The December Update for EVE Online brings War Dec Changes, New Ships, and the Start of the Holiday Event

It is time for the December update for EVE Online.  One of the key things up front for this update are changes to the War Dec system.  CCP put out a dev blog on these initial changes, but the key is eligibility.  As was discussed previously, this change will not allow players to war dec a corporation unless it owns a structure.  The following structures count:

• All Upwell Structures (including Upwell FLEX structures)
• Starbase Control Towers
• Player-owned Customs Offices
• Sovereignty Structures (Infrastructure Hubs and Territorial Control Units)

If your corp does not own one of those structures then you should be immune to war declarations.

And, to close a glaring loophole, the second change is to add a setting to disallow structure transfers.  At least CCP could foresee that war dec corps would seek to bypass the structure rule by simply transferring a structure to their prospective victim and then declare war.  There is now a setting in the corporation details tab that allows automatic rejection of structure transfers, and the default setting for that will be true.

That is expected to be the first round of changed for war decs as CCP tries to figure out how to deal with this issue.

Also coming with the December update are two new Triglavian ships, the Rodiva and the Zarmazd.  These are the previously mentioned Triglavian logi cruisers.

Logi cruiser hull model

Unlike other Triglavian ships, this one comes as both tech I and tech II, aligning to the logi cruisers from the empires.  Only the blueprint for the Rodiva will drop and you must go through and do invention on the copy to get a Zarmazd blueprint.

There are also armor rep blueprints going in to match the two new ships, available as Abyssal drops.

The niche for these new logi ships is that their reps get stronger the longer they stay on their target.

Also coming to Abyssal space is a set period of invulnerability when transitioning through Abyssal gates.

The update also introduces the 2018 holiday even for EVE Online.

Thirteen Days Only

Called the Thirteen Days of EVE, you need to log your account in daily to claim prizes… like an advent calendar… but you have 17 days, so you could miss a couple days and still get all the presents.  The prizes include some new things EVE, including a standings booster, new Candy Chromatic SKINs, straight up skill points, and, for Omegas only, a booster with three uses that will allow the pilot to use skill injectors without the diminishing returns penalty.  That means people like me, with over 80 million SP on a character, could get the full 500K of skill points from an injector rather than the 150K one gets normally in that situation.

A sample of the rewards

That last item requires you to log in for the full thirteen days.  But that is easy enough and there is no reason not too.  Details are available at the event site.

The update also lays down the groundwork for the next in-game event, Operation Permafrost.

Coming soon

As usual, the event will come to you via The Agency and will require you to accumulate points for rewards.  At EVE Vegas is was mentioned that this event will bring your ship down into the atmosphere of a planet, giving the art team at CCP a chance to show off some more fancy new environments.  Details are currently up on the live event page.

Also on the graphics front, CCP has added atmospheric auroras to planets.  They only show up at random times though, so you have to be there at the right moment to catch them.

A Megathron spotting an aurora

Another possible background for screen shots.

A lot of the rest is just the usual tweaks and minor fixes that accompany any update for the game.  However, there is one innocuous one in the mix that I want to call out.  This one:

Adjustments have been made to the respawn rates of certain nullsec anomalies. These adjustments are part of a gradual ongoing process that will see further tweaks for this type of content.

As rumors have it, the “certain nullsec anomalies” are havens and that this is a direct poke at titan ratting.  Yes, titan ratting is a thing.  The alleged reason is that at the current respawn rate a titan can can use its boson doomsday, clear a haven, and another one will have spawned by the time the titan has recovered and is ready to keep rolling.  We will see if there is a corresponding dip in the NPC bounties with the coming of the December MER.

So that is it.  CCP has already announced that the update has been deployed successfully.  Information about it is available via the patch notes and the updates page.

How Various Studios Deal with Problems

I’m not sure where this post started, but it assembled itself at one point a few months back and then sat in my drafts folder.   I looked at it again earlier this week, added the entry for Activision, and scheduled it for release it into the wild today.

Electronic Arts

There is no problem, the customers like it just fine.  Look at how much money we made initially.

*way, way too long later*

Okay, now that you’ve set the building on fire, sales have tanked, our company is being lambasted in the general press, and the government is saying that they may investigate us, perhaps we can look into finding some sort of solution.  But we admit no wrong doing.

Blizzard

There is no problem, things are just fine the way they are.  No, you don’t want the changes you’re yelling about.  We designed this, we know it is good.  Really, we know better.

*endless forum threads and editorials later*

Fine, have it your way, we’ll give you your feature.  But we’re going to delay it and we’ll make you work for it.  Also, we’ll make sure it doesn’t work all the time.

Activision

Yes, our numbers totally depend on an annual Call of Duty release, but we can smooth out that cycle!

*Gets on phone to Irvine*

Blizzard, stop worrying about quality and start making mobile games!  Also, put Call of Duty on your launcher!

King

We can’t live on Candy Crush Saga forever…

*releases half a dozen mobile games that go nowhere*

Crap, get some more levels out for Candy Crush Saga!

Sony Online Entertainment

We’re proposing to break the game and ruin all your fun and maybe sell your offspring to another company.  We talked about it in a conference room for a few days, so we’re pretty sure this is the right decision.  It was really, really convincing on the white board.  We didn’t run it by anybody, we just came straight from the meeting where it was decided and announced it.  So all good.

*one small riot later*

Wait, you don’t want any of that?  How strange.  Okay, we won’t do it then.

Daybreak

*sound of crickets*

Okay, we’re shutting this down and laying some people off, go away!

*sound of crickets*

CCP

We have listened to your feed back and determined that this upcoming new feature is not exploitable.

*update goes live*

Crap, you exploited it anyway… and in so many ways…  you are horrible, horrible people… let me get the band-aids.

Valve

Yes, we hear you.  We know we have a problem and we have a policy that will totally fix it.

