Lansing Pinball League

Our October 3 meeting wrapped up a rotation between the banks that I dubbed Corvus and Canis Minor. Corvus was originally set to have Elvira’s House of Horrors in it, but Elvira was misbehaving (surprise?) and Black Knight: Sword of Rage got subbed in. Canis Minor contained Guardians of the Galaxy, the game that was actually the reason for naming the bank Canis Minor. If you can figure out what that reason is and you’re not Joseph, I’ll buy your league games for a night.

Sadly, since last league night, Guardians of the Galaxy has left in order to make room for Venom. When Derik broke the news to me about what was leaving, I told him, “Oh, Joseph is going to be so sad.” He replied with exasperation that he knew someone was going to say it was their favorite game. He did say there’s a chance it will return at a later date, at which time The Beatles will leave instead. I thought he was serious – I honestly wouldn’t be that surprised if it’s not the best earner there – but then he told me he was joking with (or at) me. Anyway, it’s lucky that we did finish the bank with Guardians before it left, and Venom will be placed in the eighth bank, Coma Berenices.

Speaking of The Beatles, that was our Smackdown game for the night. I was rather frustrated by this because it’s one of my favorite games there (as Derik and everyone else knows) but I was grading student journals and therefore highly distracted. I didn’t think I would get time to put a game in on it and even if I did, it would probably be lousy, since I tend to play badly when I combine pinball and work. Ultimately, though, I was able to drop a mediocre score on it which got me into the B division finals. We had a particularly long league night with several players having very long games and also a couple of “super groups” with power players clustered together. I don’t think I managed to get out of there until almost 11 pm by the time the Smackdown was over.

There was a bit of a hitch with the Smackdown as I had discovered just prior to league that I had lost a part for my button press and could not give the usual buttons to the winners. I subsequently found the part and pressed the buttons and will give them to the winners tonight at league night. Those winners, by the way, were Joseph on The Beatles – not surprising as it is one of his strong games – and Brian on the B division game, Indiana Jones.

With the bank rotation finished, I can now report that the winner of Bank Corvus was Pat, and the winner of Canis Minor was Tim. The overall standings have Tim at the top, Pat in second just four points behind, and Danny in third with a somewhat bigger points deficit to make up.

Before signing off I want to give a reminder that the Fear and Trembling Charity Pingolf Tournament, supporting the Capital Area Humane Society, is Thursday. You can start the nine-hole course anytime before 7 pm. Cards cost $10 and players are responsible for coin drop. Each game will have two objectives to choose from. Finals will also use a pingolf format, with the top seed getting to choose either a bank of three games or which objective on each game each opponent will shoot for. Whichever isn’t chosen by the first seed will go to the second seed. We will also be raffling three large gift baskets of merchandise donated by local businesses. Let’s make this our biggest pingolf tournament ever!

September 5 was the completion of our first two-bank rotation, including the banks I have dubbed “Ophiuchus” and “Lepus,” as part of this season’s theme of constellations. Unfortunately, Scared Stiff ended up having a flipper issue and had to be substituted for its designated substitute game, The Addams Family.

This was our first time using a new league rule I have introduced this season: if a game goes down during the second night of a rotation, rather than scrap all the games people played on it in the previous league night, only the people scheduled to play it that night will play the substitute game, and their scores will only be compared against each other. This will cause the results on the two games involved to be slightly inflated, but I’ve decided that’s better than making everyone replay. In general, this was a somewhat cursed league night. I had to make as many rulings as I often make during an entire season.

That said, it was a night full of the usual hijinks too. At one point I overheard a conversation in which Shylia was declaring that we should all wear leotards. I have no idea what that was about, but Ethan was quite insistent that it should be put into the recap. Later, Josh broke out into a dance as he somehow managed (without activating the super skill shot) to have the ball bounce into the scoop and start Crank It Up on his plunged extra ball. Fortunately it was on Ball 3, as I don’t think he would be doing a happy dance if he had spoiled a Crank It Up earlier in the game. (That’s why the league rules permit someone to tilt out an extra ball if they choose.)

It was a hot night, with a lot of the relief coming from fans. During Joseph’s game on The Beatles, Derik pointed one of the big fans right at him, which blew his hair around so much that he had to play for a while with one eye covered.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on AC/DC, and the champ was Bryan J. I won the Undercard match on Avengers.

