November 9 was League Night #3 and it was also the start of our new league format. Due to the record number of people attending during nights #1 and #2, we have instituted a new way of playing the banks. Instead of everyone playing the same bank on the same night, we divide everyone between two banks, and then rotate on the next night so players move to the bank they didn’t play yet. This time everyone played either Bank 3, Girdle of Hippolyta, or Bank 4, Ceryneian Hind. The question immediately arose, “Will we play with the same group next time?” Since the answer was that mostly the groups would remain the same and we’d just slot in absent players randomly, things then turned to people lightheartedly razzing each other about being stuck with these jerks for two weeks.
Todd signs the contract for his appearance money.
Besides the new format, the other big news was that Godzilla (LE) had moved into the alcove, so I made that the Tuesday Night Smackdown game, bypassing the usual practice of drawing a game at random. We will be having a Godzilla launch party on November 30.
Jason playing his league game on TotAN.
League night went extremely fast. I think my league play was done by 9 pm and Tuesday Night Smackdown wrapped up by 10. This is in part due to the fact that after two bumper weeks, we had only a normal number of people (fewer than 20) show up for the night, so we could have actually run our old format. Everyone liked it anyway. It will probably be necessary at times in the future, and even when it’s not necessary it means groups have much less waiting time. I had at least two people make a point of thanking me for the new format so it is probably here to stay.
Shylia plays in the Undercard division on Scared Stiff.
The Smackdown on Godzilla had some very high scoring games and people who already have learned how to play it already schooled the rest of us. Allen won the A division tournament and Josh won the Undercard with a big game on Scared Stiff. The Smackdown also promoted Shylia into the status of an IFPA rated player. Congratulations, Shylia!
Tonight is our next league night, and we will complete the bank rotation, with players who were on Girdle of Hippolyta playing Ceryneian Hind (well, I like the names) and vice versa. I hope to see you there!
For those relatively new to the league, I have to explain a little history, which might help account for what probably seemed like a bizarre choice to cram more than two dozen people into the Avenue’s alcove at our last league night on October 26. We used to play all the games more or less in alphabetical order each season, but at some point I hit on an idea, inspired by how game banks are set up at Pinburgh. Since some games were notoriously much longer-playing than others, what if I tried to arrange the banks so that they eventually spread out the longest-playing games? We assigned each game a value of long, medium, medium/short, or short based on average scores the previous season, and then tried to have two long, two mediums, and a short game per bank. On top of that, I wanted the banks to be thematic, also a Pinburgh convention. I spent a good hour moving around little slips of paper with names of games and “S/M/L” written on them to try to get banks that both fit the vague theme of “the Muses of Greek mythology” and had an even distribution of lengths. This worked pretty well for a couple of seasons, but then we got in a lot of new games and also our sense of which games played long versus short shifted as tilts, player abilities, and other things changed. So I created the latest set of banks with a new theme, the Labors of Hercules. That’s when COVID hit mid-season.
Joseph in his red panda kigurumi.
One known issue with the Labors banks is that while I managed to solve the puzzle of getting games in the L/L/M/M/S format while at least paying lip service to themes, I did not observe at all where the games were located. This resulted in the Lernaean Hydra (generally themed to “snakes and dragons”) bank being almost entirely in the alcove. I got a lot of friendly complaints about that and figured I’d fix it when I next updated the banks. Meanwhile, COVID hit, interrupting our season, which brings us almost to the present.
Joseph shows me what he’s up against on Scared Stiff. I think Player 3 was Mike, if I remember correctly. We had a lot of long-playing games.
When we started Season 15, I was just too busy with a brutal work schedule as well as taking a class to devote time to rethinking the banks – plus, we really needed to start collecting new data for game length again. The truth is that very few of our games could reasonably be considered “short” playing anymore due to players getting better and better. So I figured to just redo the Labors of Hercules for Season 15 and worry about new banks later.
Sam making out like a bandit on Monster Bash.
Then the league suddenly grew. We had an all time record night for Night 2, resulting in the long-planned-for, never-used emergency bonus game rule being brought into play. Then Night 3 beat that record again. And it happened that Night 3 was the Lernean Hydra, so around 30 people ended up crammed into the alcove together. I deliberately chose a bonus game that was not in the alcove, and then it went down. We have a designated backup bank, so I took the game that was designated as the backup for the bonus game… and it was in the alcove. This is the point when being a philosopher really worked against me because one occupational hazard is a tendency to place a heavy weight on consistency in decision-making. A sane person non-philosopher would probably have just picked another game not in the alcove. Everyone had to play elbow-to-elbow all night.