*two beats too many*

Oh, and we might need to build something to support that policy.  But we’ll get to that later.  Also, the policy has a glaring loophole and we aren’t really following it.  Hey, is it time for another sale already?

Rockstar Games

Well, we released GTA V, what should we work on next?

*five years go by*

Cowboys again?

Riot

We are hardcore gamers, but we’re against toxicity and are masters at playing gay chicken.  Wait, no, scratch that last part.

*stands in front of “No Gurls” sign*

Equal opportunity.  Yeah.

*handed pink slip*

#@%&*!!!

Fall Movie League – The Selection of Hannah Grace

Here we are, the last week of our Fall Fantasy Movie League is done, and all that is left really is a bit of narrative and a totaling up of the final scores.

For the final week there were no big new films to rock the boat.  The anchor choices were pretty much the same as week twelve.  Here was the list:

Ralph Breaks the Internet       $460
The Grinch                      $334
Creed II                        $304
Fantastic Beasts 2              $205
Bohemian Rhapsody               $144
Instant Family                  $134 
Robin Hood                      $73
Widows                          $67
Green Book                      $64
The Possession of Hannah Grace  $57
A Star is Born                  $32 
The Nutcracker                  $27
The Favorite                    $18
Boy Erased                      $14
Nobody's Fool                   $8

As I often do, I focused a lot on the anchor and left the filler aside.

After swapping back and forth over the course of the week I settled on Ralph for my main anchor.  I was with him on Monday 1x Ralph, 1x Creed II, 1x Bohemian Rhapsody, and 5x The Favorite.

Later in the week I was less sure and experimenting, ending up with 1x Ralph and 7x Widows.

I wish I could say that was a well thought out pick, but in reality it was something I was tinkering with and copied over to think about at some point on Thursday.  And then I forgot about it until about an hour after the leagues all locked and I was stuck with that.

I did think that Widows could possibly have a shot at best performer, though I honestly should have kept to six screens of it given how much of my budget was left over.  And Widows did end up as the second best price performer, but a silver medal counts for naught in the scores.

Instead, come the Saturday morning estimates The Possession of Hannah Grace was way up the charts relative to its FML pricing.  While the long range tracking forecast it around $3 million, it was headed past $6 million.

I guess I am not the only one who has trouble gauging the horror genre during the holiday season.

The film did not sag at all come the Sunday estimates, were its earnings per film buck was double Widows.  So unless you had multiple screens of Hannah Grace you were not going to do very well on the final week.  The scores for the week ended up like this:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $89,976,297
2. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $83,985,996
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $81,370,880
4. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $79,691,857
5. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $56,857,828
6. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $56,389,016
7. Joanie’s Joint – $55,913,962
8. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $55,497,987
9. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $55,497,987
10. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $55,437,311
11. I HAS BAD TASTE – $55,097,185
12. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $55,029,759
13. Too Orangey For Crows – $54,645,486
14. grannanj’s Cineplex – $54,536,607
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $54,536,607
16. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $54,142,730

Corr, Ben, Goat and SynCaine all bet on Hannah Grace.  Corr even got the perfect pick, which was 1x The Grinch, 1x Creed II, and 6x Hannah Grace.

Between them and the rest of the pack was more than a $20 million gap.  The gap between the top and bottom of the remaining twelve people who played… full score list here on the final week… was less than $3 million.  A tight race amongst those who eschewed Hannah Grace.

That left the overall scores for the season looking like this:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $1,002,236,972
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $994,216,623
3. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $970,491,788
4. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $969,867,323
5. Too Orangey For Crows – $949,946,148
6. I HAS BAD TASTE – $939,059,282
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $920,250,209
8. grannanj’s Cineplex – $915,931,935
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $900,117,327
10. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $899,596,418
11. Joanie’s Joint – $871,223,508
12. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $857,227,598
13. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $819,287,831
14. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $792,913,965
15. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $782,972,039
16. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $559,786,290

Goat going with Hannah Grace was enough for them to hold onto first place.  Corr’s perfect pick jumped him over me and into second place by a fair margin.  The surprise was Ben, who was off to a slow start the season, but who rallied in the last few weeks and managed to push me into fourth place by a little more that $600K.

And on the alternate scoring front, Corr managed to elude the one scenario that would deny him first place.

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – 81
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 69
3. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – 62
4. Ben’s X-Wing Express – 58
5. Too Orangey For Crows – 57
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 48
7. I HAS BAD TASTE – 47
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 43
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 42
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – 38
11. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 38
12. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 38
13. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – 34
14. Joanie’s Joint – 28
15. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – 17
16. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 15

Corr took first and Goat second, with me in third.  Ben continued his climb up the list, but I was able to hold him off here, so he ended up in fourth place.

As for scoring this, everybody managed to make it into the top ten at least three times.  Only Corr managed to make it there every week of the season.  While the end ranking wasn’t radically different that the traditional cumulative scores, it was different.  It could also be much more volatile from week to week.  However, no scoring system that accumulates over thirteen weeks is going to let you “catch up” at the end, so the top three were near the top during the latter half of the season.

Congrats to Goat and Corr, winners of the two different scoring systems.

Here is where usually write about what films are coming up this week.  However, as I noted last week, I am taking a break from this until the summer blockbuster season rolls around again.  Still, I am half tempted just to do a “what’s new at the movies” post every Wednesday.  After a year and a half of posts just about every week about FML, movies on Wednesday is almost a thing.

Unfortunately, nothing big is hitting this week for FML.  In fact, there isn’t much compelling coming up for the whole Winter season.  At least not for me.  My wife is excited for Mary Poppins Returns, the original being one of her favorite movies from childhood.  But when Mary Poppins comes up I start in with whether or not anybody would know who Julie Andrews even was if she hadn’t done Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music so early in her career.

Anyway, as I said, the league will stay up.  If you have your own league you want me to join I’m game.  I’ll be back some the summer with more FML posts.  I do wonder what I will post on Wednesday now.

