer to keep this the same if people got out early due to CPU 'interference')

The finishing positions were varied to start, but as the rounds progressed everyone generally improved - particularly Tim!

The points reflecting this gave us the final scores after 10 rounds:

Tim ran away with the victory, as he had the most consistent wins! 

We have been running our online events using games suggested by our regular attendees.  Because of this, at 4pm we had a Mario Maker 2 multiplayer tournament.  Sadly only 3 people signed up for this, and the person who suggested it also didn't sign up! 

The 3 had fun though, and it was a best of 5, across the courses below: (videos are of single player mode)

4FS-G2K-DLF

77Y-LQK-N8G

HTS-82N-7GG

N22-KHR-2CG

S91-JP8-8GG

Chris won the first three courses, but everyone was happy to finish the final two, giving a result of 4-1-0 top Chris.  Although this was over fairly quickly, Chris, Dan and Dylan decided to stay on to play some random courses online.  As with all online Mario Maker courses, some are great, some are … not so great!

We actually finished the event slightly earlier than the designated time, as everyone wanted to go and have food, but we actually came back later in the evening to join in with the Chicken v Egg Splatfest on Splatoon 2!  It's nice to be able to create the team names and experiment to see what's the funniest!

Virtual Event #4 25/07/20

We have settled into a schedule specifically for online meets now... still no date as to when we can get back to physical events, though rumours are saying not until 2021 :(
Everything is up in the air though, and we're working out what our options are.


 At 1pm, we started by taking part in the Animal Crossing New Horizons Bug Off. 3 or 4 of us played the game on one island, and managed a few rounds trying to catch all the bugs!


 At 2pm we did a Mario Kart 7 tournament for a change. It was set to "all items" and "150cc". You can't really close the tournament without deleting it, so we said we'd take the scores at 4pm, and the highest at that point could win the eShop credit. Well done to Glyn who won it for this session :)




 At 4pm, we had a tournament for 51 Worldwide Games.
A lot of the regulars were missing due to work and other commitments, so we only had 4 entries for this.

 The tournament went as follows:
 Round 1 - Consisted of 10 games, all 1v1: Mancala, Dots and Boxes, Four-in-a-Row ×2 (two rounds of this game), Draughts, Gomoku, Renegade, Texas Hold-em Poker (5 rounds), 6-Ball Puzzle, Toy Curling.

To ensure fairness as much as possible, the first move was set to 'Random' where relevant. Once this round was completed, the scores were: Chris 5 - 5 John Sam 7 - 3 Callum In Chris and John's game of Draughts, there was a stalemate where all pieces had progressed equally and had nowhere to go, and none were taken. Although it was technically a draw, the game decided that John won (possibly as it was Chris' turn and he couldn't move?).

Final Round - all four players were together, for a game of Last Card. Rules of this round were that the game was to be played to all positions, so that first place gets 3 points, second place gets 2 points, third gets 1 point, last place gets 0 points. As soon as a player gets to two wins the game ends. In the first game, John was the first person to forget to declare last card, and so had the obligatory penalty. Chris ended up winning the game (3 points), with Sam coming second (2), Callum third (1), and John last (0). The second game followed, and, as quoted in the chat, John 'got gud' and remembered to declare. Sadly, it wasn't enough and the cards were against him, with Chris winning the game (3 points), Sam second (2), John third (1) and Callum last (0). The total points for all games gave us: Chris 11 Sam 11 John 6 Callum 4 After all the games, we ended up with a tie-breaker for first place. Another game followed, just for Chris and Sam. The tie-breaker game was Blackjack, played for 10 rounds to reduce the risk of there being another tie. The CPU scores were ignored, and so whoever had the highest value (or least debt) would be the winner. 10 rounds later and Chris was declared the winner with 103 chips, compared to Sam's –179 chips.


Our next event will likely be on Saturday 22nd August so look out for news soon :)

Virtual Event #3 30/05/20

With still no definite date of when we can resume physical meets (which can't come soon enough!) we pushed on with our main event date keeping. This time we changed up the games as suggested by some of the regular members, so the featured games this time were: Splatoon 2 and Mario Maker 2!

We asked our friend Leon from BourneNintendo/ Nintendo Chichester if he'd be willing to help out/stream some of our event, and bingo, he had a day off!
www.twitch.tv/NintyBuzz go check him out!

(Highlight video will be linked in the near future!)


1pm-2pm, like last event, we did a warm up with a free for all Tetris99 session! Leon was commentating but also taking part, and when down to the last few, I noticed he kept describing my own grid! (I won maybe one game, but the rest I made that fatal mistake and bombed out near the end!)

