A Two Boss Day in Blackrock Depths

Our plan for the Thanksgiving holiday was to try and get in a couple runs at Blackrock Depths in WoW Classic since we all had most of the week off.  And then, of course, the week slipped on by so we fell back to what we all learned in college, which was to cram things in at the last minute.

Who said you don’t learn life skills at school.

So on Saturday afternoon we did our tour with Marshal Windsor, which was yesterday’s post, and late Sunday afternoon we went back in to see if we could knock out another dungeon quest or two. Our group was:

• Viniki – level 56 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 56 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 56 night elf druid
• Ula – level 55 gnome mage

Looking at the map and the quests, we picked a couple of likely targets.

Blackrock Depths map

The first on the list was Bael’Gar.  He is number 11 on the map and sits alone at one end of the Dark Iron Highway, so we were not going to catch him on the way to anything else.  So it seemed like an easy plan to go after him.

After that we figured we would see if we could run back up to the other end of the Dark Iron Highway and catch Lord Incendius, number 10 on the map.  I am not sure why these two bosses need a highway running between them.  It was probably part of some pork barrel appropriations bill in the Dark Iron legislature or some such.

We formed up out at Thorium Point once more and ran to the instance.  Inside, the Dark Iron Highway is easy to get to as it is just through the gate off to the left and straight down the tunnel.

The Shadowforge Key lets us through again

The highway is close and you can even see Bael’Gar standing in his spot up the way.  The tricky bit is that the highway is home to a number of groups of Dark Iron dwarves who roam about in packs of five.  The key to getting through this was mastering those groups.

Their composition followed a standard pattern:

• 1 – Officer
• 1-2 – Medics
• 1-2 – 2h axe wielders
• 1-2 – guards

The officer ended up being the most annoying member of these teams as they can cast heal, they have a stun attack, and they prefer to sit back out of melee range and shoot the healer.

Medics are healers.  Having two in a group made them extra annoying, but most groups only had one.

The 2h axe dwarves seemed normal at first, but they have an AOE attack.  There were usually two in each group and their combined AOE meant that Moronae took a bunch of damage at times and had to step out and heal up.

Finally there were the guards, which were just normal melee NPCs.  Easy enough.

Adding to that, there are about a dozen of these groups of five along the highway, including one group off to either side of Bael’Gar, and several of them march about or change positions, so you have to keep an eye on your surroundings.

And then there was getting ourselves up to speed.  Several of us had been playing retail WoW a lot over the course of the week, and the play style is very different.  We had a bit of warm up time to get through.  So there were issues… and one wipe… as we ramped ourselves up and tried out some variations on who to sheep and who to kill first.

Dead on the highway shoulder

In the end, the best plan seemed to be to sheep the officer who, as noted above, was the most annoying in those groups, and kill the medic or medics first, then the guys with the AOE axe attacks, then then guards, and then finally the officer.  Not sheeping the officer had a nasty tendency to get Skronk dead, causing Moronae to use his combat ress, so we stuck with the plan that kept Skronk alive.

Aggro management was the tricky bit.  With four mobs on me and not a lot of AOE options… I have an AOE debuff that gives me a tiny bit of aggro and an AOE attack that doesn’t do much more and which will pop the sheep if he’s too close… there was some running back and forth between Skronk and I as his heals would put him over the aggro line now and again.  If his fade skill was up, that was good enough to send mobs back to me.  But if it was on cool down, then he had to run to me or I to him… the latter being slow because, among their other tricks, somebody in these groups kept hitting me with hamstring… so I could use my single target taunt or whack on whoever was giving him problems.

Anyway, we eventually got into the swing of things and cleared the way to Bael’Gar.

