Cue the cracks about how I’m always “right on time” with my league updates. Done? OK, let’s move on…
Jason shows his moves.
Our third league night of the season was a snowy night. So much so that we worried Mike wouldn’t make it (but of course he did, the thought of missing two meetings was too much!) and Todd (a prospective new player whom we met at the Munsters launch party) sent apologies and a promise to come next time. We did have a new player this time, Jon, who has recently moved to the area from New York, where he lived in Brooklyn and Queens. Jon has previously played in a team league in NYC as well as the Sunshine Laundromat league. I chatted with him a bit about Brooklyn as my brother has lived there for around 15 years now.
Derik fills new player Jon in on the league gossip.
When I was having people draw for groups for the night, I came up one slip short, and realized there was one more person present than I had accounted for on my list. I was being driven crazy trying to figure out how the count was wrong, when suddenly I realized who I forgot to count: myself. It was also a fairly cramped situation trying to get league started because they were in the midst of noisily building a bar upstairs, plus I was told we could not have the “good table” (you know the one) because a D&D group wanted it. As a result I had to set up operations in the alcove. I got the groups sorted out and was just sending people off to their games when the aforementioned Jon arrived. I added him to my own group, which is lucky for him, because we were traveling behind Danny’s group and got to farm his credits all night, making for a cheap session.
Unfortunately I had to work while trying to keep up with league. I had my laptop with me and was grading student reflection papers online in between balls. At one point I thought (it turned out incorrectly) that a student had plagiarized something, and that got me temporarily so upset that I tanked on Medieval Madness as a result. I swear that’s why.
Pat shows off his first Smackdown medal, for the Undercard competition on Medieval Madness.
I was due to have a sleep study later in the week, and began explaining to my group what that would entail. Everyone agreed that no one would be able to sleep normally under those conditions. I can now report back: I didn’t. I got probably an hour of sleep over the ten hours they gave me to try to do it, falling far short of the minimum time for the test to mean anything, so it was a big expensive waste. I’m about as happy about this as you might guess.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown was held on our brand new Munsters, which really and truly was drawn by the random number generator. I’m not sure everyone believed me about that. The smack was laid down by Mike in A division and by Pat in B division (his first hardware, locally at least). The B division played on Medieval Madness, which (to no one’s delight) has been drawn as tonight’s Smackdown game.
Smackdown finalists Mike (winner), Bryan, Tim, and Josh (who apparently didn’t want to quit eating).
League night is, of course, tonight at 7 and I hope to once again see all of you there.
The annual Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness tournament returns to the Avenue Cafe in Lansing on April 2nd, this time with a new format. This year it will be a Critical Hit match-play tournament. To the best of my knowledge, this will be the first Critical Hit tournament in Michigan. What are rabbits known for? No, the other thing. Magic! Critical Hit is a format that uses a deck of (IFPA-sanctioned!) cards that allow players to “cast spells” during the tournament. Spells that, for instance, allow you to force everyone in your group to replay a game, or make a game disappear for the whole rest of the tournament, or let you shake a game in an attempt to give someone else tilt warnings. Players will all be dealt two random cards to start, and additional cards may be earned by meeting specific goals during the course of play.
We will play four-player (or in some cases three-player) rounds with Pinburgh (3/2/1/0) scoring from 6:30 until 10:00 pm. After the last round, the top four scoring players will move on to a three-game final round. Players are asked to be on-site by 6:20 to register as we will begin promptly at 6:30.
To borrow from Watership Down: “be cunning and full of tricks” and you will carry home one of this year’s custom rabbit-themed trophies, one for each of the four finalists. This tournament honors my lost rabbit Stephen, a giant among rabbits, and thus it benefits the rabbit rescue from which I adopted him, Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue (RASA Rescue) of Westland, a registered nonprofit charity. The cost of the tournament is $10 plus coin drop. $9 goes directly to RASA Rescue and $1 covers our IFPA fees. Trophy costs and the cost of the Critical Hit deck are donations by the tournament organizers.
