Believe it or not, we’re officially already heading into week four of the grifball Summer league. Before we know it the playoffs will be here and not long after the Fall league. In the meantime there’s plenty to talk about this week.

Epic Games in the Pro League
This past week there were several big games played in the Pro league, two of which involved my team, Bleep Bloop. On Monday Bleep Bloop faced off against Crayola Magic in a nearly 41 minute battle. Though the score ended up in an 8-1 victory for Bleep Bloop, it doesn’t properly reflect how hard fought the game was.

Two days after after that game, Shut Your Lips and Learn, one of this summer’s pre-season favorites to win the championship found themselves the victims of a huge upset win by a revamped Put it on the Pad squad. There’s no doubt they are a much stronger team this season. The final score of the game was 6-3.

Finally on Friday there were two more monstrous games which were perhaps a couple of the most epic the Pro league has seen in its two seasons of existence. The first game featured +1 Zing besting That’s What She Said in 49 minutes and 39 seconds. It was a game which featured nearly 1,300 combined kills. In the end Zing took the win 5-4.

Zing and TWSS briefly held the record for the longest game in Grifball Pro league history until Bleep Bloop and Separate Intelligence completed their match-up just a few minutes later. It took Bleep Bloop 50 minutes and 13 seconds to finally shut down SI in what was definitely the most epic game I’ve personally ever played in. The final score was 5-4 and it was literally a war.

Big Performances in the Pro League
Considering the epic games played this past week, there certainly had to be some stand out performances in those games and there were. Here’s a run down of just a few of the most notable performances.

• Puptastrophe – 199 kills and a +66 kill to death ratio against Crayola Magic. Averaged 151.5 kills per game in two games this past week.
• I MajorSilva I – 225 kills and a +31 kill to death ratio against That’s What She Said. Averaged 131 kills per game in three games this past week.
• A Baby Tortoise – 225 kills and a +70 kill to death ratio against Separate Intelligence. Averaged 178 kills per game in two games this past week.
• Twizzted Status – Scored 15 goals in three games this past week for a 5 goal per game average.
• Doc Status – Scored 17 goals in four games this past week for a 4.25 goal per game average.

Forfeit Factory?
Sadly despite how well things are going this Summer in the Pro league, it seems we may officially have at least one forfeit factory. I’ve been hearing that the Apocalypse Ponies have called it quits without playing any games thus far. If so that means the remaining three teams in their division will be awarded two forfeit wins, unless a replacement team is found. Considering how far we are into the season though, it’s hard to imagine finding a replacement now.

Another team which has yet to play any games is Fizzlewinkie. From what I’m hearing though, several of their members are currently unavailable and they do plan to play their games. Let’s hope so. Fizzlewinkie has been around a long time. It would be unfortunate for them to end up as forfeit factory.

Grifball Matchmaking Update
When the next grifball double XP rolls around, there will be some changes made to the playlist. This is the information which Nokyard couldn’t tell us about during the last HubCast because at that time he had no confirmation of it. I’m sure it’s what many of us have been expecting however.

From the Bungie Update:

Grifball – Updated to include Mayan Grifball, Grifball Up There, and Aerial Grifball on Sandbox map variants (Optional)

It will still not be a Mythic required playlist but what this means is that if everyone in the game has the Mythic maps, there’s a good chance you’ll see one of Nokyard’s Sandbox grifball maps show up, which means you’ll finally have the option to veto. Now we don’t have to listen to the very old “veto!” joke anymore. Also Mayan Grifball has been added to the Action Sack playlist.

Pro League Top 10
I haven’t received a final word from Zeg regarding what his definitive plans are regarding his weekly top 10, but until I do so I’d just like to remind everyone to please send your votes into him via private message at the end of each week. It really doesn’t take that long. It would be sad for such a great contribution to the grifball community to have to come to end due to lack of participation. It’s things like Zeg’s Top 10 which help this league grow.