It’s been a tough week, so this is going to have to be a very short league report. Our last league night was actually three weeks ago due to our returning to the previous calendar pattern of 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. Sorry, I know it makes for long gaps sometimes, but it makes it easier for me to keep track of the league schedule in advance! At least we had the Fear and Trembling charity pingolf tournament to tide us over. Congrats to Tim for a third consecutive win at that tournament!
Erin gets quarters while Jason and Brian get down to business.
The biggest and saddest news of the night last time is that Erin told is it might unfortunately be her last night, as she has too much competing for her time and money at the moment. She has come to enough nights to attend finals so I hope she’ll be able to do that at least. We’ve enjoyed having her in league, along with all the friends she brought!
It’s a visit from our past league member, Sam!
The happiest occurrence, on the other hand, was a surprise visit from past league member Sam, who played as a guest player for the night. Sam was part of a Grand Rapids contingent who used to play with us in the past.
Mike and Bryan smacking down.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Indiana Jones since it got bumped for Uncanny X-Men the previous night. Mike Stewart won and Bryan Johnson took the B division title.
Smackdown B-division winner Bryan and champion Mike.
Joseph and I showed up for the last league night to find a surprise: our Uncanny X-Men LE was in! This caused a sudden change of plans as we like to always use a new game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown, so our original pick of Indiana Jones got bumped. Don’t worry, Indy fans, we’ll be playing it at our next meeting tonight instead.
Peter playing Jaws in the Smackdown.
We had a new player, Peter, join us tonight and hopefully for the rest of the season. Peter is new to tournament and league play but has a burgeoning interest in pinball and seems to have gotten pretty good already in a short time.
This meeting was the fifth of the season, and started our rotation between banks 5 and 6, Cetus (the Sea Monster) and Argo Navis (the Ship Argo). We will be finishing that rotation at our next meeting which is in just a few hours. (People don’t even bother razzing me about how late my updates are anymore.) So far, with half the league having played each bank, Brian K. is the captain of Argo Navis, and Josh is beating Cetus. The overall standings right now aren’t very meaningful until we finish this rotation, but currently Tim and Danny C. are actually tied for top of the league. Fairly close behind in third place is Josh.
We take pinball seriously! (Joseph, Peter, and Tim watch the current Smackdown players Devon and Mike.)
The Tuesday Night Smackdown was an interesting one as everyone had played Uncanny X-Men only a few times before. Devon ended up winning the A division, followed by Tim, Joseph, and Linda. The real action, though, was in the B (aka “Best”) division, with three of the four players (Mike, Derik, and Peter) putting up similar and very high scores on Jaws, something over 400 million. The exception was Ethan who trailed far behind, causing him to sing “one of these scores is not like the others.” Someone pointed out that with his bonus his score had gotten to 69 million, which was agreed to be “nice.” Ethan decided to call this a victory with a smug “In your face!” to Devon, who replied, “Well if it was 69 you would be in my face.” We hope that the elevated classiness of LPL does not drive our new player away.
That’s all for my recap this week and I’ll be seeing you all in a few hours (less if you want to put in a Smackdown attempt before league)!
Undercard winner Mike poses with Smackdown champion Devon.
We wrapped up the second rotation of banks on September 24 and that brought us to the halfway point of Season 21. After a very under-attended night the previous time, several of the missing players returned. We were relieved to find we that Ethan had not scared everyone away. We are still sad to be missing some of our past regulars such as Ted, Adam, and Mark.
Ethan gets ready to bring law to the West.
Our banks for the night were Corvus (The Munsters, Rush, Elvira’s House of Horrors, Game of Thrones, Attack from Mars) and Perseus (Avengers, AC/DC, Cactus Canyon, Foo Fighters, James Bond). Derik ended up the overall winner on Corvus, and Danny was the champ of Perseus.
At the halfway point of the season, Danny is now in first overall with an eight-point lead over Tim in second. Tim then has a mere five points over Josh in third. Joseph is having an exceptionally good season so far and is in fourth place, though Tim has a good 10-point lead over him. Fourth-through-seventh is currently a close battle with Joseph ahead of Brian K. by a mere three points, Jason just a solitary point behind Brian, and Derik one more point behind Jason.
Jason puts on a clinic for Linda and Erin.
Despite hearing that the bar would be starting up live music on Tuesdays again for the “Sip ‘N’ Shop” event, this did not seem to happen while league was in session. The Sip ‘N’ Shop event was going on, though, with a few local vendors selling goods in the stage area.
