The Capital Combo

Welcome to the Capital Combo, a blog of the Lansing Pinball League.  Anything posted here can be blamed solely on the post’s author – usually Heather.  It does not represent the official position (or sense of humor) of the League.

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League Night Recap for 3/11/25

Our last league meeting started the second half of the season and a rotation between banks 5 (Argo Navis, “The Ship Argo”) and 6 (Cetus, “The Sea Monster”). An interesting fact about Argo Navis is that it depicts a ship and yet appears to rotate around the pole backwards. What the ancients made of this, I don’t know. Often such oddities are reflected in their myths about the stars, but I don’t know of any myth that involves the Argo moving in reverse. Maybe Poseidon backhanded the orbit shot.

Devon plays KISS while my travel mug hangs out in the foreground. Yes, that’s Bam from Animal Crossing.

Week 5 is officially the last week new players can join except as guest players, although I don’t believe we had any new joiners at the last minute. Erin made it out again, though, which is great. She thinks she might manage to make enough nights this season to play finals, but work makes it very iffy. Mike Stewart has let me know that he will not be playing the rest of the season, unfortunately, due to needing to budget gas money and other stuff competing for his attention. Mike is one of the league long-timers so I’m hoping he’ll be able to rejoin us next season.

Tim plays the B division Smackdown game on Elvira’s House of Horrors.

Joseph and I were recently talking about how the scores on Medieval Madness just never seem to have reached the averages players used to get on our previous MM that we had when the league was new. The first half results on MM are consistent with that observation: Dan N. was the only person to score over 15 million with 38.7, and the median was 6.8.

Devon took this photo of me playing in the Smackdown finals. I like how you can see me in the monitor also.
Danny plays the decisive Smackdown game on Dungeons & Dragons.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on our newest game, Dungeons & Dragons, and the B division played off on Elvira’s House of Horrors. Danny won the A division and Tim was the champion of B.

Tonight is, of course, our next league night. We’ll finish the bank rotation and play our brand new Pulp Fiction as the Tuesday Night Smackdown game. I hope to see everyone soon!

Tim and Danny celebrate B and A division wins in the Smackdown, respectively.

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League Night Recap for 2/25/25

On our last league night, we finished banks 3 and 4 and the first half of the season. It was our first league night without Ethan, which made it a hard one for many league members. People kept commenting on how quiet the night was.

Mark and Nathan chatting as I blast them in the face with a flash. Lexi points out that direct flash is very on trend right now, so there.

We had another technical mishap as the flipper decided to fall off Indiana Jones mid-game. Joseph put up a sign saying “Indy has chosen poorly, go play Monster Bash” which was the chosen backup game. Since half the league had already played Indy, what happens is that we end up with two score tracks: there are two 100s, two 99s, etc., as people are only ranked against people who played the same game they did. It screws up the scoring for the season a bit but it’s better than making everyone replay a game from a past league night.

Peter and Dar are hard at work mining points, while Dar takes a break.

With the bank 3/bank 4 rotation now complete, we can say that Tim is the leader on 3 (Corvus) and Josh has bested 4 (Perseus). The overall winner at the end of the first half of the season is Danny C., with Tim one solitary point behind, and Josh 5 points behind Tim in 3rd place. The cutline for A division is below 8th place (a new rule this season), and right now Joseph and Mike are tied for 7th, leaving this reporter trailing 14 points behind them in 9th. I am regretting changing the rules to make finals shorter.

Tim plays in the A division of the Smackdown while Scott plays in B.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Medieval Madness, chosen because it was one of Ethan’s favorite games. Shortly after Ethan died, a sign reading “ERR RIP” went up on Medieval Madness (ERR was Ethan’s high score entry). Jason also has suggested that anyone achieving a high score in March should enter ERR. Jason ended up winning the Smackdown game. Meanwhile, the B division played out on Ghostbusters. This was Scott’s first time playing Smackdown finals. He had actually qualified in the past, but didn’t realize he was supposed to stick around for the playoff at the end of the night. Joseph won the B division game on Ghostbusters.

Jason and Joseph, the Smackdown winners of the night, gesture at Ethan’s high score initials.

We’re about to start another league night, which will open the second half of the season and provide the last chance for new players to join this season. After the 5th night, new players can only play as guests. If you’re thinking of joining, right now is the time! See you all soon!

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League Night Recap for 2/11/25

It’s sad to write the league night recap this time since it marks the last league night that Ethan played. We lost Ethan unexpectedly last week. I was hoping to feature photos of him in this recap, but then I discovered that it was one of those nights when I got distracted and didn’t start taking photos until near the end of the night, and his only appearance is half of his back. I’m very sorry for that. As it happens, Ethan’s last league night was a very good one for him, as he finished second so far on Bank 4 (Perseus).

New player Greg and old hand Brian, hard at work in the pinball mines.