2-4pm was allotted for Splatoon 2. We took inspiration from Nintendo South Wales' Splatfests, except the teams were just Alpha and Bravo rather than "this or that". Teams were assigned randomly every game.
All weapons and gear were allowed, and modes were one of each in turn, but random maps.

Here are some clips taken from the session.



https://twitter.com/XenoNick/status/1266748101408116737?s=09

https://twitter.com/XenoNick/status/1266747292234596352?s=09

https://twitter.com/Tydd_Dan/status/1266764020352077826

From NNW Dylan:

"Take a Look at Sam in the top Right Corner!"

"Tekirai surviving longer than Expected!"

The final tie breaker was a 3 way tie between Nick, Geo and Mole. 

It was a Turf War 1 v 1.

1) Mole v Nick = Mole

2) Geo v Mole = Geo

3) Nick v Geo = Geo

"Final Handshake Between Nick And Geo"

During the Splatoon 2 session, a few also got together to play a bit of Salmon Run.

https://twitter.com/iTim64/status/1267081153678176256?s=20

At around 4pm the Mario Maker 2 challenge started.

The two stages to be played were:

Option 1:

The Last House on Elm Street

VB3-DF3-2BG

Option 2:

The Summer Bug Off

831-6YM-CCG

Leon did a demo on them on his stream then left us to it!

You had to send your fastest time screenshot to Dylan by 5pm. 

The best time from each stage had to do a tie breaker on the final stage:

Mario Crossing: Wild World: NW4-9VN-CVG

Luke took the victory over Rhys on that one, and since we couldn't actually see them do the challenges, here's what they had to say:



Rhys: "Enjoyed playing and unravelling the selected levels."

Luke: "It was kinda stressful trying to figure out how to shorten my time on the last level, but I eventually figured out a strategy. Rhys certainly tightened the record, but now I think I made it unbeatable, ha ha. "

These scores were submitted around the 6pm mark


Rhys:

Luke: 

Special thanks to Leon for being able to stream and help us out!

Side note: If you don't know much about Splatoon but you like the look of it, or have it but think you're no good, why not sign up for NPUK's Sushi Bracket of the Squid League. Check out NNW's or NPUK's Discord servers/social media for more details :)


and of course if you just fancy watching, the Kraken Brackets for the more competitive are available to watch over on the NPUK Discord NOW! (week 2 out of 5 starts this coming week!)

https://discord.gg/p77gGNC

Virtual Event #2 25/04/20

We shortened the hours slightly this time, so that there was a bit more of a fair playing field for the tournaments, though we're open to ideas of how to do things for future meets, as we're pretty sure the next few months may still be on the virtual level! 

We kept to fairly well known and mainstream games this time. 
Firstly we had some freeplay Tetris99 while the hosts were having lunch :P (Managed to hop towards the end though!) 

at 2pm, yes we had Mario Kart again, but this time it was a 20 round Battle tournament. For those who didn't get to play solidly from 2pm, they found that there was no one to play with towards the end of the timeframe, so this is something to bear in mind for future tournaments. 
The Mole still won the eShop for the day too, so well done him! 
The battles themselves were fairly straightforward, meanwhile on the Discord channel there was a discussion about what was the best version of Mario Kart. N64 for battles, obviously! ;) 


At 4pm, Runbow had 7 sign ups plus Dylan as the host, which was very neat! 
The first round was "Run": 10 rounds

The second round was "Arena" - unfortunately in the 8th round out of 10, everyone disconnected, so the as far as the host could see, the game was still running but no one was running! By the end of round 10, there was a draw between Cat and Drn. This led to a tie breaker, but because everyone disconnected, it turned into an endless tie breaker! They had to restart arena and do all the games again. Sadly this meant that Cat and Drn didn't do as well the second time round!

 The third round was "King of the Hill"

and the final scores were:
Mole 7, Drn 4 Tim 3 Dan 2, John 2, Everyone else 1.
But had it been before disconnections it would have been:
Mole 7, Drn 7, Tim 4, Cat 3, Dan 2, John 2, Luke 2, Dylan 1

because Mole agreed to take into account the disconnected round, this resulted in a tie between Mole and Drn, and they played their tie breaker in "Run" .





The Mole won Runbow too! :o

All day, since most are still hooked on Animal Crossing, we held another little photo contest. This time the theme was "costume" (but the background is also important!)
The person who won this time was another newer member: Rosalind. She had a lovely Kiki's Delivery Service inspired Photo, perfect!