Jason and Ethan show their different game faces.
Our Smackdown game for the night was Stranger Things, and Tim got honors in the A division. The B division, on Batman, was won by yours truly, the humble blogger.
Our next meeting starts in a few hours and we’ll be kicking off the back half of the season with a bank rotation between Argo Navis (“The Ship Argo”) and Cetus (“The Sea Monster”). I hope to see you all soon!
We started a new bank rotation with our third league night of Season 21 on September 10, between Corvus (“The Crow”) and Perseus (“The Guy Named Perseus”). We were back to Tuesday after a couple of Wednesday night meetings. It turned out to be a very long night for some of us, in large part because Corvus contains both Rush and Game of Thrones. Upon being drawn into a group with me and Brian K., Danny made a comment about how this was going to take a while. I don’t think he was referring to my prowess at Attack from Mars (especially when I went on to put all of 500 million points on it, AKA “an AfM nickel”). Later when I announced that our last game would be Rush, Danny said “Oh boy” with a tone of resignation that confused me. I said, “what are you talking about, you love Rush!” but he clarified that meant that he and Brian would be playing it a long time. This did indeed happen and Danny had one ball that went on more than a half an hour and ended up with over 3 billion points. It’s a score that looks like Joseph got confused about how many zeroes should be on the end of a number.
Josh moves Foo Fighters back into position while Danny chops redwoods on Rush.
Another contributor to the long night was a mysterious issue on Foo Fighters. Bryan J. was carefully and politely sliding the game back in place at the end of a ball during his bonus count and the game suddenly reset entirely, wiping all scores. There was no tilt or slam tilt message, just a sudden total reset. I ruled that it was a major malfunction and gave everyone involved the choice of either restarting their whole game or taking the lowest score they were certain they had achieved so far and taking compensation balls with that. Most took the total replay (I think the exception was Jason who had a very high score at the time that he didn’t want to lose) so we were all waiting a long time for that group to finish for the night. This resulted in a lot of the Smackdown qualifiers giving up and going home before the Smackdown.
Another big score moment happened when Cyndi had her first ever high score table entry on Rush, which is a big milestone for a pinball player. I still remember mine vividly; it was on a Stern Pirates of the Caribbean at Pinball Pete’s. I still live for the anticipation of hearing high score board entry music, which in many games is used only for that ritual and nothing else, ensuring it remains special. I’m getting a little off topic but I invite you to check out the high score board entry sequence on Space Station, surely the greatest high score sequence of all time. The burst of electronic noise as it wraps up the song gives me goosebumps! I put in time on Space Station every time I’m at the VFW trying to get the high score so I can see it in person, and I never have.
Yes, I know, Ethan. IOU a button for your B division win on Venom.
Anyway, back to the report. The night was noticeably light on attendance as none of our big group of new players were present. This led to speculation about whether they had been scared off, and rumors that they could only attend Wednesdays and were therefore out for the season. I did hear from one new member, Erin, that she was attending a concert at Pine Knob and would therefore be absent, so I wonder if some of her friends who also joined with ehr were gone too for that reason.
Jason gets back at the Black Knight for all the insults during his Smackdown game.
We had our Tuesday Night Smackdown game on Tuesday once again, and the arena was Black Knight: Sword of Rage. I surprised myself by making the top group with a big qualifying game despite the fact that the Knight usually won’t let me do a damn thing. Jason got the win, though, and the B division honors on Venom went to Ethan.
That’s the news from a fairly eventful week last week and I’m hoping to see everyone in just a few hours. We’re also still hoping for the return of some of our missing past members such as Mark and Ted!
Season 21 got off to a huge start on August 14 with one of the biggest groups we’ve had in a while and possibly the most people who have ever joined at once since I became director. A total of 22 people played including a guest player. Our new players were Dana, Amy, Jessica, Donald, Erin, Orneal, Emily, and Scott, and the guest player was Lillium. I know Donald and Jessica from the Grand Rapids pinball scene. Donald and I used to frequently end up in the same group at GRPL back in the Pyramid Scheme days, and Jessica and I have played each other in GR’s Belles and Chimes. Everyone else was totally new to me and honestly I am dreading having to tell everyone I have forgotten their names already when I see them tomorrow. (I am usually pretty good at learning up to two new members’ names per night, but past that and I can’t retain them.) Of course, that’s a great problem to have and if they do all come back, we’ll know it means we did not scare them off. I did start off by telling the regulars to try not to be weird, but for some reason this instruction was not taken seriously. In addition to the new players, we also had the return of longtime, off-and-on league member Jason.
