One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer

League finals for the season, the one with just a monthlong delay for the first Omicron wave, were Tuesday. We had 24 people qualify as having played at least half the season, so that 12 people could go to the top, A, Division. Great for four people who got a first-round bye. I went in seeded fifth, the first person not getting a bye, but this was almost as good: based on our seeds and one person we knew wasn't going to make finals, bunny_hugger and I would not play one another unless it was to get into a trophy-winning position. Sad to say we wouldn't play one another at all; she would get knocked out in two straight rounds. I won my first round, lost the second, and continued on in the second-chance bracket until RED beat me two games to none.

We did interact some, though. I had to run off in the middle of one of my games to issue a ruling on a game bunny_hugger was playing. She can't properly give a ruling on herself, after all. You may protest that how could I give an impartial ruling on my own wife, but I think everyone who knows us knows we are scrupulous about ruling fairly. And in any case there was only the one thing to really do in the situation, it just had to be pronounced officially by someone not in the match.

One surprise this week was our venue finally got its Mandalorian, the newest Star Wars-themed game and that arrived about six months after the initial planned date. Stern Pinball had some manufacturing issues we don't understand and we got in their two successor games before we got this. Those games --- Godzilla and Rush --- are long-playing ones, and we assume Mandalorian will be as soon as anyone knows how to play it, so we were afraid of closing the bar out. Or worse. Since they close at 1 am now, there was a nontrivial chance the night would end without a decision. The best I could think was, well, we'd have to finish the finals whenever all the still-competing players were able, but it's hard to think when that could be. bunny_hugger and I are at Motor City Fur[ry] Con this weekend, the bar's not open Sundays, and this coming Tuesday is already booked for the March Hare Madness charity pinball tournament.

Also the bar once again had the same band in playing 70s country/pop music that, again, feels nice to me and bunny_hugger but is loud and distracting. I don't know how long it'll take the bar to get bored with this, but I know them and they will.

We had to set up everything on a small table upstairs, one with an extremely wobbly support. This because the good table was occupied by a bunch of people playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill. You know, like bunny_hugger and I would do with MWS before league nights, back a couple years. Very strange.

This format, the double-elimination best-two-of-three contest, has weird phases. In the first rounds there's a lot of action and running around and everything going on. Later, there's a lot of waiting. After your first loss, you go into the Second Chance bracket. People end up waiting to see who they're going to play. MWS, undefeated in the winners brackets, ended up going outside to take a nap while waiting for the long, long process of Second Chance brackets to clear up. RED offered to let him go to his house and nap somewhere comfortable and MWS said if he did that he'd never get up. This could have been brilliant strategy on RED's part: he would end up the winner of the Second Chance bracket and the person whom MWS would have to beat to take the championship.

The last round started about midnight, with one hour to get through potentially six games between people who could play forever. (If MWS had lost the first round, he would be in the Second Chance Bracket, and have to play a second round against RED, and each round is two out of three, after all.) MWS made a concession to the need for speed by picking the Beatles, always a quick game, and they both had games that were very much just okay. Might be RED was tired, after five hours of nearly continuous play, but MWS had just come off a nap. RED had pick of game, so he went for Tales of the Arabian Nights. It's a fun game. It was the one I had my first come-from-behind win of the night on. It's ... oh, that was a fast first ball. The league's two best players just bombed out their starts.

The basic strategy for Tales of the Arabian Nights is to shoot the lamp, which gives you points and builds your bonus. Neither of them were working the lamp that hard, though RED did get into a mode for shooting the captive balls, which build the bonus multiplier. It is a very bonus-heavy game, but the main thing that builds the bonus is the lamp. They got into multiball, getting a couple jackpots (by the way, the lamp also builds the jackpot) each.

On that last ball MWS could have done better but then the game just tilted, knocking out several millions in bonus. RED told him, he was slapping the flipper buttons hard. I didn't think it was that hard, but it can be hard to see just how bad the hit is from afield. MWS finished at about 9.5 million, a solid enough score but not unbeatable from where RED was. (I'd come back from about the same gap my first ball.) RED built the score well enough, hitting the captive balls a good bunch, not building the bonus base as fast as he could, but still, keeping good control. He finally reached the point that I leaned over to bunny_hugger and said, he's got him on bonus. bunny_hugger agreed, but chided me: saying that would be coaching. I could see MWS thinking what game to take RED to. And then the ball did something and it was coming near the outline and RED tried to save it and ...

RED tilted.

It was just short of the win, too. RED said he didn't know how close it was, he just knew he was in danger of losing his ball, so. He was happy with the ending; after all, that's just how pinball is.

The trophies were presented to an audience of the three people receiving them, plus me and bunny_hugger, shortly after the bar announced last call. We got out before the bar closed, but it was a close thing.

If we should have a twelve-person final in future something will have to be done differently.

Here's a few more pictures of our pet rabbit.

Enough examining my camera. Here she grooms her leg and shows us a little foot.

Now she's sprawled out like she's in a Renaissance painting.

If she's this good at grooming herself why does she still have all those plugs of hair on her backside? Huh?

Trivia: The last significant nesting of passenger pigeons in New England happened in 1851, near Lunenburg, Massachusetts. Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg.

Currently Reading: Across The Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift.