Our penultimate league night was way back on January 24, and it was the conclusion of a two-bank rotation between Hades (Indiana Jones, AC/DC, Deadpool, Ghostbusters, Stranger Things) and Ares (The Simpsons, The Mandalorian, Scared Stiff, Star Trek, and Attack from Mars). The reason it was so long ago is that first we had a three-week gap due to the calendar, then The Avenue was unexpectedly closed on what would have been our next meeting night (February 14), so we had to reschedule for February 28.
Another hitch is that during our last meeting, Star Trek had a malfunction, a switch firing nonstop that was escalating scores. Since half the league had already played it, we couldn’t just remove it for a backup game, so now everyone who didn’t get to play it has to play it as a makeup tonight. This is not an optimal time for that because we also have to play a single bank tonight no matter what, since we’re on our last night of the season. Unfortunately, this happened because we started a two-bank rotation on an even-numbered night. It’s an inherent flaw to the system of deciding night by night whether to play one or two banks, and I think I may just switch back to a permanent two-bank system next season.
This was our first league night without Allen, since he went back to Texas and his family. League won’t be the same without him. I was thinking we have to call this the AA era, After Allen, except that doesn’t sound quite right.
An interesting and somewhat alarming occurrence happened as we were finishing up Tuesday Night Smackdown: James Bond 007, which fortunately was not a Smackdown game, suddenly decided it was going to update its code right now. It was odd watching it do this totally unprompted and unattended, but that’s the brave new world of pinball we live in. I’m just glad it didn’t happen during a tournament.
As for the Smackdown game, it was on Rush. It feels like we just did a Smackdown game on it, but that was actually last season. The champion this time was Pat and the undercard winner (on Cactus Canyon) was Joseph.
Tonight is our final qualifying night of Season 17, locking in the seeds for the playoffs in two weeks and perhaps even more importantly, deciding who gets to play in A division. The bank is Zeus, which includes Guns N’ Roses, Tales of the Arabian Nights, The Addams Family, James Bond 007, and the wild card game voted by the league, Attack from Mars. It’s actually hard to say how close the positions are at this point due to the Star Trek failure that has left half the league with no score for that game in Bank 7, so I’ll just go ahead and say “anything could happen.” So, I hope to see you there tonight for the final reckoning!