Mike looks less than thrilled to be playing The Simpsons, somehow.
Season 15 of the league finished up on April 12 with our traditional post-season split flipper tournament, Super-Ball XV, also known as the Zen Tournament. We had an even number turn up this time, so no one got to (or had to) play on two teams. Tim, who missed most of the second half of Season 15, happily reappeared for the event, teaming up with Jason. Mike (who has been on the most winning teams in the history of the tournament) usually tries to defend his Zen wins with the same partner, but his partner from last year, Josh, was out sick. Instead he teamed up with Joe P. The other teams were Derik and Allen, Brian and Bryan (AKA “Team Bry/ian”), and of course me and Joseph.
Jason and Tim play Star Wars as Brian watches.
I thought the Dream Team was going to be Tim and Jason, though their seeding undervalued them due to Tim’s being out for much of Season 15. Instead they took third and the finals were between Derik/Allen and Mike/Joe. Joseph and I managed to barely survive one round in the loser bracket, trading extremely close games with Team Bry/ian (they won by about 15,000 points on The Beatles and we won by about a million on The Addams Family; I forget what our third game was on).
Jason and Tim conferring about strategy.
Mike and Joe unfortunately failed to defend the title on behalf of Josh. Derik and Allen decided to take a sassy photo with the trophies, and then took a “real one.” Derik told me, “use whichever one you want.” I’ll use both.
The gracious winners?
That’s more like it.
Super-Ball XV was a bit low on attendance, but as usual it was big on fun. The tradition goes back to the first league season and was originated by the league’s original director, Matt. It will be back next season as always, and many seasons to come, I hope! Speaking of seasons, Season 16 will be starting tomorrow after a short delay due to the bar being closed for a few days during our intended starting week. This is a great time to join or rejoin the league. We have a new bank theme this season, “The Olympian Gods,” continuing the Greek mythology theme that I have used for several seasons.
6/14 & 6/28 (B): “Hermes”: The Getaway, TRON, Willy Wonka, Batman 66, Metallica
7/12 & 7/26 (A): “Athena”: Cactus Canyon (replaces Star Trek: The Next Generation), Avengers Infinity Quest, Rush, Jurassic Park, Black Knight: Sword of Rage
8/9 & 8/23 (A): “Ares”: The Simpsons (switched with Lord of the Rings), The Walking Dead (switched with The Mandalorian), Star Wars, Star Trek, Attack from Mars
8/9 & 8/23 (B): “Zeus”: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Scared Stiff, Guns N’ Roses, and two games chosen by vote: Cactus Canyon and Getaway.
The season 15 final playoffs on March 22 ended with Mike successfully defending his Lansing Pinball League champion title in a final match against Derik. Allen finished third and was gracious enough to wait around until the very late final match played out so we could get a winners’ photo. (A couple of times we have staged two photos so the third place could go home, with the first and second place swapping trophies, but Mike developed a superstition that it was unlucky to touch the first place trophy before the end of the tournament, so that brief custom has been retired.) Allen hadn’t seen one of our special etched glass awards before and was impressed by them. Someone (maybe Derik) told him, “you can take that to Texas with you,” referring to the upcoming Texas Pinball Festival.
Various players play finals matches in the alcove.
This was our largest finals ever, with A division comprising 12 people, an expansion made possible by having an unprecedented 24 people play at least half the season. This resulted in a very long tournament, with Mike, the leader of the winner bracket, going out to his car to take a nap while the second-chance bracket dragged on. I began to have very serious concerns that the tournament might not finish before the bar closed at 1 am and I was having to think about what to do if that happened. We would have had to postpone the end of the tournament for a night that Derik and Mike were available.
Allen, Derik, and Mike, with their third, second, and first place awards, respectively.
Instead, when the final match came around, Mike did me a solid by picking The Beatles (one of the very few shorter-playing games left in the venue). He won the game and so Derik picked Tales of the Arabian Nights. On Mike’s last ball, he tilted a huge bonus and figured that it had likely cost him the game. It was a very surprising tilt because he hadn’t made any big moves with the game. In the photo, you can see how surprised and offended he was.