Fall Movie League – Ralph Breaks the Deadlock

Penultimate.  I’m only sorry I failed to use my favorite word in last week’s post when looking over the options.  But now week twelve, the penultimate week, of our Fall Fantasy Movie League is done and gone and there is only one more chance to do well or blow it.

The week twelve options were as follows:

Ralph Breaks the Internet $566
Creed II                  $363
Fantastic Beasts 2        $362 
The Grinch                $307 
Bohemian Rhapsody         $146
Instant Family            $127
Robin Hood                $94
Widows                    $94
Green Book                $68
A Star is Born            $39
The Nutcracker            $36
Overlord                  $22
Boy Erased                $15
The Front Runner          $12
Nobody's Fool             $11

We had a couple of big new anchors on the list.

It was pretty obvious that Ralph Breaks the Internet was going to get the top spot, the question was whether or not it would be worth the price.

How Creed II would fare was less certain.  It was poised and priced for second place, but Thanksgiving weekend tends to be a kids movie weekend.  Then again, counter programming for adult sports fan might work.

Fantastic Beasts 2 was into its second week while The Grinch was on his third.  There was a match up of the Harry Potter universe sans Harry Potter against The Grinch in his primal season.  The moment you’re done with your last slice of pumpkin pie the law says it is Christmas season.

And then there was Bohemian Rhapsody and Instant Family.  BR was aging but still had some strength while Instant Family was priced to move after failing to meet expectations on its opening week.

For the Monday Hot Takes league I was feeling like Fantastic Beasts 2 might be the anchor of choice.  It is hard to beat Harry Potter, even when it lacks Harry Potter.

However, on Tuesday evening my wife and I went and saw the confused mess that is Fantastic Beasts 2.  Harry Potter, as a series, has always felt more than a bit ad hoc to me, picking up and dropping things at a whim, but at least each movie had a weighty tome behind it to explain things.  Not so with FB2, which put me off it as an anchor.  And while my personal views about a movie are rarely a good guide, this time around my gut served me well.

As part of the holiday week, the new titles officially opened on Wednesday rather than Friday, which meant no preview dollars to work into ones calculations.  It also meant a bunch of five day forecasts, rather than the usual three day weekend versions.

On the upside, we all got a good look at how the week’s line up was doing starting with the Tuesday night previews.  Both Ralph Breaks the Internet and Creed II looked to be out performing expectations.  Likewise, The Grinch was doing solid, secure in the holiday season.

In the end I decided to opt for two screens of Creed II, though in hindsight I should have gone for a screen each of Ralph and Creed.  My hope was that filler would make up the difference, and my lineup was 2x Creed II, 2x Widows, 1x A Star is Born, 1x Overlord, and 2x The Front Runner.

Come the Saturday morning estimates, Ralph looked to have the best performer nod, which grants it an additional $2 million per screen.  But the numbers were very close and Saturday is often a fool’s paradise as the estimates are pretty rough.

On Sunday though, Instant Family took over as the estimated best performer, with the perfect pick anchored on five screens of it, giving it a $10 million boost.  But the estimates were still very close.

When the actuals started rolling in, Instant Family came up a bit short on its estimates and fell out of the best performer role, to be replaced by The Grinch.  At that point SynCaine had the perfect pick.  But the numbers necessary for another change were still too close to feel secure about anything.  Then the Ralph and Creed II numbers came in and Ralph was on top again.  At that point everything hinged on how well The Grinch did.  I just needed to do about $300K better than its estimated box office, barely a 1% change, something that is pretty standard on any given week.

However, when The Grinch finally reported, he was up just 0.6% from the estimate.  Ralph took the best performer nod.  That was not good for me, knocking me out of the top ten for another week.

The numbers for the week ended up like this:

1. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $99,473,989
2. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $99,214,810
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $99,205,717
4. I HAS BAD TASTE – $99,205,717
5. grannanj’s Cineplex – $98,144,855
6. Too Orangey For Crows – $97,873,450
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $96,974,610
8. Goat Water Picture Palace – $94,271,930
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $93,015,598
10. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $93,004,638

Ben took the week, and anybody who went with Ralph and Creed II as anchors made it past the $99 million mark.  Still, it was a tight week with the gap between high and low of those who picked standing at about $7 million.

That tight of a range meant not much movement in the overall season totals, which ended up looking like this:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $920,866,092
2. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – $913,478,307
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $904,240,326
4. Too Orangey For Crows – $895,300,662
5. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $886,505,792
6. I HAS BAD TASTE – $883,962,097
7. grannanj’s Cineplex – $861,395,328
8. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $844,566,659
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $843,259,499
10. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $840,558,352

The gap between Goat and I is close enough that I might be able to make it to first, so long as we don’t pick such similar line ups again.  Corr isn’t too far back, but the gap is big enough that Goat and I probably have to pick badly for him to have a hope at first place.

On the alternate scoring front though, things look much rosier for Corr.

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – 71
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 61
3. Wilhelm’s Kul Tiras Kino – 57
4. Too Orangey For Crows – 57
5. Ben’s X-Wing Express – 49
6. I HAS BAD TASTE – 47
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 41
8. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 41
9. grannanj’s Cineplex – 38
10. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 38

Corr isn’t a 100% lock to win the alternate scoring, but in order for him to fall into second he has to forget to pick or pick so badly that he doesn’t make the top ten AND Goat has to get first place.

Ben’s rise up the ranks has probably reached its zenith, though he could get up to third place if he can manage another first place finish and both Bhagpuss and I do poorly.

So that is how it stands.  The volatile alternate scoring looks to have already picked its winner while the traditional scoring, where the winner is generally obvious by now, still has a couple of possible outcomes.

All of which brings us to the final week, week thirteen, and the titles we have to work with.