Dan talks with Lexi. I really wish I got a better picture of Lexi’s costume!
It ended up probably the longest league night ever, with almost everyone choosing to play the sixth “optional” bonus game and then a Tuesday Night Smackdown still happening afterward. I came away from the craziness of the night with the realization that we needed to change the league format to accommodate a larger league while still retaining the traditional “five games per night” scoring. By the time I went home I had already come up with the new plan. From now on, we will alternate banks on a two-week rotation. That is, in odd-numbered weeks, half the league will play bank A and half will play bank B. Then in even-numbered weeks, people will switch banks. This will keep everything from our old format except the protracted night caused by having dozens of people all playing a single bank at the same time.
I’m so sad this is out of focus, but this is Shylia winning her first undercard at Tuesday Night Smackdown!
I don’t want it to sound like the night was all bad, though! We had several new players join including Jen, Leanna, Kevin, and Shylia. We also had some league members in costume for Halloween. I wore my new three-headed Cerberus kigurumi (too bad we weren’t playing bank Cerberus), Joseph was in his red panda one, and Lexi was dressed as a winged unicorn with pretty rainbow face-paint and a cool hairdo. Tuesday is also the bar’s DJ dance party night, and they were having a costume contest, but no league members won. We were all beat out by a Carmen Sandiego. (I did go to the dance floor for a little while as I waited for the epic night to roll to a close.)
Joseph wins Tuesday Night Smackdown on Medieval Madness.
I hope to see everyone shortly and also that our newcomers aren’t afraid to return after the Alcove Extravaganza, which I expect to be ribbed about for years to come. Derik posted in the LPL Facebook group for the first time yesterday after lurking for years. What drew him out was apparently wanting to write an LOL in response to a thread about the alcove clusterfluff. I guess I deserved that.
Lexi took this photo of me playing Stranger Things in front of the themed decorations, while Jim watches.
The league started Season 15 on 10/12 with a historic event. The thing I had worried about and prepared for finally happened: more than 20 people attended, meaning we could not fit all the groups on five games. This was thanks to the return of some long-absent members and the arrival of several new members. Members returning after at least a season (and in some cases several seasons) away included Tim, Jake, and Sam, those last two making a surprise appearance together. Jim and Nick, who hadn’t been active in the league since the pandemic interruption, also returned. Meanwhile we also counted several new members: Susan from Jackson (here to take up the Jackson-area champion’s mantle after we mostly lost Chris); Brian-with-an-I, who recently moved to the Capital City from Grand Rapids, not to be confused with longtime member Bryan-with-a-Y; Joe W., whom I know from the Chesterfield Pinball League; and Nate, Jake’s brother-in-law, who also came with him and Sam. I’m not sure if Nate and Sam are planning to be returning members but it seems as though Jake is. Not present was new member Michele, who played her games during a one-time-only, IFPA-calendar-shenanigans-related (don’t ask) “League Night #1 makeup night” on the following Tuesday. Even without Michele this was an unprecedented number in the time I have been running the league: 23.
Brian plays KISS while Joseph, in his very cool Peanuts Halloween mask, tries to learn a thing or to.
I rolled out the contingency plan we had in place for this, which is to play six games and have the best five count for each player, allowing players to either play all six and take the best five, or leave after five games in their group have been completed so they can get home at a reasonable hour. (Nick and Lexi took this option and I might have if I hadn’t needed to be the one running things. Having to get up early for work on Wednesdays this semester is no fun.) I hadn’t prepared a “bonus game” in advance but threw The Walking Dead in as the sixth, as it’s relatively new to the venue and we haven’t played it as much, plus it’s Halloween month. From now on there will be a designated bonus game for each bank in case this happens again. I have tried to choose ones that loosely match the bank themes – not that bank themes make much sense to anyone outside the fantasy land of my own head.
