It’s time for Rocket Robin, the summer charity tournament to benefit the Capital Area Humane Society! The entry fee will be $10, with $9 going to the charity and $1 to the IFPA for sanctioning.
The format will be straight up head-to-head match play in a round robin style. Because we almost certainly won’t have the time to do a complete round robin, we will instead use “Strict Swiss” pairing to do as much of a round robin as possible. At the end of a designated time period the tournament will end and the person with the most wins (1 point per win) will be the champion.
As far as I know this is the only IFPA tournament in Michigan to use this format, so it’s unique if nothing else! There will be trophies, a translite giveaway, and the satisfaction of knowing you supported a worthwhile cause.
The tournament will start at 6 pm on July 10, and the last round will start at or before 10 pm.
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The Lansing Pinball League and the Lansing Lightning Flippers will be celebrating the arrival of our new John Wick with two launch parties! There will be prizes, Stern swag giveaways, and a Grand Champion plaque at both tournaments!
The Lightning Flippers women’s launch party will be Saturday, July 20 at 4:30 pm. We’ll play a four-strikes knockout tournament with arena priority on John Wick, meaning one match each round will be on John Wick.
The main launch party will be Wednesday, June 26 at 6:00 pm. The format will be six rounds of group matchplay followed by an 8-person, two-round ladder finals. (If fewer than 16 compete, finals will instead be the top half of the field, rounding down.) Arena priority during qualifying will be on John Wick, and all finals games will be on John Wick.
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Season XX ended with an unprecedented two-day league finals as Brian took two long matches to triumph over Tim. The hour grew so late that the bar began closing and the tournament director had to call time and reschedule the last match for another night.
Season XX champion and second place Tim.
Some had predicted that this might finally be Tim’s season, but it would be a tough battle for them, as they had already taken a loss going into finals against Brian. This meant that Season XIX champ Brian would only have to win one match to prevail, but Tim would have to win two. Tim had previously defeated Josh 2-1 to come out on top of the second-chance bracket, giving Josh third place.
Josh, expressing his delight with the third place trophy.
The first match between Brian and Tim went to three games, eventually giving the victory to Tim and putting them into a second match. As the last game of the match ended it was around 1:50 am and the bar was shutting down, so tournament director Heather (yes, that is me) declared that the last match would have to take place at a time agreed to by both of the other parties.
B division champion Devon and second place Donny.
That ended up being two days later on Thursday. The two competitors met in the comparative quiet bar around 7 pm to resume, and after a brief warmup period they resumed the battle. It went to three games again, meaning that they had to play the full six games in order to settle things. Brian came out on top this time, retaining his title as the league champion and giving Tim second place.
Biff shows his B division third place trophy.
Meanwhile, back on Tuesday night, the B division also had some hot competition, but as there were only eight players it did not run nearly so late. Biff and Devon went to three games, leading to Devon moving on to finals and Biff taking home the third place trophy. Devon then played two matches against Donny which also went to the full six games, 2-1 for Devon in each match. During their last game, the tournament director checked in to see the status of the match and Devon declared that it was as good as over since he had probably just lost to Donny on Ghostbusters. Instead he rallied, winning Ghostbusters and a very hard-fought B division title.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament was also held, despite the usual low participation for finals night. The arena was Foo Fighters and the winner was Ethan, who wrote another IOU on behalf of Heather for a button. Heather, however, declared that this time it was not marked with the phrase “official signature” and was therefore invalid.
Tonight is Super-Ball XX, the split flipper tournament colloquially known as the Zen Tournament. The format will be the same as for league finals but the tournament director has expressed the hope that it will not need to take two sessions.
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The league night of 4/16 was our last night of the qualifying season, and we finished banks 7 and 8. This night finally determined who would be in A, who would be in B, and who would play whom in the first round of the final tournament… sort of.
Donny has a bash with some monsters.
The problem is that Ghostbusters threw a clot near the end of the night, refusing to recognize balls in the left scoop and doing a ball search every time. I ruled catastrophic malfunction and required everyone to play a new game in place of Star Trek. Since I had a quite terrible night and Ghostbuster was one of only two decent games for me, I wasn’t best pleased. Also, unfortunately, Donny had already left before this change was made, meaning that he has to play his makeup before finals. In a strange twist, this will make no difference to Donny’s final position, but could affect two other people’s seed in the bracket.
Joseph waits his turn while Cyndi plays Jaws; Tim plays Elvira. Linda and Ethan watch in the background.
What won’t change is that Tim is going to be the top seed for the tournament this season. Could this finally be the Season of Tim that some have been predicting for a while now? Tim did manage to qualify for A division at their first Pinball at the Zoo just a few nights later, which was an amazing dark horse showing in a field that included world famous players. Will Tim’s hot hand continue into Lansing finals? We will see soon. (Note: Hot Hand will not be one of the games in finals.) Assuming everyone shows up for A division, that means the top seed of B division will be Devon.