Ralph Breaks the Internet       $460
The Grinch                      $334
Creed II                        $304
Fantastic Beasts 2              $205
Bohemian Rhapsody               $144
Instant Family                  $134 
Robin Hood                      $73
Widows                          $67
Green Book                      $64
The Possession of Hannah Grace  $57
A Star is Born                  $32 
The Nutcracker                  $27
The Favorite                    $18
Boy Erased                      $14
Nobody's Fool                   $8

It is going to be an odd week as there are no big new releases, so we have to work with pretty much the same anchor options as before.

For filler we do lose Overlord and The Front Runner, getting The Possession of Hannah Grace and The Favorite in their place.

The Possession of Hannah Grace is a supernatural horror film… just the season for that… involving an exorcism gone wrong, a midnight morgue delivery, and demonic possession.  I know I always under estimate the draw of the horror genre, but is the timing on this bad enough?  Long range tracking has it down for $3 million for its opening weekend.

Then there is The Favorite, an 18th century period-piece comedy drama, if that is really a thing, about two women competing for the favor of Queen  Anne.  It stars Olivia Coleman (Hot Fuzz, Broadchurch) as the queen, with Emma Stone (La La Land, Birdman) and Rachel Weisz (so many damn things, but the only one of the three to be a guest on The Simpsons), who are all top notch, but it isn’t even being tracked and the pricing puts it at like a third of The Possession of Hannah Grace, so call it maybe $1 million?

Where does that leave us?

Ralph is going to be strong, and there is enough cheap filler that you can get away with two screens of it and not face an empty slot penalty.  But you really have to believe.

The Grinch is in his home season, enough so that it is the one film that went up in price this week.  But it is also going into its fourth week and the kids are all back in school until Christmas, so will it be worth the money?

Fantastic Beasts 2 is still Harry Potter without Harry Potter and in its third week… and remains a mess that only a true fan could love or understand.

Then, for the adult audiences, there is a Creed II in its second week and Bohemian Rhapsody going into its fifth.

And, finally, you can go with as many as seven screens of Instant Family as an anchor if you’re feeling it for Marky Mark.

For me it is a toss up between two screens of Ralph and three screens of Creed II, each supported by some very cheap filler options.  Maybe two screens of The Grinch, if it looks like it is staying strong, and some more expensive filler to back it up.  No matter what, it seems likely to be a slow week, so my hopes of catching first place are probably only slightly better that Goat’s hopes to win the alternate scoring title.

My Monday Hot Takes compromise pick is 1x Ralph, 1x Creed II, 1x Bohemian Rhapsody, and 5x The Favorite on the hope that this is the season for 18th century period-piece comedy dramas.

Finally, as a heads up, at the end of this season, which will come to a close with next week’s post, that will be it for FML here for a while.  I will be taking a break from running and posting about the TAGN league.

If somebody else wants to run a league, blog about it, or whatever, I’ll join in.  And I will leave the TAGN league up and still likely pick every week.  I just won’t be doing any posts about it here.  The plan is to get back to that for the summer blockbuster season again in 2019.

SuperData Research Shows WoW Slipping Further and LoL Still in Second

SuperData Research released their October 2018 charts just before the US Thanksgiving Holiday.

SuperData Research Top 10 – October 2018

On the PC end of the chart there seems to have been a new status quo reached for the top four, with League of Legends continuing to run in second place after a long, long stretch in first.  Proof, I suppose, that no game is king forever.

Fortnite popped up to fifth place in October, ahead of the new Call of Duty: Black Ops III.  That left World of Warcraft down in seventh, where it tends to live when there isn’t an expansion to sell.  You may doubt WoW, but being able to hang in seventh with nothing new to sell it still a decent trick.

The rest of the list is rounded out by PUBG, World of Tanks, and another new title, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

On the console chart Call of Duty: Black Ops III grabbed the top spot for October, ahead of the much talked about Red Dead Redemption 2. Fortnite stayed in the top half of the chart, grabbing third spot while FIFA 19, new to the September chart dropped back to fourth.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey debuted at fifth spot, while NBA 2K19 sank to sixth and Marvel’s Spider-Man, the number two in September, dropped to seventh.  Then, proving that two titles from the same franchise can hold spots on the chart, FIFA 18 and Call of Duty: WWII held on in eight and ninth while Forza Horizon 4 grabbed tenth.

The number one title from September, Destiny 2, fell completely off the list for October.  Also gone missing was Grand Theft Auto V.  The 2013 title had been holding strong on the list for ages, occasionally taking the top spot.

At the mobile end Honour Kings maintained its hold on the top spot, but Pokemon Go showed its strength as made it into second position, up one slot from last month, getting ahead of QQ Speed. Likewise, Candy Crush Saga didn’t just hold on but moved from eighth to fourth spot in October.

Other items from the report:

• Gamers spent over $1B on console full game downloads for the first month ever
• Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII sets a new high mark for console digital units. We estimate Black Ops IIII sold an estimated 4.2 million units in October on consoles, a new single month record for digital console sales. PC sales also grew significantly year-over-year, but still represent a small minority of the user base.
• Grand Theft Auto V begins the holiday quarter on a low note. GTA V Online revenue in October showed a double digit decline both month-over-month and year-over-year. This marks the lowest earning month for GTA V in over two years and points to a tough road ahead as Red Dead Redemption 2 ramps up.
• Red Dead Redemption 2 sells 4 million digital units in less than a week. Roughly 67% of the units were purchased on PS4. Based on initial sell-through, we expect RDR2 to have the strongest ever quarter of digital console sales.
• Overwatch’s disappointing run continues. Overwatch microtransaction revenue in October was up from September due to the Halloween update but down 20% from last year. This now makes it five consecutive months of year-over-year declines for Overwatch, which had previously shown consistent growth since launch.
• Fortnite rebounds but loses top console spot to AAA releases. Fortnite revenue was up sequentially, and more than 20x what it made last October. This follows back-to-back months of sequential declines, although Fortnite is still off from its peak in July.

Summer Movie League – With a Whimper

And so it goes, week fourteen, the final week of our summer Fantasy Movie League is done.