Speaking of the banks, we are more or less replaying last season’s “Labors of Hercules” banks, with some changes made as needed for new or departed games at the venue. Night #1 is “Nemean Lion,” commemorating Hercules’s victory over the Nemean Lion. (He subsequently wore the lion’s skin around and is often depicted that way in art.) It’s one of the easiest themes to put together: the games all have “cats” in them (or tigers, or Sabertooth, or…). It happens that Tales of the Arabian Nights, despite the tiger in it, got used for a different bank but in a fortuitous occurrence, the random drawing for Tuesday Night Smackdown chose it for the night. The games that are supposed to be in the bank are The Simpsons Pinball Party, Deadpool, Theatre of Magic, Batman ’66, and KISS, but Theatre of Magic was resetting during practice games so we switched it for a game from our designated backup bank, “Cerberus,” hence we played Stranger Things in its place.
Tim celebrates his victory and triumphant return as the Tuesday Night Smackdown champ.
League ran predictably very long, so the last games in the Smackdown qualifying were going on late in the night. This resulted in an old-time Lansing League situation. A ball got stuck during Tim’s qualifying game on Tales of the Arabian Nights and Derik had already left, so there was no way to get the ball unstuck. I had to employ the special Lansing rules for this, meaning Tim was forced to shake his stuck ball out and get a compensation ball for the tilt, not great for a game where bonus is so important. Fortunately, his score was so good that he got top seed even without bothering to play his comp ball. Also fortunately, the ball was retrievable so we could have the Smackdown finals without picking a new game. Tim became the Smackdown champion and Bryan won the B division game on The Beatles. I still owe Bryan a medal, as I was out of the plastic medal blanks. (It turns out Michaels doesn’t sell them anymore so we will be rolling out a new model tonight.)
Hitting a historic attendance high was an auspicious beginning to a new league season, and I wonder if that is going to become the new normal or if it was a fluke. I guess we will see soon, as League Night #2 will be starting in about four hours. See you all very soon!
The league night of 9/14 was notable for two reasons: first, it was, at long last, the final qualifying night for Season 14, a season that began in January 2020; and second, it was the return of the Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament. The Smackdown was the first official IFPA tournament that I have submitted results for since the pandemic started.
Jason sizing up TMNT during Smackdown finals.
The bank was officially unnamed, consisting of just the games we had not played yet so far this season, plus three games determined by popular vote. (The Mandalorian was supposed to be in there too, but it turned out not to have arrived yet.) Due to the lack of a bank theme, I didn’t include it in the Labors of Hercules naming scheme. At the last minute, as we made up the scorecards, I decided to give the bank a name after all: The Augean Stables. For those not up on their Greek mythology, this was the labor in which Hercules had to clean out a filthy stable occupied by a herd of immortal cattle. He did so by diverting the course of a river into the stable. I said that the name was chosen because my favored game choice, The Beatles, did not make it into the bank, so it was therefore bullshit. Joseph said it was because the whole season was bullshit, though of course being Joseph he did not in fact say “bullshit.” As I explained the bank name to the league at the start of things, Joseph gestured to The Avenue’s leaking ceiling (it had been extremely rainy again) and said “there’s the river.”
The ceiling leak meant that the original Tuesday Night Smackdown random choice, Getaway, could not be used, as most of the games in that corner were turned off for safety. By the time I showed up, tired and harried, from the unfortunate Tuesday commute I have this semester, Joseph had already crossed off Getaway and then another game which had malfunctioned (I can’t remember what it was – Star Trek maybe?) and written “Fine. TMNT. It’s late.” on the score sheet.
The night’s crowd mostly consisted of the smaller group who have been attending since league restarted, with the addition of Nick. He had made a point of coming along with Lexi so that he would make the requisite four nights to qualify for finals. Unfortunately, just yesterday, Lexi realized that the two of them would be missing finals after all as they will be celebrating their anniversary. I pointed out that Joseph and I celebrated one of our anniversaries at a pinball tournament, but Lexi said they already had dinner reservations at the English Inn. Happy anniversary!
The Tuesday Night Smackdown finalists, (some of them) heeding my command to “pretend you’re beating each other up.”
