Tyler with his Smackdown Undercard winner medal.
September 25 was the sixth meeting of Season 11 (out of eight) so we are starting to head into the endgame. Unsurprisingly, this has some members starting to pay close attention to the current standings. The day of league, I found a message on Facebook from Chris, who (understandably) misunderstood what was actually a spreadsheet error to mean that we had changed the policy for missed meetings from “get last place on all games” to “get 0 points on all games” which makes a huge difference. Chris missed two meetings this season, which would leave him way out of A division if he received a 0 for his missed night. Fortunately, this was actually just a mistake, which Joseph quickly fixed when alerted to it. Sorry, Chris, you don’t have your excuse to quit coming… yet!
We had two new league members join this time, married couple Tim and Sarah. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Tim, but I did chat a bit with Sarah and learned that she used to live in the Seattle area, where there is a thriving pinball scene. Although she has a longstanding interest in pinball, this is the first time she and Tim have played in an actual league. I hope the long night we had (somehow logjams kept happening) doesn’t deter Tim and Sarah from coming back!
This was our first night playing Road Show, which moved to the Avenue recently. Danny and I were in the same group and we had a ridiculously close pair of scores, with mine beating his by about 300K out of 355 million. Joseph points out that there were a high number of these kinds of close calls – check out the standings document and see for yourself!
Finalists Mike and Derik demonstrate the best way to hang around Smackdown winner Danny. Not pictured: the other A finalist, Chad.
By a vote of the league (on Facebook), we made Iron Maiden the Smackdown game again so that people could have another opportunity to qualify for Stern’s “Up the Irons” contest. Only games played during an IFPA-endorsed tournament or league are permitted to count for the contest. No one set a new high score, though I heard Danny had one over 1 billion before Joseph arrived to start taking scores, unfortunately. Danny won the Smackdown (shocker!). The Undercard was fought out on AC/DC again. This time it turned into a family feud as Chad played in the Smackdown and Tyler played on the Undercard. Tyler showed his dad how it’s done, taking the Undercard medal home.
Since I’m posting this you all know that means it’s time for another league meeting. I’ll see you tomorrow at the Avenue at 7:30.