Lansing Pinball League

Our last league night, the final qualifying night of the season, was just two days before Thanksgiving. Despite encroaching on the holiday, there was a good turnout, since everyone was making use of their last chance to improve or retain their seed for the final playoffs.

The final two banks, Perseus and Coma Berenices, both contained one of the league’s newest games, Foo Fighters and Venom. Coma Berenices also contained the games that had been elected by the League as wild cards. As a result of the final bank not being part of my original bank organization, we had several games all in use in the alcove, which I try hard to avoid when I set the banks at the beginning of the season. Normally we would not have five games all being played in the alcove. We had two guest players, Jamison and his son Owen, who were checking out the league, and I had to reassure them that it isn’t usually like playing inside a sardine can. Owen is normally off being a student at GVSU and was on break for Thanksgiving, but Jamison lives relatively close by and I told him he should come back when we start a new league season.

Danny C. ended up placing first for both of the banks and, unsurprisingly, will also be the top seed in playoffs, with a pretty big points margin. Brian K. in second and Tim in third are clustered a little closer together.

The Avenue’s famously eclectic vending machine often stocks bags of stick-on googly eyes. Someone had been going to work with them, resulting in Pete’s pink elephant and the Foo Bot each having one giant googly eye.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game for the night was Scared Stiff and the champ on that was Danny. Devon won the B division game on Foo Fighters.

Tonight is our final playoffs and that will determine who is the Season 19 champion. Will it be Danny again? Will Tim finally get his win? Or will it be relative newcomer Brian K.? We’ll find out sometime tonight… or early tomorrow morning.

On November 7, we started our final bank rotation, which will complete tonight. One of the games we were supposed to play, James Bond, had an issue so it was replaced with The Beatles (the runner-up from the vote for the wild card slots in Bank 8). Early on, it was discovered that The Beatles had a drop target issue that was causing people to get a mode selected for them at the start of the ball, and not the same mode every time, so I made the call to also pull The Beatles and it got randomly replaced by Jurassic Park. At one point there was a moment when I thought we would have to also pull Elvira’s House of Horrors again, but it seemed to straighten itself out adequately after a ball search so fortunately it stayed in.

We also had some trouble with our Smackdown game, which was supposed to be Getaway, causing Joseph to write “You’re welcome, Tim” on the rule sheet. Ethan “broke” it during an attempt to qualify, so I chose a random replacement, which was The Avengers. I scribbled out “You’re welcome” and wrote “Sorry.” During finals, however, Tim ended up blowing the game up and taking first, so Joseph pointed at his original message and said “See? See??”

Jim was back, and greeted me with “Guess who was here on Halloween?” Unfortunately, it turns out that Jim missed the memo that we were going to meet twice in a row and then skip Halloween, so he missed a league meeting and then showed up confused on Halloween. I was also at the bar on Halloween, though I apparently showed up late enough that I didn’t run into Jim or any other league folks, and it was jammed. We would not have wanted to try to have league that night.

We ended up with a group that included both of the Dans again (who were the A and B division camps last season). Everyone started calling the group “Double Dan-ger” as a result, which I think is going to end up sticking as a name for Dan N. and Danny.

Double Dan-ger had a great night: the winner for the first half of Bank 7 (“Perseus”) (which can, of course, change as the other half of the league plays it tonight) was Dan and second place was Danny. Over in Bank 8 (“Coma Berenices”), the top scorer for the night was Brian K., followed by Pat. After the dust settles tonight, we’ll know the final seeds for the season, and who will get to make the cut for A division. Given the number of people qualified to play finals, it looks like we will have a 10-person A division.

Our last league night was actually held only one week after the one before it, due to wanting to leapfrog over Halloween. I was at the bar on Halloween myself, and I can attest that we would not want to have had league night that night. Despite it being a Tuesday, it was very crowded indeed. Plus, my costume offered only non-binocular vision and poor finger dexterity, so the games I did play that night were not exactly my finest.

Anyway, the night of 10/23 was the end of a rotation between banks 5 (Argo Navis, and if you try to tell me it’s not a constellation anymore I’m just going to put my hands over my ears and yell “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”) and 6 (Cetus). With the rotation complete, the standings on the banks are now final. Danny C., probably to no one’s surprise, took the lead on both banks. On bank 5, Brian K. and Derik tied for second place; on bank 6, Brian took second and Derik got third. Danny is still at the top of the overall standings with a comfortable lead over Tim. Brian is in third place but has only two points on Derik in fourth.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was The Simpsons Pinball Party, which is a challenge since it is currently unable to start TV modes except from the mystery award. It’s hard to believe it, but somehow I managed to get a good game going and win the finals. Joseph took the B division honors. It was a late-running league night so we were definitely ready to pack up and so, it seemed, was almost everyone else since we had no one to take our picture for the Smackdown honors. Here, then, is a selfie taken with my phone’s incredibly bad camera. (If you’ve seen my phone, you’ll understand.)

Tonight starts our final bank rotation which will mostly finish all the games at The Avenue, except for James Bond which will have to be pulled for an issue and will be replaced by The Beatles. Bank 8, Coma Berenices, includes three “wild card” games previously used this season that were voted on by the league: Attack from Mars, Batman ’66, and Indiana Jones. I hope to see everyone soon!

What’s this? Heather is writing a recap of a league session that was only one week ago? Is this a sign that she has begun fighting her procrastination habit? No! It’s a sign that we’re having league night tonight because we want to avoid meeting on Halloween. While a Halloween league night at The Avenue sounds fun in the abstract, it would probably be a bit too much chaos in reality. So, we will meet tonight and then again in two weeks, skipping Halloween in between.

Our last league night was our fifth, so we started a new rotation between banks 5 and 6, “Argo Navis” and “Cetus.” Yes, the banks have names and I’m going to keep insisting on using them. These two together might be called the Ocean Rotation because they mean “the ship Argo” and “the sea monster” (some people translate it “whale”). Argo is the ship the famous Jason and the Argonauts sailed on in a quest to retrieve the golden fleece; Cetus is the monster that Perseus had to slay to save Andromeda.

I ended up in a group with Tim and Danny C. When I drew that assignment I promised that I would do my best to bring the average ball time for my group down, and I want you to know I made good on my promise. To my surprise, though, I somehow ended up tying Tim for third on Bank 5 for the night. Less surprisingly, Danny took first on the bank. Meanwhile, over in Bank 6, Derik took first for the night. We won’t know how things have shaken out on the banks as a whole until after tonight when we finish the rotation.

The big news at The Avenue is that our Venom LE has come in, so we made it the Smackdown game for the night. It complicates things for us a bit because if people log in on Insider at the start of the game it will save progress in the game. Luckily, it turns out that there is a simple workaround to have people not log in until ball 2, which still gives people credit for their games but prevents progress from carrying over. That is going to be the rule for the rest of the season for games involving Venom. Danny won with a huge game in finals. The B division played on Medieval Madness, which meant some people had a lot of Medieval that night, since it was also in one of the banks. The B division winner was Donny.

That’s it for the league report. Of course, we had something big happen since then, which was the Fear and Trembling charity pingolf tournament. That deserves its own recap when I have time, though, so I’ll conclude here.

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!