Lansing Pinball League

Mike plays the Attack from Mars remake for the Smackdown championship.

Our league night for 4/24 was the last night of the regular season.  The total points for each player at the end of the night would be used to determine divisions and seeding for the playoffs.  Although the pressure was on with it being the last chance to climb up a position or two for finals, most people were less concerned with that and more interested in checking out the new games.  The latest  addition is a Game of Thrones LE.  I was quick to razz Derik about how Pete’s took out a relatively uncommon game (Revenge from Mars, my planned go-to for finals!) and put in “a weed that grows everywhere.”  Nevertheless, Game of Thrones was new to many of the league players since they aren’t all crazy people who drive an hour or two in every direction to play in other leagues.  This makes it especially funny that it ended up being randomly drawn for the Smackdown Rookie Challenge game.  Sorry for throwing you to the wolves, folks.

Oscar playing Game of Thrones in the Rookie Challenge.

The main Smackdown was on our other new addition, the Attack from Mars remake.  Being the crank that I am, I can’t stop complaining about how I want my “real” AfM back.  I think everyone else loves it.  I believe it was Immanuel Kant who said, “there’s no accounting for taste.”

Mike won the Smackdown tournament and Derik won the Rookie Challenge, leading to jokes about how it was the Night of the Gingers.  They insisted I take a picture of them with their medals to use in their redhead propaganda campaigns.

Ginger Twin powers, activate!

The founder of the league, Matt, gave us the news that he has already landed a job on the strength of his recently-completed degree from MSU.  As a result, he has already moved to the Kalamazoo area so this is officially his farewell season.  A few of us stayed until the bar closed playing games with him and taking turns buying him celebratory beers.  Sadly, I got news from him yesterday that he will not be making it to finals and “probably” won’t be at the Super-Ball tournament (but we’ll see if we can work on him a bit before then).  I know that the league won’t feel the same without him (and the other founding member, his former roommate Aaron, who we already lost this season due to his work schedule).

Speaking of founding league members, I ran into Russell yesterday.  He was playing his new favorite game AC/DC, which has evidently replaced Lord of the Rings in his heart.  He said that his absence this season was due to having a semester from hell but that he expects to be able to join again next season.

I have to wrap up this report in order to go fetch the trophies for tonight’s finals.  I hope I’ll see you all there.  Remember, even if you don’t meet the requirements to qualify for playing in finals, you can still play in the side tournament.  Good luck everyone!

Our last league night was the first day of the rest of your life… sorry, I mean the first day of the second half of the season.  This also made it the last day for new players to join and still have a chance to fulfill the 4-night requirement to play in the final tournament.  (Any player with dues paid in full can play in the post-season Zen tournament.)  We did have a new player, too, in the form of Oscar, who was so confident about wanting to join us that he paid dues in full well in advance of his first meeting!  Who can blame him?  We are the best pinball league in town and I won’t apologize for saying so.

Bryan, Derik, and Tim, playing their league games on ToM and TotAN.

We were scheduled to play Demolition Man to make up for not being able to play it during what would have been its turn, but it went down during the first group playing it.  I wasn’t told what was wrong with it, just a succinct “it’s broken” from Chris, but I later found out it was the claw having trouble once again.  I asked Derik if he can’t just turn the claw off during league play so we can at least play it once, and he has done so.  Tonight, then, expect to witness a historic moment as Demo Man (maybe) makes it through a whole league night for the first time in the League’s history.  Those who have not played it with the claw disabled before should be advised of how it deals with this: the claw can still be lit in the usual manner, but shooting the ramp will bypass the claw and just come back around, the way it does when the claw is not lit.  If the claw is lit, you will be given a claw award, but will not get to choose which one.  It will start with Lock Freeze, then ACMAG, and continue in order from there.  (I have played in tournaments in which the claw was disabled specifically to stop people from doing the Lock-Freeze-All-Day strategy.)

Chris and Dan playing league games on ToM and TotAN.

We had our first Rookie Challenge, which is a playoff between the top 4 Smackdown qualifiers who are literal rookies (new to the league this season).  This did result in the ridiculous situation of seasoned pinballers Karen and Derik being called “Rookies.”  The main fight was between Derik and Tyler.  Tyler was already approaching 100 million at the end of his first ball on Monster Bash.  Derik rose to the challenge and ended up with about 120 million, but that wasn’t enough when Tyler finished with something more like 150.  Bryan and Karen were left in the dust to fight it out for third and fourth, respectively.  The Rookies ended up playing much longer than the supposed Pros.  Despite running up extremely high scores on Mustang in qualifying, including a long game by Danny at the end that had Chris threatening to pull the plug on him, the main Smackdown finalists were not able to repeat the performance in the finals.  The scores topped out at 50 million and some were quite a bit lower.  In fact, they refused to pose in front of the game lest the scores show.  The finalists were Chris, Tim, Danny (who said “hey, I’m not last this time!”), and Mike S, respectively.

