Last league night was meeting #7 which means that we started our final bank rotation between “Pythagoras” and “Thales.” The race is really close around the A/B cut line, so tensions are running high for the players clustered there. We needed to vote to determine which game to take up the final slot in Bank 8, Foo Fighters or Star Wars (both games having been played by only half the league due to backups getting switched in mid-rotation). As usual there wasn’t a high voter turnout, but Foo Fighters won by a mini-landslide. (Star Wars will be the backup game if needed during Week 8.)
Jason plays the new Star Wars: Fall of the Empire.
Once again I came rushing in at the last minute due to having an Academic Senate meeting. We were in the second round of a contentious discussion that had started at the previous Senate meeting and the discussion still didn’t finish. It’s going to be going into round three tomorrow, so everyone should expect Joseph to be checking people in again. The good news for my rivals at the bottom of A division is that I will once again probably not get any warmup time.
Devon plays the Smackdown game, Rush.
At this point, the standings in the banks aren’t very meaningful, since only half of the league has played each won. But so far on Bank 7 (Pythagoras) Mike is in first, which has done a lot toward moving him up in the rankings, having been held back by a couple of missed nights this season. Jason is in the lead so far on Bank 8 (Thales). Down in the cut line cluster, Joseph, Heather, and Devon are in seventh through ninth places, and only 5 points separate Joseph and Devon, so our positions are all very tenuous. Even Mike is only four more points ahead of Joseph.
Gary, Tim and Danny share a moment.
Too many power players being drawn into the same group along with some very high scores (like billion-plus games on Deadpool for Danny and on Jaws for Brian) made for an especially long league night and a late starting Smackdown game. Unfortunately for my school-night bedtime, the Smackdown game was also a long one on Rush. Jason triumphed over Danny, Joseph, and Devon to win. Meanwhile, I won in the B division on Munsters by pulling out a third ball rally that got me from around a million to around 13 million points on my final ball.
Smackdown champion Jason (trying to levitate) and B winner Heather (me)..
That’s it for the recap from last week, but we did also have two other events recently: the women’s and open launch parties for our new Star Wars: Fall of the Empire LE. Tim won both tournaments, making them the first ever Lansing double launch party winner!
For several years starting in 2015, the LPL had an annual Halloween costume contest. While nothing ever topped the first year in which three people came as Chris Tabaka (only one of whom was, in fact, Chris Tabaka), it had a pretty good turnout for a few years before petering out. After only a couple of people participated one year, I decided there was no longer enough interest and put it on hiatus.
Front row from left: Mackenzie as Britney, Lexi as Hornet (Silksong), Stephanie as Cowboy Furby, me as a jackalope, Tim as the pinball witch, and Peter as King Kong (the pinball machine). In the back: Traci as Martha Overhead from Beetlejuice, Danny as Michael Myers, Joseph as a red panda, Christy as a Hershey Kiss, Jason as a luchador, and Linda as “Big Penny” the Pennsylvania Avenue RR bridge. 1st place: Peter, 2nd place: Linda, 3rd place: Mackenzie. Photo by Mark Cutler.
This year, a combination of the passage of time and the closeness of league night to the holiday made me think it might be successful if I gave it another try, so I bought a few small trophies for it and hoped. Unfortunately, that day I was up at work for an unusually lively Academic Senate meeting that ran past 5 pm, and then had to rush home and change into my jackalope costume, causing me to be the last person to arrive on scene, while Joseph got things organized. He had texted me with “I think you’re going to be pleased with the turnout for the costume contest,” but I didn’t see the message because I didn’t look at my phone in the rush to get dressed and over to the Avenue. Instead I was delightfully surprised by the crowd of costumes I saw upon arrival. This was the most participation since the first year, and probably at least as much. I hope we’re able to keep things rolling with it next year, too!
Mike and Traci vote in the costume contest.
