Lansing Pinball League

So it turns out that I only took two (2) pictures during our league night of 10/23 (actually both of the Smackdown winners), which was also the final night of regular play for season 11.  I think my mind was really elsewhere because I was a bit worn out from preparing for the Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament, which would be held the next day.  This year the previously annual league Halloween costume contest went on hiatus, due to the low participation last year.  This didn’t stop me from working on a costume and, for the second year in a row, burning myself with hot glue to the point of screaming.  I just waited to unveil my costume until the Fear and Trembling tournament, where I thought the theme would make it more appropriate.

The league voted again to have Iron Maiden be the Tuesday Night Smackdown game so that people could try to get a score for Stern’s Up the Irons leader board.  Danny didn’t manage to best his previous score, but Chris got a score that put him in 9th place.  Last I saw he had moved down to 10th as a certain well known Michigan pinball player managed a score over 4 billion (!).  I’m not sure if that is going to tamp down the league’s enthusiasm for Iron Maiden Smackdowns, although the vote did shift to “play a random game” for tonight’s league meeting, perhaps coincidentally.

Derik (the Smackdown Champion) insisted that the four finalists should pose like Egyptians, to match some of the theming in Iron Maiden.

When it was time for Smackdown playoffs, the only B division player left around was Bryan, so he won the medal for the Undercard by default.  Derik insisted I draw a random game anyway so we could say what game Bryan “won” on.  The dice said it was “Star Wars.”  Congrats on your Star Wars win, Bryan!

Bryan celebrates his Star Wars “win.”

After the dust had settled and Joseph had gotten the scores entered, and despite Tim showing good moral fiber as he corrected a score of his that Joseph had accidentally added an additional digit to, we had something happen that has only happened once before: Chris did not finish the regular season on top.  Instead, Tim passed him to finish in first place.  (Granted, this is almost certainly due to Chris having missed more than one league meeting.)  The only other time this happened, former league member Alex H. beat him by a very small margin and went on to lose by an equally slender margin in playoffs.

The next day was, as previously mentioned, the Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament.  The twist of this tournament is that it is an objective based pingolf tournament with a choice of two objectives on each hole.  The turnout wasn’t as high as I had hoped for, but those who did attend seemed to be enthusiastic about the format and have a lot of fun.  We also had a rare appearance by Russell and Aaron H.  And I finally got to publicly show my basilisk (cockatrice, if you make that distinction) costume.  That’s a monster from European folklore that has a rooster’s head and legs and a dragon’s wings and tail.  I bought the rooster head but modified the wings and feet from previous costumes I’d used and reused the dragon tail that I sewed by myself last year for my dragon costume.  I showed Aaron H. the sheet I printed from Mythology Wiki to explain my costume.  “You know that’s not a real thing, right?” he replied, with a tone of concern.

Me (the basilisk) posing with the finalists of Fear and Trembling: Danny (1st), Dustin (4th), Mike (3rd), and Derik (2nd).

Tonight (in about an hour and a half… shut up, Mike) we’ll be having our final playoffs, with the top eight going to A division and everyone else going to B, to battle it out for the privilege of earning beautiful crystal plaques inscribed with the league logo.  Will Chris finally cede his throne?  Will it be to Tim or to Danny?  Or will Mike S. finally get his long coveted Lansing win?  Soon we’ll find out!  See you at 7:30.

Tyler with his Smackdown Undercard winner medal.

September 25 was the sixth meeting of Season 11 (out of eight) so we are starting to head into the endgame.  Unsurprisingly, this has some members starting to pay close attention to the current standings.  The day of league, I found a message on Facebook from Chris, who (understandably) misunderstood what was actually a spreadsheet error to mean that we had changed the policy for missed meetings from “get last place on all games” to “get 0 points on all games” which makes a huge difference.  Chris missed two meetings this season, which would leave him way out of A division if he received a 0 for his missed night.  Fortunately, this was actually just a mistake, which Joseph quickly fixed when alerted to it.  Sorry, Chris, you don’t have your excuse to quit coming… yet!

We had two new league members join this time, married couple Tim and Sarah.  I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Tim, but I did chat a bit with Sarah and learned that she used to live in the Seattle area, where there is a thriving pinball scene.  Although she has a longstanding interest in pinball, this is the first time she and Tim have played in an actual league.  I hope the long night we had (somehow logjams kept happening) doesn’t deter Tim and Sarah from coming back!