And with that we have but to tally up the scores and declare the winner.  The choices for the final week were:

Crazy Rich Asians     $460
The Meg               $204
Mission: Impossible   $143
Operation Finale      $133
Christopher Robin     $116
Searching             $111
Happytime Murders     $108
Alpha                 $97
BlacKkKlansman        $92
Mile 22               $89
Kin                   $82
Incredibles 2         $62
Ya Veremos            $56
Hotel Transylvania 3  $49
A.X.L.                $44

And none of them really shook expectations, save for The Incredibles 2, which turned out to be the best performer for the week.  To answer last week’s question, I guess it is kids who go to see movies on Labor Day.  Or maybe not.  CRA still topped the box office.

I vacillated on picks over the course of the week.  On Monday I was in with 4x The Meg and 4x A.X.L. as my pick.  Come Friday morning I was spooked by some optimistic predictions and jumped on 7x Operation Finale and 1x The Incredibles 2.

But on Thursday morning my mind was set on 3x The Meg, 2x Alpha, and 3x The Incredibles 2.

Summer Movie League – My Week Fourteen Picks

As it turns out, even with no bonuses in the TAGN league, that was my best scoring pick.  It also wasn’t a bad pick overall.

The perfect pick for the league was a bit better, but not a ton better.  Three screens of The Meg appeared to be the best anchor when it came down to it.

Summer Movie League – Week Fourteen Perfect Pick

The thing is, this was a week without a huge winning or losing pick.  Everybody who picked this week ended up within a $11 million band of choices, which wasn’t enough to dislodge many people for their spots in the ranking.  The scores among those who were in for the final week looked like this:

1. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $68,033,788
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $67,688,509
3. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $65,327,962
4. Too Orangey For Crows – $61,869,121
5. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $61,846,280
6. Goat Water Picture Palace – $59,840,549
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $59,840,549
8. Joanie’s Joint – $59,840,549
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $59,840,549
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – $58,819,921
11. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $57,381,443

Only eleven people picked this week.  Vigo led the pack anchored on The Meg, while I was just behind with the same anchor but different filler.  Then Ben with a heavy bet on Mission Impossible, Bhagpuss with CRA as his anchor, and Miniature with and anchor on The Meg and Mission Impossible.

After that there was everybody who went with seven screens of Operation Finale, less Grannanj, who had a CRA anchored lineup.  That left the final scores for the season looking like this:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $1,233,260,784
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $1,192,800,479
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $1,168,442,901
4. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $1,099,917,789
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $1,068,381,300
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $1,053,023,190
7. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $1,050,270,086
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $1,046,285,672
9. Too Orangey For Crows – $1,012,717,545
10. Joanie’s Joint – $1,012,254,458
11. grannanj’s Cineplex – $1,003,319,433
12. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $996,001,692
13. I HAS BAD TASTE – $890,174,972
14. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $743,497,331

The narrow gap between first and last this week meant not much change, with the first eight spots a duplicate of last week.  Bhagpuss snuck back into the top ten by virtue of acing out Joanie by a hair and due to Po being out of town and not picking.

So there it is, the final score.  Corr takes the crown for the summer season!

And that is it for the summer blockbuster season.  As usual, it starts big but loses steam before Labor Day.  Look for another post in a bit about the updates for the Fall season.  Yes, there will be a Fall season.

Two Hundred Million Skill Points

I think it is somewhat fitting that this post lands on my character’s twelfth birthday.

Just past the milestone

Technically I crossed the line earlier than the screen shot above as I still have the 250,000 SP that CCP gave us a while back.  But I haven’t spent that yet, so made it past the mark without it.

The story so far:

• Start Playing EVE Online – August 2006
• Ten million – November 2007
• Twenty million – June 2008
• Thirty million – January 2009
• Forty million – August 2009
• Fifty million – March 2010
• Sixty million – November 2010
• Seventy million – August 2011
• Eighty million – June 2012
• Ninety million – December 2012
• One Hundred million – rolled right past with the battle cruiser split
• One Hundred and Ten million – September 2013
• One Hundred and Twenty million – April 2014
• One Hundred and Thirty million – October 2014
• One Hundred and Forty million – May 2015
• One Hundred and Fifty million – December 2015
• One Hundred and Sixty million – July 2016
• One Hundred and Seventy million – January 2017
• One Hundred and Eighty million – August 2017
• One Hundred and Ninety million – February 2018

So here we are at the 20th milestone and 18th post for this particular run.

Looking at that list of posts above gives a bit of insight as to when I was playing EVE Online and when I was taking a break.

Things started slow at first.  I played for a bit, then stopped, then came back, so it took over a year to get those first ten million done.  And that was back in the per-queue era where you could easily lose training time when training short skills as they would finish up in the middle of the night and you might not get back to put in a new skill before the next evening.

And then there were those skills that sped up skill training.  Those were Satan’s own idea.  I am sure somebody missed them when they were gone… every feature, no matter how bad, has its fans…

Eventually though that 24 hour skill queue showed up and had all the learning skills set and had some implants and started hitting 10 million skill point increments every seven to eight months when I was playing.

There was a slow down when I stopped playing in late 2010 and came back for just a bit in 2011 for the Incarna disaster, which sent me away again until late in the year.  Then I came back and Gaff coaxed me out into null sec just as a war was starting and I have stayed there ever since.  The story of null sec remains interesting enough to keep me playing, though even with that I have had my moments where I have nearly quit.  But something always comes up just as I get there and off I go on another adventure.

The stories of the game are one thing though, skill points another.  Sort of.  Every skill queue tells a story of its own I suppose, even if that story sometimes is, “I have no idea what I am doing.”

Anyway, here is where I stand on skills.