Joseph contends with The Simpsons, which was playing a bit erratically due to issues with the lock.
This was the first time in League history that league night has been something other than Tuesday. Our August meetings are on Wednesday due to The Avenue closing Tuesdays over the summer, a new schedule this year. We will return to Tuesday meetings in September.
Jason plunges on Jaws in the Smackdown contest.
Our first two banks were Ophiuchus and Lepus, named for constellations. Ophiuchus is the Serpent-Bearer, and is actually probably the most tightly-themed bank in the season. Most of the games in Ophiuchus feature a snake or serpent; the only exception is Jurassic Park, because dinosaurs would have to be good enough. Lepus, the Hare, is very loosely themed as “things that go fast” except for The Beatles, which is in there because Lepus is my favorite constellation and The Beatles is maybe my favorite game at The Avenue.
Linda, Ethan, and Jason waiting to play in the Smackdown.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown – still so-called despite being on Wednesday – was Jaws. Probably unsurprisingly, it was won by Ethan, who is a big fan of the game. Joseph took first in the B division “Undercard” on Elvira’s House of Horrors.
Ethan and Joseph celebrate their Smackdown wins.
Will we break new attendance records at our next meeting tomorrow? I look forward to finding out! See you all soon!
Season XX ended with an unprecedented two-day league finals as Brian took two long matches to triumph over Tim. The hour grew so late that the bar began closing and the tournament director had to call time and reschedule the last match for another night.
Season XX champion and second place Tim.
Some had predicted that this might finally be Tim’s season, but it would be a tough battle for them, as they had already taken a loss going into finals against Brian. This meant that Season XIX champ Brian would only have to win one match to prevail, but Tim would have to win two. Tim had previously defeated Josh 2-1 to come out on top of the second-chance bracket, giving Josh third place.
Josh, expressing his delight with the third place trophy.
The first match between Brian and Tim went to three games, eventually giving the victory to Tim and putting them into a second match. As the last game of the match ended it was around 1:50 am and the bar was shutting down, so tournament director Heather (yes, that is me) declared that the last match would have to take place at a time agreed to by both of the other parties.
B division champion Devon and second place Donny.
That ended up being two days later on Thursday. The two competitors met in the comparative quiet bar around 7 pm to resume, and after a brief warmup period they resumed the battle. It went to three games again, meaning that they had to play the full six games in order to settle things. Brian came out on top this time, retaining his title as the league champion and giving Tim second place.
Biff shows his B division third place trophy.
Meanwhile, back on Tuesday night, the B division also had some hot competition, but as there were only eight players it did not run nearly so late. Biff and Devon went to three games, leading to Devon moving on to finals and Biff taking home the third place trophy. Devon then played two matches against Donny which also went to the full six games, 2-1 for Devon in each match. During their last game, the tournament director checked in to see the status of the match and Devon declared that it was as good as over since he had probably just lost to Donny on Ghostbusters. Instead he rallied, winning Ghostbusters and a very hard-fought B division title.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament was also held, despite the usual low participation for finals night. The arena was Foo Fighters and the winner was Ethan, who wrote another IOU on behalf of Heather for a button. Heather, however, declared that this time it was not marked with the phrase “official signature” and was therefore invalid.
Tonight is Super-Ball XX, the split flipper tournament colloquially known as the Zen Tournament. The format will be the same as for league finals but the tournament director has expressed the hope that it will not need to take two sessions.
We started our final bank rotation on 4/9 and mercifully, this time people voted for the wild card games to be stuff upstairs rather than in the alcove. The talk before league started centered on the previous day’s total solar eclipse. Joseph and I had gone to Cedar Point to watch it. Ethan wanted us to know that he was definitely not envious of this because while he had seen it in Muncie, it lasted 20 more seconds for him.
The usual suspects.
