2 Season 2 Update

Season is crawwwwwwling.  Real-life conflicts, lots of other store events (and Spring) competing for attention, the previously-undefeated store owner completely devastated about his team's recent spat of injuries, matches scheduled haphazardly throughout the week keeping the rest of the coaches in the dark.  It will be a grind to finish even this 6-week season, and then the game will certainly get shelved at least for awhile.  It's a shame, but I don't know how to fix it.  Obviously a fixed playtime would help as far as keeping everyone in the loop, maybe 1 Saturday a month type deal, and most but not all coaches would be able to make it.  Hmm.  People still ask about it, and the most enthusiastic coaches still discuss, but the league is certainly on life support.

I SHOULD be the most enthusiastic, if I wasn't ready to take a break from it.  My Humans are (W-T-L) 4-1-0 for the season, and 6-4-0 total, and get more and more dangerous every game.  Handing the store owner his second straight defeat on Week 5 all but locks me in at the #1 seed in the bracket, and leaves me 1 game left regrettably against a very bashy, very murderous Necro team.

Playoffs should be fun, if they happen.  Looks like the Wooden Spoon is going to the same guy this season: Orcs with an absurd 0-2-3 record, still after 9 games and 5 deaths chasing that elusive win.  Or at least level-up.  He finishes the season vs. our current league #2 (Runner-up last season as well).

Season 2 Update

No good time for updates for these sorts of things.  End of week, maybe?  Some weeks are certainly more noteworthy than others.  But otherwise I'm likely to forget interesting details.  I've also been busy with store runnings, the kind of thing that starts with "Where do I store these BB pitches?" and ends with, "Maybe I can clean out this room and set up these shelves and sweep."  On the BB logistics side we have not one, but TWO new dads, which is exactly as disruptive as it sounds, so I'm racing to get into the playoffs before the whole thing goes off the tracks.  We are behind, finishing up Week 4 tonight and with 2 regular season Weeks left.  We have some close races, I'm still creating the weekly leaderboards, there is still momentum, but with the coming of Spring the priority level of the game has dropped in general.  It has gone from a 3-days-a-week to 1-day-a-week activity for the league, and with the corresponding loss in visibility.  I think that's ok, but the honeymoon is over and we're settling into the mature phase where BB definitely takes a backseat to many other games/projects.

What DOES concern me, though, is that visibility is what draws new coaches in, to keep us at the magic 8.  The store organization is not at the point where it can give us much help there (which is a big reason for my getting involved), and so I'm worried about where that new interest is going to come from.  The other pressure is from INside the gates; the game length is drawing a real bad rep from people.  We're having trouble getting our games in under 4.5 hours, and it's slowly sapping people.  I need to implement game timers, or at least try them, even though ironically no one is asking for them.  It's the frog in the boiling pot.  In true penny-pinching fashion, I'll use some website on a laptop to try it out.  The first time it'll get rolled out, and here's a kicker, is the grudge match between me and the Norse.

I am leading the league, haven't lost but I've had some damn lucky Turn 16 wins, including my patent-pending 14-Square Pass.  Norse is second, he played last week against a prepared and focused Chaos team who took him apart.  This leaves him with one AG-boosted runner and a skillless Yeti (if he rebuys for one match) against my Human team.  My team has leaned on a lot of luck, armor breaks, Guard-spam in a Guard-less league, and Dauntless.  That Guard in particular has set me up with a very good casualty record, including pummeling the Chaos team the week before he pummeled the Norse.

What we’re playing for isn’t nearly as exciting as Swiss: seeds 1&2 (or 3, whatever) for the bracket.  I don’t like fixed-schedule, it’s nice that games can occassionally get done early logistics-wise and no one has to ask who they play next but it’s much more bland than Swiss and many games are insignificant.  I will do a swiss regular season and brackets, the best of both worlds, for Season 3.