Our fifth meeting of Season 11 was supposed to be the one that would bring us up to date on all the games we had not yet played so far this season. Instead, by the time it rolled around, we had received a new game at The Avenue: Road Show, or as I call it, “twice the heads, half the fun.” But hey, half the fun of FunHouse is still pretty darned fun. It was too late to make it part of league night #5, so it will be on the list for our next meeting.
The big excitement of the night is that our T-shirts, courtesy of Pinball Pete’s, were delivered! Everyone should thank Derik for co-ordinating the T-shirt design and printing. If you missed picking up your shirt, I will have them at league tomorrow.
The other big excitement of the night was that we were finally playing Iron Maiden during league. Stern is currently running a high score tournament called Up the Irons. In order to qualify for it, a player must set a high score on Iron Maiden at a Stern Army location while playing a game for an IFPA tournament or league. Only games played for the event can be submitted. That means that this was the first chance for LPL players to take a whack at it. I posted the current-as-far-as-I-knew cutoff score for 10th place (the bottom of the leader board) and three players all exceeded it during the course of the night. Unfortunately, Joseph’s and Derik’s scores turned out to fall short of 10th place by the time I submitted them to the IFPA the next day (Joseph’s by a mere 2 million). Danny’s 779 million score, however, put him in third place and put LPL on the map. As of this writing he is still in third, with the title “Cyborg Eddie.”
Sure, Iron Maiden is great and all, but it’s no “Dr. Dude.”
Our Smackdown game was Getaway. Thanks to the very long night of people having epic games of Iron Maiden, the Smackdown finals were quite late. My group finished but another was still playing, so I went upstairs to drop a single score on it like I usually try to do for completeness’ sake. I had a pretty lousy game of 20 million or so, noted it, and started to wander off, when Jason walked up, handed me an extra dollar for his entry fee, and started a game. He said, “Want to play two players?” I’m not sure quite why, but despite not planning to play again, on an impulse I said “Well… sure.” The next time I did something like 130 million, not exactly a normal result for me on Getaway, so I ended up in the finals. I think I bumped out Mike S. last minute with that. Sorry, Mike. In the finals, Tim ran away with it (appropriate, right?) by, among other things, having a multiball with a big old super jackpot. I ended up trying my darnedest on Ball 3 to come from behind and while I did a lot of work and got to a pretty decent score, I kept missing the multiball start shot that would have been my only hope.
We hadn’t done “beat-em-up” pictures for the Smackdown finals in a while and someone (I forget who) really wanted to, so here you go! So many people had left that the two finals divisions consisted of everyone still present, leaving the Undercard with only three players. I wonder if some people don’t realize we have a second division.
Derik, Danny, and I beat up the Smackdown champ, Tim. (That’s me about to hit him with a chair.)
Mike and Bryan beat up the Undercard winner, Joseph.
Our next league night is tomorrow. It will be the sixth of the season, meaning we are getting close to the final stretch. Don’t forget that players have to be present for at least four league nights to qualify to play in the season finals. New players can still join, but they won’t be able to play in the main tournament on finals night (though they will be able to play in the side tournament). See you all tomorrow at 7:30 at The Avenue!