Topic: Does a Bear Pung in the Woods?

Last Sunday, August 1st, the Portland MahJong Society turned two years old. A bunch of us decided to celebrate, Pacific Northwest style! We grabbed some tables, a bunch of chairs, more hot dogs than should ever be consumed by one group of people, and headed into the heart of the Mt. Hood National Forest. Yes, my friends… The tranquility of the forest was shattered by the roar of tiles, that day.

I think there were about eight different cameras taking pictures that day but, here's a link to several of the shots that have surfaced, so far.


Does a Bear Pung in the Woods Photo Album

"Al fresco" mahjong… I like it! Looks like a great day out.

PS Ordered Janline-R on Friday, it's currently somewhere between here and Japan (said he impatiently).

Nice. Does this mean you'll have your PS3 online, now? "Milkmaniac" and I need a few more Janline players.

That would be a logical assumption… but in fact what it means is that I'd been waiting ten days for any indication that my new import DS mahjong game order had shipped and I was getting fidgety and overcome with the irresistible urge to buy another game!

Of course predictably the other order came good in the end so I now have two new games en route. I am investigating options for home broadband though so would hope to be up and running (and ronning!) in a month or two maybe.

SCORE!  I cannot wait, Bart!      

It's certainly going to be an exciting and interesting experience for me. I've been playing MJ for over a year now but have never played against real people either on or offline. Have picked up some bad habits and will miss being able to get away with blatant open flushes and taking ages to deliberate over a crucial defensive discard!

I've a few questions… do you play with headset mics? and webcams? what time of day do you usually play? (I'm in England)

Also do you set up a room for play with custom rules? Either way, what time limit is usually applied to player turns?

Should be online pretty soon now and (as long as I don't get sucked into COD4 or similar!) we can sort out some transatlantic MJ action!

Barticle said

Have picked up some bad habits and will miss being able to get away with blatant open flushes and taking ages to deliberate over a crucial defensive discard!

lol. Yes, you will get over that. Although, some people will amaze you at what they're willing to discard (I refer you to my recent Dai San Gen), I'll take it to the end of the wall before feeding you Chinitsu.

Barticle said

've a few questions… do you play with headset mics? and webcams? what time of day do you usually play? (I'm in England)

Personally, I use the Eye Camera and a headset, I think Milkmaniac just uses a mic but, plans on getting the cam after Move comes out… As for times, I'm on the West Coast of the States and Milkmaniac is on the East Coast however, I'm disabled, retired, and keep odd hours anyway. Shoot, I regularly get up at 4:00am to play in mahjongtime's daily tournaments. I'm sure we'll be able to schedule something.

Barticle said

Also do you set up a room for play with custom rules? Either way, what time limit is usually applied to player turns?

We usually set up a room titled, "USPML". You can set all the rules you would expect and, I usually set the time limit to 10 seconds. Although there is a "panic" button that will give you a few extra seconds.. Although, I think that button is limit to how many times you can use it during a match.

Look forward to seeing you soon… Oh, and stay away from COD4… We don't want to loose you to a shooter.

Okay, cool. I like mahjong but not enough to get up at 4am! (so I admire your devotion) If you're on PDT in Pōtorando then you're 8 hrs behind me (with Milk in the middle) which lends itself to some viable permutations at wkends. Think I'll just grab a USB headset for now.

The Janline looks a little light on rule options compared to some titles but it uses the core modern Japanese rules and that's the main thing. The default on the time limit is 15 seconds so I'll practise offline using that. I guess it's not so bad when you're playing humans who are also using more of their allocated seconds - if you've folded you can think and read the table during their turns too. At least you're not using the 3 seconds setting, that'd be pretty hardcore! Good training if you were going to play in Japan though.

I found the button for extra thinking time. Mahjong Fight Club has a similar option - you can use it once per hand. Also I played a quick game using a USB keyboard last night and that felt pretty good. You can tap backspace to jump the cursor to your drawn tile which is a handy feature.

Thanks for the answers.

That sounds awesome, Bart.  I'm looking forward to playing you both sometime!