Hard to believe it’s already time for another league night – the seventh of Season 4. Here is the (very) tentative list of games (and a couple of notes about maintenance issues):
Theatre of Magic: watch out for Midnight, because the magnet likes to drop the ball straight down the middle.
World Cup Soccer
The Addams Family: I will be surprised if this actually gets played, since it is still intermittently suffering from the ball-loading problem.
Tales of the Arabian Nights: skill shot is still not working, but no one cares besides Joseph and me.
Medieval Madness (if more than 16 players)
Matt will be gone again this time, so I presume Aaron will preside over the revelry like Dionysus in a hoodie. Sadly, Joseph and I will also be gone, our first absence since joining the league. (I had to buy tickets to a concert before our league season was scheduled and I knew there was a 50/50 chance I would end up missing a league night… and I got unlucky. Sniff…) Here’s hoping someone gets some good pictures they can pass on to me for the blog.
7 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday 4/7), the Avenue: be there, even though I won’t!
It’s that time again (or at least it will be in about four hours): time for the sixth meeting of the fourth season of the League. Our benevolent pinball king, Matt P., tentatively selected the following games:
Lord of the Rings
Austin Powers
Indiana Jones
Getaway
Attack from Mars (if more than 16 players show up)
We haven’t played Lord of the Rings once this season, mostly because it was confused and giving out unearned multiballs and jackpots for a while, and I suspect certain parties will be happy to see it return. Austin Powers is almost certainly not going to get played as it was still disabled last night. (A ball has gotten lodged in one of the bonus lanes by some debris that’s fallen there and until that’s cleared, it’s unplayable.) Addams Family has just made a surprising return to the Avenue and we usually will play any game that’s new, but it’s also unlikely that it will end up in rotation since it is intermittently failing to load balls.
Will Chris regain his #1 position? Will anything get slam tilted? Will Addams Family be playable? Will we be able to see our hands in front of our faces? Will Austin Powers just explode already? These and many other mysteries will be solved tonight at 7 p.m. at the Avenue!
Tonight’s the night: the fifth meeting of the fourth season of the incomparable Lansing Pinball League! Aaron is going to be running things again this time, as Matt is traveling during his Spring Break. As for me, well, the saying among professors is that Spring Break is neither in spring nor a break. In my case it is definitely not a break from pinball; instead it’s an opportunity to play pinball when I’m not utterly wrung out from a long day at work.
Aaron’s stewardship of the league in Matt’s absence last week was received with mixed reviews. Some were relieved by the paucity of hugs, others were unsettled by his unorthodox methods (such as rotating through games counterclockwise). Rumors that his broken nose was caused by a scuffle over the slam tilt rule are unfounded; I have it on good authority that it resulted from losing a fight with a sidewalk. Like any pinball player, he had the good sense to protect his hands from injury by taking the fall with his face.
We will also be down a Mike, specifically Mike S., who went early to PAPA with Todd. This should bring our Mike levels back within recommended allowances.
The games for today will (probably) be as follows:
Monster Bash
Tales of the Arabian Nights (warning: last I knew, skill shots were not working)
Junk Yard
Please not The Simpsons Pinball Party, anything but that
Attack from Mars is the contingency game, used if more than 16 people play, but that doesn’t look likely.
In just a few hours it will be time for the fourth meeting of Season 4, the halfway point of the season. Last meeting saw an unprecedented number of players which led us to play five games instead of our usual four. Matt has lined up four games for us to play with a fifth contingent on there being more than 16 players. The games are:
The Walking Dead
World Cup Soccer
Getaway
Indiana Jones
Tales of the Arabian Nights (if more than 16 players)
Joseph asked which game I thought would break this time. After some consideration (World Cup was also a contender) I decided to throw my vote to Getaway. Joseph agreed. Mike S. has threatened to use his gremlin powers against Indiana Jones, which he is not a fan of, but since that one has been treating me a little bit better recently, I asked if he couldn’t target Getaway instead.
Matt has some serious studying to do tonight due to a midterm tomorrow, so he won’t be running the meeting tonight. In all seriousness, I admire his diligence as a student. As for my academic diligence… well, I stayed home from class today. Aaron will be serving as Matt’s stand-in, which will of course require him to do a lot more hugging than usual.
