In a late-night two-match finale, number one seed Danny C. wrested back the LPL championship title from number two seed Tim Treichel. Derik took third in A division. There would be no repeat of Double Dan-ger, though, as Heather defeated Dan N. in B division finals, and Bryan got third in the division.
This was our first season using the new rule capping A division at eight players. This was an attempt to avoid having another very late night and having to resume the last round at a later date as in the past. It was not wholly successful, since the tournament still did not wrap up until around 1:30 am and could have gone even longer. By the time things finished, bar staff had turned all of the pinball games off upstairs, leaving the players to turn Foo Fighters back on during the match.
Danny, as the winner-bracket winner, had a very long wait before finals started. There is always a big delay as the second-chance bracket finishes playing out, which is why some leagues have single-game matches in that bracket. The league may be forced to institute that change for next season because the players keep getting better and matches keep taking longer. The tendency for some of the modern games to have long ball times is also a contributing factor. The league director was very worried when one of the games chosen in the second round of the final match was the infamous tournament-wrecker James Bond.
In the first round of A division finals, Tim swept Danny, winning on both Danny’s pick (Foo Fighters) and their own (John Wick). Since Tim was in the second-chance bracket, this sent them into a second round. This time Danny picked Bond (to the TD’s silent dismay) and won. Tim made an unexpected choice for the second game, taking Danny a couple of steps over to play Medieval Madness. An old saying about Medieval Madness goes, “Madness for show, castles for go.” In other words, stacking up Madnesses on the saucer is flashy, but the real points in the game are all in knocking castles down. Danny disproved this by playing Madness for show and go. To the delight of onlookers, he lined up four Madnesses on the saucer with Trolls lit. This allowed him to defeat the trolls during multiball, thus bringing Troll Madness into it for the complete set of madnesses. It was the highest-scoring Multiball Madness this reporter had ever seen, totaling about 27 million points. Neither player ended up with a gigantic score, but the Medieval Madness at The Avenue has not been known for huge scores in recent times. Danny took the win and the championship, commenting that he thought Tim was going to take him out.
Eleven players played in B division, which finished a couple of hours ahead of A. Due to the awkward number of people, there were a lot of byes in the first round. The rule was that only important ties for seed would be broken, which means ties to get into A division or to get a first round bye. Otherwise, ties would be broken automatically according to which player had the highest scoring single night. The only two players who tied this season were Devon and Heather who tied for the top of B division. It turned out that they both got byes, sparing everyone the wait for a tiebreaker game. The automatic tie went in Devon’s favor so he got top seed in B division.
The final match in B division was between Heather in the winner bracket and Dan in the second-chance bracket. Heather chose Dungeons and Dragons and rode a good set of multiballs to victory. Dan then chose Deadpool, and neither did all that well, but Heather managed another win to take the B division without having to go into a second round. Despite having expressed disappointment at not making A division this season, she later commented, “It’s better to reign in B than serve in A.”
The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament was also contested, on The Beatles. For obvious reasons a lot of people did not play in finals, so we had only a two-person B division. The Smackdown champion was Danny and the B division winner was Peter.
Although Season 22 is officially concluded, the post-season split flipper tournament known as Super-Ball XII will take place tomorrow at 7 pm. The format is the same as for league playoffs, except there will probably only be one division. A Tuesday Night Smackdown tournament will also be open to all. The Best Game, Worst Game, and Most Improved awards will also be given out at the Super-Ball.