The first person who came up to me was someone in a gorilla mask and I had to ask, “Who is that?” It was Peter and I quickly realized he was dressed not as King Kong but as the King Kong pinball machine, complete with a playfield-art T-shirt and a “Go Ape Again” light hanging around his waist. (Later, Mike said to me, “Don’t ask him where his center post is.”) I knew pretty much immediately that he was going to win the costume contest vote, which made me feel rather silly when I announced that I would not be keeping the prize translite if I happened to win the vote. In my defense, I had been one of the top vote getters most years in the past when the participation was usually lower, so I hadn’t anticipated how many other people would put real effort into it this time. Indeed, with everyone marking a first, second, and third place vote (3/2/1 points), Peter won by a landslide and earned a Stranger Things translite along with his trophy. Second place went to Linda as “Big Penny,” the Pennsylvania Avenue Railroad Bridge; and third place went to Mackenzie as Britney Spears. I did a recount of 2-4th place because they were so close that I wanted to be sure. Taking honorable mention, one vote shy of third, was Stephanie as Cowboy Furby.
Danny as Michael Myers plays John Wick. Joseph is in the background doing the “standing up and raising paws” thing that red pandas do to try to look intimidating.
Christy brought some cute witch’s hat and pumpkin shaped cookies, and someone (I didn’t see who because of my late arrival but I’m guessing it might have been Tim) brought candy. It was a wonderfully festive league night and I was so pleased that everyone agreed to indulge my love of Halloween and dressing up.
Peter as King Kong the pinball machine, with his costume contest trophy.
Oh yes, some pinball also got played. It ended up being a very late night because Deadpool got pulled for a malfunction after one group had already played it. Worse, the group that had played it included Brian K., who had put up over 700 million on a game that would now be voided. Sorry, Brian. With the bank 5/6 rotation complete, Danny has won both banks and is the current frontrunner in the overall standings, 12 points ahead of Brian K. On the other end of A division, there is currently a scrum going on to be above the cutline. Currently the line falls between Devon in 8th and Mike in 9th (both of them hampered by missed nights this season).
Since it was costume night, I decided to make Monster Bash the Smackdown game instead of doing a random drawing, and made The Addams Family the B division game. Tim won the Smackdown and Joseph won the B division against Lexi.
Smackdown B division winner Joseph (doing the red panda pose) and winner Tim.
Our next league night (tonight) will start the final two banks, 7 and 8, including most of the games that have not been played yet, or have been played by only half the league, due to being pulled as backup games earlier this season. There wasn’t enough room in the banks to include “old” Star Wars (which got pulled mid-rotation), but it will be the designated backup game if we do need to pull anything tonight.
Our last league night was the fifth of the season and we began the Bank 5/Bank 6 rotation. Bank 5 is named for Socrates, who needs no introduction. Bank 6 takes its name from pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander, who along with Bank 8’s Thales is a member of the Milesian School. Philosophers from this school were particularly concerned with finding the fundamental origin or principle of all reality, which they often identified with one particular “element.” Anaximander had a particularly abstract version of this, identifying the fundamental principle with something called the apeiron, which is translated “boundless” or “indefinite.” I promise that each bank has some reason I connected that philosopher with that bank. Unfortunately, I can’t swear that I remember what my reason was in each case and Anaximander might be one of those cases…
Peter, Devon, and Curtis watch Joseph and Tim play Smackdown finals games.
Speaking of banks, we had originally created the banks this season with the idea of maximally spreading out the groups, so they were entirely based on game location. Sadly, the best laid schemes of league directors go oft astray, and our nice, neat banks have been overturned by the plough of a new game. When Star Wars: Fall of the Empire came in, Derik also did a fair bit of rearranging. While I lament our banks being in disarray, I do like the way he has put a lot of our Bally/Williams games together in a murderer’s row.
Everyone was happy to see a familiar face at league night: Cyndi has returned, maybe just for a night and maybe for the rest of the season. I believe I speak for everyone in the league in hoping for the latter.
Peter and Tim celebrating a B and A division Smackdown win (respectively).