For the latest updates and discussion of the tournament, visit our Facebook event page.
Joseph seems unperturbed by the pink elephant looming over his shoulder to watch him play Deadpool.
Our bank for the night was Clio, themed to “cartoons” but named for the Muse of History. I pronounced the name “clee-O,” causing Mike to haughtily correct me, “It’s pronounced Clio” (with an “i” as in “eye”). Oblivious, I launched into Professor Voice and said “that’s also an accepted pronunciation, but it can be pronounced either way in English.” Mike had to tell me that he was joking and only then I realized he was referring to the city of Clio, in his neck of the woods, which is pronounced with the long I sound. “I was talking about the Muse,” I said. “That’s where the bank’s name comes from. The city is probably named for the Muse, come to think of it.” Mike said that he was just giving me some, ah, “stick.” About twenty minutes later, during a break between balls, I looked it up. The city is indeed named for the Muse. I was pleased with this discovery and eager to share it with Mike, who somehow just didn’t get as excited about it as I did.
My night got off to a less than stellar start on Iron Man as I burned through an Iron Monger multiball in record time. My first ball went like this: shot, shot, shot, here’s the Iron Monger, bam bam bam here’s multiball WOO HOO record time, like a PROOOO…. wait where did it go already? All the balls? ALL OF THEM? I was so irritated at draining out my multiball so quickly that I declared, stubbornly, that I was just going to have to get it again. This despite the fact that I am not sure I’ve ever started the same MB more than once in that game. And yet that’s what I did. I started it a second time on Ball 3 and… wait, what? C’mon. No really, c’mon. You cannot tell me that I started Monger multiball twice and still finished a game under 10 million. You cannot tell me… because I already know. C’est la vie de flipper.
Josh tries his hand (and Thing’s) at The Addams Family.
On my next game, The Simpsons Pinball Party, I wasn’t quite so unfortunate, but I did have a very unlucky drain when the Itchy and Scratchy saucer ejected the ball STDM. Derik was in my group and expressed sympathy and surprise. It was a one in a million bit of bad luck, he said, that couldn’t be duplicated if you tried. Except that according to Mike, the very same thing happened to him when his group played it next.
I probably should have given Derik a hard time about that, but I was too busy giving Derik a hard time about the fact that I discovered where the Police Force I liked so much (formerly at Pete’s arcade in the Royal Scot bowling alley) had gotten to: a kids’ play area at the Meridian Mall. Derik grinned a bit sheepishly when I confronted him with this discovery. He could hardly hide it from me; I work at the mall sometimes and pass that storefront all the time. Sure, technically I can still go play it, but it’s not the kind of place where it’s very comfortable to stop and play games, as I found out yesterday when I tried playing Jack-Bot while two girls stood on the couch that’s right next to it and leaned in so close that one girl’s hair kept falling on my right flipper fingers. (Police Force seemed to be out of order on my visit yesterday, or at least the score display was out, so we didn’t bother.)
Joseph looks offended on Danny’s behalf as he tries to save a doomed ball.
I didn’t see much of what happened outside my own group, though I heard that Danny toured the Mansion on The Addams Family, or as he calls it, “a good start.”
Afterward it was time for Tuesday Night Smackdown on Game of Thrones. Special mention should be given to Bryan, who played in the Smackdown Championship (A division) for the first time. I think this was his first time playing in any tournament’s finals. I remember how exciting that milestone was for me and he seemed pretty pleased too. Derik had put up the best qualifying game but was not able to defend his top seed. Instead, Mike became the Smackdown Champion of the night. The Undercard (B) division played off on Medieval Madness, with the win going to Tim.
The Smackdown finalists (Bryan, Derik, and Danny) beat up the winner, Mike. Uh, that looks like kind of a low blow there, Danny.
See you all tomorrow (technically tonight!) at league night #3, when we will be playing the bank Thalia. Anyone who tries to correct my pronunciation of it will be kicked in the leg, just like a pinball machine.
