League cancelled 1/11/22

Sorry, Capital City crushers, but due to the out of control Covid numbers in our county and state, league will not meet 1/11/22. We will re-evaluate things in two weeks.

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League Night Recap for 11/23/21

Our last league night was just two days before Thanksgiving, so I decided to make Thanksgiving-themed Tuesday Night Smackdown medals. I didn’t trust that I’d be able to do a good job drawing an actual turkey so I decided to go with a classic “hand turkey” look. Of course, the medals were too small to use a real hand for tracing. Mike asked me what American Girl doll’s hands I traced, but in fact I just set my hand down on the table to use as a model and copied it as carefully as possible.

The “hand turkey” medals I made for Tuesday Night Smackdown.

This was the second week of our two-bank rotation, a new format first debuted the previous league night. People mostly played with the same group, with people who missed Week 3 distributed among the existing groups at random. After a week of lower attendance, we were back at a higher level, so the new format proved its usefulness. Jake, Sam, and Nate F. were back from Grand Rapids after a week off, and we had a new joiner, Nate T. Two people specifically thanked me for the new format, and no one has complained about it, so I call it a success.

Lexi looking less than thrilled with whatever is happening on Tron during the B division of Tuesday Night Smackdown.

With more people in attendance, we didn’t sail through the night quite as quickly as we did on Night 3, but we still kept things moving pretty well. The biggest problem was that Tron kept getting balls stuck. A few times players got it unstuck themselves, and once I got Derik to free it. I realize now that I should have removed it from contention because of this, but I randomly drew it for the B division game in Tuesday Night Smackdown and they got started playing on it. It soon did the same thing again, and Derik was gone for the night. I had to bring in “old school Lansing rules” from the days before we had Derik in the league: I told Donny to try to shake it loose and if he tilted (which he did) he would get a compensation ball. The game proceeded for a little while but then the ball got stuck again and so I ruled “catastrophic malfunction” (which is the usual ruling if there are two major malfunctions in the same game). The new game I drew was Star Trek.

Mike playing in the B division of Tuesday Night Smackdown.

The A division, meanwhile, played off on Indiana Jones. Brian was the winner and got to take home one of the coveted hand turkey medals. Joseph, though disappointed to have the Tron game scratched (as he was doing better on it than during his league game), ended up winning the new game on Star Trek. He remarked that he really likes when he gets to take one of the “special” medals back home.

Brian poses with his Smackdown champion medal. Junk Yard has nothing to do with it, but there’s light here…

Tomorrow is Week 5, so we will be starting a new two-bank rotation. It also means we are starting the second half of the season. I hope to see you there!

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Silver Balls in the City Returns

The annual Silver Balls in the City charity tournament will be returning to The Avenue Cafe on December 28, 2021, at 7 pm sharp. The cost is $10 plus coin drop and it will once again benefit the Capital Area Humane Society. The format will be a group strikes tournament, with the number of strikes determined by the number who attend the tournament, most likely 3 or 4. This is our traditional holiday-week tournament, so festive attire is encouraged! There will be random prize drawings and themed trophies for the top three finishers.

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League Night Recap for 11/9/21

November 9 was League Night #3 and it was also the start of our new league format. Due to the record number of people attending during nights #1 and #2, we have instituted a new way of playing the banks. Instead of everyone playing the same bank on the same night, we divide everyone between two banks, and then rotate on the next night so players move to the bank they didn’t play yet. This time everyone played either Bank 3, Girdle of Hippolyta, or Bank 4, Ceryneian Hind. The question immediately arose, “Will we play with the same group next time?” Since the answer was that mostly the groups would remain the same and we’d just slot in absent players randomly, things then turned to people lightheartedly razzing each other about being stuck with these jerks for two weeks.

Todd signs the contract for his appearance money.

Besides the new format, the other big news was that Godzilla (LE) had moved into the alcove, so I made that the Tuesday Night Smackdown game, bypassing the usual practice of drawing a game at random. We will be having a Godzilla launch party on November 30.

Jason playing his league game on TotAN.

League night went extremely fast. I think my league play was done by 9 pm and Tuesday Night Smackdown wrapped up by 10. This is in part due to the fact that after two bumper weeks, we had only a normal number of people (fewer than 20) show up for the night, so we could have actually run our old format. Everyone liked it anyway. It will probably be necessary at times in the future, and even when it’s not necessary it means groups have much less waiting time. I had at least two people make a point of thanking me for the new format so it is probably here to stay.

Shylia plays in the Undercard division on Scared Stiff.

The Smackdown on Godzilla had some very high scoring games and people who already have learned how to play it already schooled the rest of us. Allen won the A division tournament and Josh won the Undercard with a big game on Scared Stiff. The Smackdown also promoted Shylia into the status of an IFPA rated player. Congratulations, Shylia!

