This update will be unlike most of the previous updates. Due to a conflict, for the first time I had to pre-play my games this week. For those who don’t understand how this works, it’s pretty simple. I arrived during the practice interval and played one game on each machine, recording the score and submitting it. I was (eventually) able to get in games on all seven machines (one should play all seven as games that no scores are submitted for, at least in this league, count as a score of zero, should they happen to be games one’s group is drawn for).

As a result, the scoreboard pictures are going to be a lot different than they usually are. For obvious reasons I will not have scoreboard pictures of the remainder of the group. Instead, I will be using a portion of the screenshot from matchplay.events which is for practical purposes the official record of our league scores anyway. I am also completely blind to what actually transpired when Erich, Nina, and Bruce actually played.

My scores:

• Star Trek: 23.3M+ (not used)
• The Hobbit: 53.3K+ (second place)
• Kiss: 12.3M+ (third place)
• Metallica: 6.31M+ (second place)
• Ghostbusters: 55.9M+ (not used)
• Game of Thrones: 4.57M+ (third place)
• Spiderman: 9.13M+ (fourth place)

Notice anything missing in the above? Yes, that’s right. Not a single first place out of all five games. The score that represents my best performance on the night, the 55.9M+ on Ghostbusters, wound up on the cutting room floor, a casualty of group game assignment. In any of the groups that actually got assigned this game, it would have been good for first or second. Actually, the same is almost true for my Star Trek score: it would have been good for at least second in three of the four groups that played it, and no worse than third in the other group.

It goes without saying that if I had any plans to play in the league finals, they are out the window at this point. If I show up, and that’s a big fat honking if, it’s strictly to watch and possibly take advantage of the group pizza buy. Right now though, I’m leaning strongly towards just kicking back at home and getting my ducks in a row for next season.

I’ll be making a longer commentary post sometime over the weekend, no later than Monday night. I might actually wait until a set time to post it, I have not decided yet.

So as mentioned previously, I was unable to attend the previous two weeks of league play. I likely had questionable chances of qualifying for A division anyway, so from that angle there was not much point in showing up. However, it’s free pinball, and a chance to hang out with everybody again, which I really needed, so why not play anyway?

I would be grouped with Marc Gammons, Brad Berryman, and Jake Valdez. We would be assigned to Medieval Madness, Game of Thrones, Kiss, Wrestlemania, and Spiderman VE. Also, a welcome change would come with this week’s play: the Matchplay.events software now assigns player orders for all five games instead of us having to work out “who goes first this time”.

Again, we would begin with Medieval Madness. And in what is starting to become my usual for this game, I get off to a lousy start and never really get a lot going, signing off with a third-place 1.3M+ which barely edges out Jake’s 1.1M+. Not the start I wanted.

My disappointment would be short-lived, as the next game was on Game of Thrones. This is a game I knew I could put up a winning score on, the only question was whether or not I could. I was able to start Blackwater Multiball during ball 2, and I remembered my add-a-ball (I play House Martell where add-a-ball is the action button award). Somehow I was able to put up a solid 455M+, easily good enough for first place this time, with Brad holding down second with 6.91M+.

Next game was on Kiss, where I’d put up an unremarkable 3.2M+ and wind up with fourth. Enough said.

After that we’d move on to Wrestlemania, another game that I know I can score high on. Unfortunately this time it was not to be, I’d put up a 6.4M+ which realistically isn’t going to be good for much barring a lot of luck and a lot of house balls or quick drains from the other players. Neither of which happened this time, so fourth place it was.

I’d finish the night with a 54.1M+ on Spiderman good for second, however Jake had two stuck balls, and for some reason on this game it was not possible to put them back in play and have him finish the ball normally, so Jake got two replacement balls at the end of the regular game. I don’t have a picture of this score (yet) but he did not score enough to get out of fourth place (his adjusted score was 10.3M+ according to the official record).

You should see my post about week 8 sometime in the next couple days. I will probably not be playing the finals, so the bulk of my commentary on the season (or at least what I got to play of it) will be in that post.

Unfortunately due to real life and other things coming up, I didn’t get around to posting this until now. Better late than never, I guess. I will be following up shortly with a post about week 7 (which was last week; I missed both weeks 5 and 6) and shortly after that week 8 (which is happening tonight). I will reserve detailed commentary for after my week 8 post.

Another Wednesday night, another week of pinball. I arrive shortly after the nominal start time of 7pm; luckily for me at least a couple of others were running behind schedule as well. Our lineup this week would be: Kiss Pro, Ghostbusters Pro, Metallica LE, Spider-Man Vault Edition, Medeival Madness, Game of Thrones Premium, and The Hobbit.

The highlight of the night may well have been my unexpected grand champion on Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, this came during warmups, and not during actual league play.

I’m going to make this more or less a brief summary because there was really only one noteworthy event, which I’ll explain when I get to it. This week I was grouped with Brian Foytik, Rick Garcia, and Robert Clauson, and we were assigned to The Hobbit, Ghostbusters, Metallica, Spiderman VE, and Medieval Madness (remake).

The first game was on Medieval Madness. I never really got a lot going on this game, and for some reason that seems to be the case in a lot of games once I approach them to play in actual league play. I manage to put up a 1.6M+ good for third. Brian ran away with this one early with 49.9M+ which if memory serves me correctly included the one allowed extra ball.

Next game would be The Hobbit. I would sign off with a 43.0K+ which would be edged out by Robert’s 45.1K+ and completely dominated by the other two players, leaving me with fourth place.

The next game would be Ghostbusters, and this is the game with the irregularity. For some reason the game decides to launch Robert’s (second player) ball while he is away from the table. We have to wait quite a bit of time for Phil to make his ruling, and it’s a pretty obvious and standard one: Robert gets another ball after the current game is over, and the score from that one ball is added to the score from the previous game to determine the final score. To say the least, Robert isn’t too happy about it. While understandable, arguing a ruling the way he did reflects badly on all of us. Anyway, after the dust settles, my 25.8M+ would hold up for second place (Robert put up just less than 1.2M on his replacement ball, he needed around 5.75M to take second).

Game four was Spiderman, another game that Brian just ran away from the pack on. I put up 38.0M+ which is good for second, but still rather disappointing as with better focus and ball control I probably could have put up a score closer to if not higher than Brian’s 65.7M+.

We wrapped up with Metallica, the one game of the night I actually win with an 8.04M+, surpassing Rick’s 6.45M+ and Brian’s 5.50M+. Sum total of the night, 8 standings points of a possible 15.