Tonight is the third meeting of our fourth season. Some members of the league have barely recovered from the IFPA state championship in Grand Rapids on Saturday, but last meeting’s shakeups mean that no one can relax! Matt’s random number generator managed to choose the exact same games this time as last (one of our league mathematicians, Joseph, tells me the odds of this happening are 1 in 715); he threatened to make us all play 4 games of Simpsons instead, so we could go home early. I assume he must have changed his mind and rerolled, since this is the slate he has posted:
Austin Powers, which we were supposed to play last time but kept eating quarters.
World Cup Soccer, which we were also supposed to play last time but the right flipper was not working.
Junk Yard, which has no serious issues to the best of my knowledge.
Medieval Madness. Aw yeah, Medieval Madness! Shoot the castle! Shoot the castle! Shoot the castle!! Or be a rebel and go for multiball. It’s your funeral.
I will be mighty surprised if we actually play all those games. Remember, my streak of writing previews with games we did not actually play has been unbroken since I started this blog in the fall. But we shall see soon enough.
It’s time for another League Night, the second of Season 4. As usual, Matt has randomly chosen our games:
The Simpsons Pinball Party. Arrrrghhhhhhhh….
World Cup Soccer. This one seems likely to get switched with something else, since recently the left flipper has not been staying upright when held. That’s fine; I’d hate to break my perfect failure streak. My preview post has never once successfully listed all the games we ended up playing, and this time will probably not be the exception.
The Walking Dead. Joseph is not looking forward to this after playing a Grand Champion game of it during the off week. He says, “I am going to be completely humiliated every single time we play Walking Dead at league forevermore.”
Tales of the Arabian Nights. I’m looking forward to this one: the lamp has been spinning very well and now that there are some lights in the alcove, Lightning Lamp won’t be quite as terrifying. If I’m lucky, I’ll play it after SPP to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
See you all at 7 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Avenue!
Season 4 of the Lansing Pinball League starts tonight. It’s traditional for any new addition to the Avenue’s games to be included in the next league night, and this time the new addition is Theatre of Magic. ToM was my original favorite pinball game, back in the days before I discovered FunHouse, and it’s still near the top of my list. The volume is up nice and high so you can hear the great voices and music quite well. I think it is going to be a welcome addition to our lineup.
Matt has announced the games for tonight as the follows:
Austin Powers. I have asked Mike S. to please break it for me so I don’t have to listen to its awful yammering.
Theatre of Magic. If there is any justice, my affinity for bunnies, even devilbunnies, ought to help me.
Monster Bash. A lot of people in the league are really good at this one. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some Monsters of Rock action during league play.
Junk Yard. Handle with care! And hope Mike isn’t in your group.
It’s also been decided that we are going to be changing the league format a little this season, with points determining seeding for an end-of-season playoff for final standings. The exact format for the playoff tournament is still being determined.
As I have not yet completely worked out my strategy for quitting my job and devoting myself to a life of pinball hedonism, I have been kept busy by the end-of-term crunch. As a result I sadly did not find time to write my usual League Night Recap for 12/2/14. This is too bad especially since it was an exciting finale that saw the third place position decided by a mere 5 points. (Joseph still cannot believe he has gotten good enough for third place, but I don’t think he’s about to give it back either.)
Joe Cool, hanging around the change machine.
Speaking of Joseph, remember the League Night Preview for 12/2/14? The one in which Joseph was said to be scoffing at the idea we would play Getaway, due to its track record of breaking every league night? Well, during practice, the launcher broke again. Matt responded by yelling “damn it, Joseph!” and accusing him of having jinxed it. Naturally, I rushed to Joseph’s defense by blaming Mike the Gremlin instead, which Matt was willing to agree to. Mike pointed out that he had not been playing it, but I said that his mere presence is enough to cause things to malfunction.
Anyway, it’s official: we have not once actually played all the games on my League Night Preview. Man plans, the gods of pinball laugh.
Matt laughing at the existential futility of it all. Either that or something to do with the new Star Wars trailer.
