Lansing Pinball League

Before I get to the recap, I have to set the record straight. The Capital Combo is a reputable news organ, and as such, we correct all errors of fact. Jason pointed one out in last time’s recap, when I said that to my surprise we had never played a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Rush. I based that on the fact that my list of what games we had played so far in Season 16 (to avoid duplicating them) did not show we had played Rush, and I mistakenly thought that this was the first season during which Rush had been in the venue. Jason pointed out that we did have Rush as a Smackdown game, but it was during Season 15. It’s been around longer than I thought. I should have remembered, though, because that Smackdown was the one in which a catastrophic malfunction forced three of the four players to replay an entire game which had already gone on for ages. Jason certainly would have remembered, because he had blown the game up and was far in the lead when it happened, so it was very unlucky for him.

August 23 was our eighth league night of Season 16, which means that it was our last qualifying night. The positions at the end of the night would determine who went to A division and B division and what the seeding would be for the finals on September 13. The most contested positions were for the top seed and for the bottom seed in A.

After a season which saw a record turnout and therefore the largest A division finals we have ever had, a surprising inversion happened. This was our least attended season in the time I have been the league director, and we ended up with only 15 people qualified to play finals. We thought it was going to be 14, but then Wolff reappeared after a couple of weeks absent, and since it was his fourth night, he was just in time to squeak in for finals. Unfortunately, it didn’t make a difference for how many people could go to A division, because the IFPA requirements mean that we have to cut at least half the field going into finals. We will therefore be having a 7-person A division, with the rest of the people who attend playing B. This makes the top seed especially attractive, because that person gets a first-round bye while the other six play off. The question was, who would this be: Mike, or Danny? They were very close going into the final night.

The dividing line between A and B was also a very competitive position, with several people only a few points apart. I was sitting in 8th place, 4 points behind Joseph in 6th and 1 point behind Josh in 7th. Jason was relatively far behind me in 9th, as I had 13 points on him.

At the end of the night when we got home and Joseph put all the scores in (which he always does surprisingly quickly), I got to see how the dust settled, and there was good news and bad news for me. Good news? I ended up in 7th place. (Meanwhile, Jason had an incredible rally – after a couple of underperforming nights, he jumped up from 9th to 6th with a very strong finish.) Bad news? Mike won the top seed spot. Bad news for me because that meant I would be playing Danny in the first round.

We had our usual Tuesday Night Smackdown, of course. The main game was Game of Thrones. Joseph often writes little quips above the rules sheet that he posts, and this one in small letters said “You’re welcome, Mike.” Mike certainly loves his Game of Thrones and this time it also loved him. Predictably, he won the A division. Tim continued the tradition of being the “Best” division champ on Metallica. Jason, as usual, wanted a true “Smackdown” photo and this time he had the idea of sparring with “swords.” He ran off and then reappeared holding two pool cues to use for a mock swordfight, followed about 7 seconds later by a semi-disgruntled person who said, “We were using those” and collected them back again. Jason went off again to find different cues and this time no one showed up demanding them back, at least not before I got the photo.

And that was that: Season 16 was all over except the final battle. Will Mike defend his title again or will the league have a new champion? In about 24 hours we’ll know. I hope to see you tomorrow at finals.

The league night of 8/9 was the 7th meeting of season 16, so it started our final bank rotation. We had a vote to fill in two empty spots in Bank 8 (known as “Zeus”) and the most popular choice ended up being Getaway. In second place there was a tie between Cactus Canyon and Stranger Things, and I did a random drawing to break the tie, landing on Cactus Canyon. Stranger Things was designated to be a backup game if needed.

Our average league night attendance has been dwindling this season, raising the question of whether we should continue using the rotation format or return to having everyone play the same game on the same night. There are some advantages to both formats, but if we continue averaging about 12 people per night, rotating really won’t be necessary. It’s a question we are going to want to consider before the start of Season 17.

We had both a surprising absence and a surprising reappearance this time. Allen let me know that Derik wouldn’t be attending the rest of the season, as he didn’t have a chance of making A division and didn’t want to play in B. I was surprised, and said that I thought he must be wrong about not having a chance to make A. Then I went and looked at the numbers and realized he was probably right. Derik has always been a power player in the league, so he must be having an off season. The reappearance was by Wolff, who I thought might have drifted away from league after we didn’t see him for a few meetings. It was great to have him back. It was also good to be finishing the season with Allen still around. He was originally going to be returning to his home in Texas at the end of July, but it turned out he would be in Lansing a while longer and would be able to complete the league season after all.

