Lansing Pinball League

Season 21 got off to an exciting start on January 14. The biggest development was that Peter brought the new streaming rig he had built. That’s right, after 11 years of existence*, LPL has joined the big league! It had its soft launch during the previous week’s Lightning Flippers meet, but we had trouble keeping the Internet connection live that time. This time Peter dropped the quality so we were able to stream all night, dividing time between The Beatles (one of the games in bank Lepus) and Cactus Canyon (the Smackdown game).

Another source of excitement was the return of previous league members Mark C., Nick, and Todd, who were absent last season. Now if only Pat would come back, since people keep asking me about him and I don’t know where he disappeared to.

Friend of the league Christy officially joined the league this season. We also were joined by new player Dar, who I believe is a friend of Nathan.

Bank 1 (Ophiuchus) started off the same way as last season, with Black Knight: Sword of Rage having a malfunction (I don’t remember what it was last time, but this time it was the catapult giving unearned multiballs) and being switched out. The backup game chosen from Bank 7 was Venom. Unfortunately this did force a couple of groups to replay their league game, leading to a rather late ending.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Cactus Canyon. This was my first time trying out Matchplay as a way of running the Smackdown tournament, which allows me to more quickly see who is qualified for A and B division. As it happens, it also makes for a better streaming display, so Peter was happy. Our Smackdown winner was Jason, and the B division went to Joseph.

Prior to league I made another attempt to get my button maker to press buttons to give out and it was once again misfiring, which we can’t figure out the source of, since it’s not really something with working parts that can go wrong. Some investigation seems to suggest it might be the printer paper I’m using so I’m going to experiment with that. Joseph and I have both been very busy and much of our pinball time has been devoted to getting ready for and then running the women’s state tournament, so I hope I’ll have more time to work on league stuff now that it’s over. That’s also what has put Joseph behind on getting the league scores entered.

*To the best of my knowledge, the Lansing Pinball League is the third oldest league in the state, preceded only by the Grand Rapids Pinball League and Marvin’s Pinball League. There are other leagues that pre-date it, but they are no longer in existence.

November 12 was our seventh night of the season and the beginning of our final bank rotation. Bank 8 is always used to finish up anything that hasn’t been played yet in the season, and then the remainder is decided by vote. We had very few votes this time, but the clear winner was Jaws, followed by a couple of votes for Attack from Mars. Bank 7 contained Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but before league I heard that it might need to be pulled for a malfunction. When this happens during the last league night I use the also-rans in the vote as backup games. There were two other games that had received any votes at all, Godzilla and Batman ’66. I flipped a coin and it turned up for Godzilla, to Josh’s disappointment (he was the vote for Batman). I was certainly glad to play something other than TMNT. To my disappointment, but his credit, Derik was able to get TMNT working again, so it got put back in. However, soon after the start of league play, it was discovered that Jaws in Bank 8 had a beneficial malfunction and I decided to replace it. I initially told Josh we would go to Batman as I forgot that Godzilla was no longer needed in Bank 8, and he got excited until I corrected myself and said “Wait, I already drew Godzilla, it’ll be Godzilla.” Josh expressed dismay at my “takesy-backsies.” Sorry!

We had a surprise visit from Christine V., who played in the league many seasons ago along with her husband Jake. Christine was on her way to a job in Wixom, putting Lansing on the way for her, so she came by and played as a guest player. Strangely enough, Nathan’s friend Kristy (I have very likely spelled that wrong), who didn’t play but hung out with our group, told me she was from Wixom. I hadn’t thought about Wixom in years, then somehow it came up for me twice in one night.

Because of the Jaws substitution, the composition of groups, and the number of long-playing games, we had an especially drawn-out league night. At the end we had our usual Tuesday Night Smackdown, this time on The Simpsons Pinball Party. One of our new players this season, Emily, made the top group for finals. There were times in the past she also would have qualified to play but had already left by the time we did the playoff. It turns out that she hadn’t understood how the Smackdown worked and didn’t know she needed to stay for the final match. She took fourth for the night, marking her first time playing in an IFPA tournament finals match. Tim was the overall champion, and over in the B division on The Mandalorian, Joseph got the win.

After the Smackdown, I realized I had completely forgotten to take any photos for the night except the one of the winners at the end. Peter suggested that we stage some photos to recreate the league night using the diehards who were still around at the end of the Smackdown. Those photos follow.

In other recent news, we had both our women’s and open launch parties for Uncanny X-Men. I won the women’s launch after defeating Linda in finals, and Danny toppled Tim to win the open launch.

It’s been a tough week, so this is going to have to be a very short league report. Our last league night was actually three weeks ago due to our returning to the previous calendar pattern of 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. Sorry, I know it makes for long gaps sometimes, but it makes it easier for me to keep track of the league schedule in advance! At least we had the Fear and Trembling charity pingolf tournament to tide us over. Congrats to Tim for a third consecutive win at that tournament!

The biggest and saddest news of the night last time is that Erin told is it might unfortunately be her last night, as she has too much competing for her time and money at the moment. She has come to enough nights to attend finals so I hope she’ll be able to do that at least. We’ve enjoyed having her in league, along with all the friends she brought!

The happiest occurrence, on the other hand, was a surprise visit from past league member Sam, who played as a guest player for the night. Sam was part of a Grand Rapids contingent who used to play with us in the past.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Indiana Jones since it got bumped for Uncanny X-Men the previous night. Mike Stewart won and Bryan Johnson took the B division title.

See you all soon!

Joseph and I showed up for the last league night to find a surprise: our Uncanny X-Men LE was in! This caused a sudden change of plans as we like to always use a new game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown, so our original pick of Indiana Jones got bumped. Don’t worry, Indy fans, we’ll be playing it at our next meeting tonight instead.

We had a new player, Peter, join us tonight and hopefully for the rest of the season. Peter is new to tournament and league play but has a burgeoning interest in pinball and seems to have gotten pretty good already in a short time.

This meeting was the fifth of the season, and started our rotation between banks 5 and 6, Cetus (the Sea Monster) and Argo Navis (the Ship Argo). We will be finishing that rotation at our next meeting which is in just a few hours. (People don’t even bother razzing me about how late my updates are anymore.) So far, with half the league having played each bank, Brian K. is the captain of Argo Navis, and Josh is beating Cetus. The overall standings right now aren’t very meaningful until we finish this rotation, but currently Tim and Danny C. are actually tied for top of the league. Fairly close behind in third place is Josh.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown was an interesting one as everyone had played Uncanny X-Men only a few times before. Devon ended up winning the A division, followed by Tim, Joseph, and Linda. The real action, though, was in the B (aka “Best”) division, with three of the four players (Mike, Derik, and Peter) putting up similar and very high scores on Jaws, something over 400 million. The exception was Ethan who trailed far behind, causing him to sing “one of these scores is not like the others.” Someone pointed out that with his bonus his score had gotten to 69 million, which was agreed to be “nice.” Ethan decided to call this a victory with a smug “In your face!” to Devon, who replied, “Well if it was 69 you would be in my face.” We hope that the elevated classiness of LPL does not drive our new player away.

That’s all for my recap this week and I’ll be seeing you all in a few hours (less if you want to put in a Smackdown attempt before league)!