Tonight is our next league night, and we will complete the bank rotation, with players who were on Girdle of Hippolyta playing Ceryneian Hind (well, I like the names) and vice versa. I hope to see you there!

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League Night Recap for 10/26/21

For those relatively new to the league, I have to explain a little history, which might help account for what probably seemed like a bizarre choice to cram more than two dozen people into the Avenue’s alcove at our last league night on October 26. We used to play all the games more or less in alphabetical order each season, but at some point I hit on an idea, inspired by how game banks are set up at Pinburgh. Since some games were notoriously much longer-playing than others, what if I tried to arrange the banks so that they eventually spread out the longest-playing games? We assigned each game a value of long, medium, medium/short, or short based on average scores the previous season, and then tried to have two long, two mediums, and a short game per bank. On top of that, I wanted the banks to be thematic, also a Pinburgh convention. I spent a good hour moving around little slips of paper with names of games and “S/M/L” written on them to try to get banks that both fit the vague theme of “the Muses of Greek mythology” and had an even distribution of lengths. This worked pretty well for a couple of seasons, but then we got in a lot of new games and also our sense of which games played long versus short shifted as tilts, player abilities, and other things changed. So I created the latest set of banks with a new theme, the Labors of Hercules. That’s when COVID hit mid-season.

Joseph in his red panda kigurumi.

One known issue with the Labors banks is that while I managed to solve the puzzle of getting games in the L/L/M/M/S format while at least paying lip service to themes, I did not observe at all where the games were located. This resulted in the Lernaean Hydra (generally themed to “snakes and dragons”) bank being almost entirely in the alcove. I got a lot of friendly complaints about that and figured I’d fix it when I next updated the banks. Meanwhile, COVID hit, interrupting our season, which brings us almost to the present.

Joseph shows me what he’s up against on Scared Stiff. I think Player 3 was Mike, if I remember correctly. We had a lot of long-playing games.

When we started Season 15, I was just too busy with a brutal work schedule as well as taking a class to devote time to rethinking the banks – plus, we really needed to start collecting new data for game length again. The truth is that very few of our games could reasonably be considered “short” playing anymore due to players getting better and better. So I figured to just redo the Labors of Hercules for Season 15 and worry about new banks later.

Sam making out like a bandit on Monster Bash.

Then the league suddenly grew. We had an all time record night for Night 2, resulting in the long-planned-for, never-used emergency bonus game rule being brought into play. Then Night 3 beat that record again. And it happened that Night 3 was the Lernean Hydra, so around 30 people ended up crammed into the alcove together. I deliberately chose a bonus game that was not in the alcove, and then it went down. We have a designated backup bank, so I took the game that was designated as the backup for the bonus game… and it was in the alcove. This is the point when being a philosopher really worked against me because one occupational hazard is a tendency to place a heavy weight on consistency in decision-making. A sane person non-philosopher would probably have just picked another game not in the alcove. Everyone had to play elbow-to-elbow all night.

Dan talks with Lexi. I really wish I got a better picture of Lexi’s costume!

It ended up probably the longest league night ever, with almost everyone choosing to play the sixth “optional” bonus game and then a Tuesday Night Smackdown still happening afterward. I came away from the craziness of the night with the realization that we needed to change the league format to accommodate a larger league while still retaining the traditional “five games per night” scoring. By the time I went home I had already come up with the new plan. From now on, we will alternate banks on a two-week rotation. That is, in odd-numbered weeks, half the league will play bank A and half will play bank B. Then in even-numbered weeks, people will switch banks. This will keep everything from our old format except the protracted night caused by having dozens of people all playing a single bank at the same time.

I’m so sad this is out of focus, but this is Shylia winning her first undercard at Tuesday Night Smackdown!

I don’t want it to sound like the night was all bad, though! We had several new players join including Jen, Leanna, Kevin, and Shylia. We also had some league members in costume for Halloween. I wore my new three-headed Cerberus kigurumi (too bad we weren’t playing bank Cerberus), Joseph was in his red panda one, and Lexi was dressed as a winged unicorn with pretty rainbow face-paint and a cool hairdo. Tuesday is also the bar’s DJ dance party night, and they were having a costume contest, but no league members won. We were all beat out by a Carmen Sandiego. (I did go to the dance floor for a little while as I waited for the epic night to roll to a close.)

Joseph wins Tuesday Night Smackdown on Medieval Madness.

I hope to see everyone shortly and also that our newcomers aren’t afraid to return after the Alcove Extravaganza, which I expect to be ribbed about for years to come. Derik posted in the LPL Facebook group for the first time yesterday after lurking for years. What drew him out was apparently wanting to write an LOL in response to a thread about the alcove clusterfluff. I guess I deserved that.