Danny wasn’t present during roll call and I felt sure he would probably show up in time, so I commented, “That’s all right, when he comes I’ll just put him in a group with Derik and Dan.” Danny did come midway through the first game and I flipped a coin to determine what bank he’d be in. Then I asked which of the three groups he wanted to be in. He said he really didn’t care, so, being the imp that I am, I sent him over to the closest group which indeed had Derik and Dan (and Curtis) in it. When I walked up, Derik was player 3 and in the middle of a multiball on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was hoping to still put in a fourth player and saw that Derik had both balls trapped so I said “Hey Derik” and just then he started flipping again and I said “Nevermind, I was going to ask you something while you were trapped. ” He tried to trap again and lost one of the balls in the process, which I apologized profusely for, but he was nonchalant about it. I fed quarters into the game while he trapped his remaining ball so we could hit the start button and put Danny in.
Tim poses after winning on Jaws! Unfortunately there are no prizes at the moment as my button maker is out of commission.
Our Smackdown game was finally on Jaws! Not too many people played, so we ended up with a two-person group (Mark and Cyndi) on Scared Stiff in the B division. Tim apparently brought a big enough boat to Jaws, and Mark won on Scared Stiff.
Our next meeting (in a couple of hours) is our last qualifying meeting of the season. This will determine who makes A division and what seeds everyone gets for finals. See you shortly!
Our last league night was three weeks ago now, a longer gap than usual due to the bar unexpectedly closing Monday and Tuesday last week. Between that, the mountain of grading I’m buried under (students are going to riot soon if I don’t get some old grades back), and the fact that I’m still shaken up from seeing the total eclipse yesterday, my memories of last league night are pretty fuzzy. It was our last night with banks 5 and 6, meaning that tonight we’ll embark on the final bank rotation between 7 and 8.
A typical league night crowd: Derik, Curtis, Brian, Ted, Devon, and Adam.
One notable event I do remember is that we were joined by former league player Jake VanKempen, playing as a guest player. Jake goes back to the early days of the league, or as we like to call them, the Theio’s days (IYKYK). Jake was a little miffed to learn that the new league rules mean that anyone playing after the midseason has to play as a guest player, meaning their scores do not count. He said that if he was going to come all the way out to play for no points I should at least put him in “a good group, like one with Dan.” He also mentioned a couple of other names but I honestly don’t remember who they were. As it happens, when I drew for him (he was running late) I did draw him into a group with Dan N., AKA half of Double Dan-ger. The other half ended up in another group for a change.
Devon watches with admiration as Curtis tears up Godzilla.
Now that banks 5 and 6 are both finished, we can take a look at the standings at the end of the night. Tim won Argo Navis (Bank 5) with solid to great games on everything. Derik took honors in Bank 5 (Cetus) with a mediocre game on Medieval Madness but great games on everything else, including a huge 942 million on Godzilla. That was not, however, the biggest score on Godzilla; that distinction goes to Curtis, who did around 1.3 billion.
A rare photo of me for the league report, taken by Joseph. I am starting the Smackdown game on Indiana Jones.
We were still unable to use Jaws due to its placement in Bank 5 (Argo Navis), so our Smackdown game was the random selection of Indiana Jones. For the second time in a row, Joseph won the Smackdown and I got second. The B division was on Star Trek and in that arena Dan prevailed. Unfortuantely I had no buttons to give out because my button press is out of commission. It’s not pressing correctly and I can’t figure out why, but I hope to get that fixed eventually and give everyone the back buttons they are owed.
The champs: Smackdown winner Single Dan-ger and undercard winner Joseph.
Tonight will start our final rotation, including the wild card games that the league voted to include in Bank 8. See you all very soon!
Derik does some quick work on Deadpool to get it running for league.
We passed the halfway mark of the season with our last meeting, at which we played banks 5 and 6, Argo Navis (the ship Argo) and Cetus (the sea monster). These were very appropriate banks for our first night with our shiny new Jaws LE game. Jaws was conveniently slotted into Argo Navis to replace the game that left to make room for it, Guns and Roses. This did mean we had to break our tradition of using the newest game for Tuesday Night Smackdown. Instead, Metallica got drawn for that honor.
It looked like we might have to replace Deadpool as it was suddenly not registering the scoop right before league was going to start. But Derik went and got his equipment and did some quick soldering, allowing us to start with the bank intact and just a few minutes late.
Mark plays The Mandalorian in Bank 6.
For some reason, it was a night with light attendance, and the number of people in attendance meant that some people were in two-player groups. I ended up playing with Ted and we both felt like we had solid nights. I had one embarrassingly bad game, but otherwise always felt like I was playing at least mediocre, and consistently mediocre is often enough to do pretty well. Everyone finished pretty early, and we started the Smackdown well before our average start time of 10 pm. So far, Derik is the champion of bank 5; appropriately, his Jaws score was huge. Tim has the lead in Bank 6 with big scores on just about everything in the bank.