My “official signature,” or so I’m told.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Elvira’s House of Horrors, and the B division was on Jaws. We had relatively few players this time, so only two people – Joseph and Cyndi – played in B. Despite this, they somehow managed to have a longer game than Bryan, Linda, Ethan, and Tim had on Elvira. When Ethan triumphed, I had to apologize to him for the first that I still do not have my button maker back in working order. He responded by writing an IOU on the score sheet. I said, “I don’t think you get to write an IOU. I think I have to do that.” He said, “No, because it says official signature right here.” I responded, “The funny thing about this official signature… it was never notarized.” I only got three words in before Joseph, still playing Jaws, started giggling. He recognized exactly where I was going because we are both fans of Peanuts and I was quoting (actually slightly misquoting) one of Joseph’s favorite bits from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
B division winner Joseph and Smackdown champ/button creditor Ethan.
Season 20’s qualifying is a wrap so that means all we have left is the final battle, tonight at 7 pm! I hope to see you there!
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We started our final bank rotation on 4/9 and mercifully, this time people voted for the wild card games to be stuff upstairs rather than in the alcove. The talk before league started centered on the previous day’s total solar eclipse. Joseph and I had gone to Cedar Point to watch it. Ethan wanted us to know that he was definitely not envious of this because while he had seen it in Muncie, it lasted 20 more seconds for him.
The usual suspects.
Danny wasn’t present during roll call and I felt sure he would probably show up in time, so I commented, “That’s all right, when he comes I’ll just put him in a group with Derik and Dan.” Danny did come midway through the first game and I flipped a coin to determine what bank he’d be in. Then I asked which of the three groups he wanted to be in. He said he really didn’t care, so, being the imp that I am, I sent him over to the closest group which indeed had Derik and Dan (and Curtis) in it. When I walked up, Derik was player 3 and in the middle of a multiball on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was hoping to still put in a fourth player and saw that Derik had both balls trapped so I said “Hey Derik” and just then he started flipping again and I said “Nevermind, I was going to ask you something while you were trapped. ” He tried to trap again and lost one of the balls in the process, which I apologized profusely for, but he was nonchalant about it. I fed quarters into the game while he trapped his remaining ball so we could hit the start button and put Danny in.
Tim poses after winning on Jaws! Unfortunately there are no prizes at the moment as my button maker is out of commission.
Our Smackdown game was finally on Jaws! Not too many people played, so we ended up with a two-person group (Mark and Cyndi) on Scared Stiff in the B division. Tim apparently brought a big enough boat to Jaws, and Mark won on Scared Stiff.
Our next meeting (in a couple of hours) is our last qualifying meeting of the season. This will determine who makes A division and what seeds everyone gets for finals. See you shortly!
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Our last league night was three weeks ago now, a longer gap than usual due to the bar unexpectedly closing Monday and Tuesday last week. Between that, the mountain of grading I’m buried under (students are going to riot soon if I don’t get some old grades back), and the fact that I’m still shaken up from seeing the total eclipse yesterday, my memories of last league night are pretty fuzzy. It was our last night with banks 5 and 6, meaning that tonight we’ll embark on the final bank rotation between 7 and 8.
A typical league night crowd: Derik, Curtis, Brian, Ted, Devon, and Adam.
One notable event I do remember is that we were joined by former league player Jake VanKempen, playing as a guest player. Jake goes back to the early days of the league, or as we like to call them, the Theio’s days (IYKYK). Jake was a little miffed to learn that the new league rules mean that anyone playing after the midseason has to play as a guest player, meaning their scores do not count. He said that if he was going to come all the way out to play for no points I should at least put him in “a good group, like one with Dan.” He also mentioned a couple of other names but I honestly don’t remember who they were. As it happens, when I drew for him (he was running late) I did draw him into a group with Dan N., AKA half of Double Dan-ger. The other half ended up in another group for a change.
Devon watches with admiration as Curtis tears up Godzilla.
Now that banks 5 and 6 are both finished, we can take a look at the standings at the end of the night. Tim won Argo Navis (Bank 5) with solid to great games on everything. Derik took honors in Bank 5 (Cetus) with a mediocre game on Medieval Madness but great games on everything else, including a huge 942 million on Godzilla. That was not, however, the biggest score on Godzilla; that distinction goes to Curtis, who did around 1.3 billion.
A rare photo of me for the league report, taken by Joseph. I am starting the Smackdown game on Indiana Jones.