Bael’Gar waiting for us

His fight went pretty smoothly.  He hits hard, but not that hard.  He summons a non-elite red blob every so often, and we just turned to kill them whenever they showed up.  And every so often he shouts then lets go with a fire damage AOE attack.  Skronk and Ula just stayed out of range, while Moronae ran for it when the shout came.  I sat and took the hit.  Skronk had given me a fire resist potion before hand, which helped.  The one time I was a little low on health after a shout I put up my shield wall ability and it seemed to absorb the hit for me.  Then Bael’Gar was down.

He dropped the Rubidium Hammer, which nobody wanted, so it was a roll-off to see who got to vendor it for the 4 gold.

Well all used the black dragonflight molt from the quest on his corpse, which got us the Encased Fiery Essence, which is what we needed to turn in to finish the quest.

Then we turned around and headed to the other end of the highway, where several more groups waited for us.

Down at the other end

We were able to bypass one group handily, but ended up clearing out the rest just to be safe.  There is one group that actually walks through the giant doors at the end of the highway, so once again you have to be aware.

Through the doors there is an open area and a gate guarded by a pair of fire elementals, with three more pairs down the hall beyond them.

The Fire Elementals Await

The elementals are linked, so you get them both no matter what, and they have a ranged attack, so you have to go get them.  That just makes crowd control a little annoying, since we don’t have a warlock to banish them.  The first pair is the toughest as they are far apart, but the hallway beyond them narrows so each subsequent pair is closer together, with the last two in easy melee range.

And beyond them is Lord Incendius.

There he waits with the black anvil

Skronk had given me another fire resist potion before we got to the elementals, but I held onto it until we got to this fight.

The fight itself wasn’t too bad.  We had a bit of luck with it.  Skronk read after the fight that he has a knock back, so the suggestion is that you pull him back in the hall so the tank won’t get punted into the lava surrounding the platform.  I happened to align myself so that when the knock back came, I landed safely on the ramp to the platform.  I chose that alignment just so I wouldn’t accidentally back up into the lava, so it was a happy moment when I found it was a good choice.  And so we won.

It is an MMORPG, everybody respawns man

We got our update for slaying him, some loot that was also going to get vendored, and stood on the black anvil to take our victory shot, there not being much left of the boss after he passed.

We survived

Then it was time to turn in the two quests we had completed.  Ula was going to portal us to Stormwind so we could fly to Morgan’s Vigil, but she was out of the reagents required.  So we stoned back to Ironforge instead.  The inn happens to be right next to the reagent shop, so people stocked up and then we took the bird out to Burning Steppes.

One turn in was there in the camp.  More stuff to vendor plus some exp.  The other was back in the cave where we had to fight the dragon four times, once for each of us for a drop, with a 10 minute timer between fights back when we were doing prep for the instance.

Back with Cyrus Therepentous

That was a bit more exp and another item to vendor.  It also got us down to just four quests left for the instance.

The remaining quests

The hope is that we can knock those out in the next run and be done with Blackrock Depths.

Gnomeregan Again but Backwards

Did I say we were done with Gnomeregan?  Clearly I was in error.

Gnomeregan Establishing Shot

Sunday saw us online again.  The weather outside was foul, with heavy rain and high winds, so my plan to go out and hang the holiday lights on the house was postponed.  Time for games. (It was a bountiful Thanksgiving week for that.)  We got together to decide what instance we ought to do, since we had five of us on. (It was Monday morning for Earl in Japan, so he was off the list.)

The discussion went around, but Moronae still wanted that staff, the Manual Crowd Pummeler, from the Crowd Pummeler 9-60 boss in Gnomer.  And I can’t blame him, it is a great item.  I’d love one for my pally.  So we figured we would just run in through the back door, get to the Crowd Pummeler, and take him down.  Easy days.

But then we needed a group.  Skronk and Ula wanted to go with their alts, Fergorin and Scscla, so I rolled out Alioto, who managed to survive our Scarlet Monastery graveyard run, giving us a group that looked like this.