This was our first night playing Road Show, which moved to the Avenue recently.  Danny and I were in the same group and we had a ridiculously close pair of scores, with mine beating his by about 300K out of 355 million.  Joseph points out that there were a high number of these kinds of close calls – check out the standings document and see for yourself!

Finalists Mike and Derik demonstrate the best way to hang around Smackdown winner Danny. Not pictured: the other A finalist, Chad.

By a vote of the league (on Facebook), we made Iron Maiden the Smackdown game again so that people could have another opportunity to qualify for Stern’s “Up the Irons” contest.  Only games played during an IFPA-endorsed tournament or league are permitted to count for the contest.  No one set a new high score, though I heard Danny had one over 1 billion before Joseph arrived to start taking scores, unfortunately.  Danny won the Smackdown (shocker!).  The Undercard was fought out on AC/DC again.  This time it turned into a family feud as Chad played in the Smackdown and Tyler played on the Undercard.  Tyler showed his dad how it’s done, taking the Undercard medal home.

Since I’m posting this you all know that means it’s time for another league meeting.  I’ll see you tomorrow at the Avenue at 7:30.

Our fifth meeting of Season 11 was supposed to be the one that would bring us up to date on all the games we had not yet played so far this season.  Instead, by the time it rolled around, we had received a new game at The Avenue: Road Show, or as I call it, “twice the heads, half the fun.”  But hey, half the fun of FunHouse is still pretty darned fun.  It was too late to make it part of league night #5, so it will be on the list for our next meeting.

The big excitement of the night is that our T-shirts, courtesy of Pinball Pete’s, were delivered!  Everyone should thank Derik for co-ordinating the T-shirt design and printing.  If you missed picking up your shirt, I will have them at league tomorrow.

The other big excitement of the night was that we were finally playing Iron Maiden during league.  Stern is currently running a high score tournament called Up the Irons.  In order to qualify for it, a player must set a high score on Iron Maiden at a Stern Army location while playing a game for an IFPA tournament or league.  Only games played for the event can be submitted.  That means that this was the first chance for LPL players to take a whack at it.  I posted the current-as-far-as-I-knew cutoff score for 10th place (the bottom of the leader board) and three players all exceeded it during the course of the night.  Unfortunately, Joseph’s and Derik’s scores turned out to fall short of 10th place by the time I submitted them to the IFPA the next day (Joseph’s by a mere 2 million).  Danny’s 779 million score, however, put him in third place and put LPL on the map.  As of this writing he is still in third, with the title “Cyborg Eddie.”

Sure, Iron Maiden is great and all, but it’s no “Dr. Dude.”

Our Smackdown game was Getaway. Thanks to the very long night of people having epic games of Iron Maiden, the Smackdown finals were quite late.  My group finished but another was still playing, so I went upstairs to drop a single score on it like I usually try to do for completeness’ sake.  I had a pretty lousy game of 20 million or so, noted it, and started to wander off, when Jason walked up,  handed me an extra dollar for his entry fee, and started a game.  He said, “Want to play two players?”  I’m not sure quite why, but despite not planning to play again, on an impulse I said “Well… sure.”  The next time I did something like 130 million, not exactly a normal result for me on Getaway, so I ended up in the finals.  I think I bumped out Mike S. last minute with that.  Sorry, Mike.  In the finals, Tim ran away with it (appropriate, right?) by, among other things, having a multiball with a big old super jackpot.  I ended up trying my darnedest on Ball 3 to come from behind and while I did a lot of work and got to a pretty decent score, I kept missing the multiball start shot that would have been my only hope.

We hadn’t done “beat-em-up” pictures for the Smackdown finals in a while and someone (I forget who) really wanted to, so here you go!  So many people had left that the two finals divisions consisted of everyone still present, leaving the Undercard with only three players.  I wonder if some people don’t realize we have a second division.

Derik, Danny, and I beat up the Smackdown champ, Tim. (That’s me about to hit him with a chair.)

Mike and Bryan beat up the Undercard winner, Joseph.

Our next league night is tomorrow. It will be the sixth of the season, meaning we are getting close to the final stretch. Don’t forget that players have to be present for at least four league nights to qualify to play in the season finals. New players can still join, but they won’t be able to play in the main tournament on finals night (though they will be able to play in the side tournament). See you all tomorrow at 7:30 at The Avenue!