We were still unable to use Jaws due to its placement in Bank 5 (Argo Navis), so our Smackdown game was the random selection of Indiana Jones. For the second time in a row, Joseph won the Smackdown and I got second. The B division was on Star Trek and in that arena Dan prevailed. Unfortuantely I had no buttons to give out because my button press is out of commission. It’s not pressing correctly and I can’t figure out why, but I hope to get that fixed eventually and give everyone the back buttons they are owed.
The champs: Smackdown winner Single Dan-ger and undercard winner Joseph.
Tonight will start our final rotation, including the wild card games that the league voted to include in Bank 8. See you all very soon!
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Derik does some quick work on Deadpool to get it running for league.
We passed the halfway mark of the season with our last meeting, at which we played banks 5 and 6, Argo Navis (the ship Argo) and Cetus (the sea monster). These were very appropriate banks for our first night with our shiny new Jaws LE game. Jaws was conveniently slotted into Argo Navis to replace the game that left to make room for it, Guns and Roses. This did mean we had to break our tradition of using the newest game for Tuesday Night Smackdown. Instead, Metallica got drawn for that honor.
It looked like we might have to replace Deadpool as it was suddenly not registering the scoop right before league was going to start. But Derik went and got his equipment and did some quick soldering, allowing us to start with the bank intact and just a few minutes late.
Mark plays The Mandalorian in Bank 6.
For some reason, it was a night with light attendance, and the number of people in attendance meant that some people were in two-player groups. I ended up playing with Ted and we both felt like we had solid nights. I had one embarrassingly bad game, but otherwise always felt like I was playing at least mediocre, and consistently mediocre is often enough to do pretty well. Everyone finished pretty early, and we started the Smackdown well before our average start time of 10 pm. So far, Derik is the champion of bank 5; appropriately, his Jaws score was huge. Tim has the lead in Bank 6 with big scores on just about everything in the bank.
Joseph plays in the Smackdown.
In the Smackdown, Tim won B division, which is well known to be the Best division, and Joseph was the overall champion on Metallica.
The following Tuesday was the Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness Charity Pinball Tournament, named in honor of a very special rabbit. We had 15 people attend, which is around average for this particular tournament. In recent years it has been a Critical Hit tournament, using the original Critical Hit Matchplay Edition deck. This continues to be a popular format – well, except among who keep getting bad card draws. A standout moment was when Ethan played the most powerful card in the deck, one that forces another player to trade games with you after Ball 2. Danny was then compelled to give up two high scoring balls on Tales of the Arabian Nights to play Ball 3 starting from about a million points. Ethan was so delighted by this that he came over to tell me before returning to his game. A while later he reappeared and, while laughing so hard he was wheezing, eventually managed to get out that Danny had come back and won anyway.
B division winner Tim and Smackdown champ Joseph showing off their buttons.
Things ran fairly late as always, and a few people ended up dropping out before the end, including Derik who would have made finals but decided to leave without playing. That bumped me up into finals. Unfortunately, Brian started the round by making everyone discard a random card, and that cost me the card I had been saving, one that forces someone to stop playing immediately. I was left with only a card I drew at the beginning, which makes everyone in the group play an entire game with the display covered. The game I deployed it on was Willy Wonka, so we had the ridiculous situation of having to cover just about the entire backbox of the game with newspaper. I don’t think it could have really helped me at that point, but as I said at the time, “I just want to watch the world burn.”
Joseph, to his surprise, ended up winning March Hare Madness, with Tim in second, and Brian in third. I ended up with fourth. And that’s another March Hare Madness in the books. We made $256 for the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue, thanks in considerable part to a $100 donation from Pinball Pete’s, as well as all the players.
Our last league night was the fourth of the season, so we finished up our rotation of banks 3 and 4, Corvus (the crow) and Perseus (the guy named Perseus). My notes don’t include mention of any particular shenanigans this week, but that’s probably just because I wasn’t looking. I’m sure they happened; it’s Lansing League, after all.
Curtis checks the score sheet as Tim plays.
The most notable thing about the night is probably that it marked the end of the first half of our season. Brian K. and Tim are tied for the lead, with Danny trailing them by 10 points. Tim also took the night’s lead in both banks 3 and 4. Assuming enough people qualify this season for a 12-person finals, which looks likely, the bubble for making A division is currently around Curtis in 12th and Biff in 13th, with Curtis 7 points ahead of Biff.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Black Knight: Sword of Raaaaaaage! according to the score sheet Joseph wrote out, and yes, I counted the A’s. I had made cool buttons with colored pencils depicting fierce horses surrounded by flames, and then the button maker misfired on both of them and I was out of time to remake them, so the champs just got flames instead. Sorry about that. That’s the problem with hand making them. Devon won in the main fight and Joseph triumphed in the undercard on Godzilla.
Undercard winner Joseph and Smackdown champ Devon.
