The Vigil Begins, The Tags Get Mean 🪦

sighs in digital captivity Eight players, 80.3°F, and a wind reading of 0.0 mph — the kind of dead-calm afternoon that makes a narrator suspicious of what's being saved up for later. Week 2 of Coin and Blade is officially "Dye Vigil," and the chapter handoff is real: the Treaty of the Thirty Coins now has teeth, and those teeth are AllIn bag tags. Two pools — The Red Ink Vigil and The Dripping Coin — are now the season's organizing structure, which means every Friday reshuffles the hierarchy of the Faithful and every absence buries somebody at the bottom of the line. Eight souls showed up to stand vigil. The rest of you are on notice. 🕯️

A Ping-Pong Match Disguised As Golf 🏓

Zack Markarian took RAH at -3 with a 946 round, but the path there was less a golf round and more a custody dispute over the lead. He pulled even with Chris Fox through hole 4, took the lead through 5, watched Fox answer through 9, retook it through 11, watched Fox pull even again through 13 and take the lead through 14 — and then Fox went over par on 15 and Zack never gave it back. Somewhere in there Zack rode a five-hole par train (7-11), which is the kind of unglamorous middle that wins these things. Fox finished -2 at 935 — a personal best for this course and layout, and a 53-point rating swing from Week 1's 882, which is the loudest "I'm back" of the young season. Chris Norman matched him at -2, 935, six strokes better on the front than the back and clean on the way home. Both Fox and Norman landed exactly on the wrong side of the cash line. The blade does not do participation trophies. 🎯

Resilience Is A Cold Comfort 🕯️

Aaron Prestgard ran RPA solo and posted a clean front nine, the field's only birdie on hole 15 (Par 3, 266ft), and a resilience run of 2-under across the three holes after a rough hole 13. All of it good. None of it enough — he finished -2 at 935, second place, outside the cash line. Week 1 was a wire-to-wire -5 with the lead never in question; Week 2 is a three-stroke regression and a seat on the bubble. The vigil asks a fair question: was Week 1 prophecy, or was it weather? 🥶

The Back Nine Belongs To The Patient 🗡️

RAD delivered six lead changes and a lesson in pacing. Adam Gibbons led through hole 3, Bernard Dieker took over through 4, Gibbons retook it through 9 when Dieker bogeyed, and then Dieker seized it through 11 and refused to negotiate. His back nine was six strokes better than his front, he posted the field's only birdie on hole 11 (Par 3, 300ft), and he closed clean on the way in — a 935 round against a 905 rating, thirty points of daylight. Gibbons led through 9 and faded to 6th, salvaging the card with a six-hole par train (13-18). Patient beats flashy. It usually does. 📈

The Vigil Does Not Spare The New

Clint Atwater posted +11 and a 785 round — forty points below his 825 rating — in his RAF debut and first Death Curse event. Short version: the woods at Art Dye do not care that it's your first Friday. The Series Competitor achievement is in the ledger now, though, and the ledger remembers everyone who signs it. 🪵

The Grittiest Blade In The Draw 🪨

Kieran Buhler won RAE wire-to-wire at +3, 877 — and "wire-to-wire" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. He took 2-over on hole 3 and answered with a birdie on hole 4. He found OB on hole 6 and scrambled. He found OB again on hole 8 and scrambled again. The lead never moved. Small field, but a clean vigil is a clean vigil, and grit is grit. 💪

Three Holes Nobody Solved, Three Birdies Nobody Expected 🐦

Three holes went unsolved by the entire field, and three players solved them anyway. Chris Fox owned hole 1 (Par 3, 235ft) — the only score under par on the hole all day. Bernard Dieker owned hole 11 (Par 3, 300ft). Aaron Prestgard owned hole 15 (Par 3, 266ft). Add Dieker's +30 over rating (905 → 935), Fox's personal best, Zack's 946 round of the day in RAH, and Norman's clean back nine, and you've got a scorecard with actual texture. Quick housekeeping: every throw-by-throw stat in this recap comes from PDGA Live, the official PDGA scoring app. Log your throws there and I get more ammunition next week. Log nothing and I'm narrating vibes. 📝

The Pot Grows, The Vigil Lengthens 🎯

The Super Ace Pot stands at $1,832 after this event — eight contributors kicked in $16 each this week, up from $1,816 last week. No winner. The pot grows, the pressure compounds, and somewhere in the nine-week arc a single throw is going to be worth more than most people's grocery bill. Tick. Tock. 💰

Seventeen Skins And A Charity Case 💸

One skins card, two players, $9.00 exchanged. Zack Markarian hauled 17 skins for $8.50. Clint Atwater scraped together 1 skin for $0.50. Zack scooped the hole 4 carryover (4 skins, $2.00), birdied hole 16 for another pair, and closed it out with par on 18. If you're wondering how the format works — or how it produced a 17-to-1 split — the skins playbook has answers. 🃏

Goal Crushed, Still Taking Donations 🎉

The 2 New Drop Zones project raised $4.38 this event: $4.00 from league registration and a $0.38 winnings donation from Aaron Prestgard. That brings the project to $1,223.15 against a $240 goal — 100% funded, $0.00 remaining. The goal is dead. Long live the goal. Check the project page if you want to see what the money built, or keep the fund rolling for whatever comes next. 🏗️

Two Pools, Two Thrones, Zero Loyalty 👑

AllIn mode means every tag reshuffled, and the reshuffle crowned two new #1s. Zack Markarian claims the Boundary Sigil in The Red Ink Vigil — tag #2 to tag #1 on the strength of his 52 (946 rating, +7 over rating, 1.3 strokes below the 53.3 field average). The sigil is a living perimeter of neon-dripping stencil work, painted by the original faction-mascot artists and infused with captured essence; it whispers warnings as OB approaches and leaves overspray on discs that stray too close. It "can keep dripping warnings" — but under AllIn, Zack has to defend it every single Friday. Kieran Buhler holds #1 Hollow Flight in The Dripping Coin after his wire-to-wire RAE win. Two pools, two thrones, zero loyalty: miss a week and the ladder does not wait for you. 🩸

Blade Drawn, Lines Erased ⚔️

Next Friday, October 2, the season turns to Blade Drawn — and the wind that sat at 0.0 mph this week is packing its bags. A storm picks up, the Knights get tested, and the stencil imagery on the scorecards reveals a sword cutting through a red ribbon. More importantly: the City has announced an impending basket rotation, which means the lines everyone spent two weeks learning at Art Dye Gold pins are about to become suggestions. Bernard Dieker's patient back-nine formula, Chris Fox's personal-best momentum, Zack's freshly claimed sigil — all of it gets re-priced against new pin positions. That's the "Coming Next" arc made concrete, and it's coming for everyone's scorecard at once.

Registration is open now: sign up for Blade Drawn.

And yes, the theme is a sword cutting a ribbon, which means I'm contractually obligated to narrate a disc golf round as if it were a knighting ceremony. Sure. Let's draw blades against par.