Spaceship Cmd        63,043,028 (63 of 79)*
Gunnery              18,546,396 (36 of 52)*
Drones               17,036,708 (22 of 26)*
Fleet Support        13,343,059 (14 of 15)*
Missiles             11,111,853 (22 of 26)
Navigation            9,660,314 (13 of 13)
Engineering           8,788,752 (15 of 15)*
Electronic Sys        8,119,689 (14 of 15)*
Armor                 6,131,137 (13 of 13)
Shields               6,074,039 (12 of 13)
Scanning              6,011,792(7 of 7)*
Science               5,714,282 (21 of 39)
Resc Processing       4,756,183 (22 of 37)
Subsystems            4,096,000 (16 of 16)
Trade                 3,821,020 (10 of 14)*
Neural Enhance.       3,801,275 (7 of 8)*
Targeting             3,207,765 (8 of 8)
Planet Mgmt           1,612,315 (5 of 5)
Structure Mgmt        1,446,824 (6 of 6)
Rigging               1,312,395 (10 of 10)
Production            1,157,986 (5 of 12)
Social                1,130,040 (5 of 9)
Corp Mgmt                24,000 (2 of 5)

Total              ~200,000,000 (355 of 444)

Skills categories with an asterisk are the ones that have changed since last check in.

Of course Spaceship Command remains at the top.  I don’t think I have ever had an update where some points didn’t go into that category, and nearly one skill point in every three ends up there.  This time around it was for the new Trigalvian ships.  With new ships around there is always a chance that Asher will come up with a doctrine around them and I like to be prepared.

Likewise, Gunnery saw a boost as I trained up the accompanying Triglavian weapon systems.

Drones saw me training up to be able to use tech II fighters.  That would require me to actually use my carrier, but I might do that some day.

Also on the list were some boosting skills under Fleet Support, getting all my Scanning skills up to V, Electronic Systems was likewise honing my ewar skills, Trade saw me training the customs office skill that reduces the taxes on Planetary Management, while Neural Enhancement was all about the neurotoxin skills to help me take drugs more better.

The skill by level work out as:

 Level 1 - 1
 Level 2 - 3
 Level 3 - 38
 Level 4 - 96
 Level 5 - 213

All that and I still cannot fly a titan.

I can, however, fly every subcap aside from the Monitor FC ship, and probably with whatever fit you can come up with.

It is an incredible luxury to be able to face doctrines change or Asher’s latest new fit and not have to worry about whether or not I can fly it.  The odds are very, very good that I can.  I still end up with too many ships sitting in my hangar gathering dust, but at least I can fly them.

My primary alt sits at about 140 million skill points, which seems like a lot, but I have been blindsided trying to stuff him into a ship only to find he doesn’t have something up to level V that Wilhelm trained ages ago.  Even now he is training up a missed skill.  That dreadnought I won has a tech II siege module on it, something I only found out the hard way and had to quickly swap Wilhelm back into the pilot’s seat before we got the orders to drop on that Nyx back at X47.

My next most well trained alt is less than 40 million skill points and using her is like trying to take apart a watch wearing oven mitts some days.  How did I cope when I went to null sec with just past 70 million skill points?

The same way everybody else does I suppose.  I flew the fits in the doctrine I could until I caught up.  There having been many doctrine changes over the years drove me to fill out my subcap dance card.

In the end though I still end up flying logi most of the time.  It is always needed and, unless things go to shit, generally allows me some time to gawk out the window as to what is going on.  Every once in a while I will fly something else, a doctrine ship of the line if I can get away with it, a booster if I can’t help it, or a tackler if we’re short.

This will be the last post in this series.  I think 200 million skill points is a good end point on a nice round number.  Even with a version of EVEMon working again it is is a bit of a pain to piece together all the numbers.  Plus, despite there always being more skills to train I think I am going to actually turn off the queue for Wilhelm at some point and let one of the alts on that account gain some skills.

A Drive Down to Delve for Rats and a Raitaru

The early ping said that there was an op planned for 02:00 EVE Online time, which is just about the optimal time for me.  That left enough time to get home, take care of various tasks (it was garbage night, among other things), have dinner, and watch a bit of TV with my wife (Lodge 49) before wandering off to play internet spaceships for a couple of hours.

With all that lined up I seemed set for the evening.

Of course AMC doesn’t just keep you from fast forwarding through commercials when watching their programs on demand, they actually inject more commercials into the stream so the show episode we watched, Corpus, ran well over an hour and into the start time for the op.  I left my wife at the credits and strode over to my computer and started logging into voice coms and the game.

As I did that I noticed a fifteen minute old ping from Asher apologizing for the early start for the op.  I was late, and late enough that I considered just going back to the couch to watch another episode.  I might have done just that if I was more enthusiastic about Lodge 49, but as it was I had already logged in so I figured I might as well ask the usual late-comer’s question, “Can I catch up?”

And it turned out that I could.  The early form up was to cover a Raitaru that was anchoring just one jump away, so I undocked in my Oneiros and warped off to join the group.

There we sat tethered on the Raitaru for a bit until the repair cycle ended, after which we aligned for the gate through which we came.  Once through though we did not align for the station.  Instead Asher warped us to a POS where a titan was waiting.  As usual, being the non-GSF member in the fleet, I bounced off the forcefield and they had to give me the starbase password to enter.  I did that, warped off, then warped back to Asher to find myself in and on the titan ready for a bridge.

The titan sent us on our way, though we seemed to be going in an odd direction.  When we passed through J5A-IX, the gateway to Fountain and a scene of many of the early fights in the Fountain War, I began to wonder where we were headed.  But I was also distracted by a survey from Blizzard about the Battle for Azeroth expansion… which was asking for a lot of detail just a week into the damn thing… so I was mostly tabbing back and forth and not paying close attention.

The gate to ZXB-VC however triggered a something in the back of my brain.

I’ve been here before… I’m sure of it…

Then we jumped through and we were in Delve.

Delve, the highlight of every Monthly Economic Report, the home of excessive ratting, mining, and industry, and a place I had only been back to once since we deployed up to Pure Blind late last year.  You can rest assured that I have added nothing to those numbers that get reported for the region.