The Tuesday Night Smackdown championship was played off on TMNT between Josh, Jason, Joseph, and Mike, with the plastic medal going to Mike. The undercard (B division) included Shylia, a non-league-member making her Smackdown debut, along with Bryan, Donny, and me. When the random game draw for it was Deadpool I figured I was sunk as I had literally not played Deadpool since March 2020 if not earlier. Somehow, though, I pulled out a win. On my last ball I got two dangers for absolutely nothing, and if I had tilted at that moment it would have given the game to Donny. I know people will say “for what??” every time they get dangers on a touchy machine, but this one really was for nothing, I swear! I didn’t even nudge. At most I might have leaned against the game a little. Shylia was hit by it too, getting a tilt for a similar amount of nothing at all. “You can blame Danny for that,” said Mike of the overly tight tilt.
Me posing with my Undercard winner medal. (Photo by Joseph.)
Tonight we will be having our playoffs for Season 14, which will determine final standings. We will also be giving out the coveted “Most Improved” and “Worst Game” awards. (I mean “worst game score of the season,” not actual “worst game,” whoever just yelled “TMNT!”)
Our second meeting of August was the penultimate qualifying night of Season 14. (Despite what Kyle Kaminski of the City Pulse thinks, penultimate means “second to last.”) It was the last official “Labor of Hercules” as the final bank would be determined by a combination of throwing in all the games that hadn’t yet been played and voting on the others. Traditionally, Hercules’s final and most difficult labor was to subdue Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the underworld. (Fun fact: the Lernaean hydra, namesake of one of our earlier banks this season, was Cerberus’s sister!) The games in bank “Cerberus” were chosen because they either have vicious dogs or hellhound-like creatures in them, or because they related to Hades in some other way.
The biggest slowdown of the night was Junk Yard, with multiple groups playing very long games on it. A few people might still remember the first Silver Balls tournament in December 2015, which ran so long that we were in danger of not finishing before the bar closed. For the final game, I rigged the software to choose from only the two or three shortest-playing games we had in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The game that got drawn was Junk Yard, notorious at the time for its touchy slam tilt. Back then, it was considered a good game for someone to get 10 million on it. Times have certainly changed and now it is one of the reliably long-playing games. In my group, I felt sorry having to remind Biff to plunge off several extra balls as he was having a complete blowout of a game.
The disappointment of the night for at least some players was that Joseph’s group broke Stranger Things, and this after Joseph had put up around 100 million on Ball 1. We had to take it out of commission – I think the only time we had to do that with a game this season since Derik keeps everything playing so well – and play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead. Or at least some people played it. I did something while standing in front of it but I am reluctant to call it “playing.” At the end of my game I angrily declared, “I have just played the worst game in the entire history of pinball.” Mike tried to reassure me that my game was only terrible “so far” but he had missed the brutal fact that I’d just finished Ball 3. I think he just could not have imagined that someone could end a game of TMNT with 15K points. For perspective, the second worst game of the night on it was over 800K. I’m going to be very surprised if I don’t get the “Worst Score” ribbon this season. Someone else would surely have to slam tilt to make that possible.
We did not have a Tuesday Night Smackdown but we are going to be starting them again for our next league night tomorrow. The random drawing has decreed that our Smackdown game will be The Getaway. For the actual league play, we will be playing the miscellaneous bank which I have belatedly decided to call “Augean Stables.” If you want to know why I called it that, just go read up on the Labors of Hercules and you’ll probably figure it out.
August 10 was our first official return to league play since March 2020. We are continuing Season 14 which was already in progress when things got interrupted, changing our usual “long season league” into an “ultra-long season league.” Turnout was on the light side for our season re-kickoff but not too bad, all things considered. Unfortunately, the weather was hot, which combined with the new league mask requirement made for a somewhat uncomfortable time. Nevertheless, it was amazing to see people in person again, as I had not seen any league members face to face since the pandemic started.
We played bank “Apples of the Hesperides,” commemorating the time Hercules had to steal the apples of immortality from the goddesses called the Hesperides while fighting off a dragon named Ladon. It was a surprisingly quick-running night considering Game of Thrones was in the bank. My group only had to wait once for a game (and it was Game of Thrones, of course). I had a surprisingly good night considering I have barely played pinball since the pandemic. It felt like a lot of mediocre games, but sometimes consistently mediocre is all it takes.
Derik brought a ringer with him, long-time local player Allen who has not previously played in our league. I had to warn Allen that he could not qualify for finals since we were past the halfway mark for the season, but he was gracious and a good sport about it. Derik tried to petition me to change the rules but I told him rules changes have to be between seasons, not during the season. I will be asking the league if people would prefer to change the finals eligibility rule before next season.