We had a last and a first on the same night, as so often happens in life. While it was Ethan’s last league night, it was also the first league night for our new member Greg. Greg is new to competition play but not to pinball. Coincidentally, I ran into Greg again not long later at RLM Amusements in Grand Rapids during their Dungeons and Dragons launch party. We didn’t get to play together either time, though. We also have had a temporary departure as Christy is going to be living in Minnesota for a couple of months due to her husband’s work, but she expects to make it back to the league in April in time to qualify for finals.

Christy thought I should be in one of the photos for a change, so she asked me to do a Charlie’s Angels pose with her. Joseph took the photo. Unfortunately the accidental capture of half of Ethan’s back as he plays John Wick in the Smackdown B division finals is my only Ethan photo of the night.

Peter set up streaming on Game of Thrones, giving the people who played bank Corvus that night a chance to be on the stream. Corvus is one of the banks that still retains a fair bit of its “theme.” Corvus is the Crow, so the games mostly have birds in them, with the exception of Attack from Mars which got square-pegged into the bank on the basis that it has flying saucers. Perseus is supposed to be a “heroes and adventure” bank, although I can’t remember how AC/DC ended up in it. I probably just couldn’t figure out where else to put it.

Devon plays in the Smackdown tournament.

Attack from Mars was, for some reason, playing ridiculously tough for people. I don’t think there’s anything I can objectively identify that was different about it, but the scores were remarkably low. I beat the rest of my group with a score of 943M and that score put me above the night’s median for the entire league!

Smackdown undercard winner Joseph and main champ Tim.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Uncanny X-Men, and the B division played on John Wick. Tim won the A division tournament and Joseph won the B division.

That’s it for yet another recap. See you all shortly. It will be a strangely quiet night without Ethan, but we’ll have each other’s company as consolation.

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In Memoriam: Ethan Reynolds

By now, most of already heard the news that league member Ethan Reynolds died unexpectedly last Tuesday. Below, I am reproducing the announcement of this that I posted in the league Facebook group when I learned about it on Wednesday.

I am terribly sad to have to report that league member Ethan Reynolds passed away yesterday, suddenly and unexpectedly. […] As I am sure is also true for all of you, I was stunned to hear this news. It is incomprehensible to think of someone so vibrant being suddenly gone from the world. Although I did not know Ethan well on a personal basis, I did know him as an indispensable part of the camaraderie of our league. He quickly became one of the core members, the people who make up the league’s personality. He also contributed considerably to the growth of the league in recent years by bringing in friends, and he often recruited people to play in the charity tournaments too, sometimes people who just happened to be at the bar that day! His outgoing nature was legendary to the extent that his name became synonymous with courageous extroversion. If I didn’t have enough people for one of my tournaments, someone might say, “If only we had Ethan here to do his thing” or “We need someone to be an Ethan and go talk to that person playing Medieval Madness.” […]

I am so sorry to lose Ethan and his joyful, fun, and welcoming presence from the LPL, but I know he will never be forgotten by the membership.

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Ethan Reynolds Memorial Charity Tournament

The Ethan Reynolds Memorial Charity Tournament will be held at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing on April 1 at 6:30 pm to celebrate our recently departed member Ethan. The tournament will be “pay what you wish,” with $1 being the minimum to cover IFPA fees, and anything past that being a donation to the Capital Area Humane Society, Ethan’s preferred charity. There will be prize giveaways and trophies for the top three.

The format will be a seven-strikes group strikes format using “fair strikes.” That means that in a four-player group strikes will be 0/1/1/2, in a three-player group 0/1/2, and in a two-player group 0/2.

Come have fun with us – Ethan would have wanted all of us to have a blast!

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League Night Recap for 1/28/25

We had our second league night of the season on January 28, which finished our bank rotation between the first two banks (known to me and Joseph and probably no one else as “Ophiuchus” and “Lepus”). Due to an issue with Batman ’66, we had to switch in Ghostbusters for a backup game, which I don’t think very many people were excited about. When a game switch happens midway through a rotation, we don’t have the people who played the bank during the previous league night replay, since that would be impractical. Instead, we have two separate rankings on the games, each with their own 100/99/98 scores. This does result in the weirdness that for that given night the number of total points is inflated since there are two 100s, two 99s, etc., but I decided it was the least bad way to deal with it.

Two Peters for the price of one: now that’s a Value Price!

The league seems to be growing again as we had more new new players: Darien (Linda’s neighbor, if I’ve got this right), who has played pinball a long time but never in competition; Luc, whom I didn’t get to talk to very much yet; and mother-daughter combo Kim and Payton. Some of the new players were curious about Peter’s streaming rig, which made another appearance tonight, and I was excited to explain to them that people stream pinball on Twitch.

Devon is presumably giving his usual helpful advice to Joseph, like “you should shoot that ramp that you keep missing” and “maybe don’t drain.”

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Godzilla, so Peter set the streaming rig up on that. The B division was on Monster Bash. Smackdown champion Jason asked if he could wear what he called my “bunny hat” for the photo, meaning the hat that we draw numbers out of for bank assignments at the start of each league night, a tradition dating back to the Matt days. I said sure, but it’s a deer hat, to which he responded that he just assumed it would be a bunny since it was mine. I do own multiple bunny hats (as well as a bunny hoodie and a bunny-hooded cape) but, as I explained, the hat was actually an impulse buy at a gas station somewhere up north many years ago. It was either in Grayling or Gaylord, I forget which – somewhere it made sense to be selling a deer camp souvenir. I managed to prevail in the B division on Monster Bash to join my hat in the photo.