It’s our tradition to use any newly arrived game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament, so this time it was the new Star Wars: Fall of the Empire LE. Tim won the A division, and Peter won the B division on Scared Stiff (appropriate for Halloween season).
Speaking of spooky, our annual Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament happened the following Tuesday. This year, Joseph and I drew the nine games for the course randomly, to stop us from falling back on the games we’ve used in the past. Some of the objectives we chose ended up feeling a lot harder at the tournament than they did when we tested them; it happens pretty much every time. I gave away several prizes including a Stern “High Score” embroidered hat. Derik was very enthusiastic about winning it (he declared it “sick”) and put it on right away, despite the fact that he is usually never seen wearing a hat. I tried pointing out that at a pingolf tournament he really shouldn’t be bragging about getting a high score. I’m not sure if he didn’t get the joke I was making or if he just didn’t find it funny, but either way it fell flat and my repeating it three times somehow did not improve it.
Tim went into the tournament as the returning champion, and they managed to pull it off again. Tim is now the four time consecutive champion of Fear and Trembling. Pingolf is evidently Tim’s format… though it doesn’t hurt that one of the games on the course was Getaway.
The 2025 Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament, supporting the Capital Area Humane Society. From fourth place to first: Joseph, Danny, Derik, and Tim (four-time champion!).
Tomorrow at our next league night, we will be reviving the dormant tradition of the LPL Halloween costume contest. Wear your costume to league night and you might win a trophy or the top prize of a translite! Christy is bringing Halloween cookies. See you there!
September 23 was the fourth night of Season 23 which means that we finished the rotation between banks 4 and 5, known as Democritus and Heraclitus after two pre-Socratic philosophers. Their traditional epithets are “the Laughing Philosopher” and “the Weeping Philosopher” respectively, but whether the night left someone laughing or weeping didn’t seem to correlate with the bank. For my part, I had a much better time with Heraclitus than Democritus, which suits me fine, given that Heraclitus is my favorite pre-Socratic. Heraclitus is also known as the philosopher who said that fire was the fundamental principle of the universe, so that must be why I had a hot streak.
Mark, Devon, and Brian.
At one point I got called over to Monster Bash to resolve an issue in which the right flipper button was getting stuck. I did what I have seen other TDs that I respect do in this situation. I hit the button 100 times to see if the problem recurred. Since it didn’t, I said “play on” and left. Minutes later they fetched me to say it happened again and this time I was able to reproduce it. I expressed reluctance to bother Derik about it, and Peter said that he thought it was just gummed up with something sticky. Joseph suggested he could clean it with his hand sanitizer if he had a cleaning tool, so Peter went and got a napkin and folded it up. Peter stood there working on jamming the folded up paper in the crevice around the button, and reported that it was working. He did not notice Derik creeping up behind him and then standing there with an amused “WTF” expression on his face.
Derik silently watches Peter work on the flipper button.
Speaking of WTF, the B division on Tuesday Night Smackdown stole the spotlight from A with a much longer game and a very dramatic finish. Joseph (as player 2) had finished the game on James Bond with 626.7M, and Jason (as player 4) looked almost certain to overtake him. When Jason drained through the left outlane, everyone watching (including, probably, Jason) thought he had won on bonus. The score display was interrupted by a prompt for player 2 to enter initials for the high score board, which I assumed would be followed by a prompt for player 4 to enter them also. Instead, after Joseph finished putting in his JFN, it went to a match screen. A couple of stunned beats followed as people registered what had happened. Jason had finished at 625.8M, less than a million short. Danny, meanwhile, had destroyed everyone with a big game of Ghostbusters in the A division.
Joseph gestures to the amazing close scores on James Bond.Jason just barely failed to eke out enough bonus to beat Joseph.