Mike reconsiders his life choices.
Derik had a good last ball and at a certain point Mike and Joseph began saying that he certainly had won on bonus. I told them not to say anything because it would be “coaching” and we had to wait until he actually passed Mike’s score. Moments later Derik tilted, causing Mike to cry out, “No! Derik!” This ended the night without having to go into a second round. For me this was good news, because another round certainly have resulted in us failing to finish before last call. Mike was rather distraught, saying he didn’t want to win that way, and Derik said he didn’t care: “I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”
Derik plays Mike in the first game of the final match.
I think Joseph would want me to mention that he actually knocked out the number one seed, Josh, in the second chance bracket. Despite this, Joseph finished only a modest fifth. As this was his starting seed, he said that he had made technically the least improvement of anyone.
Todd poses with his third place B division award.
Over in B division, things also ran long but not quite as long. After securing third place, Todd had to take his photo and leave, because he was in danger of turning into a pumpkin at that late hour. That left Donny and Bryan to have two final matches, a fitting match-up because Bryan was the number one seed and Donny the number two. Donny came through the second-chance bracket and won the first round, but lost the second, making Bryan the B division champion for Season XV.
B division champ Bryan and second place Donny.
We did also have a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Getaway. I put up a great score in my one qualifying attempt, which later led me astray when I decided to pick it during finals and thoroughly faceplanted. Jason won the Smackdown but he had me get in the photo as a fellow finalist so you can see a very rare selfie by me. Unfortunately we had only one person available to play in B division so Jen won by default, playing a solo game of Indiana Jones for the title.
Jason wanted a group photo but two of the finalists wandered off, so we just got Jason’s winner photo with me trying for a selfie (badly).
That concludes Season XV, except for Super-Ball XV: The Zen Tournament, happening tonight. That is our traditional post-season, just-for-fun-and-a-corny-trophy split flipper tournament. I have already heard that defending Zen champions Josh and Mike are both out, so we will be crowning a new champion.
Jen shows off her B division Smackdown medal.
Posted inRecaps|Taggedfinals, recap, season 15|Comments Off on Mike defends his title again in the Season 15 playoffs
I’m going to be trying something new for the Lansing scene, a women’s tournament series called the Lansing Lightning Flippers. If it is successful it may become a regular monthly tournament. It will be free, novice-friendly, and eligible for women’s ranking points with the IFPA, which can be used to qualify for the women’s state championship (new this year). The format will be four-strikes knockout. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about women’s tournaments in pinball.
What’s the point of a women’s tournament? Can’t women compete with men at pinball?
Yes, of course, women can and do compete successfully with men at pinball. However, the IFPA recognizes that women are underrepresented in pinball. The reasons for this are diverse and complicated, but one likely factor is that pinball has not always been a socially welcoming hobby to women. The purpose of women’s tournaments is to try to encourage greater participation by women and to bring greater attention to women in pinball.
Can women’s-restricted tournaments be sanctioned by the IFPA? How does that work?
The IFPA has a separate WPPR (World Pinball Player Ranking) points system for women’s -restricted tournaments. They follow the same rules as other IFPA tournaments except for being restricted to women. Because there is no prize pool, women’s tournaments are not charged the $1 per player sanctioning fee, which is why ours can be free.
I’m a female player and I see myself listed in two different women’s rankings on the IFPA. What’s up with that?
The IFPA keeps two rankings for women. One is the women’s open ranking, and one is the women’s restricted ranking. The women’s open ranking uses only points earned by female players in open tournaments. The women’s restricted ranking is based on points earned in women’s restricted tournaments and does not consider open ranking points.
Which ranking is used to qualify for the women’s state championship?
