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!