On Saturday, February 9, we will be holding Mad Monster Party: The Munsters Launch Party at The Avenue Café in Lansing. This is a launch party using the same format as our Battle of the Bands II launch for The Beatles. Qualifying will be from 3 pm (when the bar opens) until 6:30 pm. The qualifying format will be “best game” on The Addams Family, Ghostbusters, Monster Bash, The Munsters, and Scared Stiff, with the player’s best 3 of the 5 counting. Each player will be limited to two attempts on each machine. At 6:30 pm, the top 8* qualifiers will go on to to a 3-game semifinal match in two groups of 4, and then two from each group will go to finals and play a 3-game final match. The tournament is free except for coin drop.
*If there are under 16 eligible players, defined as people who put in at least two qualifying games, this number will change as follows:
14-15 eligible players: 7 go to semifinals (3/4 groups) 12-13 eligible players: 6 go to semifinals (3/3 groups) 10-11 eligible players: 5 go to semifinals (3 play off, 2 get a bye) 8-9 eligible players: no semifinals, 4 go to finals 6-7 eligible players: no semifinals, 3 go to finals 5 or fewer eligible players: no semifinals, 2-player finals, I cry a little
Note that if any of the games (besides the Munsters) goes down or is removed from The Avenue before the tournament, the substitute game will be Attack from Mars.
For further information and the latest updates, join the Facebook event page.
This is the permanent link for the spreadsheet where we are keeping the Season 12 standings. You can see the standings for a specific night or overall, and check game scores.
Super-Ball XI in November finished with Mike and Bryan beating Joseph and me in an epic six-game finale that finished after last call, then the league took a break for the holidays. We started up again on January 8, the opening night of Season XII. There were a few changes this season. First, my work schedule changed, and while the new schedule is worse in almost every other way, it does give me Tuesdays off, so the league start time has been moved back to 7 pm. Second, I decided to incorporate an idea from Pinburgh in an attempt to keep us from having nights where three or more of the venue’s longest-playing games end up scheduled at the same time.
Joseph watches Danny try to become the Smackdown Champion on Medieval Madness.
Pinburgh has banks (fancifully named, and often themed) with a game from each era, so in a given session, players can expect to play a modern game, a couple of solid states, and an EM. I hit on the idea of designating the league’s games as long-, medium-, and short-playing, and then grouping them into banks that have no more than two longs, and at least one short. I predicted to Joseph that people would immediately start critiquing our judgment about which games are long and short. This prediction came true. We based it on looking over the average and median scores on each game the previous season, and in some cases it goes against conventional wisdom. We’ll look at it again and make adjustments next season. We then set about trying to arrange games so that they followed the correct long/medium/short pattern but could also be describe as a loose theme. Some were easier and some fit better than others, but we eventually came up with something, and I named the banks after five of the nine Muses of Greek mythology. One of the banks is (as at Pinburgh) designated as a backup bank, so that if a long-playing game has to be substituted, a long-playing game out of the backup bank comes in and the “down” game goes into the backup bank to replace it, and so on. At the end of the rotation we play the backup bank, including whatever games got rotated into it, assuming they have been repaired by then.
I didn’t have much time to admire my neat new banks. Shortly after our first league night, two of the games were already sent away (Getaway and Star Wars) and have been replaced by Kiss and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Oops. Well, anyway. The banks are as follows (we’ll play them in this order):
Euterpe: AC/DC, The Beatles, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Monster Bash
Clio: The Addams Family, Deadpool, Iron Man, South Park, The Simpsons
Urania: Elvis, Junk Yard, Star Trek, Star Wars Kiss, Tales of the Arabian Nights
Calliope (backup): Getaway Star Trek: The Next Generation, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Theatre of Magic
This week was Euterpe, or as Tim called it, “Battle of the Bands III.” I offered to pay the entry fee for the Smackdown tournament for anyone who successfully guessed the one-word theme that each bank was arranged around. Lupe was close enough that I gave it to her. The answer is Euterpe, “Music”; Clio, “Cartoons”; Thalia, “Comedy”; Urania, “Stars”; and Calliope, “Adventure” (this is the loosest theme and Lupe said “Quests” which I thought was close enough).
