Let's end it in style!

Fast, furious and unedited. I swear. Maybe spellchecking.

It has been a long, wild ride on our Yahtzee roller coaster. We lost a lot of people along the way. We found new ones. Some people were nuts, and DARN near psychotic. Others just wanted to go elsewhere. Some came back. We had fun and tried not to hurt too many feelings.

A month ago, or so, I promised a contest, with the nicest prize I'd ever offered. Didn't say what that was, but I knew exactly what it was, a $10 gift card. Nothing spectacular, but it was to be my way of thanking everyone for their support, and providing incentive to listen to episode 47 of my podcast, which I was super excited to have produced.

I never held that contest, because we decided, one time, to stretch our delayed start of the Feast, to a second day. Three people openly groused about it. You're welcome to dislike and disagree, but the gripes soured me. End of the world? Hell no. But after countless Feasts, three people acted like there was no other source of Yahtzee entertainment.

I constantly preach the idea that Yahtzee is not a job, and we shouldn't treat it like one. But every other week we've got a Feast going on. And every time a four-week "Family Games" ends, a new one starts. And there are Prize Climbs galore, and many other ways to play. And if you spend enough time playing the tournaments they run every four hours, and challenging other players, you'll amass plenty of scratchers so that you can spend more than an hour of your week trying to help us win the latest Feast. There's too much, and if you wanted to play/do more, you can spend money and spend hours to keep the dice rolling.

So I never held that big contest. And at the same time, I was feeling a bit burned out by it all. I still enjoy playing. I love the variations they have created for Feast, Family Games, the DiceWorld games and Survivor. Awesome creativity.

But I stopped playing head-to-head games a while ago, for the most part, and I was only putting in extra effort for the Feast when it seemed like there was a reason to. (I have instigated that extra effort a couple of times in recent months.) I'm still sitting on nearly 1,800 free rolls at this moment.

What does it all mean?

Life is short, and I realize it with each passing year. I'll still keep playing the game, but I might only put forth a significant effort once in a while. I have three challenge games going on right now, thanks to that new, wacky challenge button. But my days of having a couple dozen running games are behind me for a while.

We lose members, we find new ones. It's not a lot of work to keep the roster full. But even with a full roster, 12 out of 50 team members haven't played, and I'm only at 12th place on our team at the moment because I played a couple extra games over the daily free game. Several people are behind me, and not by a whole lot. Others are burned out, perhaps, if they haven't moved on and held onto their roster spot. Our Feast delay helps, but we don't have the team firepower we once had.

Clearly I'm not the only one who has lost some of the enthusiasm for the 99 different ways to play Yahtzee.

I'm not leaving, but it's time to step back, officially. I would happily add a new team captain if somebody wanted to run the team in some capacity. There's not a lot to do, but it's up to you to make it what you want it to be. You can change the team name if you want, I don't care. I'm still doing podcasts, and I still appreciate everyone who listens, but the name isn't that important. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny way to promote my podcast.

You can decide to remove the players who have disappeared into the night and recruit new blood, or keep things as they are. (I tend to wait until I recognize a prolonged absence before pushing somebody out the door, but you can have your own policy.)

And if nobody wants to do it, that's fine, just know that I won't be working hard to invigorate the roster. I will continue to leave the Feast delays to you all, whether I'm the active leader or not.

In closing, thanks all for making it a lot of fun to play Yahtzee. I hope it continues. I just won't be working so hard to make it happen. The blog is ending with this post, as well.

Above all, I don't need slaps on the back or thank yous for living out my dream of being a game show host in some small way. That's not what this is about.

But, let's have one last contest, with one last prize package. It's going to be a random contest, method of picking the winner to be determined.

I'll post the entrants and some sort of video randomly picking the winner at the bottom of the post after the contest entry period closes. When will the entry period close and the winner be announced? When I get around to it. To enter, send a private message to MikeVegas72 with the words "pick me." I may update the entry list below before I close the contest. Good luck, and have a great summer!

CONTEST ENTRANTS:
1. 71fraz (1-6)
2. GregRulz (7-12)
3. Sheila618 (13-18)
4. Spartan75 (19-24)
5. QuickSparrow14 (25-30)
6. MysticShores (31-36)

Winner to be announced one of these days.

Contest update:

It's going to be a spin of the roulette wheel to determine the final winner of the final prize package....and it's a prize package. I'm cleaning out the prize closet. Your roulette wheel numbers are listed next to your name above. When I record and upload a video, you'll see it below. The winner needs to contact me via private messaging.