Munzee Olympics

      Now that the Olympic games in Sochi are underway, Munzee has come up with a new game for us to get into the Olympic spirit. The Munzee Olympics are an interesting new twist to the traditional clan wars (which are also going on... see below). The basic idea is that you pledge your allegiance to a country and then enter into up to five events. As munzees are captured, they count towards your individual event goals and rankings. Should your country rank in the top three at the end of the day, your country gets points which count towards the overall country rankings. I play Munzee for Ireland and as a country we are doing about as well as the Irish figure skating team (Ireland has a figure skating team??). In other words, we aren't going to be bringing home any gold for the Motherland!

A more detailed description of the game can be found on the Munzee blog (here), but the various events are as follows:

Freestyle: Overall points for all activity during the Munzee Olympics

Greenies: # of Greenies capped

Academic: # of Quiz and Quiz virtuals capped

Social: # of Socials capped
Badge: # of Badges earned during the Munzee Olympics (includes ALL badges)
Visitor: # of Motels capped (sum of Motels and Motel Rooms)
Virtual Olympian: # of Virtuals and Mystery Virtuals capped (sum of both)
Ice: # of Diamonds capped
Grow the Map: # of Greenies deployed (may not be converted during Olympics)
Unicorn: # of Business caps
Level Up: # of Levels gained
Triathlon: # of times you cap a complete cycle of 1 green, 1 virtual, 1 mystery

Webbed: # of Virts and Mystery Virtuals deployed (sum of both)
Perfect 100: # of days with exactly 100 points
    Go For the Gold: # of premium caps (goldies)

I signed up for the events in red. I won't be competitive in any of these (stupid day job!) but the Olympics aren't about winning the medals, it's about the spirit of competition. Right? RIGHT!

   In addition to the innovative Olympic game Munzee is running this month, a more traditional Clan War is also active. The clan I've been a member of recently has not been very active, and several players were not really contributing at all.  So, I decided to leave the Mixed DohNutz clan and go to the free agent market (aka the Munzee Clan FB group). With only about two days between Clan wars to get on a clan, it becomes a crazy place! Clans are scrambling to get the required ten members to compete, and individual players are trying to get placed on a Clan that will give them the best chance of success to win the special Clan Weapon munzees. After a few FB posts, I wound up on the short list of several clans and it was an anxious evening waiting to see how the final rosters would shake out. With only a couple hours until the deadline, I got a request from a clan in Wisconsin, so I am a member of the Wisconsin Munzee clan. We have already secured the first weapon and are closing in on the Mace Munzee. So in the spirit of the Sochi games... Go Ireland! Go Wisconsin!    

12 Days of Munzee Christmas

So, our clan finished in 118th place in Clan Battle 8.  We earned one weapon and finished in the middle of the pack.  I hit my 1,000 point goal, but we had a couple of stragglers last month, so we didn't get the scoring we needed from everybody.  However, Clan Battle 9 is even worse.  A last minute cancellation left us with only 9 players, so we won't qualify for anything this month.  Very unfortunate, as Munzee has Christmas themed weapons this month, which would have been cool.

However, all is not lost! Munzee is running a very cool promotion for Christmas, which you can read about here. In a nutshell (or chestnut, since this is the holiday season, after all), icons will start appearing on the map December 13th. 20 points for the capture and 10 points to the owner of the host munzee. Every day thereafter, new icons will appear on the map.  Random places, random times, and if you manage to capture 6 of the 12, there will be a special badge in your Christmas stocking this year! I'm going to try and get all 12... even the goofy Christmas pickle that is supposed to appear on the 16th.  I am a bit disappointed that there wasn't a cool icon for the Solstice on the 21st, but I am hoping to have a geocaching related event for that special date!

Not too excited about collecting icons? That's okay, Munzee has upped the ante. During Dec 13-24, every capture and deploy makes you eligible for some cool prizes! Battery packs, GPS units, mysteries, motels, virtuals (maybe even the new mystery virtual!), and socials.  On the 24th, capping or deploying activity qualifies you for a chance to win a premium membership! As a premium member myself, that is a great prize! So, even though our Clan got screwed up this month, I'll be out there growing the map.  Let me know if you cap some of the icons or if you win any of these cool prizes!

Munzee Clan Battle #8 begins!

After two days of scrambling to get the required ten players, our clan began battle last night.  This is the eighth clan battle that Munzee has done, and the third for which I have participated. My clan, the Mixed Doh Nutz, is an offshoot of the original Mixed Nutz clan started by Vanderarban.  Vanderarban recruited me to her clan in September, which was the first time that clan weapons were available.  It's an intense but fun 28 days of group Munzee.  The goal is to score as many points as possible as a group and compete against other clans around the world (about 250 different clans now).  We had munziers from all over the country, Canada, and Europe on the Mixed Nutz clan.  The weapons, which are merely special munzees that you win by hitting certain point totals, were a great new feature as they are only available via clan warfare, have special functions, and give you a unique icon when capped. To get these, every member of the clan has to hit 500 points (Mace munzee), 1000 points (Longsword munzee), or 2500 points (The Chuck).  The Chuck is a cache of 5 Maces and 5 Longswords.  We qualified for the Chuck on the last day as two people scrambled to get the final points.  It was quite exciting rooting for a stranger in Canada to find enough munzees to finally push us over the edge.

For the last two months, I have been with the Dohs.  It's a more relaxed group and that works for me because scoring 2500 points in a month is tough in San Diego.  I did it in September, but I had to drive to LA so I could go capping in a Mystery Garden.  Even with the string of virtuals I hit along Las Vegas boulevard (see post here), I could only manage about a thousand points last month.  As a clan, we only qualified for the first weapon, so it's not easy getting the Chuck. This month, I have my own personal strategy for capping at least a thousand points:

1. Cap a couple new Hotel munzees.  Hotels are another new type of munzee where the first few people to cap get a 'room' in the hotel and can score points as future people cap the hotel.  These bonus residual points are a great way to boost score without having to rely solely on finding munzees.

2. Take advantage of November 9th.  Munzee occasionally has special days where the point values of each munzee you deploy or cap is higher than normal.  Sometimes double, sometimes triple.  On the 9th, all regular munzees (special types are excluded) are worth 4X!  Given that there are a LOT more regular munzees in San Diego than the special types, this will be a great way for me to crank up the points locally.

3. Deploy, deploy, deploy.  I have deployed a significant number of the munzees in San Diego, but I will be looking for more opportunities to grow the map.  When I started back in January, there were only a couple of active players in the area.  Now there are at least ten active players, as well people that travel to San Diego, so I'm starting to see more capping on my munzees.  I have a bunch of regular munzees to put out there and a number of specials, including some weapons, a Hotel munzee, and a Quiz munzee.

We'll see how it all goes, but I'm hoping our clan can at least pick up the Mace again.  We can't compete with the top clans (scoring hundreds of thousands of points), but it's a lot of fun to meet new people and try to attain these small goals. In the Spring, there were no clans, no weapons, no Hotels, no Quizzes... the game has really come a long way in the last few months.  It's been a lot of fun to watch that, too.