Tag: recap

We had our second league night of the season on January 28, which finished our bank rotation between the first two banks (known to me and Joseph and probably no one else as “Ophiuchus” and “Lepus”). Due to an issue with Batman ’66, we had to switch in Ghostbusters for a backup game, which I don’t think very many people were excited about. When a game switch happens midway through a rotation, we don’t have the people who played the bank during the previous league night replay, since that would be impractical. Instead, we have two separate rankings on the games, each with their own 100/99/98 scores. This does result in the weirdness that for that given night the number of total points is inflated since there are two 100s, two 99s, etc., but I decided it was the least bad way to deal with it.

The league seems to be growing again as we had more new new players: Darien (Linda’s neighbor, if I’ve got this right), who has played pinball a long time but never in competition; Luc, whom I didn’t get to talk to very much yet; and mother-daughter combo Kim and Payton. Some of the new players were curious about Peter’s streaming rig, which made another appearance tonight, and I was excited to explain to them that people stream pinball on Twitch.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Godzilla, so Peter set the streaming rig up on that. The B division was on Monster Bash. Smackdown champion Jason asked if he could wear what he called my “bunny hat” for the photo, meaning the hat that we draw numbers out of for bank assignments at the start of each league night, a tradition dating back to the Matt days. I said sure, but it’s a deer hat, to which he responded that he just assumed it would be a bunny since it was mine. I do own multiple bunny hats (as well as a bunny hoodie and a bunny-hooded cape) but, as I explained, the hat was actually an impulse buy at a gas station somewhere up north many years ago. It was either in Grayling or Gaylord, I forget which – somewhere it made sense to be selling a deer camp souvenir. I managed to prevail in the B division on Monster Bash to join my hat in the photo.

After the first two weeks, the standings aren’t meaningful yet (since everyone drops the two lowest nights), but the final scores for the bank rotation are complete, at least. Right now our champ on Bank 1, Ophiuchus (“the Snake Bearer”), is Danny. Second place belongs to Josh and third to Tim. The winner of Bank 2, Lepus (“The Hare”), is also Danny, but this time Tim has second and Derik has third.

We’re less than a day away from our next league meeting. Peter will surely bring his rig again and we’ll have the usual fun with our Smackdown side tournament, so come early to put some games in! See you all soon!

Season 21 got off to an exciting start on January 14. The biggest development was that Peter brought the new streaming rig he had built. That’s right, after 11 years of existence*, LPL has joined the big league! It had its soft launch during the previous week’s Lightning Flippers meet, but we had trouble keeping the Internet connection live that time. This time Peter dropped the quality so we were able to stream all night, dividing time between The Beatles (one of the games in bank Lepus) and Cactus Canyon (the Smackdown game).

Another source of excitement was the return of previous league members Mark C., Nick, and Todd, who were absent last season. Now if only Pat would come back, since people keep asking me about him and I don’t know where he disappeared to.

Friend of the league Christy officially joined the league this season. We also were joined by new player Dar, who I believe is a friend of Nathan.

Bank 1 (Ophiuchus) started off the same way as last season, with Black Knight: Sword of Rage having a malfunction (I don’t remember what it was last time, but this time it was the catapult giving unearned multiballs) and being switched out. The backup game chosen from Bank 7 was Venom. Unfortunately this did force a couple of groups to replay their league game, leading to a rather late ending.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on Cactus Canyon. This was my first time trying out Matchplay as a way of running the Smackdown tournament, which allows me to more quickly see who is qualified for A and B division. As it happens, it also makes for a better streaming display, so Peter was happy. Our Smackdown winner was Jason, and the B division went to Joseph.

Prior to league I made another attempt to get my button maker to press buttons to give out and it was once again misfiring, which we can’t figure out the source of, since it’s not really something with working parts that can go wrong. Some investigation seems to suggest it might be the printer paper I’m using so I’m going to experiment with that. Joseph and I have both been very busy and much of our pinball time has been devoted to getting ready for and then running the women’s state tournament, so I hope I’ll have more time to work on league stuff now that it’s over. That’s also what has put Joseph behind on getting the league scores entered.

*To the best of my knowledge, the Lansing Pinball League is the third oldest league in the state, preceded only by the Grand Rapids Pinball League and Marvin’s Pinball League. There are other leagues that pre-date it, but they are no longer in existence.

November 12 was our seventh night of the season and the beginning of our final bank rotation. Bank 8 is always used to finish up anything that hasn’t been played yet in the season, and then the remainder is decided by vote. We had very few votes this time, but the clear winner was Jaws, followed by a couple of votes for Attack from Mars. Bank 7 contained Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but before league I heard that it might need to be pulled for a malfunction. When this happens during the last league night I use the also-rans in the vote as backup games. There were two other games that had received any votes at all, Godzilla and Batman ’66. I flipped a coin and it turned up for Godzilla, to Josh’s disappointment (he was the vote for Batman). I was certainly glad to play something other than TMNT. To my disappointment, but his credit, Derik was able to get TMNT working again, so it got put back in. However, soon after the start of league play, it was discovered that Jaws in Bank 8 had a beneficial malfunction and I decided to replace it. I initially told Josh we would go to Batman as I forgot that Godzilla was no longer needed in Bank 8, and he got excited until I corrected myself and said “Wait, I already drew Godzilla, it’ll be Godzilla.” Josh expressed dismay at my “takesy-backsies.” Sorry!

We had a surprise visit from Christine V., who played in the league many seasons ago along with her husband Jake. Christine was on her way to a job in Wixom, putting Lansing on the way for her, so she came by and played as a guest player. Strangely enough, Nathan’s friend Kristy (I have very likely spelled that wrong), who didn’t play but hung out with our group, told me she was from Wixom. I hadn’t thought about Wixom in years, then somehow it came up for me twice in one night.

Because of the Jaws substitution, the composition of groups, and the number of long-playing games, we had an especially drawn-out league night. At the end we had our usual Tuesday Night Smackdown, this time on The Simpsons Pinball Party. One of our new players this season, Emily, made the top group for finals. There were times in the past she also would have qualified to play but had already left by the time we did the playoff. It turns out that she hadn’t understood how the Smackdown worked and didn’t know she needed to stay for the final match. She took fourth for the night, marking her first time playing in an IFPA tournament finals match. Tim was the overall champion, and over in the B division on The Mandalorian, Joseph got the win.

After the Smackdown, I realized I had completely forgotten to take any photos for the night except the one of the winners at the end. Peter suggested that we stage some photos to recreate the league night using the diehards who were still around at the end of the Smackdown. Those photos follow.

In other recent news, we had both our women’s and open launch parties for Uncanny X-Men. I won the women’s launch after defeating Linda in finals, and Danny toppled Tim to win the open launch.

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!

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!

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.

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.

See you all soon!

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.

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.

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)!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!