FML – Moving from Winter to Spring

This week saw the final round of the Winter/Awards season for Fantasy Movie League.

While I am still holding out for the summer blockbuster season before I return to focusing on the league as a regular feature here, if you wanted to join in for a practice season now would be a good time.  I will put a link in the comments after this post goes live.  The links expire, so I don’t want to put it in the post in advance.

As for the season just passed, here were the final top ten scores.

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $964,413,237
2. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $941,196,773
3. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $861,126,227
4. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $786,513,610
5. Too Orangey For Crows – $784,396,889
6. Joanie’s Joint – $739,435,908
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $707,973,439
8. grannanj’s Cineplex – $696,783,637
9. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $682,821,329
10. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $621,049,944

That is the same people in the top three slots as my mid-season summary, though the final positions changed a bit.

Goat and I were neck and neck, with me behind by a mere $600K, at the end of week ten.  But then I made bad picks on the last two weeks.  Goat and SynCaine both went with the Alita lineup in week 11 and How to Train Your Dragon plus Happy Death Day 2U lineup in week 12 that were both runaway picks, weeks where if you don’t get those you fall way behind.  That lifted Goat and SynCaine well past my score.

That I was even in contention was probably a bigger surprise.  I didn’t win a single week, while SynCaine and Goat won 10 of the 12 weeks combined. I just didn’t make a really bad pick until the end.

And then there is the alternative scoring methodology which, as a reminder, hands out a score to the top ten finishers each week, with first place getting 10 points, second getting 9 points, and so on down the line, which is an attempt to remove the scoring volatility that some weeks show when the FML team is off in their pricing.

1. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 96
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 85
3. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – 84
4. Too Orangey For Crows – 69
5. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 65
6. Joanie’s Joint – 55
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – 48
8. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 44
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 41
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – 37

In that scoring SynCaine came out in first place, well ahead of Goat in second and myself in third.

While SynCaine only won 4 weeks to Goat’s 6, SynCaine also never fell out of the top ten on any week while Goat did so twice.  Despite never winning a week I held on to third place by consistently staying in the top five finishers every week, save for the final two, where I placed sixth.

And so it goes, another season down.

The Spring season will be a long one, running 14 weeks, ending after the US Memorial Day weekend. That seems late, and puts the start of the Summer Blockbuster season out until the first week of June.

If I had been paying closer attention I could have changed the duration of the Spring season for the TAGN league.  However, now that the season has started, we’re stuck with 14 weeks.  No changing after a season goes live.

I am thinking about possibly changing the Summer season.  I could cut it up into two or three shorter seasons; maybe two six week seasons (or a six and a seven) or three four week seasons (or two fours and a five to line things up).  That would let people come and go on vacation without them messing up a whole season as well as stopping that inevitable second half drag where anybody who started off with a couple of bad weeks feels they are totally out of contention.

Anyway, feedback on that idea is welcome.