The league started Season 15 on 10/12 with a historic event. The thing I had worried about and prepared for finally happened: more than 20 people attended, meaning we could not fit all the groups on five games. This was thanks to the return of some long-absent members and the arrival of several new members. Members returning after at least a season (and in some cases several seasons) away included Tim, Jake, and Sam, those last two making a surprise appearance together. Jim and Nick, who hadn’t been active in the league since the pandemic interruption, also returned. Meanwhile we also counted several new members: Susan from Jackson (here to take up the Jackson-area champion’s mantle after we mostly lost Chris); Brian-with-an-I, who recently moved to the Capital City from Grand Rapids, not to be confused with longtime member Bryan-with-a-Y; Joe W., whom I know from the Chesterfield Pinball League; and Nate, Jake’s brother-in-law, who also came with him and Sam. I’m not sure if Nate and Sam are planning to be returning members but it seems as though Jake is. Not present was new member Michele, who played her games during a one-time-only, IFPA-calendar-shenanigans-related (don’t ask) “League Night #1 makeup night” on the following Tuesday. Even without Michele this was an unprecedented number in the time I have been running the league: 23.
I rolled out the contingency plan we had in place for this, which is to play six games and have the best five count for each player, allowing players to either play all six and take the best five, or leave after five games in their group have been completed so they can get home at a reasonable hour. (Nick and Lexi took this option and I might have if I hadn’t needed to be the one running things. Having to get up early for work on Wednesdays this semester is no fun.) I hadn’t prepared a “bonus game” in advance but threw The Walking Dead in as the sixth, as it’s relatively new to the venue and we haven’t played it as much, plus it’s Halloween month. From now on there will be a designated bonus game for each bank in case this happens again. I have tried to choose ones that loosely match the bank themes – not that bank themes make much sense to anyone outside the fantasy land of my own head.
Speaking of the banks, we are more or less replaying last season’s “Labors of Hercules” banks, with some changes made as needed for new or departed games at the venue. Night #1 is “Nemean Lion,” commemorating Hercules’s victory over the Nemean Lion. (He subsequently wore the lion’s skin around and is often depicted that way in art.) It’s one of the easiest themes to put together: the games all have “cats” in them (or tigers, or Sabertooth, or…). It happens that Tales of the Arabian Nights, despite the tiger in it, got used for a different bank but in a fortuitous occurrence, the random drawing for Tuesday Night Smackdown chose it for the night. The games that are supposed to be in the bank are The Simpsons Pinball Party, Deadpool, Theatre of Magic, Batman ’66, and KISS, but Theatre of Magic was resetting during practice games so we switched it for a game from our designated backup bank, “Cerberus,” hence we played Stranger Things in its place.
League ran predictably very long, so the last games in the Smackdown qualifying were going on late in the night. This resulted in an old-time Lansing League situation. A ball got stuck during Tim’s qualifying game on Tales of the Arabian Nights and Derik had already left, so there was no way to get the ball unstuck. I had to employ the special Lansing rules for this, meaning Tim was forced to shake his stuck ball out and get a compensation ball for the tilt, not great for a game where bonus is so important. Fortunately, his score was so good that he got top seed even without bothering to play his comp ball. Also fortunately, the ball was retrievable so we could have the Smackdown finals without picking a new game. Tim became the Smackdown champion and Bryan won the B division game on The Beatles. I still owe Bryan a medal, as I was out of the plastic medal blanks. (It turns out Michaels doesn’t sell them anymore so we will be rolling out a new model tonight.)
Hitting a historic attendance high was an auspicious beginning to a new league season, and I wonder if that is going to become the new normal or if it was a fluke. I guess we will see soon, as League Night #2 will be starting in about four hours. See you all very soon!