Surprisingly absent was Danny. I had brought a box of karate medals to give him. He had given me the medals to strip off the ribbons for Tuesday Night Smackdown repurposing, but wanted the medals back when I was done. I brought them to the Zen tournament, but he forgot to take them and I had to bring them back home. Then I brought them to the league re-opener, and Danny was nowhere around. Was he trying to avoid having to take them back after all?
Tonight in an hour or so is our seventh meeting of the eight-meeting season, during which we will accompany Hercules on his quest to defeat Cerberus and enter Hades. See you soon! (Don’t forget a mask!)
March 10, 2020 was the fifth meeting of Season 14. As part of our “Labors of Hercules” themed season, we played bank “Stymphalian Birds” which was Attack from Mars, Elvira’s House of Pancakes Horrors, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Iron Maiden.
Jason shows off his Smackdown champion medal.
Danny won the night, Derik took second, and Mike took third. Danny is also in the lead for the current season, with Mike 17 points behind him. On the other end of the spectrum, Joseph reports that he had one of his all time worst games of Attack from Mars, in which he did not so much as topple a single saucer. For full results, check the standings document that Joseph keeps updated for us.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown game was on The Simpsons Pinball party. Jason “the Mag” won the top award (a “medal” decorated with a shamrock) and Travis won the undercard bout.
Travis with his Smackdown undercard medal.
Those of us who stuck around late got to meet meet a surprise visitor, Mike, one of the owners of Pinball Pete’s, and play some games with him. When we were introduced he made a wry remark about how we weren’t really supposed to shake hands anymore.
The night had a strange feeling to it, a sense of being moments ahead of a storm. At the time we were still expecting to have the quarterly charity tournament, March Hare Madness, on March 18. But the first cases of what everyone was still just calling “the coronavirus” had just been reported in Michigan. Before I left, I stopped in the bathroom and washed my hands much more thoroughly than normal, the way that has since become habitual – in other words, almost as well as Joseph has always washed his hands.
Season 14 will resume on August 10, but July will taken up by a couple of unofficial meetings in place of league nights. We will be meeting tonight at 7 for a non-season “just for fun” mini pingolf tournament, Silver Balls in July, and for an early Super-Ball XIV (Zen tournament) on July 24. See you all (I hope) soon.
Our fourth league night of the season, taking us to the halfway point of the regular season and qualifying for finals, was on the bank titled “Girdle of Hippolyta”: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Addams Family, Lord of the Rings, and Terminator 3. It was an action-packed night because we also had a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the conclusion of our launch party for Stranger Things.
Josh leaning in for a picture to avoid disrupting a game Bryan was playing on Kiss.
I had an awful night. I don’t know if it’s because of coming right from school without warming up or what, but I have had a pretty weak season and this was more of the same. The less said about my Terminator 3 game the better, especially since the time it would take to say something about it would be longer than my game. But it was an up night for the league in general, specifically for attendance. We were just about to break into groups when a new player, Morgan, timidly stepped forward and asked if it was too late to play. Morgan’s last minute entry put us up to 20 people. I yelled, “Oh no! The dangerous number!” If we ever get more than 20, we will have to make an ad hoc change to our league format. We do have plans for how to deal with it if it happens, but it will be a landmark for the league. We also had a new player named Trevor, who has played a bit in Grand Rapids before. Trevor dropped a score in our just-about-to-close Stranger Things tournament when he arrived, and it got him into the top eight for the ladder tournament!
Pat shows off his excellent-crafted Tuesday Night Smackdown medal.
It wasn’t as long or congested a night as I expected for having our maximum capacity, which is a good thing because afterward we had to run the Stranger Things launch party. We did a ladder of the top eight, eliminating two per round and playing one game with the top four. Josh won the launch party, the first one he’s won. He was very excited to win it and said if he could choose any launch party to win, he would want it to be this one. He took home the plaque and the translite.
The following Sunday we had playoffs for Destrier of Death, the Black Knight tournament. Only Joseph and I showed up for what was supposed to be a four-player finals. We played one game and after my ball 3, I was losing 4 million to 6 million. Joseph decided to play his ball 3 anyway, so I stood there teasing him and posting updates to Facebook about how he was doing victory laps on me. He ended up with about 140 million and was on the verge of starting the Black Knight 2000 mode when he drained.
