Lansing Pinball League

It’s been a tough week, so this is going to have to be a very short league report. Our last league night was actually three weeks ago due to our returning to the previous calendar pattern of 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. Sorry, I know it makes for long gaps sometimes, but it makes it easier for me to keep track of the league schedule in advance! At least we had the Fear and Trembling charity pingolf tournament to tide us over. Congrats to Tim for a third consecutive win at that tournament!

The biggest and saddest news of the night last time is that Erin told is it might unfortunately be her last night, as she has too much competing for her time and money at the moment. She has come to enough nights to attend finals so I hope she’ll be able to do that at least. We’ve enjoyed having her in league, along with all the friends she brought!

The happiest occurrence, on the other hand, was a surprise visit from past league member Sam, who played as a guest player for the night. Sam was part of a Grand Rapids contingent who used to play with us in the past.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Indiana Jones since it got bumped for Uncanny X-Men the previous night. Mike Stewart won and Bryan Johnson took the B division title.

See you all soon!

Joseph and I showed up for the last league night to find a surprise: our Uncanny X-Men LE was in! This caused a sudden change of plans as we like to always use a new game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown, so our original pick of Indiana Jones got bumped. Don’t worry, Indy fans, we’ll be playing it at our next meeting tonight instead.

We had a new player, Peter, join us tonight and hopefully for the rest of the season. Peter is new to tournament and league play but has a burgeoning interest in pinball and seems to have gotten pretty good already in a short time.

This meeting was the fifth of the season, and started our rotation between banks 5 and 6, Cetus (the Sea Monster) and Argo Navis (the Ship Argo). We will be finishing that rotation at our next meeting which is in just a few hours. (People don’t even bother razzing me about how late my updates are anymore.) So far, with half the league having played each bank, Brian K. is the captain of Argo Navis, and Josh is beating Cetus. The overall standings right now aren’t very meaningful until we finish this rotation, but currently Tim and Danny C. are actually tied for top of the league. Fairly close behind in third place is Josh.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown was an interesting one as everyone had played Uncanny X-Men only a few times before. Devon ended up winning the A division, followed by Tim, Joseph, and Linda. The real action, though, was in the B (aka “Best”) division, with three of the four players (Mike, Derik, and Peter) putting up similar and very high scores on Jaws, something over 400 million. The exception was Ethan who trailed far behind, causing him to sing “one of these scores is not like the others.” Someone pointed out that with his bonus his score had gotten to 69 million, which was agreed to be “nice.” Ethan decided to call this a victory with a smug “In your face!” to Devon, who replied, “Well if it was 69 you would be in my face.” We hope that the elevated classiness of LPL does not drive our new player away.

That’s all for my recap this week and I’ll be seeing you all in a few hours (less if you want to put in a Smackdown attempt before league)!

We wrapped up the second rotation of banks on September 24 and that brought us to the halfway point of Season 21. After a very under-attended night the previous time, several of the missing players returned. We were relieved to find we that Ethan had not scared everyone away. We are still sad to be missing some of our past regulars such as Ted, Adam, and Mark.

Our banks for the night were Corvus (The Munsters, Rush, Elvira’s House of Horrors, Game of Thrones, Attack from Mars) and Perseus (Avengers, AC/DC, Cactus Canyon, Foo Fighters, James Bond). Derik ended up the overall winner on Corvus, and Danny was the champ of Perseus.

At the halfway point of the season, Danny is now in first overall with an eight-point lead over Tim in second. Tim then has a mere five points over Josh in third. Joseph is having an exceptionally good season so far and is in fourth place, though Tim has a good 10-point lead over him. Fourth-through-seventh is currently a close battle with Joseph ahead of Brian K. by a mere three points, Jason just a solitary point behind Brian, and Derik one more point behind Jason.

Despite hearing that the bar would be starting up live music on Tuesdays again for the “Sip ‘N’ Shop” event, this did not seem to happen while league was in session. The Sip ‘N’ Shop event was going on, though, with a few local vendors selling goods in the stage area.

Our Smackdown game for the night was Stranger Things, and Tim got honors in the A division. The B division, on Batman, was won by yours truly, the humble blogger.

Our next meeting starts in a few hours and we’ll be kicking off the back half of the season with a bank rotation between Argo Navis (“The Ship Argo”) and Cetus (“The Sea Monster”). I hope to see you all soon!

