Attack of the Jim Jim Squad

Some nights you get a feel for how the games are going to go...and other nights you get some cool surprises. I showed up at laser tag right at the start of the night and in the briefing room I was the only woman (not entirely unusual) among a swarm of overly confident high school jocks who came to the arena as a group and loudly determined that this game would just be their "warm-up" until more people started to arrive. I'm not sure if they even noticed me...yet.

I do love being underestimated and they sure didn't see me coming. Typically I can tell when players don't expect for me to have any laser tag skills and I love the moment of realization that hits at some point during the game. I won that round on points and that set the tone for the evening, but things got better after the next game. A few more players arrived and I found myself playing on the red team with three young guys who just showed up while all the jocks joined together to make one big team of double our size...clearly they thought a victory was imminent. What was really cool about the guys on my team was that they too were flying under the radar at that point...all were great players and our little team easily dominated the game in spite of having significantly fewer participants on our side.

After the game the guys from my team came over to me, offered me a congratulatory Mountain Dew and introduced themselves. They suggested teaming up again and it was the start of a victorious night for what became called "The Jim Jim Squad" (I don't know what it means either...they came up with the name and some little rubber ducks from the prize counter became our mascots...cool by me).

(Tyler, Joe, Will and me...The Jim Jim Squad)

Our team had a few things going for us. Besides experience, there was some decent strategy involved with playing on a team with people who knew the arena and understood the scoring values. We anticipated what the other teams' players might do and we knew what had to be done in a logical order to keep the scores high. Plus good teamwork makes a tremendous difference in trying to scoot a group of opposing players away from a base you need to rack up team points. Our team continued to be a powerhouse all night long. I had a particularly good streak personally (top score every single game of the night...I'm not sure if I've ever had an unbroken streak that good happen before or not, but it sure helped me keep my momentum strong). Credit goes to my team for that also because I know I had solid players watching my back too. Thanks guys! One game I hit a personal best for the night at 12,300 (playing Zone) which I was really happy with. And we all had very good rankings. Every one of us was always in the upper tier of the scores and our team solidly held at least two out of the three top placements in every game. So it was a really good night for the JJS! :-)

During the height of the laser tag night there were around 30 players in the game, but by the last round we looked around and realized that there were only six of us left. The four of us, plus two additional players who teamed up with us somewhere in the middle. Since we had been playing together all night and were all quite good we knew that this would be interesting. We split up into three teams of two and had a great final round. The scores were all really close and it was a fun match playing against each other since by that point in the evening we pretty well knew each other's playing strengths and strategy. Of course I prefer to play in a packed arena, but sometimes the smaller games are better when you are more evenly matched across the board.

By the end of the night we had played hard and won all of the games (well, ok, there was one round where technically our team came in second to the jock team, but that was really just a numbers variable...our players still held the top three individual scores that round...but our team collectively won every other game of the night outright). And, as testament to the fact that I waste WAY too much cash killing time in the arcade in between rounds, I took home an extra goodie tonight...a giant stuffed Butters from South Park.

So we took a victory photo with Butters and the Jim Jim ducks. Awesome night of laser tag!

Side note...my teammates are part of a band called Dusk Till Dawn. Here's their Facebook page...www.facebook.com/vengeanceofficialbandpage.

If you have questions or comments please visit my website at www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com or email me at tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com.