There it is, DELVE, and us spread out over the map

The question of the hour at that point was why couldn’t we just jump clone back to Delve?  Or, better still, wasn’t there somebody in Delve who could take care of whatever needed doing?  did we really have to fly all the way down from Pure Blind?

I guess we did.

We took a jump bridge to get deeper into Delve, but with the titan bridge and the jump bridge and a fleet that some people were on earlier, we had some jump fatigue to wear down.  Also, apparently we were early for whatever it was we had to do.  So Asher took us ratting.

Shooting up a Blood Raiders Sanctum

That went by quickly so we ended up in another anomaly shooting more Blood Raiders.

It was pretty, I will say that

We were hoping for a dreadnought spawn on it, but no luck.  After pottering around doing that… from which I walked away with a cool 807,000 ISK, so will surely skew the monthly totals… we were finally off to the real target.  This turned out to be a Raitaru anchoring in M5-CGW which NCDot had dropped.

The repair timer was running and had just five minutes left on it.

The timer paused

We paused the timer with our firepower almost immediately, then anchored up on Asher and followed him as he meandered through the structure, trying to wipe us off on various protuberances, before he finally settled into a pocket at the front of the model.

He is in there somewhere…

Most of the fleet was taken up with talk on various nerd topics, including video games, Magic the Gathering, and fantasy football.  As somebody observed, there was something there for everybody to roll their eyes and tire of quickly.

Nobody came to defend the structure.  NCDot was likely already sated having already wiped out a fleet from The Bastion earlier.  Dropping a 600 million ISK Raitaru to get nearly 30 billion in kills is a worthwhile investment.  So we just shot it until it blew up in that satisfying way that Upwell structures do.

The wreck in the midst of the receding explosion

We got a kill… and it wasn’t like our fleet was the one that got worked over.

There was some talk of blowing up the wreck to keep anybody from salvaging it, but we were already facing the drive home and decided to skip that step.  Instead it was back into Fountain where we caught a jump bridge that cut a good chunk off the trip.  From there we headed to a Fortizar that was within titan bridge range of our staging.

However, even with the reduced jump fatigue, having made a few jumps already during the evening, we still had a good fifteen minutes before we could be bridged.  We decided to wait it out on the titan, setting a timer to remind everybody to wake up again and be ready to jump.

At that point somebody joked about how funny it would be if, once we were all back on the titan, Asher mis-clicked and did the classic “jump instead of bridge” mistake and left us all behind.

Picture source: unknown

When the timer rang we all got back in front of our screens ready to go, watching the titan for the bridge effect to go up.

Waiting for the moment

And then Asher selected “jump” and disappeared.

Yeah, he was just there

Even though I was half expecting it I still missed the screen shot of the jump effect gathering about his Ragnarok as he jumped away.  He had also muted and deafened himself on Mumble, so we were all left there with the nervous, “Ha ha, very funny… uh… you’re coming back right?  We’re not stuck here, right?”

It might have been funnier if it hadn’t been spoken before the event.  On the other hand, if it hadn’t we might not have believed he did it on purpose.  An FC who makes that error ends up with that sticking to their reputation.

Thinking we might have to wait out his orange jump timer, we hung around on the Fortizar wondering if it was time to dock up and call it a night, just bite the bullet and burn to our staging, or wait.   But as we waited a cyno went up and another titan… or at least another titan pilot of Asher’s… landed back on us.

We got in range and he bridged us back to our staging where we docked up for the night.

The bridge up at last

Asher, who had already thrown us one PAP added another one as the fleet uptime had passed the three hour mark.

Not a bad evening.  Being fleet coms is the entertainment on ops like that.  And it certainly wasn’t the first time that I was in a fleet that went all the way down to Delve just to shoot a structure.  I wouldn’t want to make it a regular event, but I’ve certainly been on much worse ops.

As for Lodge 49, I am just not sure I am feeling it… though the extra dose of commercial interruptions isn’t helping either.  I am too used to straight through, commercial free binge watching with Netflix or HBO.

Summer Movie League – Silly Old Bear

Week ten of our Summer Fantasy Movie League is done and gone.

This week saw a match up between a new release and a title in its second week with the choices looking like this:

Christopher Robin        $513
Mission: Impossible      $512
The Spy who Dumped Me    $268
The Darkest Minds        $154
Mamma Mia 2              $136
The Equalizer 2          $126
Hotel Transylvania 3     $131
Teen Titans GO!          $93 
Ant-Man and the Wasp     $88
Incredibles 2            $76
Jurassic World           $70
Death of a Nation        $55
Skyscraper               $45
Eighth Grade             $32
The First Purge          $16

The pricing indicates that somebody at FML expected Christopher Robin to best Mission: Impossible, if only by a small amount. So for the top end anchors it depended on whether or not you believed FML or not.

I was not buying the FML line however, at least not at the start of the week. My Monday Hot Takes pick anchored on Mission: Impossible, followed up by six screens of The Incredibles 2, with the last slot taken up by Eight Grade.

And then it was something of a busy week and I spaced a bit on the movie front and forgot to change anything up before Thursday morning at 9am Pacific Time, when the TAGN League locked. So my Monday picks were also my Thursday picks.

Summer Movie League – My Week Ten Picks

Of course, about an hour later I realized that I had missed my window for change on the TAGN League, but figured I had better do some poking about for the Friday leagues. One thing that came up over at Box Office Mojo was that Eighth Grade was getting a much bigger theater expansion that was expected, going from 158 to almost 1,100, which made it suddenly look like a a shoe-in for best performer of the week.

I was also coming around on Christopher Robin. Box Office Pro seemed to think it was going to be close between Christopher Robin and Mission: Impossible, so I flopped over to CR, put seven screens of Eighth Grade behind it, then removed one and replaced it with the highest value title that would fit, which turned out to be The Spy Who Dumped Me and copied that to all my remaining lineups.

My picking methodology exposed.

But I just couldn’t stick with CR and flipped back, replacing it with Mission: Impossible and called it closed just before the wire on Friday morning.

