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Season 16 kicked off on May 10 with the first two banks of our new themed season, “The Olympian Gods.” At Mike’s suggestion, I had previously announced two fake banks called “Hestia” and “Hephaestus” (the gods of the hearth and the forge) each with five games all in the alcove. This was self-parody based on the unpopular “Hydra” bank from the Labors of Hercules seasons, which had all but one game in the alcove (mostly due to bad planning by me, but partly due to games being moved after I created the banks). I figured people would realize pretty quickly that it was a gag and was planning to leave it for a day before announcing the real banks, but Josh pleaded with me so hard not to do it that I felt I had to come clean sooner. In fact, this season I have instead made it so the banks are as separated as possible. With the new bank rotation scheme it’s impossible to avoid having multiple games in the alcove, but there will be two most nights and no more than three ever.

For our first night, bank A was supposed to be “Apollo”: The Walking Dead, The Beatles, KISS, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Medieval Madness; and “Hera”: The Simpsons, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Elvira’s House of Horrors, and Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, each bank had a game removed for a malfunction early on. The Walking Dead got switched for The Mandalorian and The Simpsons got switched for Lord of the Rings. In case anyone is wondering, I lean toward leaving imperfect games in play, and my standard for removing a game is whether the malfunction is likely to cause ball loss or put the game into an unplayable state. The Walking Dead was an edge case; the crossbow button wasn’t working, which eventually causes the game to randomly shoot the crossbow in an unpredictable direction. This doesn’t directly cause ball loss but it has a strong tendency to brick a shot and cause a drain that way. The Simpsons was an easier call because it was having issues with ejecting balls from the couch (at least I think that’s what the deal was) which eventually puts the game into an unplayable state. The alternate games are chosen from bank Ares, which was designated prior to the season as the “backup bank.” The removed games will hopefully be played when we get to that bank at the end of the season.

Most likely he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about the games on a moment’s notice anyway, but Derik was not in attendance. It was a warm day and he was off fishing. I noted that he would not have had to decide between fishing and league if he hadn’t taken our Fish Tales away.

We had a couple of new league members attend: Wolff (who had made his debut at the Mandalorian launch party) and a friend Wolff brought named John. Wolff hasn’t played much tournament pinball yet but he does have a Star Trek: The Next Generation at home (in fact, it’s the one Mike used to own). John hadn’t played much pinball before, but was hoping to find something fun to do. That’s the position I was in when I joined the league in November 2013, so I have to assume John will eventually be the league director.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Indiana Jones and the random draw for the B division landed on Junk Yard, which sure seems like it has happened a lot starting last season. Allen was the Smackdown Champion, earning a tulip-themed medal I made to celebrate Tulip Time, and I got to take home the B division tulip for myself.

Tonight I dearly hope we will be finishing our bank rotation of Apollo and Hera because if something else goes down we’ll have a bit of an annoying situation to deal with. Hope to see you there!

Our last league night fell on the big “Twos Day” of 2/22/22. It started the rotation between Cerberus and Augean Stables, the final two banks in the “Labors of Hercules” series.

Cerberus was originally themed to “hellhounds” and contained Ghostbusters, AC/DC, Stranger Things, and Junk Yard, with the last spot being reserved for whatever we hadn’t played yet in the season. It also served as the official “back up bank” for other banks, so earlier in the season, Stranger Things got switched with Theatre of Magic, and then Theatre of Magic ended up switched again with Elvira’s House of Horrors. We added in the new game Godzilla, so the bank is now Ghostbusters, AC/DC, Elvira’s, Junk Yard, and Godzilla.

Augean Stables is the “miscellany” bank, determined by a league vote. I simplified the vote this time and just gave everyone one vote for any game that wasn’t in bank Cerberus. Not that many people voted and it resulted in a big tie among a bunch of games with one vote each, so I used a random draw to decide between them. The bank was determined to be The Beatles, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Batman ’66, and KISS. The random draw also chose one of the one-vote games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to serve as the backup for both banks, “just in case.”

Soon after I arrived, Mike discovered that water was pouring from the ceiling onto one of the games in the upstairs corner. Unfortunately, The Avenue’s roof is prone to ice dams, and when there is a big snow and then a thaw this often happens. Derik shut off all the games in that area and pulled them out from the wall, which resulted in the games looking like they were gathering together to look at Junk Yard. Allen said they were paying tribute to Junk Yard’s designer, Barry Oursler, who had just died.

I ended up in the Cerberus bank, which is good because I wore my Cerberus T-shirt. I had barely (if at all) played Ghostbusters since pre-Covid times, so unsurprisingly, that didn’t go well for me. More surprising is that Mike, who was in my group, also had a bad time with Ghostbusters. In fact, he pointed out that the two of us both had higher scores on AC/DC than Ghostbusters!