Both rankings will be used to determine the qualifiers for the state championship. The higher of the two will be used for each player, based only on tournaments played in 2022. There will be 16 slots for the state championship this year. The odd numbered seeds will be drawn from the women’s open rankings for 2022, and the even numbered seeds will be drawn from the women’s restricted rankings for 2022. Unlike in the open state championship, there is no limit on the number of events that can be used toward someone’s ranking.
I’m a female player but I don’t see myself in the women’s rankings. Can I fix that?
Yes! That means that the IFPA does not know you want to be included in the women’s rankings. You can email ifpapinball@gmail.com and tell them you would like to be included in the women’s rankings.
Can men come to the event?
Men are welcome and encouraged to come, watch, socialize, and cheer on players.
March 8 was the final regular night for Season 15, and so it would determine the final standings for the playoffs on March 22. As a result, the competition was really heated, especially for the top seed positions in A division. I had been allowing anyone who came late to still play their league games provided they arrived before Joseph and I left for the night. This night pushed that to an extreme, as both Mike and Danny were held up at work. Because of the tight competition, neither one was about to give up a night’s points. Mike ended up arriving around 10 pm but Danny didn’t know when he would be able to come. Joseph volunteered to wait as long as it took for Danny to make it, but that ended up being nearly midnight. I actually left as Danny arrived, leaving Joseph in charge, because I had things I had to do before bed and school in the morning. According to Joseph, by the time Danny and thus the league session finished, the bar had turned off most of the pinball machines and they were about to start closing up.
Brian plays Rush in the Smackdown finals.
Even if not for that, it would have been a late night. First, league was unusually long for our new format. My group ended up backed up for ages behind Joseph’s group as he played a huge (I mean, not Eric Stone huge, but Lansing huge) game of Batman ’66. In retrospect, I really should have just skipped over them to KISS, but I was held back by knowing that in the past skipping groups caused problems and backups. This was a time I really should have made an exception: we ended up waiting probably 45 minutes. Sorry, Lexi and Nate!
Joseph awards the B division Smackdown medal to Jim for his win on Junk Yard.
Then there was the Smackdown. We had just gotten a new game, Rush, and so as is my usual habit for new games, I made it the Tuesday Night Smackdown game. When “Rush” was first announced as Stern’s next pinball theme, Joseph joked, “I’m looking forward to the guaranteed 17-minute play time.” When we arrived and set up the Smackdown tournament, we quickly discovered that the joke had come true, it is a really long-playing game. Only four people (playing together) managed to get a qualifying game in before league started. During finals, on Ball 3, Jason (player 2) had played a really huge game, putting him far in the lead, and Brian (player 3) was now up. It had already been going on for ages at this point. Then the game decided to completely crash and reset. I had written down a 4th place already for Player 1 (Joe) as his position was already determined, but no one else’s was, and I had not recorded any scores. As a result I had to rule a complete restart of the game between everyone except Joe. After another long game, Allen emerged the winner.
Jim shows off his medal.
Around the same time that Rush reset, Mike was playing his league game of Batman ’66, and that also reset. I wondered at first whether the two issues were due to a power fluctuation, but it turned out that Mike’s reset and the Rush reset were about five minutes apart. Fortunately, Joseph was observing Mike’s game and was able to attest the approximate score, and so I ruled that Mike could keep that score and add compensation balls to it.
The Rush Smackdown finalists: Joe (4th), Allen (3rd), Jason (2nd), and Brian (1st).
Finally, sometime after 12:30 am, Danny was finished and Joseph went home. Season 15 was in the books, except for playoffs tonight. It was an eventful season and it should be an exciting finale. I hope to see you there.
Our last league night fell on the big “Twos Day” of 2/22/22. It started the rotation between Cerberus and Augean Stables, the final two banks in the “Labors of Hercules” series.
Danny getting a late start on Elvira’s House of Horrors after managing to get out of work early.