We started a new bank rotation with our third league night of Season 21 on September 10, between Corvus (“The Crow”) and Perseus (“The Guy Named Perseus”). We were back to Tuesday after a couple of Wednesday night meetings. It turned out to be a very long night for some of us, in large part because Corvus contains both Rush and Game of Thrones. Upon being drawn into a group with me and Brian K., Danny made a comment about how this was going to take a while. I don’t think he was referring to my prowess at Attack from Mars (especially when I went on to put all of 500 million points on it, AKA “an AfM nickel”). Later when I announced that our last game would be Rush, Danny said “Oh boy” with a tone of resignation that confused me. I said, “what are you talking about, you love Rush!” but he clarified that meant that he and Brian would be playing it a long time. This did indeed happen and Danny had one ball that went on more than a half an hour and ended up with over 3 billion points. It’s a score that looks like Joseph got confused about how many zeroes should be on the end of a number.

Another contributor to the long night was a mysterious issue on Foo Fighters. Bryan J. was carefully and politely sliding the game back in place at the end of a ball during his bonus count and the game suddenly reset entirely, wiping all scores. There was no tilt or slam tilt message, just a sudden total reset. I ruled that it was a major malfunction and gave everyone involved the choice of either restarting their whole game or taking the lowest score they were certain they had achieved so far and taking compensation balls with that. Most took the total replay (I think the exception was Jason who had a very high score at the time that he didn’t want to lose) so we were all waiting a long time for that group to finish for the night. This resulted in a lot of the Smackdown qualifiers giving up and going home before the Smackdown.

Another big score moment happened when Cyndi had her first ever high score table entry on Rush, which is a big milestone for a pinball player. I still remember mine vividly; it was on a Stern Pirates of the Caribbean at Pinball Pete’s. I still live for the anticipation of hearing high score board entry music, which in many games is used only for that ritual and nothing else, ensuring it remains special. I’m getting a little off topic but I invite you to check out the high score board entry sequence on Space Station, surely the greatest high score sequence of all time. The burst of electronic noise as it wraps up the song gives me goosebumps! I put in time on Space Station every time I’m at the VFW trying to get the high score so I can see it in person, and I never have.

Anyway, back to the report. The night was noticeably light on attendance as none of our big group of new players were present. This led to speculation about whether they had been scared off, and rumors that they could only attend Wednesdays and were therefore out for the season. I did hear from one new member, Erin, that she was attending a concert at Pine Knob and would therefore be absent, so I wonder if some of her friends who also joined with ehr were gone too for that reason.

We had our Tuesday Night Smackdown game on Tuesday once again, and the arena was Black Knight: Sword of Rage. I surprised myself by making the top group with a big qualifying game despite the fact that the Knight usually won’t let me do a damn thing. Jason got the win, though, and the B division honors on Venom went to Ethan.

That’s the news from a fairly eventful week last week and I’m hoping to see everyone in just a few hours. We’re also still hoping for the return of some of our missing past members such as Mark and Ted!

Season 21 got off to a huge start on August 14 with one of the biggest groups we’ve had in a while and possibly the most people who have ever joined at once since I became director. A total of 22 people played including a guest player. Our new players were Dana, Amy, Jessica, Donald, Erin, Orneal, Emily, and Scott, and the guest player was Lillium. I know Donald and Jessica from the Grand Rapids pinball scene. Donald and I used to frequently end up in the same group at GRPL back in the Pyramid Scheme days, and Jessica and I have played each other in GR’s Belles and Chimes. Everyone else was totally new to me and honestly I am dreading having to tell everyone I have forgotten their names already when I see them tomorrow. (I am usually pretty good at learning up to two new members’ names per night, but past that and I can’t retain them.) Of course, that’s a great problem to have and if they do all come back, we’ll know it means we did not scare them off. I did start off by telling the regulars to try not to be weird, but for some reason this instruction was not taken seriously. In addition to the new players, we also had the return of longtime, off-and-on league member Jason.

This was the first time in League history that league night has been something other than Tuesday. Our August meetings are on Wednesday due to The Avenue closing Tuesdays over the summer, a new schedule this year. We will return to Tuesday meetings in September.

Our first two banks were Ophiuchus and Lepus, named for constellations. Ophiuchus is the Serpent-Bearer, and is actually probably the most tightly-themed bank in the season. Most of the games in Ophiuchus feature a snake or serpent; the only exception is Jurassic Park, because dinosaurs would have to be good enough. Lepus, the Hare, is very loosely themed as “things that go fast” except for The Beatles, which is in there because Lepus is my favorite constellation and The Beatles is maybe my favorite game at The Avenue.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown – still so-called despite being on Wednesday – was Jaws. Probably unsurprisingly, it was won by Ethan, who is a big fan of the game. Joseph took first in the B division “Undercard” on Elvira’s House of Horrors.

Will we break new attendance records at our next meeting tomorrow? I look forward to finding out! See you all soon!