That brings me to the third change for the season. In order to try to keep league costs down so I don’t end up in the red again, the Smackdown fee structure has changed. Now everyone is limited to two attempts, period, and everyone who plays has to pay $1 to the league. This fee is waived for anyone who is not IFPA rated (right now that’s just Josh).
Tim shows his medal for the Undercard on Addams Family.
We had a pretty early finish to the night this time, partly because of starting at 7 and partly because we had a rather low turnout. We welcomed new member Josh (who played in his first organized event at Battle of the Bands II, the Beatles launch party) and returning member Russell (a founding member, but absent for several seasons), but we were down Mike, Chris, Terry, Ed, Caleb, and Karen. The joke went around that Mike didn’t need to come anymore now that he’d won a season and Chris didn’t have to come now that he’d lost one. Actually, Mike was sick, and Chris told me he is taking the season off (his first since the founding of the league) but expects to return in the future. Terry said that he doesn’t want to commit to making the drive in the winter, and I guess that includes Ed too. I’m not sure whether Caleb and Karen are playing this season.
The night’s winner was Danny, followed by Russell and Tim. This season’s results are available in the Google spreadsheet maintained by Joseph, and will always give the latest night’s results, overall standings, and game scores, so you might want to bookmark it.
Derik showing off the source of his magic powers.
Our Smackdown game was Medieval Madness, which was pretty unkind to a lot of people, and the Undercard (B division) was Addams Family. Derik became the inaugural Smackdown Champion of Season XII and Tim was the Undercard winner. Derik credited his red hair for his win, since redheads have been dominating the league lately.
See you all tonight at 7 for the second meeting! Remember, you get to drop the lowest, so if you missed the first night that’s no reason not to start now.
Hello everyone! Time for some start of the season announcements. First and most important, our first meeting is Tuesday. We will be switching this season to a SEVEN O’CLOCK start time. That’s right, my work schedule has shifted so I have Tuesdays off this semester, so we can start earlier, which I think is going to be better for as long as we’re able to do it. (It will likely change back next season.)
Other announcements:
2. We will be making a change to the Smackdown tournaments. Paying the IFPA fees on those was draining a lot of the league’s money, as I determined by running the numbers at the end of last season. Further, I do not think people were always remembering to pay for their extra tries, and I don’t really want to have to chase people down about that. So we are going to switch to a new fee structure for those tournaments. It will be $1 to enter*, and everyone gets two attempts. Simple, right? I am asking people to be honest about this. Anytime you play a Smackdown designated game, that counts as one of your attempts. You don’t get to count your best two or decide whether a game you played was a real game or a practice game. If you play it, it counts! The $1 will cover the IFPA fees for the tournament for that night. However, *UNRATED PLAYERS PLAY FREE. One reason we hold these is to get inexperienced tournament players “rated” with the IFPA, which benefits the league in general. So, to encourage this, unrated players will get a freebie. (If you don’t know whether you’re rated yet, ask me. I probably know but can check. Everyone who played in the league last season is rated now.)
3. With the new rules for the Smackdown, I anticipate that we may have excess funds at the end of the season after paying for our trophies. If that turns out to be true, I will refund all fully-paid players based on the surplus. If this happens it will likely be around $2 each based on my projections from last season — but it will depend a lot on how many people join this season. (So get some friends on board!)
4. This season we will be meeting the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month, across the board, through May. This is largely what we did in the past, but we used to have some months that were an exception due to the schedule of the GR league. Since recently the only GR league players also playing in Lansing have been Joseph and I, we decided to just regularize the calendar.
I think that’s it for announcements. See you Tuesday at 7 pm!
