"You Got The Best One"

It had been about a month since I'd gotten back to play in Albany for some Zone Infusion, so I ended my day out east so I could take advantage of their Thursday night special. I have to say I was really impressed with the crowd they drew on a weeknight. There were steadily around 20-25 players, and past the first game they were all adult players. I could identify two factions that came out...one group was college aged kids and I assumed they were all from the same local university. The other were employees from a local business who told me they were there taking part in an employee challenge. So this was an excellent night because everyone was there to play the game hard.

I was there to play hard too and was off to a very solid start. I was consistently pulling the top score. In fact, the first four games in a row I took the top spot. I picked a pack at random in the beginning, but then I stuck with it all night, so I played as "Link". After four consecutive wins I must say the other team caught on and made a target out of me. By game five I could have used some team support because there were three guys there who came at me and I was a little irritated I could get no backup out of my team who was too focused on not leaving the bridge. I took third that game, but then came back for another couple of wins...was hoping for a perfect night, but at least I know my scores were earned because those guys were not giving it up without a fight.

I enjoyed the competition with these guys. All the more so because I was using my newly acquired hint from last week left and right on these guys...(is that courteous?) because I didn't know if it would work with the older equipment we were playing on, but it did :) One guy couldn't believe I was consistently getting the shot while right in front of him so mid-game he asked to change packs, convinced there was something wrong with his. Once he did I enjoyed continuing to do exactly what I was doing and prove that there was nothing wrong with either pack as my shots kept coming.

I chatted in the vesting room with a few of the employee challenge members. One woman asked if I was there to check out the competition as she noticed I was wearing my Laser Edge t-shirt picked up during the Armageddon. I said no, that Laser Edge was in Michigan and I was just there practicing tonight for a tournament. Another gentleman asked me a bit more about that and I explained that in this case when I say "practice" I just mean "keeping up the chops" and shared some of the differences between what we were doing here tonight versus what was involved with the upcoming competition. However, the best interaction I had all night was with another employee from the group who inadvertently (absolutely no ill intent here) gave me the most backhanded compliment I've ever received and here it is...

This guy looked at the name on my pack and saw I was again playing as Link. Then he told me I was lucky, I got the best pack because that "gun" has been getting the highest scores all night! Disregarding for a moment that he called it a gun (it's a phaser...this is not real battle) I had to take a slight bit of issue with the fact that he was giving all the credit to my pack. I tried to politely say it isn't the pack and he didn't quite get what I meant. Then one of the college guys spoke up and clarified, it's not the "gun", it's the person doing the shooting that racked up the scores. Ah...lightbulb. :) He followed up with another nice sentiment by wondering aloud if since I was on his team if he could count my scores towards the company team's average. I hope they did well, however, I left before the second to last game. This Tivia is tired people...my final round I was moving much more slowly and sniping from a corner because I was worn out after this long day. So I told the guys at the counter that "I'm too old for this (smile), I'm going home" and wrapped up another excellent night playing in Albany.

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