We started Season 19 on August 22, with some revisions to our rules and structure. One is that we will be (mostly) meeting every other week this season instead of the second and fourth Tuesdays. That pattern was created to avoid meeting the same week as Grand Rapids Pinball League, but as there is little or no overlap between the leagues anymore, the reasons had become obsolete and many league members voiced a preference for every other week. We will also be counting the best six of eight nights rather than the best seven of eight. Otherwise, the league continues to have a similar format to before, with players switching between two banks of five games in order to retain our “best game” format but avoid having to get the entire league playing the same five games in a night.
The big news of league night was that after having spent until 4 am the previous night shuffling things around on a spreadsheet to get the banks arranged for the new theme, “The Constellations,” I walked in and was told that there was no longer a Lord of the Rings, which had chosen as the Smackdown game. Further investigation revealed that Iron Maiden had also been removed. This was apparently done to allow for the placement of a photo booth. I told everyone we needed a moment of silence for LotR: it was one of the original four games the league started with in 2013. Two of those (our original Medieval Madness and Johnny Mnemonic) are already gone, and so the only remaining one is Indiana Jones. I hastily changed the Smackdown to Willy Wonka, and Joseph almost immediately got a ball stuck on it and Derik was eating dinner so we didn’t want to make him unstick it right away, so we then hastily changed again to Guns N Roses. I also then realized I had forgotten to make Smackdown medals. I admit I got pretty stressed, feeling like the league was starting off as a bit of a mess, especially given that we had a new player. Someone remarked that we always have stuff go wrong and I said, “Yes, but he doesn’t know this is supposed to be a shitshow yet.”
Our attendance was a little low for opening night, but we did have a new joiner in the form of John L. John has played a lot of tournaments elsewhere in the state and has been at one or two Avenue tournaments in the past. He was in my group and was having a very unlucky and frustrating night, except when we went to Jurassic Park and he gave the rest of us a clinic on it. He definitely understood that game at a higher level than I do (but then again, that’s not saying much).
Chaos agents Linda and Ethan ended up in a group together along with Devon and, as Joseph put it, they were “rather merry.” At one point I was playing near their group when I observed Linda pretending she was going to bump poor Devon, who was obliviously concentrating on his actual pinball game. She and Ethan were asking me if that was against the rules and I said “yes, it’s called interference, and I could give you a yellow card,” but they pointed out that she had not actually touched Devon and he hadn’t noticed, so I had to admit that they had not actually interfered with him. Then for some reason, perhaps mocking how I had asked people to put comma separators into their scores to help Joseph make fewer data entry mistakes, Ethan started asking about putting commas in his scores. “What if I put a comma here?” he said, and put one on the end of the score. I pointed out that this would not actually change his score since it would still have the same number of digits in it. Anyway, that’s the kind of tomfoolery that was going on in that group.
We did have a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Guns N Roses and an undercard on Indiana Jones. The champion was Josh, and the undercard champ was Dan N.
We’ll be starting our second night very soon but it is certainly not too late to join for new players because we drop the two lowest nights. I hope to see you soon!
