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!