Getaway was replaced with World Cup Soccer, which I was initially excited about — Getaway usually hates me, WCS usually treats me gently — but in the end my generally bad night did not take a break. I had finally started to recover on my third ball of WCS, when I got too desperate to save my ball and tilted, losing a bonus that was probably 100M or more. Joseph told me to remember what Chris told me: “If you’re not tilting, you’re not playing.” Unfortunately, as a trained logician, I know that this does not entail that if you are tilting you are playing and I am pretty sure I was not playing. On the bright side, my group’s game of WCS did lead to a remark by Aaron that gets my coveted “Quote of the Night” distinction. While (or possibly just after) losing a ball, he hit the Magna-Save, and I remarked that I never think to use it. He replied, “I only use it ironically.”
Alex thinks, “This is my chance to sabotage the Magna-Save while Aaron is distracted.”
Our other games for the night were The Walking Dead, Junk Yard, and Monster Bash. As far as I know, no one slam tilted Junk Yard this time, so there’s a small victory. I am all too familiar with The Walking Dead — in fact with that exact table since the high score table betrayed it as the one that has just left The Arcade in Brighton — and as usual the magnet threw the ball straight down the middle for me. Or that’s my excuse, anyway. A semi-decent game on Monster Bash is the only thing that saved my pride.
Tonight also saw the return of Russell at long last, whose single night of play will guarantee him a high-ranking partner for the Zen Tournament, which was surely his plan all along.
Although my disappointing night lost me the 10th place finish I was hoping for (as it would equal my last season placement), this has been a great season for me overall, and a great year of learning the joys of pinball. Thanks very much to Matt for starting and organizing the league, without which I would never have discovered this amazing hobby.
Jake found a new favorite chair.
Tonight is our traditional post-season Zen Tournament. Two-person teams are set up by pairing the highest and lowest ranked person, then the second highest and second lowest, and so on. Then it’s one person to each flipper for a double elimination tournament. Part of the fun is that no one knows who the teams are going to be until it starts, since it’s impossible to predict exactly who will show up. Well, except for the people who are guaranteed to show up; you would need dynamite to keep me away.
See you all at 7 p.m. at the Avenue for the Zen Tournament! And don’t forget you can see my latest League photos in the gallery page and the final standings summarized here.
It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that tonight is going to be a very exciting league night. It’s our final night of the season, and the points accrued by the end of this meeting will determine final standings. There will be one more league night, but it will be our post-season, unofficial tournament (traditionally a “Zen tournament”) and party.
Although the previous meeting saw Chris beaten out by an impressive tie between Danny and Joseph, he is still nearly a shoo-in to win the season, and Rodney to take second. The real action is still the #3 position. Joseph is currently #3 (he still insists, incredulously, that he is overvalued) but Matt and Mike are very close behind. Danny, despite being a mid-season joiner, has come up very quickly in rank and is also in range of a #3 finish. Many other positions have fewer than 10 points separating them so there could still be a lot of place-swapping.
The games chosen for this week are:
The Walking Dead: Well, of course. Our venue’s newest game generally gets chosen for league night. Matt reports that it has had a code update installed.
Getaway: If the launcher holds out, that is. (“We’re playing Getaway,” I told Joseph. “Suuuure we are,” he said.)
Junk Yard: “King Kong” Stewart will just have to rein himself in.
Monster Bash: A popular game that I don’t expect to hear a lot of griping about.
Tomorrow is meeting 7 of 8 for Season 3 of the Lansing Pinball League. Time for us all to channel all of the stress and frustration of our daily existence into something positive: smacking the hell out of a steel ball and watching it violently collide with things. Or maybe I’m revealing too much about myself.
As usual, Matt has done a random drawing to determine our games. As an added bonus, I am going to provide a special strategy tip for each game. You can thank me with a beer when you’re done entering your initials.
Junk Yard. Yes, Junk Yard. Chris swears the tilt is behaving. We shall see. Strategy tip: shoot the castle!
World Cup Soccer. Strategy tip: shoot the castle!
Lord of the Rings. Strategy tip: shoot the castle!
The Simpsons Pinball Party. Strategy tip: shoot the castle! Better yet, just shoot the game.