• Alioto – level 26 night elf driud
• Scscla – level 28 gnome warrior
• Fergorin – level 28 dwarf paladin
• Obama – level 29 human warlock
• Moronae – level 31 night elf druid

And with this group we had some fresh faces for Gnomer.  Alioto had collected up some of the Gnomer quests the day before when there was a question as to where we might head and what the group composition would look like.  Scscla and Fergorin had some as well, so we shared them out amongst outselves.  After all, going in the back door meant going past Techbot, and that would be a quest done.  And you have to fight your way in there, so you’ll probably get the white punch card, so you might as well start that quest off.  And, who knows, you might get enough “coke machines” along the way to finish that quest off.

So off we went.  Alioto, still not quite 27, made some early decisions for us, along the lines of, “should we kill this mob?” just as Alioto managed to proximity pull the mob with his aggro radius of doom.

As expected, we managed to pick up the white punchcard and upgrade that at the first set of machines.  Then it was off to wait for Techbot to spawn.  Despite those who rushed to level cap in the first month, there are still a substantial number of people running lower level instances.  Techbot has been dead whenever we have run by.  And he was yet again.

We were crowded around the spawn point, but a group having just left and another lurking around nearby.  Not content to wait quietly, Obama started calling the other group “Republicans.”  He is young, and in youth you find many things funny.  But he has also gotten a fair share of grief for his name choice.  At least my druid’s name, also political, was just that of an SF mayor.

My reaction to events

Anyway, that didn’t turn ugly and we took down Techbot, finishing that quest, and headed over to the back door.

The back door has mobs too

At this point I do not recall the first time that Alioto died.  Nor do I recall the situation of most of his deaths during the run.  I just know that Recount says he died 6 times.  Two of those were wipes, and one was a special case, but the other three were all pretty much the same scenario, one that occurs often in Gnomer.

A lot of the trash in Gnomer consists of groups of non-elite mobs, often centered on one elite main mob.  What happened those five times was that Scscla would go in and get everybody on her.  Then the rest of the group would join in, focused on the elite mob, which was the main threat.  At some point I would need to heal Scscla, often a big heal as the mobs would be beating her down pretty aggressively.  A rejuvenation just wasn’t going to cut it.

So I would toss our a regrowth or, if things went south fast, a healing touch.  And as soon as I did I would end up topping the aggro chart for some of the non-elite mobs who would rush me or start throwing wrenches at me.  Gnomes, right?  With the mage plus warlock group this gets handled with fire and ice, but with no Ula we just have fire and a bunch of loose gnomes running  around.

All fire, no ice

Even at level 26 I could probably handle one of these level 28-30 non-elites, but when two or three started in on me, I was in trouble.  It was time to run to the tank, say “save the healer!” on voice coms, and try to heal myself.  That I only died to this three times was probably a good sign.  An additional heal from Fergorin or Moronae was often the margin needed to keep me alive.

So I died a lot.  fortunately Fergorin could also ress me.  I’ll bypass the trash mob deaths and stick to the more memorable ones.

We made our way to the Crowd Pummeler which, relative to the trash mob fights, was easy to heal through. Aggro isn’t an issue with just one mob, though Moronae’s DPS was enough to pull aggro from the tank now and then.  We even pulled him back into the tunnel to keep the tossing about to a minimum.

We meet again Crowd Pummeler

However, the Pummeler disappointed yet again, dropping the boots rather than the 2H mace.  Moronae already got the boots on a past run, so they defaulted to Alioto as the other leather wearer.  They were a big upgrade, though he needs to get to level 28 to wear them.

Having hit our primary objective, there was the question of what to do next.  Electrocutioner 6000 wasn’t that far away, so we decided to press on to get him.  When we got to the ring area around his platform we decided to clear clockwise.  He was 180 degrees off from us in the circle, and the first group to the left looked a bit easier that the one to the right.