I ended up in a group with Allen and Jason. I had just finished a rotation in a group with Jason, so we’ve been playing together a lot lately. There was a time when being in a group with power players like them would have made me feel a little embarrassed about my B-level abilities, but these days it often has the opposite effect and ups my game. This was one of those nights. Although I didn’t always match their scores, I played games that were at least above my usual average on every game.

Whenever Danny isn’t around during league, someone or other always asks me, “No Danny tonight?” People are always very interested in where Danny is in the league standings, for some reason. Danny often plays his games late due to his work schedule and this was one of those times, though he squeaked in right at the 10 pm deadline that I have started enforcing this season. We got done with league so fast tonight that we were starting the Smackdown finals right as Danny walked up.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown random drawing chose Rush, causing me to be surprised it had not been a Smackdown game already. Usually I will make something the Smackdown game if it’s new to the venue, but I never did that with Rush. It may have been forgotten in the frenzy of new games we have gotten in the bar recently. Unfortunately, we only had six people present to play, and only seven put scores in (which means we can’t count qualifying toward IFPA points; qualifying has to halve the field to count). We had the usual four playing in A but just two people, Bryan and Dan N., played off in B. The dice chose Star Trek for the B game, which is funny considering how many times recently Junk Yard has ended up being the B game. It’s like the RNG didn’t realize Junk Yard had moved, because Star Trek is now in the former Junk Yard spot.

Tonight we’ll be finishing the qualifying season, and there is still a lot of possibility for people to move across the A/B cutoff line, considering that we will probably only be having a 7-person A bracket this season, our smallest ever. It should be an exciting final night. See you all soon, I hope!

The league night of 7/26/22 was our 6th night of the season and, being an even numbered night, finished up a rotation of two banks. The banks were “Athena” and “Hades,” according to the naming scheme that only Joseph and I – mostly I – care about. Athena was originally slated to include Star Trek: The Next Generation, Avengers: Infinity Quest, Rush, Jurassic Park, and Black Knight: Sword of Rage, but ST:TNG had left the venue and was replaced by its successor, Cactus Canyon. Hades included AC/DC, Indiana Jones, Deadpool, Ghostbusters, and Stranger Things.

I didn’t take any photos of league night until after Tuesday Night Smackdown, which is probably a consequence of my working on Calculus homework during league (a common occurrence this season), so I’m sorry for the relative lack of photos in this update.

I continued in my previous night’s group with Jason and Danny. We ended up finished last of all the groups, by far. This is no credit to me; I had a very poor night, including an abysmal game of Black Knight in which I had the opportunity to start the last chance multiball and was screaming in frustration as I failed over and over to lock the last ball needed. No, it was mostly due to Danny, who blew up a few games. I mentioned this to Mike, who replied with the advice, “Always be Danny.”

Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Metallica, with the B division playing finals (and rubbing elbows) on Stranger Things. Mike won the A division and Tim, as usual, won the B, or as he would have it, “Best” Division with another big Smackdown game. After the Smackdown, Joseph, Tim, and I played a game of Stranger Things together which I won, making me feel a little bit better after my embarrassingly bad league night. By then, almost everyone else had left except Mike, who was chatting with former league member (and founding member) Russell. Joseph and I had to leave in the morning for our short summer vacation trip so we packed up and headed home.

Starting tonight we will have our final bank rotation between “Ares” (The Simpsons, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Attack from Mars) and “Zeus” (Tales of the Arabian Nights, Scared Stiff, Guns N’ Roses, Cactus Canyon, and Getaway). See you soon!

Before I start the recap for July 12, I need to recount a story I had forgotten to put in the previous recap, and that is something that happened at the very end of the night when a few of us were still hanging around playing Avengers. I was trying to do some Calculus homework at a table nearby, and suddenly I heard Mike and Allen taking turns rattling off lists of very random-seeming words that started with “A.” I got up and asked them what they heck they were doing and learned that Josh had bet Mike and Allen $500 that they could not guess his middle name. He added that even if they could guess it, they wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. Due to his pinball initials, JAB, they knew it started with an A. I made two guesses and got it on the second one. Josh got a look on his face like I had just thrown a snake on him. Unfortunately, he says that he specifically did not extend the bet to me or Joseph. The actual middle name is left as an exercise for the reader.