At some point, someone came up to me (I forget who) and told me that there was a problem on Game of Thrones: “The flipper button broke off.” I asked, “Does Derik know?” The reply was, “I think so, he’s the one who did it.” We had a fairly low attendance night, so there were only two groups on each bank. I thought the other group had already played Game of Thrones and Derik insisted he was fine with taking his score as-is because he was on Ball 3 and was the last player, so I was going to let it stand. But then I discovered the other group had not played it yet, so we had to use the designated backup, TMNT. Mike, no fan of TMNT, was not happy about this at all. He (jokingly) said that Todd had been the one to vote for TMNT and as he was unable to make it to league night that night, his vote should be invalidated. I pointed out that if Todd came during Week 8 he still had a 50% chance of playing that bank so it was still valid and Mike conceded the point.

At the end of the night we had the usual Tuesday Night Smackdown on Guardians of the Galaxy, and since it was “Twos Day” I had made medals with big number 2’s on them for the winners of both divisions. Joseph chose to go second in the top group, which is what he always chooses, but it was especially appropriate. I decided to follow his lead and go second in the B division group on Batman ’66. Mike won the A division and Joseph took 2nd, which he said make him the real winner. In the B division, Allen absolutely ran away with Batman ’66, so far away that I completely gave up hope. I did, however, get 2nd, again making me the “real winner.”

In a couple of short hours it will be the final qualifying night of the season, with people switching their banks. Competition for the top seeds is still very tight. We will also be having a Tuesday Night Smackdown on the brand new game, Rush (LE). See you soon!

Ages and ages ago, back in the mists of time, we had the final league night of the regular (qualifying) season. It was our closest league night to Halloween this year. In years past, we used to have a Halloween costume contest on the closest night to Halloween, but as the calendar has caused league night to drift further from Halloween we started having minimal participation (read: Joseph and I) so the costume contest was put on hiatus. There may be an explanation besides the calendar. At the first league night two different people (Jake – who should get his flippin’ fingers back to league – and Matt) both showed up dressed as former champion Chris. Matt won the contest by virtue of the fact that he was dedicated enough to shave his head, or at least the middle of it. Many people felt that the costume contest had peaked early and it could only be downhill from there.

Anyway, since this was the closest night to Halloween, I found it fitting that the random number generator chose bank Melpomene, the comic-horror bank. We also had to randomly choose a game for Elvira’s House of Horror to replace, and the bumped game was Monster Bash. Given the misbehavior of the scoop lately, most were not disappointed, though I thought it was a shame to break up the monsters theme. (I would have rather seen Ghostbusters go, for more than one reason.) I made a joke to someone that I thought Jason should wear his Jason mask, as he did on his first night in the league years ago. Little did I know that Jason actually did have his Jason mask ready, and showed up wearing it once things got underway. Later, I got confused when Jason walked up and went to play a ball on a game I was playing because he was not in my group. I went to stop him, and people laughed. “She really has no clue, does she?” said Jason. Except it wasn’t Jason. It was Derik wearing another Jason mask. To my surprise, when Derik saw Jason wearing a mask, he declared that he was going to do it too, and got one out of his car. “You have a Jason mask just sitting in your car?” I asked, incredulous. The answer was yes, because he was given one in an Andy tournament he played in. Giving weird prizes is kind of an Andy trademark (ask Mike sometime about the penis keychain) so I had to accept this.

I was in a desperate race to finish the season ahead of Biff in order to play in A division at finals. He was only 10 points behind me, and while he kept reassuring me that he had been playing like crap recently and certainly had no hope of catching me, I was not so sure. I had two really good games (notably a boffo Ghostbusters, of all things) and three bad, including a truly terrible Munsters. I think Biff had more good games, so I waited anxiously to see if he caught up. In the end he did not. I finished the season one lonely point ahead of Biff, guaranteed to play in A and face Mike first round. Hooray? And, uh, thanks Ghostbusters?

As has become common this season due to my work schedule, Joseph made the Smackdown medals. He always makes them relate to a current event or “this date in history.” This time he went with a Halloween theme, making one of them a jack o’lantern and one a piece of candy corn. I finally used up a black and orange ribbon I had randomly been gifted with at a furry con and had been saving specifically for a Halloween tournament. The Smackdown championship was on Indiana Jones and the undercard fight on Road Show. Derik won the Smackdown and Josh (not pictured) the undercard.

Assuming everyone shows up for our double elimination finals, Mike will face me in the first round of A as the top and bottom seed, respectively. The other matches will be Danny vs. Joseph, Tim vs. Pat, and Derik vs. Josh. The B division will be very dependent on who shows up (as will the A, for that matter) but nine people are qualified so if everyone shows up there will be a play-in for the eighth seed position. Mike, the reigning champion famous for having ended Chris’s 10-season run, has declared that this is “the season of Derik.” I am going to put my money on Tim, though I consider Danny also a strong contender.

See you all very soon! Go for glory!