More clearing then up the ramp to the Electrocutioner, where we brought him down in short order.  Again, a single mob fight, no problems for me.  He dropped the Lagnut ring yet again, going 4 for 4 on that now.  It went to Scscla, who had an empty ring slot and who could use it.  There we realized that we had cleared to the third punch card machine, but were missing a previous one back by the dormitory.  Obama had also finished up with “coke machines” and Alioto had picked up collecting those and was nearly done.

So to finish out those quests we thought we would fight our way back to the second punch card machine, picking up the “coke machines” on the way.  It was then that we realized that clockwise was the wrong choice previously.  It left the path to the tunnel we needed to get to still occupied.  So we started to clear our way there.

That was when we had our first wipe.  We managed to get two groups of non-elite gnomes plus two elites.  That led to me dying in the usual, happened five other times, way.  But it also left too much heat on the group to survive.  We all went down.

Complicating things, Fergorin, who had the soul stone, was in the thick of the remaining mobs, so his survival seemed unlikely.  But the soul stone is a “use it or lose it” proposition, so he used it hoping for some luck.

Dead and Fergorin is out in the middle there

There was no luck.  The wipe was complete and we had to release.

Back at the graveyard we began to run back, at which point I suggested that we might as well go in through the front door this time to revive, after which we could jump of the ledge, take on the Viscious Fallout, get the dormitory punchcard machine, and then work our way back to where we died, over by the Electrocutioner 6000, which had the third punchcard machine.  After that we would just need to go back to where the Crowd Pummeler was, use the lift to get down to the bottom floor, and get the final punchcard machine.  Piece of cake.

People agreed, so we went in through the front door, got ourselves together, cleared a few pesky troggs, and jumped off the ledge to the boss fight.  It was a close run thing, and I died there too.  I suppose it was slightly different that the rest of the five deaths I’ve lumped together because my aggro radius drew elite adds, but my healing still drew aggro and I went down again.

Me, face down in the toxic ooze again

However, the Viscous Fallout nicely dropped the Acidic Walkers again, so Obama got a new pair of shoes.

After that we made it to the punchcard machine, then to the gauntlet to fight our way back to the Electrocutioner 6000 area.  By that time Alioto was done with “coke machines” and Fergorin had picked up grabbing them.  We figured it was better for somebody to complete the quest rather than have a few of us mostly done.

We managed to get up the gauntlet fine and cleared our way to the Electrocutioner platform for another punchcard update.  Then it was back to where the Pummeler resided.  At some point Skronk finished up his “coke machines” and Scscla started in on getting her dozen.  Taking the lift down to the floor below the Pummeler, we got into the death I am declaring an exception.

We once again got into the situation of an elite mod with a group of non-elites on the tank who, when I healed Scscla, started to focus on me.  I ran to the tank and went to heal myself when there was an incident.

For healing I use an addon called Healium.  It is a simple addon that keeps me from having to make Skronk’s mouse-over macros for healing.  It just gives me the group list with their health status and some spells next to each name that I can click on to apply to that person.  It doesn’t prompt me, I still decide who and when to heal, it just gives me some simple buttons to mash to make sure I drop a heal on the right person.

The Healium UI

I still screw up, but less so than if I were manually targeting and healing.

Anyway, the array of buttons sits low on my screen, right above the hotkeys.  I’ve move the cast bar up to keep it from getting in the way.  But as it turns out, when somebody loots and there is need/greed dialog up, it blocks the healing buttons for the top two people on the list, which in this case were Fergorin and myself.

And, having set all that up, you can probably guess that somebody looted mid-fight, there was a green level item that popped the dialog, and that this happened just as I was going to cast a heal on myself.

I died.  But what is one more death at this point.  I was already getting the yellow paper doll warning after the last death and we were almost done.  Fergorin ressed me yet again, I got healed up, buffed up, and we carried on.

The final punchcard machine was right there, so three of us finished off that quest.  We cleared a bit more to get to another of the “coke machines” and Alioto hit level 27 at last.  At that point Scscla just needed three more “coke machines” and she would be done.  But where to go and find them?

