Lansing Pinball League

Season 11, league night 1 of 8

Games played: AC/DC, Game of Thrones, Iron Man, Metallica, South Park

Results for the night and the season so far

Mike sent me a message saying “Give Uncle Gary a hug for me and tell him I don’t like Game of Thrones.” So here I am giving him a hug…

…and here I am telling him that Mike doesn’t like Game of Thrones.

June 12 was our first league night of Season 11, and it brought with it an exciting development.  The Avenue is now Stern Army location #104!  Derik and Pinball Pete’s helped me get us enrolled, so now our league and tournaments are eligible for prizes (e.g. translites) from Stern and we can host official launch parties for new games.  Members of the league will also receive Stern Army Recruit dogtags.  Those who attended our season opener already have theirs, and I will be passing out more at our league night tonight.  We also got the Stern Army banner featuring “Uncle Gary” (as I call him… but not to his face so far).  Even though we are past the official window for Iron Maiden launch parties, Zach Sharpe of Stern graciously sent me an extra trophy plaque he had on hand so that we can have our first Stern Army launch party.  That will be coming up on July 12; more on that later.

There was another unexpected development at The Avenue: Fish Tales and Jack-Bot were out (boo!  I loved gambling with my points!) and Elvis and World Cup Soccer were in.  Elvis is totally new to The Avenue, but World Cup Soccer had a previous term of residence before being removed for quite a while.  Meanwhile, Joseph had chosen the league games for the night based on a new rotation scheme of skipping five between each entry in alphabetical order.  A similar idea was suggested by former league member Todd as a way of ensuring we didn’t end up with games being played in the same blocks this season.  When we arrived and found the alphabetical order now disrupted, we had to stick with the already announced games, but it set our new plan already in partial disarray.  As someone or other said, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ league runners gang aft a-gley.”  I think it was Gary Stern.

Chris playing Star Trek in the Smackdown.

We had 12 in attendance at our first night, not too bad of a turnout but a little low due to the conspicuous absence of several regulars including Lupe, Caleb, and Mike S.  (Yes, Mike S.  I can’t remember the last time he missed Lansing league.)  We did have a brand new member, Bryce.  Last season Joseph had attempted to work out a scheme for allocating groups that would avoid putting any of the top players together while also balancing the group in other ways, but in the end it did not appear to speed up league play in the way it was intended to, and it also meant people missed out on the fun of meeting new people in random groups.  So I brought back the original group sorting method, famously employed by Matt in the early seasons of the league: I brought back “the hat.”  Well, not literally the same hat as I assume Matt took that one with him to Kalamazoo.  I actually used my hat with deer ears and antlers that I usually wear to the Silver Balls tournament.  It’s a very “me” version of a venerable league tradition and drawing our groups from a hat seemed to be a quicker and more flexible way of allocating groups last time so I think we will be sticking with it for now.

Tim playing Demolition Man in the Undercard match.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament has also returned for Season 11, with a couple of changes.  Since we probably won’t have as many people eligible to play as rookies this season, we are now just going to have an A and B division for qualifiers 1-4 and 5-8, called the “Smackdown Championship” and the “Undercard” respectively.  The other change is that to help cover a possible shortfall from dues in funding the league’s expenses,  we are now allowing everyone one free entry in the Smackdown tournament, with additional entries being $1 each.

Our next meeting is in just a few hours (yes, even in the summer I’m late with the recaps), and it’s still a great time to join since your lowest night of the season is dropped, so missing the first night won’t hurt you.  We are going to be taking July off of league due to the league runners needing to get ready for Pinburgh, but we will be filling in the gap by having two July tournaments: Rocket Robin, the annual round robin charity tournament for the Capital Area Humane Society, on July 10; and the Iron Maiden launch party on July 17.  The latter is also a celebration of our induction into the Stern Army, so it is going to have a Stern “Battle of the Bands” format.  Competitors will qualify on AC/DC, Elvis, Iron Maiden, and Metallica, with the top 8 going to playoffs.

Smackdown finalists Derik, Chris (the Champion), Danny, and Terry, with our new Stern Army banner.

The Undercard finalists, Tim, Kristen (the winner), Joseph, and Tim.

See you all very soon!

Mike plays the Attack from Mars remake for the Smackdown championship.

Our league night for 4/24 was the last night of the regular season.  The total points for each player at the end of the night would be used to determine divisions and seeding for the playoffs.  Although the pressure was on with it being the last chance to climb up a position or two for finals, most people were less concerned with that and more interested in checking out the new games.  The latest  addition is a Game of Thrones LE.  I was quick to razz Derik about how Pete’s took out a relatively uncommon game (Revenge from Mars, my planned go-to for finals!) and put in “a weed that grows everywhere.”  Nevertheless, Game of Thrones was new to many of the league players since they aren’t all crazy people who drive an hour or two in every direction to play in other leagues.  This makes it especially funny that it ended up being randomly drawn for the Smackdown Rookie Challenge game.  Sorry for throwing you to the wolves, folks.

Oscar playing Game of Thrones in the Rookie Challenge.

The main Smackdown was on our other new addition, the Attack from Mars remake.  Being the crank that I am, I can’t stop complaining about how I want my “real” AfM back.  I think everyone else loves it.  I believe it was Immanuel Kant who said, “there’s no accounting for taste.”

Mike won the Smackdown tournament and Derik won the Rookie Challenge, leading to jokes about how it was the Night of the Gingers.  They insisted I take a picture of them with their medals to use in their redhead propaganda campaigns.

Ginger Twin powers, activate!

The founder of the league, Matt, gave us the news that he has already landed a job on the strength of his recently-completed degree from MSU.  As a result, he has already moved to the Kalamazoo area so this is officially his farewell season.  A few of us stayed until the bar closed playing games with him and taking turns buying him celebratory beers.  Sadly, I got news from him yesterday that he will not be making it to finals and “probably” won’t be at the Super-Ball tournament (but we’ll see if we can work on him a bit before then).  I know that the league won’t feel the same without him (and the other founding member, his former roommate Aaron, who we already lost this season due to his work schedule).

Speaking of founding league members, I ran into Russell yesterday.  He was playing his new favorite game AC/DC, which has evidently replaced Lord of the Rings in his heart.  He said that his absence this season was due to having a semester from hell but that he expects to be able to join again next season.

I have to wrap up this report in order to go fetch the trophies for tonight’s finals.  I hope I’ll see you all there.  Remember, even if you don’t meet the requirements to qualify for playing in finals, you can still play in the side tournament.  Good luck everyone!