As everyone knows (and likes to give me a hard time about), I’m notoriously terrible at writing the league night recaps except under deadline pressure. The “deadline” is that I have a strict rule to get them up before the next league night. Unfortunately, that bad habit combined with our having a six week gap between meetings due to pandemic-related cancellations, that means I end up not remembering much to write about. At least I have a few photos, right?
Our last meeting on December 14 was Week 5 of the season, which began a two-week rotation of banks. We will be finishing that rotation at Week 6 tonight. The banks are the Stymphalian Birds (Attack from Mars, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Iron Maiden, and – supposedly – Elvira’s House of Horrors) and the Apples of the Hesperides (The Beatles, Willy Wonka, Medieval Madness, Indiana Jones, and Game of Thrones. By the way, some reasoning went into the games in each bank. We were attempting to get a certain number of games designated as “long playing” spread among the banks, although at this point we really need to reconsider which games are classed as “long.” At this point the Capital City Crushers have made almost everything into a long game. Stop being so good, people! Anyway, within that constraint, I tried to assign games to the chosen mythology theme of “Labors of Hercules.” In this case, the Stymphalian Birds were a group of monstrous birds defeated by Hercules, so all the games have “flight” or “flying creatures.” It’s one of the vaguer themes, I admit. The Apples of the Hesperides were magic apples that Hercules was given a quest to steal, and which were guarded by a dragon named Ladon. The games in that bank are thus about dragons (Medieval Madness and Game of Thrones), or quests to steal magic artifacts (Indiana Jones), or forbidden foodstuffs (Willy Wonka). Oh, and of course, Apple? The Beatles? That’s the joke. Thank you, thank you.
Unfortunately, I had someone come up and ask me to rule on a situation on Elvira’s House of Horrors. Someone’s score had escalated by some extremely implausible amount in a few seconds. I confirmed with Derik that the likely cause was something misfiring and registering phantom hits and that it could not be fixed right away, so we had to pull Elvira’s. It’s really fortunate that this happened during the first week of the rotation because that makes it easier to deal with. I switched in Theatre of Magic, which had been removed from a bank due to a malfunction early in the season and had since been repaired.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament game was Lord of the Rings, and Tales of the Arabian Nights was drawn as an undercard. Tim (who seems to win a lot of Smackdowns) took the top honors. Meanwhile, Joseph won a particularly hard-fought Undercard which saw a lot of good scores. It seems like a lot of people in the league have gotten really good at Tales of the Arabian Nights over the years. This is fitting because it’s one of the games that has been with the league the longest.
That was our last league meeting of 2021 but we did have one more item of business, which was to hold Silver Balls in the City, the annual holiday-week tournament supporting the Capital Area Humane Society. Although the turnout was on the low side due to a combination of dicey weather and people having to quarantine, we still earned $186.50 for CAHS. Danny even made a donation to cover the IFPA fees so all of the entry fees could go to the charity. The .50 happened because we had a Closest to the Pin side tournament with a 50/50 pot and an entry fee of $1. The goal of the side tournament was to get the score closest to 100M on Road Show without going over. Nate T. won the side tournament. It was popular, so I think I will do it again for the next charity tournament.
There were a couple of surprise appearances for Silver Balls this year. One was Bill L., who has come to Avenue tournaments in the past but whom I haven’t seen since the pandemic hit. He made it despite scary roads, as did an even more surprising guest, Pat M. I know Pat well from playing in Detroit-area tournaments and leagues, but he had never been to the Avenue before!
Danny won Silver Balls in the City 2022, with Allen taking second and Joe P. going home with third. The top three a souvenir Christmas ornaments with the tournament logo, which may not have been the most popular trophy I’ve given out. Joe said, “I don’t even have a Christmas tree” and Danny sardonically replied, “You want mine?”