Having completed League Night #4, we are now at the halfway mark of the season. Brian laughed off his rivals with a win in Democritus (bank 3), while Tim triumphed and left the competition crying in Heraclitus (bank 4). In the overall standings, Brian is at the top with a mere single point lead over Tim. Danny is another three points behind Tim. The cut-line for A division is currently between Joseph in eighth and Devon in ninth, with only two points between them. With half the season left, no one can feel secure. We’ll be starting the second half tonight, and this will also be the last chance for any new joiners for Season 23. After Night #5, new players can still attend but will be recorded as guest players without official standings.
Danny looks nonchalant about his victory in the A division on Ghostbusters, but Joseph still can’t believe what happened on James Bond.
When I showed up for our last league night I was looking and feeling quite scattered. Unfortunately, this year I am serving on Academic Senate at CMU, and the meeting dates all this semester coincide exactly with league meetings, including the times that additional weeks get skipped. As a result, I will only be able to make it just in time for the start of our league meetings and Joseph will have the responsibility of setting up the Smackdown and checking people in. When I arrived and started trying to double check Joseph’s attendance sheet, I found that he had missed a few people and I got a little frustrated and complained that he isn’t very good with names. Linda said it sure sounded like I was throwing Joseph under the bus and I joked that Joseph is always happy to go under the bus for me. Then I felt bad for being a bit of a jerk and made clear to everyone that in fact, Joseph is an invaluable league assistant without whom it would be impossible for me to keep the league running!
Tim busy working on a billion-plus game of Godzilla.
Last time was our third night of Season 23, so we started a new pair of banks. The current set are known (by me and possibly Joseph, if no one else) as Democritus and Heraclitus. These two pre-Socratic philosophers make a natural pairing for a bank rotation, because there is a tradition of referring to them as “the laughing philosopher” and “the weeping philosopher.” Baroque painters loved to depict them representing those opposite attitudes. In reality, they didn’t quite live at the same time. Heraclitus was already gone when Democritus was born. Heraclitus is known mainly for various cryptic aphorisms (hence his other nickname, “The Obscure”) and for his belief that fire, representing change, was the fundamental principle of nature. He’s also my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher. Democritus is best known for having the most developed early theory of atoms.
Mark and Brian coining up on King Kong.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that I played bank Democritus, because I can only laugh at a night in which I managed to both set a personal best on Godzilla, have probably a personal top 5 game on Indiana Jones, and then also struggle to eke out 5 million on Metallica. Meanwhile, Tim was also in my group and managed to competely tear up Godzilla and then have a great game on Indiana Jones too, so those games were treating us well.
With only half of everyone having played each bank, the results aren’t too meaningful yet, but as things stand, Mike has the lead so far on Bank 3 (Democritus) and Danny on Bank 4 (Heraclitus).
Lexi playing James Bond in the Smackdown B finals.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Ghostbusters, and the B division played James Bond. Danny won with a walk-off on Ghostbusters (which he then didn’t actually walk off, but finished playing, because it was a great game) and I somehow managed to win on Bond, a game that frequently kicks my ass, including this past Friday when I got completely pulverized on it at RLM Amusements’ weekly tournament in Grand Rapids.
Joseph has an inexplicable knack for getting photos of me with my eyes closed. This is actually the better of the two photos he took of us. In the other one my eyes are completely closed.
I’ll be seeing everyone soon, though don’t forget that I won’t be around until shortly before the start of league due to my Senate service. We’ll have a Smackdown game TBD, which Joseph will get started for everyone when he arrives about 6 pm. See you soon!
It was our second league night of Season 23, so we finished the first full rotation of banks 1 and 2, which are named (for reasons best known to myself) Anaxagoras and Aristotle. We were also joined by a few new pinball seekers. The first was Brian, who was invited to join the proceedings late but who decided to just watch and hang out instead. (I kidded him that we already had a Brian/Bryan quota, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t why he declined to compete.) Brian had noticed an unusually large number of pinball players a couple of weeks previous when he had dropped into the Avenue to get a few games in, so he tracked down the league’s Facebook page and figured out how to find us again. Unfortunately, his schedule will prevent him from playing as a regular member, but he did put in a game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament on Attack from Mars.