Jason assesses the situation as he steps up to play in Smackdown finals.
Jason wears my deer hat to celebrate being the Smackdown champion and I give a thumbs up for winning B division.

After the first two weeks, the standings aren’t meaningful yet (since everyone drops the two lowest nights), but the final scores for the bank rotation are complete, at least. Right now our champ on Bank 1, Ophiuchus (“the Snake Bearer”), is Danny. Second place belongs to Josh and third to Tim. The winner of Bank 2, Lepus (“The Hare”), is also Danny, but this time Tim has second and Derik has third.

We’re less than a day away from our next league meeting. Peter will surely bring his rig again and we’ll have the usual fun with our Smackdown side tournament, so come early to put some games in! See you all soon!

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Season 22 Results and Standings

Here is the league’s Google spreadsheet, used to keep track of season standings:

Season 22 Results and Standings

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League Night Recap for 1/14/25

Season 21 got off to an exciting start on January 14. The biggest development was that Peter brought the new streaming rig he had built. That’s right, after 11 years of existence*, LPL has joined the big league! It had its soft launch during the previous week’s Lightning Flippers meet, but we had trouble keeping the Internet connection live that time. This time Peter dropped the quality so we were able to stream all night, dividing time between The Beatles (one of the games in bank Lepus) and Cactus Canyon (the Smackdown game).

Brian and Nick are hard at work in the pinball mines.

Another source of excitement was the return of previous league members Mark C., Nick, and Todd, who were absent last season. Now if only Pat would come back, since people keep asking me about him and I don’t know where he disappeared to.

Friend of the league Christy officially joined the league this season. We also were joined by new player Dar, who I believe is a friend of Nathan.

Peter adjusts the streaming rig.

Bank 1 (Ophiuchus) started off the same way as last season, with Black Knight: Sword of Rage having a malfunction (I don’t remember what it was last time, but this time it was the catapult giving unearned multiballs) and being switched out. The backup game chosen from Bank 7 was Venom. Unfortunately this did force a couple of groups to replay their league game, leading to a rather late ending.

Devon keeping his snarky comments to himself as he watches Jason play in the Smackdown tournament.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Cactus Canyon. This was my first time trying out Matchplay as a way of running the Smackdown tournament, which allows me to more quickly see who is qualified for A and B division. As it happens, it also makes for a better streaming display, so Peter was happy. Our Smackdown winner was Jason, and the B division went to Joseph.

Jason plays Cactus Canyon on the stream.

Prior to league I made another attempt to get my button maker to press buttons to give out and it was once again misfiring, which we can’t figure out the source of, since it’s not really something with working parts that can go wrong. Some investigation seems to suggest it might be the printer paper I’m using so I’m going to experiment with that. Joseph and I have both been very busy and much of our pinball time has been devoted to getting ready for and then running the women’s state tournament, so I hope I’ll have more time to work on league stuff now that it’s over. That’s also what has put Joseph behind on getting the league scores entered.

The Smackdown B division winner Joseph, and champion Jason.

*To the best of my knowledge, the Lansing Pinball League is the third oldest league in the state, preceded only by the Grand Rapids Pinball League and Marvin’s Pinball League. There are other leagues that pre-date it, but they are no longer in existence.

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When the March Hare gets mad, does he rage tilt?

The annual Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness tournament, a charity tournament benefiting the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue of Westland, returns to The Avenue Cafe on March 18, 2025. The tournament is named in honor of Stephen (2006-2016), the greatest rabbit ever to hop the earth, a giant among rabbits.

This will be a timed group matchplay tournament using the Critical Hit deck. If you haven’t played a Critical Hit tournament before, you’re in for a treat! Every player is dealt cards that allow them to “cast spells” during the tournament. You could force someone to play a game without viewing the display, shake the game to give someone tilt warnings, or even trade scores. It’s a wild time fitting for the name March Hare Madness! Plus, rabbits and magic… it’s a whole thing.

The tournament kicks off at 6 pm and we will play rounds until 10 pm at which point the top four players will play a three-game finals match. The entry fee is $10 which goes 90% to RASA Rescue and 10% to the Sharpe cartel.

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Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye Coming to The Avenue

The Avenue Cafe will be receiving a limited edition model Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye! We will be holding two launch parties.

The open launch party will be on March 4 and will start at 6:30 pm. It will be a 4-strikes, head-to-head tournament with arena priority set to D&D, meaning one match every round will be played on it.

The Lightning Flippers women’s launch party will be on March 8 at 4:30 pm and will use the same format as the open launch.

Both launch parties will give away a translite as a random prize and have an official launch party plaque for the winner! The open launch party will also give away a banner by random drawing and Stern Insider Connected users who log in during the tournament will receive the virtual launch party badge.

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