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Godzilla Launch Party

The launch party for Godzilla will be taking place at The Avenue Cafe on November 30, 2021, at 7 pm. It will be a three-strikes head-to-head tournament using all the games at the venue, but with Godzilla used for the final match. The winner will receive a Grand Champion plaque and (most likely) a translite. Further details to come.

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Season 15 Standings

The spreadsheet linked to below contains the current standings for Season 15. Note that the lowest scoring night for each player is dropped and that anyone who does not play is given the points equivalent to “tied for last place” rather than zero to make it less punishing to miss some nights. Also note that the way Joseph rigged it up, it always gives everyone maximum points (500) for nights that haven’t happened yet.

Season 15 standings link

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League Night Recap for 10/12/21

Lexi took this photo of me playing Stranger Things in front of the themed decorations, while Jim watches.

The league started Season 15 on 10/12 with a historic event. The thing I had worried about and prepared for finally happened: more than 20 people attended, meaning we could not fit all the groups on five games. This was thanks to the return of some long-absent members and the arrival of several new members. Members returning after at least a season (and in some cases several seasons) away included Tim, Jake, and Sam, those last two making a surprise appearance together. Jim and Nick, who hadn’t been active in the league since the pandemic interruption, also returned. Meanwhile we also counted several new members: Susan from Jackson (here to take up the Jackson-area champion’s mantle after we mostly lost Chris); Brian-with-an-I, who recently moved to the Capital City from Grand Rapids, not to be confused with longtime member Bryan-with-a-Y; Joe W., whom I know from the Chesterfield Pinball League; and Nate, Jake’s brother-in-law, who also came with him and Sam. I’m not sure if Nate and Sam are planning to be returning members but it seems as though Jake is. Not present was new member Michele, who played her games during a one-time-only, IFPA-calendar-shenanigans-related (don’t ask) “League Night #1 makeup night” on the following Tuesday. Even without Michele this was an unprecedented number in the time I have been running the league: 23.

Brian plays KISS while Joseph, in his very cool Peanuts Halloween mask, tries to learn a thing or to.

I rolled out the contingency plan we had in place for this, which is to play six games and have the best five count for each player, allowing players to either play all six and take the best five, or leave after five games in their group have been completed so they can get home at a reasonable hour. (Nick and Lexi took this option and I might have if I hadn’t needed to be the one running things. Having to get up early for work on Wednesdays this semester is no fun.) I hadn’t prepared a “bonus game” in advance but threw The Walking Dead in as the sixth, as it’s relatively new to the venue and we haven’t played it as much, plus it’s Halloween month. From now on there will be a designated bonus game for each bank in case this happens again. I have tried to choose ones that loosely match the bank themes – not that bank themes make much sense to anyone outside the fantasy land of my own head.

Speaking of the banks, we are more or less replaying last season’s “Labors of Hercules” banks, with some changes made as needed for new or departed games at the venue. Night #1 is “Nemean Lion,” commemorating Hercules’s victory over the Nemean Lion. (He subsequently wore the lion’s skin around and is often depicted that way in art.) It’s one of the easiest themes to put together: the games all have “cats” in them (or tigers, or Sabertooth, or…). It happens that Tales of the Arabian Nights, despite the tiger in it, got used for a different bank but in a fortuitous occurrence, the random drawing for Tuesday Night Smackdown chose it for the night. The games that are supposed to be in the bank are The Simpsons Pinball Party, Deadpool, Theatre of Magic, Batman ’66, and KISS, but Theatre of Magic was resetting during practice games so we switched it for a game from our designated backup bank, “Cerberus,” hence we played Stranger Things in its place.

Tim celebrates his victory and triumphant return as the Tuesday Night Smackdown champ.

League ran predictably very long, so the last games in the Smackdown qualifying were going on late in the night. This resulted in an old-time Lansing League situation. A ball got stuck during Tim’s qualifying game on Tales of the Arabian Nights and Derik had already left, so there was no way to get the ball unstuck. I had to employ the special Lansing rules for this, meaning Tim was forced to shake his stuck ball out and get a compensation ball for the tilt, not great for a game where bonus is so important. Fortunately, his score was so good that he got top seed even without bothering to play his comp ball. Also fortunately, the ball was retrievable so we could have the Smackdown finals without picking a new game. Tim became the Smackdown champion and Bryan won the B division game on The Beatles. I still owe Bryan a medal, as I was out of the plastic medal blanks. (It turns out Michaels doesn’t sell them anymore so we will be rolling out a new model tonight.)

Hitting a historic attendance high was an auspicious beginning to a new league season, and I wonder if that is going to become the new normal or if it was a fluke. I guess we will see soon, as League Night #2 will be starting in about four hours. See you all very soon!

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Season 14 is over at last: Mike wrests back the title from Danny

The top three for Season 14: Mike (champion), Danny (2nd), and Derik (3rd).