My B division medal, and my face, especially my glasses. I really love my glasses.
We also had the Tuesday Night Smackdown on Star Trek: The Next Generation at the same time as the Stranger Things launch. The A division ended up having to restart their game because TNG went haywire (so, you know, normal for TNG) and I randomly drew Junk Yard. So this was the first time the Smackdown champion won on something other than the Smackdown game itself. Pat won the medal; I drew a bunny on it to signify “leap day.” To my surprise, I won the B division tournament on Theatre of Magic. It hadn’t treated me well of late, but this time the left loop strategy came through for me.
Then on the off-week Tuesday we had the finals for the Super Tournament season known as Royal Rumble. It was another ladder tournament, but open to all comers, and I managed to climb up through two games to turn my fifth seed into a third place finish. I felt very good about that, especially a big rally on Kiss which ended when someone pointed out that I was already safe. Mike won the final game against Danny by choosing Star Trek: The Next Generation, which Danny was less than thrilled about. He had a few choice words to say about TNG, but I’ll spare Joseph by not writing them here.
Tonight we will be fighting the Stymphalian Birds and playing a Tuesday Night Smackdown on The Simpsons Pinball Party. See you soon!
Hello all you pinballers out in Lansing League Land. I hope you’ll forgive me for the brevity of this recap for the league night of 2/11, as I was first under the weather and then had a huge pileup of exam grading, all of which has left me short of time. Last time we played the bank Ceryneian Hind, which commemorates the labor in which Hercules (or Heracles if you’re old school) had to chase down and catch a deer sacred to Artemis. I went into the attic and dug out a pair of home-made Bambi ears that I wore to a costume party wedding reception (the theme was “The Movies”) back in the mid-2000s. I already have a deer hat (famously used as the sorting hat for league) and a pair of light-up antlers with ears lying around, but I thought I had to be a hind specifically, which is a female deer, so I couldn’t wear antlers. I later learned that a peculiar characteristic of the Ceryneian Hind in mythology is that she had antlers. Oops.
Joseph asks Guardians what its deal is, anyway.
I went to both school and league despite being well into coming down with some sort of cold (which later turned quite nasty). I desperately wanted to avoid giving it to anyone, so I had planned to wipe down the flipper buttons and lockdown bar after each of my balls using some sanitizer wipes the upstairs bar had lying around. Unfortunately this backfired almost immediately. On Star Trek, it started registering switches as I wiped over the flipper button, then eventually fired the ball into play for no apparent reason. Our new player Jay rushed to take control of his ball, but unfortunately he drained quickly and the phantom switch hits had killed his ball saver. I called Joseph over for a ruling as I thought I might have to be DQ’d for playing out of turn since it may have been my actions that caused the ball to go into play. Joseph studied the rule book for a long time before coming over and saying that he believed it to be “accidental interference” rather than playing out of turn since it could not be expected that touching the flippers would launch the ball. We also could not be sure that touching the flipper was related to the switch hits because it seemed to continue after I was no longer touching the game at all. Joseph ruled simply “play on,” meaning I may yet avoid getting the “worst score” award again this season.
Brian trying for the Smackdown championship on Jurassic Park.
In any case, I was afraid to touch the game after my ball after that, so I switched to rubbing my own hands down with the sanitizer wipes after that. This turned out not to be the wisest idea either since that night I looked down at my hands and suddenly realized my knuckles had a red rash all over them and one spot was even cracked open and bleeding. Yes, I gave myself a chemical burn using surface sanitizer to disinfect my own hands. I really hope no one got the damn cold after that. I ended up getting so sick by Wednesday night that I cancelled my Thursday classes.
This league night saw the return of a long-ago familiar face, Rick of Nomad Kitchen (the bar’s old restaurant). We used to all love his fries with Nomad Sauce! Apparently Rick is going to start playing in the league. I can’t recall if he ever played in league before (in the Matt days) or just played with us casually. I know a couple of times he ran his own equivalent of Tuesday Night Smackdown before we started having those, which awarded a free burger from the kitchen as a prize.
Donny proudly showing his first pinball medal.