Josh hard at work pulping some fiction.
The second was the mysterious, pseudonymous Hayley Hyena, who did not join the league but whose name showed up on my Smackdown score sheet. Linda was able to point out Hayley in the bar, and I got to break the news to her that she had qualified for A division of the Smackdown with a 3+ billion AfM score. She ended up coming in second, not bad at all for someone’s first ever official IFPA tournament.
Nathan seems less than impressed with his bonus.
The third new player did actually join the league properly. Christy’s friend Jonathan, who has often spectated league in the past, and has played in one of the charity tournaments, decided to take the plunge and pay dues for the season.
I can’t resist writing a little bit about my own modest accomplishment of the night, which is that I set the top score for the league on Medieval Madness with about 67 million. There was a time when that wouldn’t have been expected to give you a first, but it seems to play tougher in recent times. I got about halfway through beating down the King of Payne’s castle when I drained my last ball. I haven’t finished the final castle in years so I fell to my knees with disappointment, but overall I really could not be sorry about that game!
Jason and Hayley playing in Smackdown finals.
Now that we have finished a complete rotation of banks 1 and 2, we can see the true winners of each bank. Danny took first on bank 1 with a whopping 494/500, giving him a 6 point lead over Tim. Over on bank 2, the winner was Brian K. with 492/500, giving him an impressive 14-point margin of victory over runner-up Joseph. At this point there is no way to say who is winning the league, because everyone drops the two lowest nights and we have only had two. After the next bank we will begin to see people break away from the current 25-way tie for first place.
Devon (Smackdown champ) and Jason (undercard winner) asked me to take their photo on the pool table. A pool player politely waited for them to get off before resuming his game. Apparently this was a parody of (or maybe I should say tribute to) Christy taking her own pool table portrait.
League ran a bit late due to having to switch out Star Wars (the substitute was Tales of the Arabian Nights), then we had our Smackdown finals on Attack from Mars and Black Knight: Sword of Rage (the B division game). Devon was the night’s champion, and Jason won the undercard.
That’s it for my recap of the good times! See you again very soon.
The second Tuesday in August marked the beginning of Season 23 of the venerable Lansing Pinball League, after a two month summer break. Everyone was anxious to start again, although we did have quite a few events to tide us over during the break. First we celebrated the end of the season with a league pizza party at Peter and Abi’s house. Then in June came the Rocket Robin round-robin charity tournament (won by Brian K. after a tiebreaker with Joseph) and the King Kong Launch Party (also won by Brian). The women’s club also had two tournaments during June and July, a King Kong launch party (won by me) and a July regular tournament (won by my longtime rival Karen C. from Grand Rapids).
New league member Craig plays while another new league member, Abi, watches.
We had three new joiners so far this season. Chris A. is a Detroit-area player who has previously attended one or two of the charity tournaments but hasn’t played in our league before. Craig is new to competitive pinball (but not to pinball). Abi has played in the Lansing Lightning Flippers tournaments and some of the charity tournaments, but not in the league before. We also had a couple of players returning after an absence of a season or two: Curtis (the director of the Royal Scot League) and longtime league member Mike.
Hanging out in the cool kids’ club with Linda and Devon.
The banks have been rearranged and given a new naming scheme this season. I decided rather than trying to group them by theme, which is getting harder and harder unless you want two banks called “movies” and “bands,” I would just group them spatially to make sure the crowds are as spread out as possible each night. That way we won’t have two groups playing side by side if it can be avoided. I then mostly arbitrarily named each bank after an Ancient Greek philosopher, although in each case there is one game in the bank that connected with the name. So far no one except me knows what any of the game connections are (and some of them are pretty thin).
Christy partying with AC/DC.
