Season 11, league night 1 of 8
Games played: AC/DC, Game of Thrones, Iron Man, Metallica, South Park
Results for the night and the season so far
Mike sent me a message saying “Give Uncle Gary a hug for me and tell him I don’t like Game of Thrones.” So here I am giving him a hug…
…and here I am telling him that Mike doesn’t like Game of Thrones.
June 12 was our first league night of Season 11, and it brought with it an exciting development. The Avenue is now Stern Army location #104! Derik and Pinball Pete’s helped me get us enrolled, so now our league and tournaments are eligible for prizes (e.g. translites) from Stern and we can host official launch parties for new games. Members of the league will also receive Stern Army Recruit dogtags. Those who attended our season opener already have theirs, and I will be passing out more at our league night tonight. We also got the Stern Army banner featuring “Uncle Gary” (as I call him… but not to his face so far). Even though we are past the official window for Iron Maiden launch parties, Zach Sharpe of Stern graciously sent me an extra trophy plaque he had on hand so that we can have our first Stern Army launch party. That will be coming up on July 12; more on that later.
There was another unexpected development at The Avenue: Fish Tales and Jack-Bot were out (boo! I loved gambling with my points!) and Elvis and World Cup Soccer were in. Elvis is totally new to The Avenue, but World Cup Soccer had a previous term of residence before being removed for quite a while. Meanwhile, Joseph had chosen the league games for the night based on a new rotation scheme of skipping five between each entry in alphabetical order. A similar idea was suggested by former league member Todd as a way of ensuring we didn’t end up with games being played in the same blocks this season. When we arrived and found the alphabetical order now disrupted, we had to stick with the already announced games, but it set our new plan already in partial disarray. As someone or other said, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ league runners gang aft a-gley.” I think it was Gary Stern.
Chris playing Star Trek in the Smackdown.
We had 12 in attendance at our first night, not too bad of a turnout but a little low due to the conspicuous absence of several regulars including Lupe, Caleb, and Mike S. (Yes, Mike S. I can’t remember the last time he missed Lansing league.) We did have a brand new member, Bryce. Last season Joseph had attempted to work out a scheme for allocating groups that would avoid putting any of the top players together while also balancing the group in other ways, but in the end it did not appear to speed up league play in the way it was intended to, and it also meant people missed out on the fun of meeting new people in random groups. So I brought back the original group sorting method, famously employed by Matt in the early seasons of the league: I brought back “the hat.” Well, not literally the same hat as I assume Matt took that one with him to Kalamazoo. I actually used my hat with deer ears and antlers that I usually wear to the Silver Balls tournament. It’s a very “me” version of a venerable league tradition and drawing our groups from a hat seemed to be a quicker and more flexible way of allocating groups last time so I think we will be sticking with it for now.
Tim playing Demolition Man in the Undercard match.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament has also returned for Season 11, with a couple of changes. Since we probably won’t have as many people eligible to play as rookies this season, we are now just going to have an A and B division for qualifiers 1-4 and 5-8, called the “Smackdown Championship” and the “Undercard” respectively. The other change is that to help cover a possible shortfall from dues in funding the league’s expenses, we are now allowing everyone one free entry in the Smackdown tournament, with additional entries being $1 each.
Our next meeting is in just a few hours (yes, even in the summer I’m late with the recaps), and it’s still a great time to join since your lowest night of the season is dropped, so missing the first night won’t hurt you. We are going to be taking July off of league due to the league runners needing to get ready for Pinburgh, but we will be filling in the gap by having two July tournaments: Rocket Robin, the annual round robin charity tournament for the Capital Area Humane Society, on July 10; and the Iron Maiden launch party on July 17. The latter is also a celebration of our induction into the Stern Army, so it is going to have a Stern “Battle of the Bands” format. Competitors will qualify on AC/DC, Elvis, Iron Maiden, and Metallica, with the top 8 going to playoffs.
Smackdown finalists Derik, Chris (the Champion), Danny, and Terry, with our new Stern Army banner.
The Undercard finalists, Tim, Kristen (the winner), Joseph, and Tim.
See you all very soon!