The interruption-protracted Season 14 of the Lansing Pinball League finally came to an end on September 28 with an exciting – but mercifully short – final playoff tournament. In the 8-person A division tourney, Danny climbed out of the second-chance swamp where he had been knocked by Mike, to face off against him a second time in the final match. I was in the process of setting up the Tuesday Night Smackdown finals on Guardians of the Galaxy when Mike came over and said I was going to hate him but that he wanted to pick Guardians for the third game of his first match against Danny. I let the main tournament take precedence while the Smackdown finalists waited. Danny needed to win on Guardians in order to move on to a second round against Mike. Mike prevailed, ending the tournament without a second finals round (which to me is always a little disappointing, even though I also needed to go home as I had work early the next day) and ending Danny’s chances of defending his Season 13 championship title.

The top three in B division: Pat (winner), Donny (2nd), and Bryan (3rd).

We resumed the Smackdown tournament, observing that this was the first time the Smackdown had finished before the league finals. This was partly due to having to wait for Mike and Danny to play Guardians and partly due to my scheduling Smackdown finals for 11 pm (I think I may have made it 10 pm in past seasons). Nevertheless, finals did get done at least an hour earlier than is typical, and it is almost certainly due in part to my unilateral decision to disallow playing extra balls. In past seasons whenever I took a vote, a narrow majority of players favored continuing to use “Lansing extra ball rules” for finals (which means playing a maximum of one extra ball).

Derik playing against me on Iron Maiden.

Meanwhile, the 6-person B division tournament had already ended a while back, with a win for Pat in the final match against Donny. Pat ended up the tippy-top seed in B division after losing a single game tiebreaker on Lord of the Rings (a random choice) to Todd at the beginning of the night. They had ended the regular season with a tie for points – actually a three-way tie that also included Biff, who hasn’t returned to league since the interruption.

Josh playing me on Batman ’66.

We also gave out some traditional end-of-season awards: Best Game, Worst Game, and Most Improved. Joseph handles the calculations for those. Best Game indicates the game that was the highest above the mean for the night, Worst Game is the furthest below the mean, and Most Improved is based on an average gain in points per night over the season. Most Improved went to Dan N., Best Game was Joseph on Elvira’s House of Horrors, and Worst Game was Jason on Stranger Things. (I was certain it was going to be my TMNT game in which I hit about two targets in three balls.) The three of them got generic red “WINNER” ribbons, and everyone else (except the top three in each division who got the nice glass trophies) got the famous green “LOSER” ribbons. Matt had a batch of them made years ago when he ran the league and he later found the leftovers and gave them to me. Sadly, there are only a couple left, so unless I manage to get enough surplus league money to get another run of them (unlikely given that I ended this season in the hole after dues and expenses were accounted for) this is the last season everyone will get one.

4th place was my highest-ever finish in Lansing Pinball League after playing all 14 seasons, so I’m a proud loser!

After Jason got knocked out of the tournament, I gave him a Loser ribbon and apologized, because I had made him a double loser for the night with his “win” on Worst Game. When he won Tuesday Night Smackdown, he hung the Loser ribbon on one side of his jacket, the Winner ribbon on the other side, and tried to put on the Smackdown medal. That’s when we discovered I had cut the ribbon too short for him to fit over his head.

Looks like winning Tuesday Night Smackdown has given Jason a big head.

We had two new players attend, Brian and Michele, though as they could not play in finals they just watched the tournament and played in Tuesday Night Smackdown. Michele put up a quite good qualifying score on Guardians but unfortunately had left before I started the finals for it. She would have qualified for A division. Brian did play in A and took 2nd place in his first Lansing tournament. Brian recently moved to Lansing from Grand Rapids, and has previously played in a season of the Grand Rapids Pinball League. Michele is a longtime pinball player but new to the competitive scene. I also have heard we may get at least one more new player this season. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone when we start the new season in less than a day.

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The return of Fear and Trembling

Quarterly charity tournaments will return to The Avenue Cafe with Fear and Trembling, the annual Halloweelection pingolf tournament, on November 2. The course may be started anytime after 4 pm, and the last entries will be permitted at 7. The early start time is to ensure the tournament can finish at a semi-reasonable time. The fee for the first entry is $10, and subsequent cards can be bought for an additional $5 provided they are started by 7 pm. All proceeds minus IFPA fees go to the Capital Area Humane Society. In addition to trophies for the top four finishers, there will also be random prize drawings.

This will be a nine-hole, objective-based course. Competitors will choose one of two objectives on each game and have to stick with the one they chose. Players get a stroke for each ball it takes to reach the objective, up to four strokes for not completing the objective at all in three balls. The lowest four scores on the course will move on to a three-game final match (with non-pingolf 4/2/1/0 scoring).

This is our first charity tournament since the pandemic started. Please come and, as Kierkegaard said, make your choices “in fear and trembling.”

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