Joseph plays in the Smackdown.
In the Smackdown, Tim won B division, which is well known to be the Best division, and Joseph was the overall champion on Metallica.
The following Tuesday was the Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial March Hare Madness Charity Pinball Tournament, named in honor of a very special rabbit. We had 15 people attend, which is around average for this particular tournament. In recent years it has been a Critical Hit tournament, using the original Critical Hit Matchplay Edition deck. This continues to be a popular format – well, except among who keep getting bad card draws. A standout moment was when Ethan played the most powerful card in the deck, one that forces another player to trade games with you after Ball 2. Danny was then compelled to give up two high scoring balls on Tales of the Arabian Nights to play Ball 3 starting from about a million points. Ethan was so delighted by this that he came over to tell me before returning to his game. A while later he reappeared and, while laughing so hard he was wheezing, eventually managed to get out that Danny had come back and won anyway.
B division winner Tim and Smackdown champ Joseph showing off their buttons.
Things ran fairly late as always, and a few people ended up dropping out before the end, including Derik who would have made finals but decided to leave without playing. That bumped me up into finals. Unfortunately, Brian started the round by making everyone discard a random card, and that cost me the card I had been saving, one that forces someone to stop playing immediately. I was left with only a card I drew at the beginning, which makes everyone in the group play an entire game with the display covered. The game I deployed it on was Willy Wonka, so we had the ridiculous situation of having to cover just about the entire backbox of the game with newspaper. I don’t think it could have really helped me at that point, but as I said at the time, “I just want to watch the world burn.”
Joseph, to his surprise, ended up winning March Hare Madness, with Tim in second, and Brian in third. I ended up with fourth. And that’s another March Hare Madness in the books. We made $256 for the Rabbit and Small Animal Rescue, thanks in considerable part to a $100 donation from Pinball Pete’s, as well as all the players.
Last league night was our third of the season, so it started a rotation between banks 3 and 4 (“Corvus” and “Perseus”). The night’s winner on Corvus – so far, as this is only with half the league having played it – was Tim, which included a stunning 108M game on The Munsters. The winner so far on Perseus was dark horse Biff. A lot of league members don’t even know Biff as he often arrives to play his games after others have finished for the night.
Ethan gets ready to go on a Space Gem quest on The Avengers.
I was going to play my second game of the night when I heard a timid voice say, “Is it too late to join the Lansing Pinball League?” I turned to see who this newcomer was, and it was actually longtime league member Mike! Mike took last season off and had missed the first two nights of this season, so I was very happy to see him again.
I was in a group with Ethan, Devon, and Adam, and there was a good deal of jollity going on. There was a lot of trash talking going on, mostly between Ethan and Devon, but Adam got in a great line too. At one point he responded to someone griping about his achievements with the classic line, delivered with sassy confidence, “It’s called luck. Deal with it.” (I can’t quite remember now what he was responding to, but it might have been Devon observing that he’d beaten Adam on every game except one.)
Linda and Mark play in the Smackdown while Curtis watches.
I mentioned to Devon that although I enjoy the atmosphere of women’s tournaments in a lot of ways, one thing I do miss is the trash talking. In my experience, you just don’t get it at women’s tournaments. One of the things I immediately loved when I first set foot in the Lansing Pinball League was watching players collegially insult each other. It was one of the things that let me know I was going to love pinball league. Devon apparently made a mental note that it was OK to trash talk me. Later in the evening I was playing really bad on Elvira’s House of Horrors, and afterward Devon approached me as though he wanted to talk to me about something confidential. In a very serious voice he said, “Is everything all right?” I thought I must be giving off some vibes of someone going through a personal crisis, and my mind began racing as I tried to figure out what might be causing me to look that way. But before I could respond, he followed up with, “Because you’re playing terrible.” I nearly doubled over laughing.
Ethan remembers what shirt he’s wearing.
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament game was on Jurassic Park, with the B division playing off on Ghostbusters. Danny won the Jurassic Park game (no surprises there) and Ethan won Ghostbusters, prompting someone to remind him that he was wearing a Ghostbusters shirt under his hoodie, which he had completely forgotten about.
Ethan and Danny with their amazing Smackdown trophies.
That’s all for this week’s recap, but we’re meeting tonight to finish up the bank rotation, so I’m hoping to see everyone soon.