That’s it for last time’s recap. I’ll be seeing you all shortly to play banks 3 and 4, Corvus and Canis Minor!

We started Season 19 on August 22, with some revisions to our rules and structure. One is that we will be (mostly) meeting every other week this season instead of the second and fourth Tuesdays. That pattern was created to avoid meeting the same week as Grand Rapids Pinball League, but as there is little or no overlap between the leagues anymore, the reasons had become obsolete and many league members voiced a preference for every other week. We will also be counting the best six of eight nights rather than the best seven of eight. Otherwise, the league continues to have a similar format to before, with players switching between two banks of five games in order to retain our “best game” format but avoid having to get the entire league playing the same five games in a night.

The big news of league night was that after having spent until 4 am the previous night shuffling things around on a spreadsheet to get the banks arranged for the new theme, “The Constellations,” I walked in and was told that there was no longer a Lord of the Rings, which had chosen as the Smackdown game. Further investigation revealed that Iron Maiden had also been removed. This was apparently done to allow for the placement of a photo booth. I told everyone we needed a moment of silence for LotR: it was one of the original four games the league started with in 2013. Two of those (our original Medieval Madness and Johnny Mnemonic) are already gone, and so the only remaining one is Indiana Jones. I hastily changed the Smackdown to Willy Wonka, and Joseph almost immediately got a ball stuck on it and Derik was eating dinner so we didn’t want to make him unstick it right away, so we then hastily changed again to Guns N Roses. I also then realized I had forgotten to make Smackdown medals. I admit I got pretty stressed, feeling like the league was starting off as a bit of a mess, especially given that we had a new player. Someone remarked that we always have stuff go wrong and I said, “Yes, but he doesn’t know this is supposed to be a shitshow yet.”

Our attendance was a little low for opening night, but we did have a new joiner in the form of John L. John has played a lot of tournaments elsewhere in the state and has been at one or two Avenue tournaments in the past. He was in my group and was having a very unlucky and frustrating night, except when we went to Jurassic Park and he gave the rest of us a clinic on it. He definitely understood that game at a higher level than I do (but then again, that’s not saying much).

Chaos agents Linda and Ethan ended up in a group together along with Devon and, as Joseph put it, they were “rather merry.” At one point I was playing near their group when I observed Linda pretending she was going to bump poor Devon, who was obliviously concentrating on his actual pinball game. She and Ethan were asking me if that was against the rules and I said “yes, it’s called interference, and I could give you a yellow card,” but they pointed out that she had not actually touched Devon and he hadn’t noticed, so I had to admit that they had not actually interfered with him. Then for some reason, perhaps mocking how I had asked people to put comma separators into their scores to help Joseph make fewer data entry mistakes, Ethan started asking about putting commas in his scores. “What if I put a comma here?” he said, and put one on the end of the score. I pointed out that this would not actually change his score since it would still have the same number of digits in it. Anyway, that’s the kind of tomfoolery that was going on in that group.

We did have a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Guns N Roses and an undercard on Indiana Jones. The champion was Josh, and the undercard champ was Dan N.

We’ll be starting our second night very soon but it is certainly not too late to join for new players because we drop the two lowest nights. I hope to see you soon!

Season 18 came to a close on July 25 with a hot, sweaty night of playoffs at The Avenue Cafe. Danny C. ultimately retained his title as league champion after a battle with Jason. Returning B division champion Dan N. also repeated his victory, this time in a final battle against league newcomer Devon. Receiving third place trophies were Pat in A division and Bryan J. in B division.

This was our largest ever final tournament because the league reached the largest ever membership. We had 28 qualified players, which according to the league rules we were using at the time meant that A division would be a 14-person double-elimination tournament. This beat our previous record of a 12-person finals. That one was a very long tournament that barely finished before last call, so I arrived at the Avenue full of trepidation that the tournament would outlast the bar’s open hours and that we would have to have the two finalists meet on an additional day. Fortunately, that did not happen, but it was a real fear that loomed over me throughout the night.

It didn’t help that I held up my own A division matches by having to make an unusual number of rulings and also sort things out when players entered themselves into the wrong branch of the second-chance bracket.