Cerberus was originally themed to “hellhounds” and contained Ghostbusters, AC/DC, Stranger Things, and Junk Yard, with the last spot being reserved for whatever we hadn’t played yet in the season. It also served as the official “back up bank” for other banks, so earlier in the season, Stranger Things got switched with Theatre of Magic, and then Theatre of Magic ended up switched again with Elvira’s House of Horrors. We added in the new game Godzilla, so the bank is now Ghostbusters, AC/DC, Elvira’s, Junk Yard, and Godzilla.
Augean Stables is the “miscellany” bank, determined by a league vote. I simplified the vote this time and just gave everyone one vote for any game that wasn’t in bank Cerberus. Not that many people voted and it resulted in a big tie among a bunch of games with one vote each, so I used a random draw to decide between them. The bank was determined to be The Beatles, Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Batman ’66, and KISS. The random draw also chose one of the one-vote games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to serve as the backup for both banks, “just in case.”
Soon after I arrived, Mike discovered that water was pouring from the ceiling onto one of the games in the upstairs corner. Unfortunately, The Avenue’s roof is prone to ice dams, and when there is a big snow and then a thaw this often happens. Derik shut off all the games in that area and pulled them out from the wall, which resulted in the games looking like they were gathering together to look at Junk Yard. Allen said they were paying tribute to Junk Yard’s designer, Barry Oursler, who had just died.
The games were pushed away from the wall due to a leak, but it looked like they were paying solemn tribute to Barry Oursler.
I ended up in the Cerberus bank, which is good because I wore my Cerberus T-shirt. I had barely (if at all) played Ghostbusters since pre-Covid times, so unsurprisingly, that didn’t go well for me. More surprising is that Mike, who was in my group, also had a bad time with Ghostbusters. In fact, he pointed out that the two of us both had higher scores on AC/DC than Ghostbusters!
Proof that Mike and I both scored higher on AC/DC than we did on Ghostbusters.
At some point, someone came up to me (I forget who) and told me that there was a problem on Game of Thrones: “The flipper button broke off.” I asked, “Does Derik know?” The reply was, “I think so, he’s the one who did it.” We had a fairly low attendance night, so there were only two groups on each bank. I thought the other group had already played Game of Thrones and Derik insisted he was fine with taking his score as-is because he was on Ball 3 and was the last player, so I was going to let it stand. But then I discovered the other group had not played it yet, so we had to use the designated backup, TMNT. Mike, no fan of TMNT, was not happy about this at all. He (jokingly) said that Todd had been the one to vote for TMNT and as he was unable to make it to league night that night, his vote should be invalidated. I pointed out that if Todd came during Week 8 he still had a 50% chance of playing that bank so it was still valid and Mike conceded the point.
Mike laying the smackdown on Guardians of the Galaxy.
At the end of the night we had the usual Tuesday Night Smackdown on Guardians of the Galaxy, and since it was “Twos Day” I had made medals with big number 2’s on them for the winners of both divisions. Joseph chose to go second in the top group, which is what he always chooses, but it was especially appropriate. I decided to follow his lead and go second in the B division group on Batman ’66. Mike won the A division and Joseph took 2nd, which he said make him the real winner. In the B division, Allen absolutely ran away with Batman ’66, so far away that I completely gave up hope. I did, however, get 2nd, again making me the “real winner.”
The Terrible Twos: Mike (A division Smackdown champ) and Allen (B division champ).
In a couple of short hours it will be the final qualifying night of the season, with people switching their banks. Competition for the top seeds is still very tight. We will also be having a Tuesday Night Smackdown on the brand new game, Rush (LE). See you soon!
After a month off to wait out the worst of the Omicron surge, league resumed play with our sixth (of eight) league night on February 8. It was time to switch banks and complete a two-bank rotation that started in December. The next pair of banks will be the two last ones for the season.
Nate playing AfM in my group. None of us really tore it up on this one.