We did not want to go in the direction of the Dark Iron Agents.  That way lay madness and more wipes.  We also didn’t want to wander all the way back to the dormitory area.  We had enough back tracking for one day.  But looking at a map of the instance, it looked like we could take a tunnel to the floor area below the platform where the Electrocutioner 6000 lived.  Surely there would be a couple quest objects there.  So off we went.

And, there were even a couple on the way, so by the time we got to the big open area below the Electrocutioner 6000, Scscla needed just one more of the “coke machines.”   As we came to the opening to the area, we saw spread before us a multitude of “coke machines.”  It was the promised land for those looking to complete the quest.  Scscla just needed to run in there and grab one.

And therein lay the rub.  The open floor had a variety of mobs and groups of mobs criss-crossing it in overlapping areas of patrol.

Scscla spotted and opening and made a dash for one of the “coke machines” around the center pillar of the room.  However, she strayed to close to a mob and was in combat.  Taking damage we ran out to support her and managed to get a few more mobs on us.  We were quickly in over our head and a wipe seemed imminent.

At that point Fergorin had the foresite to flee back up the tunnel and die there, leaving him safe to use the soul stone to revive.  He could then ress us, though that was easier said than done.

Fergorin going down back in the tunnel

He was able to get Moronae, Obama, and Alioto easily enough, but Scscla had died by the center pillar near one of the quest objectives, and was out of ress range from the tunnel.  We would have to go out onto the main floor to get her.

We picked off a couple of the wandering mobs to thin things out a bit.  Moronae played with stealthing out to get close enough to pop his combat ress, which only takes two seconds to cast, but got himself herded away.  Eventually a big gap opened and Fergorin ran out to do a ress.  I kept just in range to be able to heal should it come to it.  He got Scscla and we retreated to the tunnel.

They were looking longingly at all those “coke machines” out in the center of the room still, but I had noticed, while laying dead out on the floor, that there was one just on the other side of a huge pillar that was next to the tunnel entrance.  You can see it at the far right of the screen shot above, in the dark, but still visible.  Further poking around showed that you could squeeze behind the pillar, well away from the wandering mobs.  We all shimmied past the pillar to get her final quest update, and we were done.

I don’t know why we all had to go past the pillar, but we did

After that it was back into the tunnel where we recalled back home.

Time to hearthstone once again

When I landed in Stormwind I went straight to somebody who could mend because I was red paper doll on a couple of my slots.  Then it was back to Ironforge to turn in the quests.

And so it goes.  Are we done with Gnomeregan now?  Moronae doesn’t have his 2H mace yet, so I won’t commit to an affirmative on that.

Current Guild MOTD

We’ve certainly been into Gnomer more times now in WoW Classic than we ever went as a group in retail.  Also, I guess our path wasn’t really “backwards” so much as multi-directional, or at least somewhat out of the usual order.

Now my task though is to get Alioto and Wilhelm leveled up a bit more so they are not such liabilities on these ventures.

MER – Charts for All My Needs

CCP was a bit quicker here in December in getting out the monthly economic report November.  However, in their haste it looked like they had omitted almost all of the charts I usually write about.  Frustrated by that, I decided to just grab the raw data this time around and make my own damn charts, only to find that all the charts I expected were included in that .zip archive.

So I have already learned something new this month.   I’ll check that off my list.

And, unlike last month, the Fade region actually made the cut for inclusions again.  The Cache region however remains unaccounted for.

As usual, I will start off with the mining to see how peace in the south and small scale conflicts in the north are doing.

November 2018 – Mining Value by Region

In a completely expected turn of events, Delve continues to be the region seeing the most mining activity.  The bar chart shows just how far ahead Delve is when compared to other regions.

November 2018 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph

By this measure the mining output of Delve is greater than the next seven regions combined.  (The newly returned Fade region is at the bottom of that list as well as others, perhaps confirming the theory that it was missed last month due to not hitting some minimal activity threshold.)