The other big recent event was our launch party for the new Jaws LE, which Danny won in against Mike Stewart in a finals that wrapped up closer to midnight than I would have liked. The very warm day had changed to thunderstorms by then, and when Joseph and I opened the back door to leave The Avenue, a dramatic flood of water came cascading in until one of the staff ran over and closed it again. It seems appropriate, even if it meant we had to go out the front door and walk around to the parking lot in the rain.
Mike and Danny at the end of the Jaws launch party.
Last league night was our third of the season, so it started a rotation between banks 3 and 4 (“Corvus” and “Perseus”). The night’s winner on Corvus – so far, as this is only with half the league having played it – was Tim, which included a stunning 108M game on The Munsters. The winner so far on Perseus was dark horse Biff. A lot of league members don’t even know Biff as he often arrives to play his games after others have finished for the night.
Ethan gets ready to go on a Space Gem quest on The Avengers.
I was going to play my second game of the night when I heard a timid voice say, “Is it too late to join the Lansing Pinball League?” I turned to see who this newcomer was, and it was actually longtime league member Mike! Mike took last season off and had missed the first two nights of this season, so I was very happy to see him again.
I was in a group with Ethan, Devon, and Adam, and there was a good deal of jollity going on. There was a lot of trash talking going on, mostly between Ethan and Devon, but Adam got in a great line too. At one point he responded to someone griping about his achievements with the classic line, delivered with sassy confidence, “It’s called luck. Deal with it.” (I can’t quite remember now what he was responding to, but it might have been Devon observing that he’d beaten Adam on every game except one.)
Linda and Mark play in the Smackdown while Curtis watches.
I mentioned to Devon that although I enjoy the atmosphere of women’s tournaments in a lot of ways, one thing I do miss is the trash talking. In my experience, you just don’t get it at women’s tournaments. One of the things I immediately loved when I first set foot in the Lansing Pinball League was watching players collegially insult each other. It was one of the things that let me know I was going to love pinball league. Devon apparently made a mental note that it was OK to trash talk me. Later in the evening I was playing really bad on Elvira’s House of Horrors, and afterward Devon approached me as though he wanted to talk to me about something confidential. In a very serious voice he said, “Is everything all right?” I thought I must be giving off some vibes of someone going through a personal crisis, and my mind began racing as I tried to figure out what might be causing me to look that way. But before I could respond, he followed up with, “Because you’re playing terrible.” I nearly doubled over laughing.
Ethan remembers what shirt he’s wearing.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament game was on Jurassic Park, with the B division playing off on Ghostbusters. Danny won the Jurassic Park game (no surprises there) and Ethan won Ghostbusters, prompting someone to remind him that he was wearing a Ghostbusters shirt under his hoodie, which he had completely forgotten about.
Ethan and Danny with their amazing Smackdown trophies.
That’s all for this week’s recap, but we’re meeting tonight to finish up the bank rotation, so I’m hoping to see everyone soon.
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January 23 was the second night of the season and so we finished out the rotation of the first two banks, known (to me) as Ophiuchus and Lepus. We added a new member, Curtis. Curtis played in my group and told me that he and Derik are longtime rivals on the games over at The Royal Scot bowling alley. I hadn’t realized that The Royal Scot was back to having pinball machines. Years ago we used to have a selfie league that used the games there as well as some at The Avenue and some at Pinball Pete’s, but at one point most or all of the games were removed. Curtis told me they have several there right now, so I might need to go check it out for a change of pace.
Curtis watches his rival Derik play Black Knight: Sword of Rage.
As this meeting was just a couple of days after the big IFPA Michigan State Finals weekend, I got some congratulations for my recent win in the Women’s tournament. Devon greeted me by asking if it was forbidden to meet my gaze now that I was a champion. Then, I had been planning to mention to Ethan that I had seen him on the news (for his epic sled crash at the annual Cardboard Classic sled race) but he got the jump on me by first saying he had seen me on the news. I was interviewed for Kalamazoo station WWMT during the state finals and Ethan said it just randomly showed up in his regular news feed.
Brian locks a ball in the couch on The Simpsons Pinball Party.
Now that two banks have been completed, the true results for the nights can be assessed. Brian took the lead on Bank 1 (Ophiuchus) and Pat triumphed in Bank 2 (Lepus). Since everyone gets to drop the two lowest nights, though, the overall standings are as yet meaningless, with everyone listed as tied for first. After tonight’s third meeting, things will get interesting.
Ethan plays in the Undercard match on Metallica shortly before crashing it sideways into the snow.
Our Smackdown game was on The Munsters, and Tim was the night’s champ. Devon was the Undercard winner on Metallica.
Smackdown winner Tim and undercard winner Devon show off their amazing trophies.
Tonight we will start the rotation between banks 3 (Corvus) and 4 (Perseus). I hope to see you soon!
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