The Smackdown finalists: Tim (2nd), Chris (winner), Mike (4th), Danny (3rd).

One side benefit of the Smackdown tournaments is that some of our newer players are getting close to being “rated” by the IFPA, which means that they are considered as part of the calculation of our league’s “value.”  Until people play 5 IFPA tournaments or league seasons, they are considered to not exist for purposes of IFPA calculations (you can see this by looking at past Smackdown tournaments and noticing how some of the names are grayed out).  Tim is now officially a “rated player” thanks to the Smackdown tournaments, and Tyler and Derik will be coming to it soon.

We’re just about ready to start another league night shortly so I hope to see you all soon.  League officially starts at 7:30 but remember to come a bit early so you can have a chance on the Smackdown game (tonight, I’m sorry to say, it’s South Park).

In preparation for League Night #3 tonight, I present to you… the belated recap of 1/9 (and apologies for 1/23)!

Opening night of the 10th season of Lansing Pinball League.

Season 10 started on 1/9 with my first night as the new league director, and what a start it was.  I expected a few new players; I didn’t expect half the participants to be new players.  In the chaos of getting all the new players checked in and explaining the rules, I got a bit overwhelmed and league started a little late.  Plus, when it was time for me to put people into groups, I didn’t have a good method ready and I just started pulling names off my list, putting four per game and trying to make sure at least one league regular was in each group to help out.  I then got to the end of the list and discovered I had only one person left, Dan.  Since other groups had already dispersed, score sheets in hand, I just removed myself from another group and joined Dan as a two player group.  This was not optimal since it meant that Dan and I had to wait all night for other, slower groups to finish, and worse, neither of us really got to meet any of the new players properly.  Oops.  I’m still learning.

It was great to see so many new players in the league.  We got some extra publicity from the Avenue and Pinball Pete’s this season, and I also made a poster for both venues to hang up, and I think that accounts for some of this.  In any case we’re all happy to have the league growing again.

Dan battles those ugly Martians on our league game, Attack from Mars.

This season we are going to be working through all the games alphabetically, but that’s “alphabetically according to how Match Play has them in its game list” since originally I was going to use Match Play to run the league.  (That didn’t end up working out since the way it deals with absent scores isn’t as we had planned.  Instead we’ll be using a spreadsheet on Google docs.  Not as pretty, but it works.)  Match Play doesn’t skip “The” in the titles of games, hence “The Addams Family” was not part of League Night #1.  We’ll continue with that alphabetical method the rest of the season but I might switch back to a sane method in future.

Mike S. ended up winning the first league night.  My own night was… not so great.  I think I’m going to find that my tendency to play badly in league after rushing home from work and getting no warmup time is only going to be exacerbated by also being in charge of running things.  That’s OK.  I love this league best of all the ones I play in because of the fun factor, not because of my scores!  I wasn’t alone in my agony, anyway; Fish Tales and AC/DC especially beat up a lot of players.

I rarely miss a league night, so of course I went and missed the second night of the first season I’m captaining.  I had a very good reason; I was giving a presentation at an international animal studies conference in Mexico City.  Joseph came with me (missing his shot at the state championship!) and so that left league stalwart Mike S. in charge of things for Night #2.  The threat of an ice storm almost caused a problem since Mike has to drive from Grand Blanc, but fortunately it didn’t materialize and Mike made sure everything was fine while I acted like a professional philosopher way down south.  I heard that we got even more new players, and that things ran smoothly without me.  In the words of Chris, “Mikey done good.”

Typical LPL frivolity with Danny, Derik, and Matt.

Tonight is League Night #3, and the first of our Tuesday Night Smackdown series!  Anyone (not just league members) can put in qualifying games on our randomly-chosen Smackdown game (which for tonight will be Iron Man), with the top four going on to play off for the Smackdown Champion title.  Smackdown attempts can start as soon as Joseph arrives, which will be around 5:15.  I will probably be a little late tonight due to an exam in my class, but should be there by 7:40 at the latest to get everyone going.  See you soon.