As in past seasons we will be randomly assigning players to one of two banks on odd-numbered meetings, and then they will play the other bank on the next meeting. The two meetings’ banks were named Anaxagoras and Aristotle. Anaxagoras was a pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher who believed in Nous (mind) as the fundamental cosmic principle. Like many pre-Socratics, he was also trying to explain nature and the heavens, and came up with a correct explanation of eclipses and meteors, among other insights. Aristotle you probably already know. He was a student at Plato’s academy who went on to have the second most distinguished career of the ancients, especially in creating an ethical theory that was extremely influential on subsequent periods of philosophy (and still is).
Oh yes, but back to pinball: I got to play in the cool kids’ group with Devon and Linda, though I didn’t exactly start the season by covering myself in glory. Getting into A division is going to be very tough with it capped at 8 people again so I expect a few of us are going to fight over the cut line all season. With only one night in the books it means we have not completed a full bank rotation so the overall standings don’t mean too much yet, but the first-half winner in bank Anaxagoras was Danny (surprise!) and in Aristotle was Brian (shocker). Tonight we will finish the rotation and then we’ll have the final positions.
Linda playing X-Men on the Twitch stream.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Elvira’s House of Horrors and my random drawing for a nearby B division game happened to hit on Scared Stiff! Curtis was the champion for Elvira’s HOH and our B division “undercard” champ was Peter. Peter also generously provided the streaming rig for league play and for the Smackdown finals again.
Smackdown undercard winner Peter and champion Curtis celebrate their wins.
Looking forward to seeing you all tonight for our second meeting and finishing up the first two banks! And if you didn’t make it to the first night it’s not too late to join as we drop the two lowest nights from everyone’s score, and allow anyone who has attended at least four of the eight nights to play in the final tournament.
Peter plays his B division Smackdown finals game on Getaway.
On March 25 we played our sixth league night of Season 22, wrapping up the bank rotation between Bank 5, “Argo Navis,” and Bank 6, “Cetus.” As I arrived, Devon told me he had been waiting for a recap of March Hare Madness and was disappointed not to see one. I actually felt really bad about this. I had just barely had enough time to write the previous league night’s recap but had not been able to pound out the MHM recap yet. I reassured him that I was still planning to write it. When I gave the night’s announcements, I thanked everyone for coming to March Hare Madness and commented that Devon was disappointed I hadn’t written the recap yet but that I hoped to get to it soon. Later, Devon came up to me and gave me a hard time for busting his chops about asking for a recap. I explained that I legitimately had not intended to come off as saying “Well Devon here complained about not getting a recap, what a whiner,” but instead was trying to be apologetic as I legitimately felt bad about it! Anyway, that’s the kind of misunderstanding that happens when your relationship is mostly built on trash talking. More on that later. As of this writing I still have not recapped MHM.
Devon and Dan watch and wait to play their balls on Pulp Fiction in the Smackdown finals.
In Bank 6, we had to substitute John Wick for Stranger Things, the latest in an unfortunate series of mid-rotation substitutions we have had to make this season. It’s been unlucky that way and while we have a way to deal with it in the league scoring, it’s not ideal. Bank 5 fortunately stayed intact and we will play both John Wick and Stranger Things in Bank 8 so everyone will still get to play them at least once (fingers crossed).
Danny took the top score on both Bank 6 and 7, and is also number one in the overall standings. In second place is Tim, and in third is Josh, as we head into the final bank rotation.
Tim plays Pulp Fiction on stream in the Smackdown finals.
Our Smackdown game was the new addition Pulp Fiction, and Peter streamed it for us as he has been doing lately. During the finals, Devon commented that it was a “D heavy finals” since Dan, Derik, and Devon were all playing. I said, “Well, that’s only three people” and he said “three out of four!” I gestured at the B division game on Getaway that I was part of and said, “Excuse me, eight.” He replied, “Oh, well, I’m sure your little B division is very fun…” in the most condescending voice he could summon and I replied with something I will not write in this blog as Joseph would disapprove.
Smackdown undercard winner Peter and champion Derik.
Tonight we will be starting the final rotation of the season, with games that have either not made it into play yet or that have been switched out for backups earlier in the season. See you all soon!