Now on to the current recap. It was Night 5, and we started a new rotation of the banks called Athena and Hades. We had a couple of fluke occurrences, one of them being that Derik came to me to say that his group had their game of Cactus Canyon reset when a little kid came up and hit the start button. I’m surprised that happened, since I think it would have required holding the button down for several seconds, but that’s as much as I know about the situation. The other is that Allen played out of turn at one point, forcing me to rule a DQ for him on one game. Since that got entered as a zero machine score, I told him that he was definitely “in the running” for the Worst Score Award for Season 16. He said, “In the running? You mean someone’s going to do worse than zero?” I said, “Well, someone could tie it.” His reply was, “What do we do then? A one-ball plunge off to break the tie?” Everyone loved that idea and someone else added on the idea that the plunge off should be on The Flip Side, which I use for tiebreakers in my charity tournaments.

Speaking of charity tournaments, the week following last league night (in other words, as of this writing, last week), was the summer charity tournament, Rocket Robin. Ever since the first one I have been reusing a piece of art I drew for the original poster, which I was very proud of. The art depicts a robin saluting, wearing a cap with a logo on it, standing in front of a retro-futuristic spaceship. My inspiration for this art was the 1950s TV show Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, which was a favorite of my father’s growing up. As a result I saw it on VHS a lot as a kid. The robin’s cap and the spaceship are both taken from Rocky Jones. The reason I point this out is that near the end of league night, Joseph asked if I noticed what was showing on The Avenue’s TV. I looked down from the mezzanine and to my surprise it was Rocky Jones. I thought this seemed auspicious for the success of my upcoming tournament and said so.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was played on the brand new Guns N’ Roses game. Allen already knows the game inside and out and was freely offering advice. No one was surprised when Allen got the A division medal (which I drew a rose on). Tim won the B division game on Indiana Jones. Tim has a lot of good luck in the B division, or as he calls it, the Best Devision. He had a walk-off Ball 3 win, but since the tournament was over he went ahead and played the rest of his game after I took the winners’ photo, and set the Grand Champion score.

At the end of the night, Joseph and I played Guns N’ Roses with Jason, who also knows the game very well and was teaching it to us. To be honest, it’s so complicated I could only retain one or two things he told me. I’m not the greatest with modern rulesets. I did get to play a song, though, and of course being a Paul McCartney fan I picked “Live and Let Die.” The game puts on an impressive light show and is very fun and exciting to play, especially when you get the song multiball going.

That’s all for last time’s recap, just in time as usual for our league night tonight at 7. We’ll be playing the rest of the Bank 5/6 rotation.

June 28 was the end of the first half of Season 16, with groups finishing their tour of banks Poseidon and Hermes. A couple of people also still needed to play makeups on Lord of the Rings from the week that it was down: Brian because he was absent last league night, and Allen because he just plain forgot. I still had the sheet we had used to write scores down for the makeup, and left it out for Brian when we went to play. Since I arrived with plenty of time before league, I was able to watch most of Brian’s game. When I did my makeup, I had an excellent (for me) game in which I destroyed the ring for the first time ever. When Joseph wrote my score down, he also drew a little picture of a ring and put an X next to it, to indicate “destroyed the ring.” Well, as I watched, Brian also destroyed the ring, and beat my (not very good) ring champion time too, so I drew a little ring-and-X icon to match the one Joseph did.

I’m very sorry to say that league came to the end and I realized I had not taken any photos, so all my photos of the night are of the Smackdown winners and then some hanging around and playing Avengers: Infinity Quest afterward. I don’t have too much to report; it was a pretty ordinary league night, fortunately without any games needing to be switched out this time. Biff once again dropped in to visit and play a qualifying Smackdown game, although he did not stick around for finals.

Speaking of the Smackdown, it was Elvira’s House of Horrors, which is why the Smackdown medalists can see that I drew a spooooooky ghost on the medals. The A division (won by Allen) actually finished before the B division, which got them some razzing. The B division game was on Guardians of the Galaxy. Mike won and humblebragged that it was his first B division Smackdown medal.

Oh yes, and Allen also played his Lord of the Rings makeup game after league. He more than doubled Brian’s and my scores (which were very close together) and, yeah, destroyed the ring. Thoroughly defeated, I drew the little picture on the score sheet one more time.

We started another two-bank rotation on June 14, which was the third night of Season 16. The banks for this one are named Poseidon for the god of the sea (and, oddly, also horses) and Hermes for the messenger of the gods. Most of the game choices in Poseidon are pretty self-explanatory. Hermes’ bank is a bit more mercurial (get it?) but it helps to know that in addition to being fast, he carried the caduceus, a staff entwined with serpents. I kind of had to stretch for some of the banks because the most important thing was balancing the game locations.