We will be back at the end of May with more virtual activities!
Keep up with us via our Discord server, and in between our own events, why not get involved with the NPUK online sessions?https://discord.gg/p77gGNC

Virtual Event #1 28/03/20

Sadly, we had to cancel all our upcoming events because of the country being in Lockdown due to Covid-19.
We'd already decided as NPUK to advise people to cancel their events the week before the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but little did we know that just over a week later, the whole country would be obliged to go in an actual lockdown!

This particular event was originally supposed to be 1 of 16 "NPUK's Island Paradise" challenges, which has now been postponed to later in the year. (TBC)
In the meantime, NPUK as a whole has ramped up its online presence, hosting various games for everyone to join in! (Please check out the Discord server for more info!)

NNW will never cancel an event. We stand by that, but on this occasion we weren't allowed to hold a physical event, so rather than lose it completely, we moved it all online instead!

We had a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Tournament from 12-5pm, a Smash Ultimate Tournament from 1pm, and an all day Animal Crossing photo challenge.

The Mario Kart tournament was won by The Mole, who got all his matches in at 12pm! The majority of us went on at 2pm. 32 races were a lot to get through, but everyone seemed to have fun! (Even Jen who had awful drift haha)
150cc, Frantic items, CPU normal, random tracks!

The Smash Tournament was hosted by regular Shae. He'd asked for sign ups before the day, and set the rules out in the Discord ahead of time too. There were 10 sign ups in the end, and he did a double elimination tournament which lasted a couple of hours. 

One of the players apparently went on a shopping trip in the middle of it and ended up getting disqualified for not coming back in time...

Games between AquaZz and Lanziio were very close, and then AquaZz v TastyDerp too.
Glyn managed to swing back, but it was TastyDerp that took the final victory!


The Animal Crossing Challenge was to take a photo representing commuity. Given the weird situation that we're in at the moment, some took it as more contemplative, others took it as a group of villagers coming together, and one simply just put the NNW banner on the ground! (Thanks, it was appreciated! :P)
We asked the other NPUK admins for a quick vote, and revealed the winners as almost a tie between SammyRed and TheDrn's Fiancee, Zara!
With a couple of extra last minute votes, Zara just swiped the victory!

Wishing Upon a Star (for better times where we can meet in person again :) )

Each of the winners of the day bagged themselves £10 eShop credit. Well done guys!


Alas, we couldn't do our traditional group photo, or the raffle at the end, but hopefully it won't be forever before we can meet properly again!

Please keep in touch with our latest most up to date news via the Discord Server (discord.gg/rX8JxgD)

NNW: The Perfect Couple 29/02/20

We were forecast a storm for the weekend, but it was actually ok for most of the day!

We had a Bowser and and a special enamel smash badge in the raffle this time.

We saw some Grid on the big screen first, and then when people started arriving, some wanted to try out the "loanable" amiibo to see which one they could trust for the tournament.
Most people who signed up for our "Perfect Couple" tournament (where you and your amiibo battled it out against someone else and their amiibo) brought their own amiibo. We had a couple of Isabelles, and a few Samuses. but there was a good range of amiibo in general.

First though, we had round 1 of the new league to do. This year the league is based around Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo Olympics, Out of two rounds, one was a game themed to the Olympic game we had chosen. This time it was "Must Dash Amigos"


This is a tremendously fun, highly charged Mexican sprint, full of Guacamole, Bombs and slippery goo....!
Groups of 3 or 4 competed against each other to get their first set of scores for this year's league.

The Smash tournament was next up.
Not everyone realised that you could share stock with your amiibo, but once everyone got going, it proved quite useful!

There were some tense matches, and unexpected people won because of strong amiibo!

Especially that Bowser...
It was only after the tournament had finished, that a team of 7 managed to take down "Web"

Lucky for Glyn, he had chosen "Web" Bowser as his loaned amiibo for the tournament. He beat John in a fairly quick battle and still had 3 stock left over! oof!

Round 2 of the league was the actual Olympic Game: The 100m dash. It was very brief, but people put a lot of physical effort into it!

There was a slight gap, so some played a bit of Just Dance on the big screen.

The other screen had Smash on for most of the day.

The tie breaker featured just Dale and Kian. They battled it out on 10 rounds of Runbow, but Dale took the final victory and the £10 eShop credit that came with it!

We finished with the raffle and prizes, but almost forgot about the group photo! We just about managed it before most escaped though! (and some carried on playing Just Dance for a bit too.)
- sorry to those who actually escaped before we realised :P