Our last league meeting started the second half of the season and a rotation between banks 5 (Argo Navis, “The Ship Argo”) and 6 (Cetus, “The Sea Monster”). An interesting fact about Argo Navis is that it depicts a ship and yet appears to rotate around the pole backwards. What the ancients made of this, I don’t know. Often such oddities are reflected in their myths about the stars, but I don’t know of any myth that involves the Argo moving in reverse. Maybe Poseidon backhanded the orbit shot.
Devon plays KISS while my travel mug hangs out in the foreground. Yes, that’s Bam from Animal Crossing.
Week 5 is officially the last week new players can join except as guest players, although I don’t believe we had any new joiners at the last minute. Erin made it out again, though, which is great. She thinks she might manage to make enough nights this season to play finals, but work makes it very iffy. Mike Stewart has let me know that he will not be playing the rest of the season, unfortunately, due to needing to budget gas money and other stuff competing for his attention. Mike is one of the league long-timers so I’m hoping he’ll be able to rejoin us next season.
Tim plays the B division Smackdown game on Elvira’s House of Horrors.
Joseph and I were recently talking about how the scores on Medieval Madness just never seem to have reached the averages players used to get on our previous MM that we had when the league was new. The first half results on MM are consistent with that observation: Dan N. was the only person to score over 15 million with 38.7, and the median was 6.8.
Devon took this photo of me playing in the Smackdown finals. I like how you can see me in the monitor also.
Danny plays the decisive Smackdown game on Dungeons & Dragons.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on our newest game, Dungeons & Dragons, and the B division played off on Elvira’s House of Horrors. Danny won the A division and Tim was the champion of B.
Tonight is, of course, our next league night. We’ll finish the bank rotation and play our brand new Pulp Fiction as the Tuesday Night Smackdown game. I hope to see everyone soon!
Tim and Danny celebrate B and A division wins in the Smackdown, respectively.
On our last league night, we finished banks 3 and 4 and the first half of the season. It was our first league night without Ethan, which made it a hard one for many league members. People kept commenting on how quiet the night was.
Mark and Nathan chatting as I blast them in the face with a flash. Lexi points out that direct flash is very on trend right now, so there.
We had another technical mishap as the flipper decided to fall off Indiana Jones mid-game. Joseph put up a sign saying “Indy has chosen poorly, go play Monster Bash” which was the chosen backup game. Since half the league had already played Indy, what happens is that we end up with two score tracks: there are two 100s, two 99s, etc., as people are only ranked against people who played the same game they did. It screws up the scoring for the season a bit but it’s better than making everyone replay a game from a past league night.
Peter and Dar are hard at work mining points, while Dar takes a break.
With the bank 3/bank 4 rotation now complete, we can say that Tim is the leader on 3 (Corvus) and Josh has bested 4 (Perseus). The overall winner at the end of the first half of the season is Danny C., with Tim one solitary point behind, and Josh 5 points behind Tim in 3rd place. The cutline for A division is below 8th place (a new rule this season), and right now Joseph and Mike are tied for 7th, leaving this reporter trailing 14 points behind them in 9th. I am regretting changing the rules to make finals shorter.
Tim plays in the A division of the Smackdown while Scott plays in B.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Medieval Madness, chosen because it was one of Ethan’s favorite games. Shortly after Ethan died, a sign reading “ERR RIP” went up on Medieval Madness (ERR was Ethan’s high score entry). Jason also has suggested that anyone achieving a high score in March should enter ERR. Jason ended up winning the Smackdown game. Meanwhile, the B division played out on Ghostbusters. This was Scott’s first time playing Smackdown finals. He had actually qualified in the past, but didn’t realize he was supposed to stick around for the playoff at the end of the night. Joseph won the B division game on Ghostbusters.
Jason and Joseph, the Smackdown winners of the night, gesture at Ethan’s high score initials.
We’re about to start another league night, which will open the second half of the season and provide the last chance for new players to join this season. After the 5th night, new players can only play as guests. If you’re thinking of joining, right now is the time! See you all soon!