Joseph arrived ahead of me because I was busy with work and trying to get caught up before walking over. When I came, I found a box on the table with a Bluetooth karaoke microphone in it. I asked Joseph why it was there, and he said Susan was giving to me as a gift to make it easier for me to give announcements. Trying to raise my voice to be heard has been a long-term problem for me because I have a recurring vocal cord injury caused by years of lecturing, and I’m supposed to avoid straining my voice in noisy environments. I had to experiment a bit with the microphone (it didn’t play well with my usual mask because I think it was perceiving my muffled voice as background noise and ignoring it, so I had to switch to a paper mask) but eventually I got it working. It has a bonus feature that it can use Bluetooth to play music to sing along with, but I decided to save my one-woman show of “Tommy” for a later date.
Susan playing AfM with me and Nate.
We were down a few people and had one person (Josh) play very early and one person (Danny) play very late, by prior arrangement in both cases, so it felt like a bit of a quiet night. The Tuesday Night Smackdown was on The Addams Family, and everyone underperformed during the final game, according to Joseph. (I wasn’t paying the best attention because I was also grading for my ethics classes.) Jason won the contest and the finalists (I think especially Mike) wanted to take an old-fashioned “beat ’em up” group photo as we hadn’t done in a while. Meanwhile, Bryan won the Undercard match on Junk Yard.
Lansing Pinball League, night 6 of Season 15. The Smackdown finalists have it out: Mike, Joseph, Jason, Brian.
I made an announcement at the start of the night and I’ll make it again now: March Hare Madness, the Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial Pinball Tournament, will be taking place on March 29. It will be a Critical Hit tournament, using the Critical Hit Match Play Edition deck, which is IFPA approved and allows competitors to “cast spells” with effects like forcing people to replay a game, switching group or game assignments, being allowed to shake other people’s games to give them tilt warnings, and so on. The tournament has a $10 entry fee with the proceeds going to the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue of Westland.
Lansing Pinball League, night 6 of Season 15. Bryan won Tuesday Night Smackdown’s B division on Junk Yard.
Posted inRecaps|Taggedrecap, season 15|Comments Off on League Night Recap for 2/8/22
As everyone knows (and likes to give me a hard time about), I’m notoriously terrible at writing the league night recaps except under deadline pressure. The “deadline” is that I have a strict rule to get them up before the next league night. Unfortunately, that bad habit combined with our having a six week gap between meetings due to pandemic-related cancellations, that means I end up not remembering much to write about. At least I have a few photos, right?
Josh doesn’t look entirely pleased with The Beatles.
Our last meeting on December 14 was Week 5 of the season, which began a two-week rotation of banks. We will be finishing that rotation at Week 6 tonight. The banks are the Stymphalian Birds (Attack from Mars, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Iron Maiden, and – supposedly – Elvira’s House of Horrors) and the Apples of the Hesperides (The Beatles, Willy Wonka, Medieval Madness, Indiana Jones, and Game of Thrones. By the way, some reasoning went into the games in each bank. We were attempting to get a certain number of games designated as “long playing” spread among the banks, although at this point we really need to reconsider which games are classed as “long.” At this point the Capital City Crushers have made almost everything into a long game. Stop being so good, people! Anyway, within that constraint, I tried to assign games to the chosen mythology theme of “Labors of Hercules.” In this case, the Stymphalian Birds were a group of monstrous birds defeated by Hercules, so all the games have “flight” or “flying creatures.” It’s one of the vaguer themes, I admit. The Apples of the Hesperides were magic apples that Hercules was given a quest to steal, and which were guarded by a dragon named Ladon. The games in that bank are thus about dragons (Medieval Madness and Game of Thrones), or quests to steal magic artifacts (Indiana Jones), or forbidden foodstuffs (Willy Wonka). Oh, and of course, Apple? The Beatles? That’s the joke. Thank you, thank you.
Josh plays the A division of Tuesday Night Smackdown on Lord of the Rings.
