It’s almost time for another league meeting and that means time for me to finally post the recap for the last one. Our fourth meeting of Season 12 was the largest in recent memory, with 18 participants. (And that’s not even counting Danny, who showed up late and played his games by himself.) Despite this, we managed to keep things moving and still finished at something close to a reasonable time of night. I’m a little worried. If we end up with more than 20 people showing up at once we’re going to have an issue! Still, I must say that the growth of the league in that direction would be a great problem to have.
In addition to a good turnout by our regulars (minus Chad and Tyler), we had a surprise guest appearance by Ann Arbor residents (and AA Pinball Pete’s tournament directors) Audrey and Justin. The league also welcomed back Lexi, who played a few meetings in a past league season, and Todd, who hadn’t played in league before but made his first Lansing appearance at the Munsters launch party.
Our bank for the night was Urania, themed to “stars.” This bank contains neither Star Trek: The Next Generation nor Star Wars. Originally, the bank was Star Trek, Junk Yard, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Elvis, and Star Wars. Star Wars and Getaway left the Avenue (temporarily for Star Wars, according to Derik) and we gained Kiss and Star Trek: TNG. In order to follow the long/medium/medium-or-short/short playing game rule we’ve been using for banks, we had to slot Kiss in for Star Wars, and Star Trek: TNG went into bank Calliope (“adventure”) to replace Getaway. It still works thematically, just not quite as neatly as if Star Trek: TNG replaced Star Wars.
As I was getting ready with my paperwork and checking people in, a woman sat down at the big table upstairs and asked if it was OK that she was sitting there. Of course I didn’t need the whole table so I said it was fine. After a while her curiosity got the better of her and she asked what I was organizing. I explained that it was a pinball league, and she was delighted by this idea and began asking many, many questions about how it worked. Each answer led to another question until the next thing I knew, I was explaining the IFPA ranking system and the state championship. I learned her name was Julia, and by the time I finished talking to her, the rest of the league had clustered around and I think people were assuming she was a new league member. She said she couldn’t because she had a prior engagement for the evening, but she asked to be added to the Facebook group. I hope we’ll be seeing more of her as it’s great to find someone so enthusiastic about what we do in our little league.
In my group, Derik blew up Star Wars (getting to Kobayashi Maru early on) and had a pretty darned good run on Junk Yard too. This led to Mike, midway through his own high scoring game on JY, coming over and wanting to see Derik’s score so he knew what he needed to beat. Ultimately he did beat Derik’s score, about 54M to 41M. Mike is getting very concerned about his standing this season.
The Smackdown game, despite Tim asking if we could “pretty please” play an upstairs game this time, ended up being Medieval Madness. Blame the random number generator. I’m sure no one was thrilled given that MM has been an Undercard game already at least once this season. When we first arrived, Joseph started playing Medieval Madness and quickly discovered that the catapult wasn’t firing balls out, which spoiled a pretty good game he was having. I had actually drawn another Smackdown game when Derik walked up and I told him of the problem. I made sure he knew this was just for his information; he’s not at work during league and I wouldn’t ask him to make a fix other than getting a ball unstuck. Nevertheless, he went out to his car and came back with his tools to do a little soldering. In a short time Medieval Madness was back in action. I was glad no one noticed it was temporarily out of commission because everyone surely would have started lobbying me hard to pick a new game!
Medieval stayed in fine health throughout qualifying, and at the end of the night, Josh was the Smackdown champion. Lupe took second, which I think was her highest Smackdown finish yet. Come to think of it, my third might have been my best Smackdown game. It surely helps that Danny was too busy playing his late league games to get involved this time. Over on the Undercard, Mike took first on Scared Stiff. Joseph got second, despite his valiant attempt to win by looping the right ramp approximately 37 times. At one point he emitted a plaintive little “Help?” as he was compelled, as if by an occult hand, to shoot the loop again.
It should be noted that Audrey was actually the second highest qualifier for the Smackdown (after Derik) but had to leave before we could start the tournament. Lexi would have qualified for the Undercard, but also had left. Lupe was disappointed on her behalf. Now that I have submitted the results, Lexi is going to get her very own IFPA player number. This is her first officially submitted tournament, because when she played in the league she didn’t attend enough meetings to “count” for IFPA purposes (they require any players who did not play at least half the qualifying games for a tournament or league to be removed before official results are submitted).
Tomorrow (or today, depending on perspective) we will be having our fifth meeting, meaning we have crested the halfway point of the season. Keep in mind that members must attend four of the eight league meetings to qualify for finals, so this is the last chance for new members to join and still play in the final tournament. New players are always welcome, though, regardless of whether they are able to play in finals.
The ridiculous thing of my 462 right-ramp shots is that if I had managed one more right ramp loop I would have won the match.