A Low Key Night

There was a really low key atmosphere last night... REALLY low key. I brought my coworker Spencer to tag to learn the ropes in preparation to sub on our league team. He did well. Although the competition was limited to the handful of people who showed up on this incredibly quiet night, that might have been for the best for learning the system.

A younger player who is clearly on fire for tag was playing as well. At one point when we crossed paths he shouted "Get her! Get her! Not me!" I teased him that this was a warrior battle call I was unfamiliar with. :) However, I was heartened by his enthusiasm. He is gaining skill and proud of his level five accomplishment and was a good reminder of what tag here could be like when it isn't all about...other stuff. I remember the feeling of ascendance (yes, pun intended) that I had not too long ago and somewhere along the lines that has started to slip. But playing, not to be competitive, but just to enjoy the game with some new blood was really nice and made it worth sticking around.

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Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com

Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com

Ummm.....

So, someone I know recently unlocked this achievement at our local Laserforce center...

I have no idea what was required to get this. Congrats on whatever the accomplishment, but...do any other Photon warriors take issue with anything here?

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Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com

Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com

I am Legend

This is not about the movie. It's about how last night I got to tag using my old standby pack "Legend" all evening long. It's just a psychological thing, but every time I use that pack it still takes me back in time and I feel primed and ready to bring my best game. Call it superstition or maybe just a self fulfilling event, but while wearing Legend I had a perfect undefeated streak with the top score in every game of the night. That felt good because I was playing against my favorite kind of competition...high school athletes. They bring a good game, yet they never see me coming.

Last night the competition was from a local high school track team. They came out to burn some energy before heading off to a competition in Pennsylvania the next day. When all was said and done a couple commented that they thought they'd be too tired to run following this night of tag. However, they certainly didn't start out like that.

The first game of the night the players had their own plans for the game and who they wanted on their team. They all split up evenly between the blue and green teams. That left me playing solo on the red as a team of one. And that was fine with me...plenty of targets, plenty of chance to surprise them. 

I buried the competition in that first game scoring more than double the next closest competitor. Obviously I had more targets for points, but there were a lot of them and only one of me. A tiny bit of offense and they could have certainly kept me in check...but instead Legend got to run the game. :)

After that they started to take note. One guy asked me if I was a professional. I never know what to say to that. First, because there's no such thing as "professional" laser tag. Second, because I know what kind of tournament scene really exists out there. To call myself a pro knowing my place in the bigger picture seems really incorrect. So I told him "maybe more like an advanced-intermediate" to not be "that girl". Well, for the rest of the night that guy kept calling me "semi-pro". Lol...works for me! :)

One of the most heartening things that took place happened after most of the athletes left. There were still a couple of games to go and the group divided into several teen guys against several teen girls...and me. Those girls were intimidated by the boys and I tried to help them stand strong and not run away. Stay and shoot and don't back down. Girl power! And by the end those girls had achieved a victory and I was really proud to be playing with them and helping to bolster their confidence in the arena. So it was a good night...and Legend played as Legend does. :)

It's a couple days belated, but I want to take this time to welcome our new Ascendance team players. 

Irina, Pavel and Eugeniy will be joining us at Baltigeddon next month. Welcome! Can't wait to play with you all on our team. It will be "Legend...wait for it...dary!"

Team Deathmatch

"Big Tiv" has decided to accentuate the positives this morning...and, by the way, that nickname is NOT one of them! :) I will start by feeling good about the fact our team won a third of the games we played despite having only half of our expected team there. Here's how the night started…

I walked in and Beanz asked me what was up with my team. Until that moment I had no reason to think that anything was up with my team...surprise! For various reasons three out of the six of us were MIA as of the start time. Sigh. This was me at about quarter after five last night...

We were all brainstorming for replacements who might be able to drop everything at a moment's notice (not so easy) and about an hour later the games got started with Lenny and J-Dawg thankfully subbing in. Huge shout out to those two! If you are counting, you are correct that that only adds up to five players. We were not the only ones in this boat, so we just played with teams of five last night. I maintain my quiet opinion that we should have remained a five man league from the get-go, but que sera.

So we played rounds of Team Deathmatch. In short, Capture The Flag with no flags. Instead you could tag a base for a power-up or special mode (stealth, invulnerability, rapid fire, etc.), but you had to cycle the bases before going back for more. And you have to tag someone five times before they deactivate. As a game format it was a little...well, all over the place. But enjoyable. And we had some success while learning the game (which was a brand new format to several of us).

There were a few other games that were close. There were also a couple where our team didn't win, but I enjoyed some "personal victories". Nuff said.

We were supposed to play some Photon at the end of the night to compensate for lost games because the league will not be playing next week. However, after a late start and the time it would have taken to explain the game we ended up pushing those games off for now. It's cool, I was ready to call it a night by then anyhow.

Bringing this full circle, I will end on another positive...my nails were on point. Ok, you say why do I keep posting photos of my manicure? 

Well, this week they are looking a bit like laser tag accessories, so I'm going to consider that a victory too. :)

Comments or questions?

Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com

Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com

Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com

Accountability and Replaceability

So here's a hypothetical story. Let's say you have a player who wants to join a league and gets placed on a team. If the team is required to have a particular number of players in the arena during the games you might figure on relying on such a player to be accountable to their decision to be part of the league and show up to play for the team. What might get irritating is if that person makes comments such as "Now that I'm on a team I'll play hard" leading you to think he has acknowledged having a place on the team and then when you ask him what weeks he is available, getting a non-committal reply such as "I'm the kind of person who will be there when I can and won't when I can't". Still though, even in the wishy-washiness of a comment like that you might still think there's an understanding of such a player being on your team...when he decides to be there at all. Well, if such a player hears that a member of an opposing team has to back out you might expect him to say something like "that's a shame"...not "I'll sub for him" leaving others to ask "are you ditching your current team?" If the reply from such a player is "I never wanted to be on a team anyway, I just want to sub for different teams" then it sure might sound like there's a lack of accountability and communication and it may all be for the best because you might not be able to grit your teeth and play nice after being "ditched"...in essence so that player can join a different team. That might even be enough to really light a fire under you to play harder than you would have anyway. Especially if you have five other people who are dedicated, practiced and passionate players who might perceive this other person's actions as a juvenile way to straddle the fence in a competition. Have you enjoyed my hypothetical story?

On a completely unrelated note...we are happy now to welcome our newest addition David to the league team to fill a recently vacated spot. No connection to the hypothetical story at all. ;)

 

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Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com

Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com

Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com

Bhodi Li Speaks - An Interview with Christopher Lockwood

I would like to thank Chris Lockwood for making some time to talk with me this past week and allowing me to conduct the first and only interview he has ever done about his time playing the role of Bhodi Li on the Photon television series. The series was filmed in Japan in 1986, making this year the 30th anniversary of the show. Check out photonforever.com for this exclusive interview.

Enjoy!

 

 

Comments or questions?
Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com

The League Begins (aka Return of the Jim Jim Squad)

Last night the local Laserforce league got underway and the Jim Jim Squad was represented...because we never changed our team name. :) This was intended to be a five man team competition, but as it seems to always go, things changed along the way. Starting with our five. Four of us have been pretty solid from the start. At the beginning of the night I introduced Joe and Tommy to Mitch and established the nucleus of our team. We also established that Mitch and I both appreciate the awesomeness of Photon based on our matching Photon hats.

 

 

Now, a preface...

Let me say thank you to Beanz for organizing this. Bear in mind this all happens in the context of this being a fun opportunity for competitive play that I am glad to have, accompanied by appreciation for the fact that someone put effort into putting it all together.

Back to the story...

I knew we'd be joined by a fifth person replacing Facundo and later in the night Himes introduced himself. So there you go, five people...but it's never so simple. Although a goal of this league was to introduce new players and limit the number of tournament players to a team...well, it seems that not everyone (A) got on board with the goal by finding any new recruits and (B) counted how many people make five. Long story short, we mostly played with teams of six last night. But because of those same couple of factors (see points A and B) players were being borrowed from some teams to temporarily fill spots on others so that six people would be on a team at any given time even if they didn't originally plan to have six. To appreciate the rest of the night it's important to have a handle on this fact because it plays a role in understanding what followed.

I'm going to skip over my anecdotal examples of the trouble I see with borrowing players if it isn't essential. Don't get me wrong, I admire people who pinch hit when needed (injury, subbing for a no-show), but in this case this was a result of changing the numbers at the last minute to accommodate the preferences of those who didn't get a team together in advance (as opposed to a lack of teams who planned ahead for five players). But that's my own internal sand grain. :)

Would it have mattered to the end results of the night if that had started with original rosters? Probably not. As it was, we were the underdog team with the least Force experience and were going up against people who play regularly and quite competitively, some in serious tournaments. So, while we spent most of the night coming in second to stronger teams, we found our satisfaction in knowing that our scores were generally quite close. At some point Zac ended up on our team also, so we had six for most of the games. I am proud of how well we kept up all night. Everyone acknowledged that, in spite of the losses, we were keeping pace and appeared to be reasonably evenly matched. So we took satisfaction in that.

However, before the night was done we managed to pull a victory that helped give us the psychological push we probably needed at that point. Our David and Goliath moment occurred in this game where we played against the team I perceive to have some of the strongest players. We won by a sliver, but we did it.

 

 

Which is awesome because up until that point I thought the only victory we'd see was Joe commandeering the jukebox and forcing the other players to listen to this...https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ScVfwoKIWds

And, don't get me wrong, that would have almost been enough to make my night right there. :) But when all was said and done, even though there were things that happened that were not ideal, I felt like we had a good time and got some close games out of it. And as a secondary gain I acquired a new skill...I played Guitar Hero for the first time!

Thanks to everyone on our team...those who planned to be there and those who joined at the last minute. It was a pleasure getting to play with you all last night and I look forward to playing with you more over the next few weeks.

So, that was the first night of our league experience. Lots more still to come!

 

Comments or questions?

Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com

Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com

Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com