When the Lansing Pinball League was young, there was Chris, and there was everyone else. Chris’s victory was so certain that everyone focused instead on who would be the runner up. Matt called it “the Battle for Second.” After we switched to having a final playoff tournament instead of just basing standings on the points earned in the regular season, he had to work harder. There were some close calls, including a skill shot plunge on Addams Family that won him a narrow victory over Alex, and the time he had to battle out of the second-chance bracket and defeat Mike S. in two matches to defend his title. Yet for 10 seasons he remained the undefeated champion of the league. As Season 11 dawned, murmurs began: it’s time for a new champion. Who will it be? The strongest contenders were Mike, Tim, and Danny. I think Danny was generally favored, but Chris himself told me he thought it would be Tim.
Tim plays his last ball in the deciding game against Chris.
We did get a new champion, but it didn’t happen the way people pictured, with a tense final match between Chris and the new winner. Instead, Chris got knocked into the second-chance bracket by Danny and had to fight Tim there. It went to a third game on Getaway, Tim’s choice. I wondered if Tim had chosen wisely; he’s very strong on Getaway but so is Chris. In fact, it was an epic game of Getaway in which Chris put up about a billion points that stymied Mike in his near-miss season. I got up on a chair to watch the playfield without distracting the players, because in a previous game there had been a flipper issue reported that I was not able to replicate. In the time it took me to get up on the chair and get situated, Tim had finished Ball 1 at over 200 million. I was stunned. “How did you get that score so fast?” I said. He replied, “Loops.” He had done something crazy like 10 speed loops, maybe more, whereas the most I had ever done in my life was five. I had never seen someone use speed loops as a tournament strategy before. In the last ball, Chris went up needing to make up something close to 300 million points. I thought he might do it as he seems to thrive on this kind of pressure. Sometimes I think he only really starts in Ball 3. But this time it was different. He drained early as spectators gasped, then went over to shake Tim’s hand. Tim had slain the giant. Chris didn’t even take home a third place trophy.
Tim and Chris react to Tim’s victory and the audience’s applause. Sorry for the quality, but it does capture something of the moment.
Tim wasn’t close to finished climbing the hill yet, as he had to go on to play Danny in the semi-finals. He lost that battle, though everyone thought it could have gone either way. Tim got third place this season, but he had two accomplishments that couldn’t be taken away: he had finished the regular season in first place ahead of Chris, something that has been done only once before; and he knocked Chris out of the finals, so far a unique accomplishment (though he certainly had considerable help from Danny). After Tim and Danny finished their match, I wanted to take the “alternate reality” photos. This is a tradition that allows the third place player to go home without waiting for finals. We take two winners’ photos, with the potential first and second place winners switching trophies so we can use the “correct” one after the winner is decided. This time Mike refused. “I’m not touching it,” he said, of the first place trophy, believing that doing so had robbed him of wins in the past.
Chad and Mike working on their B and A division wins, respectively.
Danny and Mike went on to finals, with Mike in the winners’ bracket. They had a very high-scoring game of Star Wars, both around 1.8 billion. Mike tilted away a bonus that would have given him perhaps 100 million in breathing room, which he was quietly cursing himself for as Danny stepped up. Danny seemed sure to win, especially when he started a multiball; but he drained early and ended up about 2 million points short. Danny chose to play Deadpool, and himself had a very unfortunate tilt which may well have cost him the bonus he needed to win. It ended there, with Mike as the league’s new champion and Danny in second.
Third place Tim, second place Danny, and first place Mike. Unusually, this picture was taken when we actually knew who had won!
Joseph wrote up his own account of the night on his Livejournal (don’t laugh) and in it he said, “It tells you of [Chris’s] skill that, ultimately, it took the cooperative work of three people to dethrone him.” Mike said that he had to admit that there was “an asterisk” next to his win in the history books because he had not had to play Chris at all.
Meanwhile, the B division was itself fraught with drama. Most people assumed Jason, a long-time player who was in B only because he joined midseason, would just mow his way through the bracket. I felt sorry for the B players for having such a ringer in their midst. Instead, Jason had a bad night and was knocked out of the second-chance bracket by Ed, Terry’s brother who is a relative novice. It just goes to show one of the charms of pinball: once in a while, the most seasoned player can have a bad night and the greenest player a great one. Karen took third place and the final battle was between Tyler in the winners’ bracket and his father, Chad, in the second chance bracket. In an upset, Chad battled his way out of the swamp to win two matches against Tyler and take home the B division first place trophy.