Unfortunately, I had someone come up and ask me to rule on a situation on Elvira’s House of Horrors. Someone’s score had escalated by some extremely implausible amount in a few seconds. I confirmed with Derik that the likely cause was something misfiring and registering phantom hits and that it could not be fixed right away, so we had to pull Elvira’s. It’s really fortunate that this happened during the first week of the rotation because that makes it easier to deal with. I switched in Theatre of Magic, which had been removed from a bank due to a malfunction early in the season and had since been repaired.
Tim shows off his medal for being the Tuesday Night Smackdown champion on Lord of the Rings.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament game was Lord of the Rings, and Tales of the Arabian Nights was drawn as an undercard. Tim (who seems to win a lot of Smackdowns) took the top honors. Meanwhile, Joseph won a particularly hard-fought Undercard which saw a lot of good scores. It seems like a lot of people in the league have gotten really good at Tales of the Arabian Nights over the years. This is fitting because it’s one of the games that has been with the league the longest.
Joseph showing off his medal (barely visible thanks to the glare) that he won in the undercard of Tuesday Night Smackdown.
That was our last league meeting of 2021 but we did have one more item of business, which was to hold Silver Balls in the City, the annual holiday-week tournament supporting the Capital Area Humane Society. Although the turnout was on the low side due to a combination of dicey weather and people having to quarantine, we still earned $186.50 for CAHS. Danny even made a donation to cover the IFPA fees so all of the entry fees could go to the charity. The .50 happened because we had a Closest to the Pin side tournament with a 50/50 pot and an entry fee of $1. The goal of the side tournament was to get the score closest to 100M on Road Show without going over. Nate T. won the side tournament. It was popular, so I think I will do it again for the next charity tournament.
Joe playing Batman ’66 during Silver Balls.
Allen playing Star Trek: TNG during Silver Balls.
There were a couple of surprise appearances for Silver Balls this year. One was Bill L., who has come to Avenue tournaments in the past but whom I haven’t seen since the pandemic hit. He made it despite scary roads, as did an even more surprising guest, Pat M. I know Pat well from playing in Detroit-area tournaments and leagues, but he had never been to the Avenue before!
Allen and Danny with their “trophies.”
Joe must know I was a Girl scout, as he is giving me the Girl Scout salute… wait, no, that’s with the hand facing the other way. I guess he’s just letting you know he came in third.
Danny won Silver Balls in the City 2022, with Allen taking second and Joe P. going home with third. The top three a souvenir Christmas ornaments with the tournament logo, which may not have been the most popular trophy I’ve given out. Joe said, “I don’t even have a Christmas tree” and Danny sardonically replied, “You want mine?”
This is the trophy I made. I used decoupage glue to attach the logo of the tournament to the back and a paint pen for the lettering.
The annual Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness tournament returns to the Avenue Cafe in Lansing on March 18, and we will be bringing back our popular Critical Hit format. What are rabbits known for? No, the other thing. Magic! Critical Hit is a format that uses a deck of (IFPA-sanctioned!) cards that allow players to “cast spells” during the tournament. Spells that, for instance, allow you to force everyone in your group to replay a game, or make a game disappear for the whole rest of the tournament, or let you shake a game in an attempt to give someone else tilt warnings. Players will all be dealt two random cards to start, and additional cards may be earned by meeting specific goals during the course of play.
We will play four-player (or in some cases three-player) rounds with Pinburgh (3/2/1/0) scoring from 6:30 until 10:00 pm. After the last round, the top four scoring players will move on to a three-game final round. Players are asked to be on-site by 6:20 to register as we will begin promptly at 6:30.
To borrow from Watership Down: “be cunning and full of tricks” and you will carry home one of this year’s custom rabbit-themed trophies, one for each of the four finalists. This tournament honors my lost rabbit Stephen, a giant among rabbits, and thus it benefits the rabbit rescue from which I adopted him, Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue (RASA Rescue) of Westland, a registered nonprofit charity. The cost of the tournament is $10 plus coin drop. $9 goes directly to RASA Rescue and $1 covers our IFPA fees.