We had a lot of other stuff going on this night including qualifying for Destrier of Death (the Black Knight tournament designed mainly to let people put authorized scores up on Stern’s leader board), the Stranger Things launch party, and the usual Tuesday Night Smackdown which was on Jurassic Park. I put my two Stranger Things scores in knowing I would not have time on the next league night, and I ended up ranting much too angrily afterward about how I never should have tried to do scores while sick (they were not good). This broke my New Year’s resolution not to get angry about pinball, which I have mostly been pretty good about, but I think being sick tends to make me more emotional and my bad behavior can be forgiven. Joseph did a new leader board-eligible score on Black Knight, though it has since been knocked totally off the board by a last minute rush of high scores in a tournament that got barely any attention for most of its run. Mike has also lost his first place standing and is in the middle of the pack.
Danny with his Smackdown medal.
The Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Jurassic Park and our champion was Danny. Joseph had designed the medals since I forgot to do it before work, and I think he put candy hearts on them. Donny won the B division on Guardians of the Galaxy and was well pleased to get his plastic medal since it was his first pinball hardware. I definitely remember how excited I was to win my first trophy (a Zen tournament, with Joseph) and in fact it is still in pride of place on my mantel.
Tonight we will be vying for the Girdle of Hippolyta, commemorating the time Hercules persuaded the Queen of the Amazons to give him her magic girdle (which unfortunately ended in tragedy due to a misunderstanding of his intentions by the other Amazons). We will also have Stranger Things qualifying before league and finals afterward, plus a Smackdown on Star Trek: The Next Generation. See you all soon!
I was very proud of the work I did creating banks this season. I had to balance having only a certain number of games designated “long” (based on looking at average scores from the previous season, or guessing in the case of new games) in each bank, along with trying to keep to having vaguely thematic sets. I spent hours switching around games to make them match 7 of the 12 Labors of Hercules. One of the banks with the tightest and most obvious themes was the Lernean Hydra, for which I chose games with dragons or serpents in them (including Black Knight which literally has a hydra in it). Unfortunately the bank may have been more thematic than intended. The hydra, with its regenerating heads, represents a seemingly never-ending task. It also lives in a swamp. And this league night threatened to never end, and we were all crammed into the morass of the alcove together.
Biff practices his avoidance skills during the Giant Alcove Clusterfluff of 2020.
I was looking at themes and lengths, not at where the games were physically located, so I accidentally made a bank that all takes place in the alcove. It was pointed out to me that I had done this last season too. Further, a game that had been designated as merely “medium” (Monster Bash, which used to play a lot tougher) had decided it would be “very long” this time, in no small part due to Mike having a game in which he got to Monsters of Rock on his first ball. We also had to contend with Danny putting up a huge, huge score on Black Knight, incentivized in part by wanting to make the leader board in Stern’s “Ransom” tournament. It took so long for the first round of games to finish that groups ended up stacked three deep waiting for Monster Bash. Everyone was also in each other’s way due to the cramped space, with people accidentally elbowing and kicking each other. We had a few new members this time (Alicia, Jay, and Donny), and I felt awful thinking they might never come back after this especially crazy night. I hope they took it in stride! I know people were trying to tell them that, no, league night doesn’t normally involve this much waiting. This bank will definitely be reconsidered next season. Keep in mind, though, that it’s getting hard to find enough “short playing” games anymore due to everyone in the league getting better and the introduction of more long-playing games into the lineup.
Donny playing in the Smackdown Undercard battle on Guardians of the Galaxy.
We had a Tuesday Night Smackdown as usual, and for a change Biff actually stuck around to play in it. Why? Because it was Batman ’66! Biff won the Smackdown medal (a Bat Signal logo on a bat-themed ribbon) and Pat got the Undercard win on Guardians of the Galaxy.
Lexi played an animated game of Guardians in the Smackdown Undercard finals.
After league we continued to have qualifying for Destrier of Death, our Black Knight tournament designed mainly to let people qualify for the Stern leader board (Ransom) tournament. Mike put up an even higher score than the one Danny did during league, and as of this writing has the top spot in Stern’s tournament.
Pat and Biff showing off their Undercard and Champion medals, respectively.
Shortly we will be reconvening to chase down the Ceryneian Hind. I think this should be a more chill league night than the last one, if only for being upstairs instead of in the alcove. We will also have qualifying for the Stranger Things launch party and Destrier of Death, a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Jurassic Park, and of course Royal Rumble (but that’s always going on and needs no supervision). See you soon!
