November 12 was our seventh night of the season and the beginning of our final bank rotation. Bank 8 is always used to finish up anything that hasn’t been played yet in the season, and then the remainder is decided by vote. We had very few votes this time, but the clear winner was Jaws, followed by a couple of votes for Attack from Mars. Bank 7 contained Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but before league I heard that it might need to be pulled for a malfunction. When this happens during the last league night I use the also-rans in the vote as backup games. There were two other games that had received any votes at all, Godzilla and Batman ’66. I flipped a coin and it turned up for Godzilla, to Josh’s disappointment (he was the vote for Batman). I was certainly glad to play something other than TMNT. To my disappointment, but his credit, Derik was able to get TMNT working again, so it got put back in. However, soon after the start of league play, it was discovered that Jaws in Bank 8 had a beneficial malfunction and I decided to replace it. I initially told Josh we would go to Batman as I forgot that Godzilla was no longer needed in Bank 8, and he got excited until I corrected myself and said “Wait, I already drew Godzilla, it’ll be Godzilla.” Josh expressed dismay at my “takesy-backsies.” Sorry!
We had a surprise visit from Christine V., who played in the league many seasons ago along with her husband Jake. Christine was on her way to a job in Wixom, putting Lansing on the way for her, so she came by and played as a guest player. Strangely enough, Nathan’s friend Kristy (I have very likely spelled that wrong), who didn’t play but hung out with our group, told me she was from Wixom. I hadn’t thought about Wixom in years, then somehow it came up for me twice in one night.
Because of the Jaws substitution, the composition of groups, and the number of long-playing games, we had an especially drawn-out league night. At the end we had our usual Tuesday Night Smackdown, this time on The Simpsons Pinball Party. One of our new players this season, Emily, made the top group for finals. There were times in the past she also would have qualified to play but had already left by the time we did the playoff. It turns out that she hadn’t understood how the Smackdown worked and didn’t know she needed to stay for the final match. She took fourth for the night, marking her first time playing in an IFPA tournament finals match. Tim was the overall champion, and over in the B division on The Mandalorian, Joseph got the win.
After the Smackdown, I realized I had completely forgotten to take any photos for the night except the one of the winners at the end. Peter suggested that we stage some photos to recreate the league night using the diehards who were still around at the end of the Smackdown. Those photos follow.
In other recent news, we had both our women’s and open launch parties for Uncanny X-Men. I won the women’s launch after defeating Linda in finals, and Danny toppled Tim to win the open launch.