Joseph and I arrived early in order to play a makeup game of Lord of the Rings, which had unfortunately been down during League Night #2. Tim was the other early bird and he played with us. I am not normally very strong on LotR, which is evidenced by the fact that it’s been at the Avenue as long as I’ve been playing pinball there and yet I’ve never completed Destroy the Ring mode. I’ve started it a bunch of times, but I always get nervous with Frodo yelling at me and end up draining. It was the first wizard mode I ever saw, actually. My first ever league night I arrived to see a bunch of people clustered around watching a guy (it was Chris T., but I didn’t know him yet) destroy the ring. So even though it’s objectively not that hard to start and not that hard to complete, it still has this legendary status in my mind. Anyway, during my league makeup game, I somehow not only started it but actually finished it, despite getting so nervous for the last couple shots that I got the shaky hands.

I ended up grouped with Joseph (for the first time in quite a long time) and Donny for this week’s league games. Donny had his own moment of glory when he totally blew up Batman ’66 on ball 1. He then also blew up the first of the two extra balls he earned on ball 1, then sadly had to plunge off the second one, per league rules. The rest of his game didn’t measure up to that first ball, but who cares, when your first ball is that good?

Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Avengers: Infinity Quest, which actually should have been the Smackdown our first league night since it was the newest game then, but I forgot. We had a special guest appearance by Biff, who played in the league prior to the hiatus but had not returned since. He told me that he is too busy with family now. He did play in our Tuesday Night Smackdown and I finally got to tell him that I won a blue ribbon at the 2021 Calhoun County Fair with a photo of him at league that I took in 2019.

The Smackdown Champion was Jason, who set up the fun pose for his winners’ photo. Tim won the Undercard on The Munsters.

Finally, I want to extend a league welcome to our newest member, Kayl, whom I unfortunately seem not to have gotten any pictures of this time. Kayl is familiar to many due to being on the staff of The Avenue, and previously played in the March Hare Madness charity tournament.

‘Member league night 2?

Oh yeah, I ‘member! That was fantastic.

It’s been three weeks since our last league night on May 24 so it’s quite possible you don’t ‘member it. So here I am with the league night recap to jog your memberies, I mean memories.

If you ‘member even further back, you’ll recall that during League Night #1 we had to switch out two games due to malfunctions. This is no big deal when it happens during an odd-numbered league night. But now that we use a two-bank rotation scheme, having it happen during an even-numbered night causes problems. The game can’t just be switched because half the league would have played it already. And unfortunately, that’s what happened during League Night #2. The night got off on the wrong foot with the news that Lord of the Rings was down. Joseph broke it while practicing on it over the weekend. Thaaaaaaanks, Joseph. Just kidding – actually, the slingshot rubber broke while he was playing, which would have just happened during league otherwise. It was better to go into the night already knowing the game was out. As a result, half the league only played four games, making it a short night for many people. The people who weren’t able to play LotR that night will have to make it up before or after League Night #3.

Longtime league player and previous champion Danny C. missed League Night #1, and last season had been having more trouble getting work off for league, so I thought he might not play this season. He made a sudden late appearance as most of the league play had finished for the night (he was surprised that there were no groups for him to join in progress, but it was a fast-moving night), but well ahead of the new official cutoff for starting league play for the night. Due to several really late nights for me and Joseph last season trying to accommodate late starters, we made a new rule this season that league play can start late but must start by 10 pm, which is around when I’m normally starting the Smackdown tournament.

We had our Tuesday Night Smackdown tournament on the Avenue’s newest game, the Cactus Canyon remake. There were a lot of high scores in qualifying. One of the league’s newest players, Johnny, qualified to play in the B division, but disappeared while I was tabulating scores and missed out on playing finals. I had told him he was definitely qualified, but either he didn’t hear me or just plain needed to call it a night. In the A division, Allen took home another plastic medal/button, Joseph got second, Jason was third, and Brian was fourth. The B division played off on Star Trek. Tim dominated the field, already far in the lead when his walk-off ball three came around. I got second, Josh got third, and Dan N. got fourth.

Our next league night is in a few short hours and Joseph and I will be coming early to supervise Smackdown games and makeups on Lord of the Rings. It’s also not too late for new members to join! I hope to see you all tonight!