99 Luftballons

Scott Hardie | April 30, 2022
Here's giving advance notice that Rock Block's summer tournament is soon to begin. On Saturday, May 7, we'll begin a tournament based on the 1984 German hit "99 Luftballons," a plea for peace in the world.

You'll start with 99 balloons and only one automatic concert at a time. With each victory, you'll have a choice to make: Pop your own balloon, or pop another player's balloon to spawn two more concerts to speed up the process and possibly double your reward. The first player to run out of balloons will win.

Each concert will time out after four days of inactivity. In the past, when there have been shorter-than-usual concerts like this, players have preferred advance notice so that they're ready to go on time and don't miss anything. Here's providing it.

I previously hinted that "Hotel California" would inspire the next RB tournament, but the plan that I have for that is too elaborate for me to pull off right now. I'm working on it for 2023.

I'll post a reminder when we begin in a week. Good luck!

Steve West | April 30, 2022
Awesomeness!

Scott Hardie | May 7, 2022
The tournament has begun! The first two concerts will automatically spawn shortly. Good luck!

I learned a lesson from last summer: A timeout condition has been restored from earlier tournaments. If this isn't over by August 31, it will end that evening with the current positions determining a winner.

Matthew Preston | July 5, 2022
Any quick way for us to tell how many potential balloons we can pop, based on our current un-popped wins?

This has been fun seeing how exponentially the concerts can grow, if you never pop your own balloon!

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2022
It now says so under the buttons to pop balloons. You could do so by searching the page for instances of "Matthew popped" and "won by Matthew" and subtracting the former from the latter, but you shouldn't need to when the page already does that math and can simply show the outcome. Good idea.

I have gone through several different strategies so far, in regards to whose balloon to pop and when. I'm sure I will go through several more before this ends. :-)

Erik Bates | July 5, 2022
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 19, 2022
So. Many. Concerts.

Steve West | August 8, 2022
Matt! That was remarkable, congratulations!

Scott Hardie | August 8, 2022
Awesome victory, Matthew! And an awesome strategy to get to the finish line. I am very impressed!

Prizes will be issued later today.

Matthew Preston | August 8, 2022
Thanks! I now feel like the Bill Belichick of Rock Block, though. My victory is more of a "find the loopholes" strategy to get the most wins without having to defeat Steve and Scott.

Scott Hardie | August 9, 2022
It was a completely legitimate strategy as far as I'm concerned. I was worried that the ability to pop other players' balloons would be a superfluous extra thing that had no influence, but it wound up being the winning factor. And you had plenty of concert wins along the way, too. :-)

There's an incoming challenge with some new stuff you unlocked...

Erik Bates | August 11, 2022
[hidden by request]

Matthew Preston | August 12, 2022
Erik - Most of those 100 were mine... My strategy wouldn't have worked without you. So, thank you I guess!