The B division winners: third place Karen, second place Tyler, and first place Chad.
The Smackdown finalists: Jason, Heather, Derik (the winner), and Dan. Dan wasn’t quite ready with his dukes when Joseph snapped the photo, so it looks like he’s just making a subtle threat.
We also had a Smackdown on Theatre of Magic, though the participation was limited due to some people still being in the main tournament when we held finals for the Smackdown. Derik won, causing Mike to say, “It’s just like you said, your plan was to throw the main tournament so you could win the Smackdown.” Derik replied, “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone that!” Mike said, “You said it right in front of three people!”
I went home without a trophy this time, but with the glory of having played in A division and a big box of karate trophies. Wait, what? You read it right: Danny donated a huge number of old trophies for me to recycle – sorry, “upcycle” – into trophies for my charity tournaments. Joseph noted, “If you’re good at karate, you can just take whatever trophies you want.”
The Undercard winner, Joseph. The other two Undercard players had left before I took the photo.
Tonight is our post-season “Zen” (split flipper) tournament, known as Super-Ball XI. Matt started the tradition way back in Season 1, when he went to the trophy shop and said, “just give me the cheesiest thing you have for trophies.” Since I’ve taken over, I have just told them “we want the same thing again” and they have continued to pick out something great for us. This time they’re a bit wider than usual and a nice sparkly green color, with angels (or maybe they’re Winged Victories) on top. They say “Super-Ball XI Zen Champion” and they can be yours! Anyone can win the Zen tournament since skill is equalized by the unusual play. We will also be randomly giving away two translites courtesy of the Stern Army. I hope to see you tonight at 7:30 for the Super-Ball.
The fourth annual Silver Balls in the City charity pinball tournament will be held at 6:30 pm on Dec. 27 at the Avenue Café in Lansing. The tournament will once again support the Capital Area Humane Society, but this year there will be a new twist. We will be holding a 10-strike progressive strikes tournament. In this format, you receive a number of strikes according to how many people finished ahead of you in a four-player group. If you come in first, you receive no strikes; second, one strike; third, two strikes; fourth, three strikes.
The top three finishers will receive holiday-themed trophies. Additional festivities will also be in store, including a random translite giveaway. The cost to enter is $10 plus coin drop, with $9 of each entry going to CAHS and the other $1 going to the IFPA for our sanctioning fee. Everyone who plays in this tournament will become a world ranked pinball player!
For more information and the latest updates, please join our Facebook event page.
That’s right, The Beatles are coming to the Avenue Café in Lansing, in the form of the new pinball game. We will be one of the few places in the state to have this game on location! And to celebrate we are taking part in the official Stern launch party. That means PRIZES! TROPHIES! FUN FUN FUN!!!
This will be run as Battle of the Bands II, the sequel to our Iron Maiden Battle of the Bands tournament. The format will be similar. Qualifying will be from 4 pm until 8 pm. The qualifying format will be “best game” on Elvis, AC/DC, Metallica, Iron Maiden and The Beatles, with the player’s best 3 of the 5 counting. Each player will be limited to two attempts on each machine. At 8 pm, the top 8* qualifiers will go on to to a 3-game semifinal match in two groups of 4, and then two from each group will go to finals and play a 3-game final match. The cost of this tournament is $1 per player to register, plus coin drop.
*If there are under 16 eligible players, defined as people who put in at least two qualifying games, this number will change as follows:
14-15 eligible players: 7 go to semifinals (3/4 groups)
12-13 eligible players: 6 go to semifinals (3/3 groups)
10-11 eligible players: 5 go to semifinals (3 play off, 2 get a bye)
8-9 eligible players: no semifinals, 4 go to finals
6-7 eligible players: no semifinals, 3 go to finals
5 or fewer eligible players: no semifinals, 2-player finals, I cry a little
