June 27 was the beginning of the end of the qualifying season, since we started the final rotation of banks 7 and 8. Bank 8 is always a catch-all of whatever games are left to play, including ones added to the venue during the season. This time there was only one remainder slot, for which the league voted for a repeat game. The winner, by far, of the Facebook poll was Rush, prompting my mom to comment, “I don’t know what Rush is, but it seems popular.” Bank 8 also included our nearly brand new game, Foo Fighters, testing whether people had gotten a feel for the rules yet.
One advantage of the long league season is that we are able to play each game at least once over the course of qualifying… usually. This time we had very bad luck with AC/DC. It had already been taken out of a previous bank for a malfunction, and swapped into Bank 7 instead. Unfortunately it went down again and therefore won’t be played at all this season, except in finals. On the up side, it happened during the first night of a rotation, which is much easier to deal with, and after only one group had finished playing it. On the down side, my group was the one who had already played, and both Ted and I had a really good game that we had to scratch. Such is pinball.
Danny C. was wearing a totally awesome shirt with famed pinball medic Dr. Dude on it. I was admiring it because I’m kind of a fan of that game, and Derik made sure to point out that it was an original Dr. Dude shirt from when the game was new.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Godzilla. Joseph always writes a quip on the rules sheet and this time it was “I wonder if Dan C. will play?” Indeed he did. As league was getting close to wrapping up, which would mean calling time on Godzilla qualifying, Danny came over to ask me if people could also qualify on downstairs Godzilla as well as the originally assigned upstairs Godzilla (“mezza-Godzilla”). I told him that I would allow that if he would give me his shirt. He started to explain that it was a gift so he couldn’t give it away but I made sure to point out that of course I was kidding. I consulted with assistant TD Joseph for a second opinion and we decided together that yes, since they were virtually the same game, we could allow qualifying on downstairs Godzilla. I was only halfway through shouting this announcement when I saw Danny make tracks downstairs.
Unsurprisingly, Danny ended up with by far the highest qualifying score on Godzilla with over a billion points, and he also went on to win the Smackdown contest. I went to draw a B division game from the games nearby and Joseph immediately said it would be Turtles. It has been noted in the past that Turtles has come up a disproportionate number of times when I’ve had to draw a game from that cluster. This time, however, the B game was The Addams Family. I asked Joseph for his choice of position and he said “I’ll go second on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and kept repeating this as I tried to ascertain that he really wanted to go second on The Addams Family. I finally just wrote him down as second. He went on to win The Addams Family, not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Tonight will wrap up the qualifying season and determine who will make it to A division finals, who will play B, and what the seeds for finals will be. Joseph and I are back from our vacation in California, rested and ready (but not tanned thanks to SPF 70) and we hope to see you all soon!