We did have a Tuesday Night Smackdown tournament, for which we used The Simpsons Pinball Party, chosen because it was excluded from the main tournament due to wonkiness. Since people could not play in Smackdown finals if they were still playing in the main tournament, we had few people available to play when it was time. As a result, Ethan received the B division win by default, which he was very excited about. Mark C. won the A division, which he said was his first pinball tournament win. As it happens, my first ever tournament win was also a Smackdown tournament during a finals night a few seasons ago.

It was a night of upsets. In A division, #12 seed Ethan defeated #5 seed Derik in the first round of the tournament; #7 Pat defeated #2 Tim in the winner bracket and then #4 Josh in the second-chance bracket; and #9 Heather (that’s me) defeated #2 Tim and #6 Mike (who was undervalued due to missing a couple of league nights) both in the second-chance bracket. Meanwhile in B division, second place went to dark horse Devon over league stalwart Bryan J.

During the finals in B division, I asked Devon which match he was on with Dan. I meant whether they were in their first or second of the two matches, since if the person in the second-chance bracket wins, they have to then win a second match against the person who had been in the winner bracket. Devon said “this is it, this is for the tournament” but I wasn’t sure he had understood me correctly so I asked Dan who clarified that they were only in the first match. Devon, who was in the second-chance bracket, was heading toward winning his game which would win him the match, and I said to Dan, “I think Devon doesn’t realize he is going to have to beat you a second time.” Indeed I was right. When the game finished I explained that they would now have another round and Devon exclaimed, “We have to play again?”

The final match in A division started around midnight and pitted Danny against Jason, with Danny having the better seed. Danny chose Willy Wonka, which he won. Choice then went to Jason, who chose The Munsters and won. Choice went back to Danny and he chose Stranger Things. I have to admit that at this stage I had very mixed emotions. I always find it more exciting when finals goes into a second match, and I also kind of wanted to see a new league champion (Jason has never won the season), but part of me also really wanted Danny to win so that the tournament would be over before they started kicking people out. Danny did win that final game on Stranger Things and it was a few minutes before 1 am when I had him and Jason line up for photos. A single bar patron, who had gotten out of the way for the photo and was standing nearby, clapped. I then packed up my stuff and took Joseph’s car home, as he had long since walked home to go to bed in order to be rested for work the next day.

That wraps up Season 18, except for our traditional post-season split flipper or “Zen” tournament tonight, Super-Ball XVIII. Season 19 will begin on August 22.

The final results for Season 18 are as follows:

1. Danny C.
2. Jason
3. Pat
4. Josh
5. Joseph
6. Heather
7. Mike
8. Jimmy R.
9. Tim
10. Derik
11. Biff
12. Ethan
13. Donny
14. Ted
15. Dan N.
16. Devon
17. Bryan
18. Shylia
19. Mark
20. Jim J.
21. Grant
22. Adam
23. Travis
24. Ro
25. Linda
26. Ann-Marie
27. Cyndi
28. Mark H.

Our league night on July 11 was the final night of qualifying for Season 18. As we got ready to send people to their respective banks, Ted got confused because he remembered playing bank “A” last time and we gave him an A group again this time. He pointed this out as he thought it was a mistake. Joseph started to explain that he switches which bank is “A” so people keep the same letter, but Adam cut in first to give Ted a hard time: “How many league nights have you been to now, and you don’t know how this works?” or something along those lines.

Prior to the start of league play, Joseph, Ethan, Cyndi, and I played a game on The Munsters, the Tuesday Night Smackdown game of the night. Ethan had a really great game on it that he was very pleased with (around 27 million) and then Joseph decided to crush him by completing blowing it up to the tune of around 88.

At one point during the night, I had someone come over to ask me what to do because they forgot to put a fourth player on Guns N’ Roses, then when they tried to punch one in at the last minute after player three finished ball one, it went to player one ball two, but it did now show a fourth player. When they described this I was pretty sure I knew what happened. I did not actually know this was possible, but I guessed that it would allow you to add a new player at any time rather than just during Ball One, and then would just give them three balls to play no matter what ball everyone else was on at the time. This was consistent with the strange way that extra balls work on Jersey Jack games (they add them to the end of the game rather than after the ball you earned them on). As I walked over I said “This is a weird effect of how how Jersey Jack games handle balls.” Ethan replied “I’m glad we’re discussing how to handle balls.” Anyway, it turned out I was right and it just added the player’s balls to the end of the game the same way it handles extra balls. Thanks for always confusing tournament play, Jersey Jack.

