We had twelve people at the March Hare Madness tournament, which is in line with the last couple years. The turnout meant everyone could play in a four-player group, which the IFPA treats as the ideal of pinball and which means we wouldn't have to fuss with the way to score rounds with three players. It would be timed matchplay, putting people into groups in rounds that started from a little past 6 pm, when everyone was checked in and got rules, until 10 pm by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's clock. It turns out the very last round of the night finished a couple minutes past 10 pm, which bunnyhugger welcomed as a relief. We've often had a round finish a couple minutes before the cutoff, dragging the tournament out an extra half-hour or more.
We all got two Critial Hit cards to start and mine were identical: the ones that let you shake a game, giving a tilt warning or two on another player. Not one I really cared for so I didn't use it. Other people got more interesting cards, offering things like covering the scoring screen --- a card people kept getting, and kept playing, possibly every round; it's lucky I remembered to bring a newspaper so we had something to cover the displays with. And when I lost the first round by far, hey, at least I got another card out of it. That's how I had three ``give the game a shake so someone else gets a tilt warning or two'' cards. I know we shuffled the decks but ...
I would eventually start winning some games, or at least finishing second, but my start of two last-place finishes was too much for me to recover from. I eventually got some cards that weren't shake-the-table, too. One I tried using to cover the screen on The Addams Family, but someone else played the card to cancel that. For the last group of the night I played a card letting me swap DMC, the dominating player, to another group, but someone else played a card that happened to swap him back. (That wasn't their specific intent, but the other person wanted DMC out of their group so there was a three-eighths chance he'd end up back in mine.)
Still, more people were getting cards each round, and it felt like more people were using them, and earlier on. So the new card-earning rules seem like a hit. Someone before leaving even stopped to tell bunnyhugger how she liked the consolation prize of getting more cards to play when she wasn't able to move up in the standings any.
We haven't yet(!) counted the cards to make sure none went missing. But we were clearer earlier on about the heartbreak of losing cards, and managed to ask almost everyone before they left to check their pockets and make sure they didn't have any cards left over.
As you may have inferred from two people using cards to bounce DMC from their groups, DMC was having a killer night. In the six rounds we completed he finished first in ... oh ... all of them. I don't know if any of them were ever close but it's a heck of a streak anyway.
Also having a heck of a night: bunnyhugger. She never got the benefit of an extra card for finishing in last place. In fact, she only finished in third once, taking first or second place five times in six rounds. Heck, she beat FAE on games in two rounds. Also somehow we never ended up in a group together. But the important thing is she tied for second place and would be going into finals. And me? I'd be going into the streaming commentators' booth with PCL.
Continuing on our Wednesday at Kings Island, you saw the night was come and we were looking at the fireworks from The Beast's queue. So you know what to expect from that ...
We're up to The Beast's station. There's a good number of atmospheric signs, like the ones underneath the 'Caution! The Beast Attacks Likely' warning 'In the woods ... everything is fine'.
I think the ride operator is a little annoyed people are holding out for the final train instead of filling out the cars.
Train ahead of us dispatched. I forget whether we were on the last roller coaster of the night
And ... done. The Beast is ready to go to bed for the night. I don't know if there was one last train still out on the course.
One of The Beast's lift hills, alongside the final brake run.
And there's the queue, all emptied out.
Trivia: When Gemini 3's retrorockets fired, in the cross-fire sequence of rockets 1, 3, 2, and 4, Gus Grissom was momentarily concerned by what happened to retro number 2. Source: Gemini: Steps to the Moon, David J Shayler.
Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.