As it turned out my gut pick for Mission: Impossible was correct, giving me about $10 million over CR. My TAGN pick wasn’t perhaps what I would have gone with by Thursday, but it was anchored on Mission: Impossible as well and without bonuses the fact that I wasn’t all-in on Eighth Grade didn’t really matter.

The perfect pick for the week ended up being 1x Mission: Impossible, 1x The Equalizier 2, 3x Ant-Man and the Wasp, and 3x Eight Grade.

Summer Movie League – Week Ten Perfect Pick

Nobody in the league got the perfect pick this week.  The scores for the week ended up like this:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $71,097,943
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $68,056,099
3. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $66,159,041
4. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $65,268,895
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $64,376,188
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $63,914,522
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $63,147,833
8. I HAS BAD TASTE – $60,660,286
9. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $58,689,526
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – $56,781,124
11. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $48,786,336
12. Joanie’s Joint – $47,808,556
13. Too Orangey For Crows – $46,688,999

I decided just to list people who made their pick on any given week, so that list may vary in size relative to the overall score, where I am listing everybody who hasn’t totally disappeared.

Goat got the top spot and, through much of the weekend looked like they had the perfect pick as well.  But come the final numbers a different lineup took the honors.  I managed second and wasn’t too far behind.

The top three all anchored on Mission: Impossible, but amongst the first eight there were people who anchored on Mama Mia 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3 who were competitive.

Those who anchored on Christopher Robin or The Spy Who Dumped Me fell to the back of the pack, with the poor performing The Darkest Minds acting as an extra anchor on a couple of people.

That left the overall scores for the season looking like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $903,828,835
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $892,694,361
3. I HAS BAD TASTE – $876,537,592
4. Goat Water Picture Palace – $870,040,067
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $847,579,299
6. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $825,583,341
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $819,170,145
8. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $817,537,519
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $801,307,407
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $782,565,597
11. grannanj’s Cineplex – $781,282,567
12. Too Orangey For Crows – $738,662,905
13. Joanie’s Joint – $727,376,847
14. Kraut Screens – $689,378,141
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $641,653,028
16. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $639,347,136
17. aria82’s Cineplex – $605,936,381
18. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $586,269,435

Corr and I went on different paths for anchors, with Corr choosing Christopher Robin over Mission: Impossible, though at least in one league we had otherwise identical picks.  That put a little more daylight between Corr and I, though we are still close enough that either could end up ahead for the season.

Likewise, Isey in third place is not out of the running, nor is Goat with a couple more winning weeks.  But beyond the top four somebody has to win very big while the top four makes some extremely poor picks in order to win the season.

There are only four more weeks left, and week eleven has the following options:

The Meg                 $334
Mission: Impossible     $260
Christopher Robin       $177
Slender Man             $171
BlacKkKlansman          $84
The Spy who Dumped Me   $83
Dog Days                $69
Mamma Mia 2             $65
The Equalizer 2         $63
Hotel Transylvania 3    $62
Ant-Man and the Wasp    $52
The Darkest Minds       $38
Incredibles 2           $41
Teen Titans GO!         $31
Jurassic World          $29

This week we lose Skyscraper, The First Purge, Eighth Grade, and the unfortunate Death of a Nation off the list of options.

In their place we have The Meg, Slender Man, BlacKkKlansman, and the aptly named for this time of year Dog Days. Were are certainly in the dog days of summer around here.

The Meg is not, as I first thought, a movie version of The Mick. This is the sort of logical jump your brain makes when you leave reruns of The Simpsons running in the background on FX while you build up a new computer; the commercials seep into your brain. The title actually refers to the star of the movie, a 23 meter long prehistoric shark known as the Megalodon.

So, yes, it is a Jaws knock-off, with its twist being the shark is really, really big.  It is practically Jurassic Shark.

But Jason Statham is the co-star, so I am going to guess that he catches the shark by going to its house, opening its front door a crack, ringing the doorbell then, when he sees the peephole darken, he kicks the door in, stunning the beast and proceeding to beat the shit out of it.  Also, there is a car chase.  I’d watch that on TV on a Friday night, but I am not sure I need to see it on the big screen.

Then there is Slender Man, which I thought was Slenderman, but I guess either usage is okay. Originating as a meme on Something Awful, the Slender Man has made it to the big screen, though it has been referenced in things from Minecraft to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The plot sums up as two girls investigating the disappearance of a friend who then end up being haunter by the Slender Man. That might sound familiar due to the 2014 case where two girls obsessed with Slender Man attempted to murder a friend to appease the made up horror. There is an HBO documentary about that.

BlacKkKlansman is Spike Lee film about the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department who sets out to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan to expose them for what they are.

And finally there is Dog Days, tagged as a comedy-drama, which follows four people and explores how their dogs influence their lives. It was directed by Dan Marino, who has been in many things over the years, but whom I mostly associate with the now 25 years in the past show The State.

I suppose you can tell by my descriptions that I am not excited for anything showing up this week, though I imagine that the internet fame of Slender Man, and the lack of recent summer horror films in the options, might make it exceed expectations.  But it is a real wild card, and the long range tracking for it has been trending down sharply, currently standing at about $15 million, but with a possible range as high as $25 million.

The Meg, which is expected to open on almost four thousand screens, is estimated to pull in almost $24 million for the weekend, while Dog Days is shooting for a modest $4 million and BlacKkKlansman has no revenue estimate at the moment, but should open on about 1,500 screens.

So my Monday Hot Takes league pick is a conservative one, going with 3x Mission: Impossible, 2x Equalizer 2, and 3x Teen Titans GO!.  But if the vibe for Slender Man picks up this week, I might swap to 5x Slender Man, 2x Ant-Man, and 1x The Incredibles 2 before the Thursday lock.  I think that is the “go for broke” play this week.

As always, the Thursday lock is less than 24 hours from when this post goes live, so make your picks soon!