And yet the Delve number is down.  In October the amount mined was measured in excess of 19 trillion ISK, but for November it is down to 15.5 trillion ISK.  Did people get tired of mining in Delve?

Maybe not.  As usual, there is another chart here to figure into things.

November 2018 – Economic Indices

As you can see, the price of minerals has continued its post-war slide, landing at a three year low in November.  Since the mining amount is measured by the value of the ore, falling prices can mean falling numbers even if the total cubic meters of ore mined remains the same.

November 2018 – Economic Indices over All Time

As for the price of minerals, while they are not at an all time low, they are headed there.  I think we are firmly in the zone where, if you have a researched Charon freighter blueprint, you can build the freighter, insure it, have somebody gank it, and still turn a profit.  That was a tale I was told at the bottom of the last mineral price dip and we’re now well below that.

So mineral prices seem like something CCP needs to address.  Maybe.  There is a production aspect to that.

November 2018 – Production Values by Region

In production, while The Forge region was up a bit (as was its feeder region The Citadel, while Lonetrek held steady), Delve continues to be the single region with the greatest production output.

November 2018 – Production Values by Region – Bar Graph

Production, of course, requires inputs, of which mined minerals are a significant portion.  Aryth said on a recent Meta Show that production in Delve enjoyed a certain advantage in that the ore and minerals were available at a discount when compared to the Jita market.

There is a not insignificant cost to ship compressed or and minerals all the way to Jita in order to sell.  That makes what I would call the effective parity price of minerals in Delve lower, and since Delve is producing all that ore for the engines of production to consume, Delve’s economic power might be causing a greater dip in the economic indices for minerals than one might see in Jita.

Anecdotally, tritanium seems to be cheaper in 1DQ1-A than in Jita, but I cannot tell how much weight to give that observation.

And since we’re here, I might as well through the sales charts up on the page.

November 2018 – Trade Value by Region

For all the pride of the Delve region, Jita and The Forge remain the economic center of New Eden.

November 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph

That chart is so lopsided that CCP has to exclude The Forge in order to get some insight into other regions.

November 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph, Forge Excluded

Domain, home of Amarr, remains in second place with Delve not too far behind.  But you have to get down to seventh spot, which is Esoteria, the home of TEST, before another null sec region shows up.

NPC bounties are more straightforward.

November 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region

No we’re back to things Delve dominates and which do not depend on variations in market prices in order to measure.  NPC bounties are a direct faucet into the economy.  On that Delve was down by half a trillion ISK.

November 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph

Following behind Delve are Esoteria (TEST), Detroid (Fraternity & Triumvirate), Querious (Imperium alliance training ground), Fountain (Imperium), and Period Basis (Red Alliance).

In the north of null sec, where infighting around Branch and Venal is keeping everyone busy while the Imperium’s Space Violence squad is active and the NGSA is trying to oppress the numbers in Geminate, Deklein is the highest earner for ratting, bringing in just over 2 trillion ISK in bounties.

Overall bounties continued to peak.

November 2018 – Top Sinks and Faucets

While mineral prices are at a recent low, NPC bounty payouts are now at an all time high.  The question remains as to what CCP will do, if anything, and if there is anything they can do that Malcanis won’t make a mockery of.

Overall, bounties are down slightly as a percentage of the income faucet total, ringing in at 63%.  The number was 65% in October.

November 2018 – Sinks and Faucets and the ISK supply

But that is because other faucets like incursion payouts and agent mission rewards and bonuses were also up for November.  The overall money supply was up another 37 trillion ISK for the month.

So there it is, another month and the economy of New Eden hasn’t fallen over yet.  Aspects of it look bad, but it keeps on chugging along.

Finally, the chart that I choose to end with most months, the overview and comparison of regions.

November 2018 – Regional Stats

And so it goes until next month.  You can find all of the raw data and charts over at the dev blog post for the November report.

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.