My group consisted of me, Joseph, Tim, and briefly Harpy. Harpy has played in a Lightning Flippers tournament before and asked to play in whatever we had going on. I explained that it would not be possible to qualify for finals at this point but she was OK with that so I added her to our group. Unfortunately she then had something unexpectedly come up and had to leave after only playing two games with us.

When I went to play Rush, I dialed in the song I always play (“Free Will,” the one that seems most appropriate to my academic area) and Joseph said “I knew you were going to do that.” I raised a hand behind me to give Joseph a single finger salute in reply, getting a deadpan “Wow” out of Tim.

Ethan ended up getting revenge against Joseph for crushing his Munsters game in qualifying by winning the Tuesday Night Smackdown. The B division played Avengers and somehow I managed to win that one!

After the dust settled (the “dust” being Joseph putting the scores in hastily before bedtime) Danny C. had the top qualifying position for Season 18 with a pretty healthy 27 point margin over second seed Tim. Assuming everyone attends what will be a really epic finals night, Ted was the last person to make it over the cut into A division, leaving Dan N. to be top seed in B.

June 27 was the beginning of the end of the qualifying season, since we started the final rotation of banks 7 and 8. Bank 8 is always a catch-all of whatever games are left to play, including ones added to the venue during the season. This time there was only one remainder slot, for which the league voted for a repeat game. The winner, by far, of the Facebook poll was Rush, prompting my mom to comment, “I don’t know what Rush is, but it seems popular.” Bank 8 also included our nearly brand new game, Foo Fighters, testing whether people had gotten a feel for the rules yet.

One advantage of the long league season is that we are able to play each game at least once over the course of qualifying… usually. This time we had very bad luck with AC/DC. It had already been taken out of a previous bank for a malfunction, and swapped into Bank 7 instead. Unfortunately it went down again and therefore won’t be played at all this season, except in finals. On the up side, it happened during the first night of a rotation, which is much easier to deal with, and after only one group had finished playing it. On the down side, my group was the one who had already played, and both Ted and I had a really good game that we had to scratch. Such is pinball.

Danny C. was wearing a totally awesome shirt with famed pinball medic Dr. Dude on it. I was admiring it because I’m kind of a fan of that game, and Derik made sure to point out that it was an original Dr. Dude shirt from when the game was new.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Godzilla. Joseph always writes a quip on the rules sheet and this time it was “I wonder if Dan C. will play?” Indeed he did. As league was getting close to wrapping up, which would mean calling time on Godzilla qualifying, Danny came over to ask me if people could also qualify on downstairs Godzilla as well as the originally assigned upstairs Godzilla (“mezza-Godzilla”). I told him that I would allow that if he would give me his shirt. He started to explain that it was a gift so he couldn’t give it away but I made sure to point out that of course I was kidding. I consulted with assistant TD Joseph for a second opinion and we decided together that yes, since they were virtually the same game, we could allow qualifying on downstairs Godzilla. I was only halfway through shouting this announcement when I saw Danny make tracks downstairs.

Unsurprisingly, Danny ended up with by far the highest qualifying score on Godzilla with over a billion points, and he also went on to win the Smackdown contest. I went to draw a B division game from the games nearby and Joseph immediately said it would be Turtles. It has been noted in the past that Turtles has come up a disproportionate number of times when I’ve had to draw a game from that cluster. This time, however, the B game was The Addams Family. I asked Joseph for his choice of position and he said “I’ll go second on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and kept repeating this as I tried to ascertain that he really wanted to go second on The Addams Family. I finally just wrote him down as second. He went on to win The Addams Family, not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Tonight will wrap up the qualifying season and determine who will make it to A division finals, who will play B, and what the seeds for finals will be. Joseph and I are back from our vacation in California, rested and ready (but not tanned thanks to SPF 70) and we hope to see you all soon!