Our last league night was the first day of the rest of your life… sorry, I mean the first day of the second half of the season. This also made it the last day for new players to join and still have a chance to fulfill the 4-night requirement to play in the final tournament. (Any player with dues paid in full can play in the post-season Zen tournament.) We did have a new player, too, in the form of Oscar, who was so confident about wanting to join us that he paid dues in full well in advance of his first meeting! Who can blame him? We are the best pinball league in town and I won’t apologize for saying so.
Bryan, Derik, and Tim, playing their league games on ToM and TotAN.
We were scheduled to play Demolition Man to make up for not being able to play it during what would have been its turn, but it went down during the first group playing it. I wasn’t told what was wrong with it, just a succinct “it’s broken” from Chris, but I later found out it was the claw having trouble once again. I asked Derik if he can’t just turn the claw off during league play so we can at least play it once, and he has done so. Tonight, then, expect to witness a historic moment as Demo Man (maybe) makes it through a whole league night for the first time in the League’s history. Those who have not played it with the claw disabled before should be advised of how it deals with this: the claw can still be lit in the usual manner, but shooting the ramp will bypass the claw and just come back around, the way it does when the claw is not lit. If the claw is lit, you will be given a claw award, but will not get to choose which one. It will start with Lock Freeze, then ACMAG, and continue in order from there. (I have played in tournaments in which the claw was disabled specifically to stop people from doing the Lock-Freeze-All-Day strategy.)
Chris and Dan playing league games on ToM and TotAN.
We had our first Rookie Challenge, which is a playoff between the top 4 Smackdown qualifiers who are literal rookies (new to the league this season). This did result in the ridiculous situation of seasoned pinballers Karen and Derik being called “Rookies.” The main fight was between Derik and Tyler. Tyler was already approaching 100 million at the end of his first ball on Monster Bash. Derik rose to the challenge and ended up with about 120 million, but that wasn’t enough when Tyler finished with something more like 150. Bryan and Karen were left in the dust to fight it out for third and fourth, respectively. The Rookies ended up playing much longer than the supposed Pros. Despite running up extremely high scores on Mustang in qualifying, including a long game by Danny at the end that had Chris threatening to pull the plug on him, the main Smackdown finalists were not able to repeat the performance in the finals. The scores topped out at 50 million and some were quite a bit lower. In fact, they refused to pose in front of the game lest the scores show. The finalists were Chris, Tim, Danny (who said “hey, I’m not last this time!”), and Mike S, respectively.
The Smackdown finalists: Tim (2nd), Chris (winner), Mike (4th), Danny (3rd).
One side benefit of the Smackdown tournaments is that some of our newer players are getting close to being “rated” by the IFPA, which means that they are considered as part of the calculation of our league’s “value.” Until people play 5 IFPA tournaments or league seasons, they are considered to not exist for purposes of IFPA calculations (you can see this by looking at past Smackdown tournaments and noticing how some of the names are grayed out). Tim is now officially a “rated player” thanks to the Smackdown tournaments, and Tyler and Derik will be coming to it soon.
We’re just about ready to start another league night shortly so I hope to see you all soon. League officially starts at 7:30 but remember to come a bit early so you can have a chance on the Smackdown game (tonight, I’m sorry to say, it’s South Park).
