Okay, so it’s been a while. Due to various personal reasons I’m not going to try to go into here, I missed week 7. And, due to the Astros playing a home game this Tuesday night, league night was at Phil and Matt’s house, on their collection. In the rotation for league play were: Tales From the Crypt, Dr. Dude, Whirlwind, Firepower, Diner, and The Simpsons Pinball Party.

I was grouped with Leon Moncla, Blake Dumensil, and David Pollock. I’m not going to go into where everybody was with regard to standings, as it was pretty much set. After looking at the way it played out, it was obvious I was stuck in B division at least after the week 7 no-show, possibly as early as week 6. I may go in and look at what could have been in a later post, or I may not. Staring at standings numbers gives me a headache at the moment, so now is definitely not the time.

I’m going to go ahead and touch on the second half of the post title here, since the majority of what I have to say on the topic is going to be in a post on Rant Roulette. Every week, everyone who wants to eat pizza chips in $5 towards pizzas. With the change of venue, we were out of the delivery area of our usual pizza place. Suffice it to say, this week the usual timely arrival of the pizza didn’t happen. Details and my thoughts in the aforelinked post (that’s why I have Rant Roulette in addition to this blog).

The night got off to a pretty good start on Firepower. I managed a score of 101,580, bested only by Leon’s 110,630. I had a great game even though I was not able to get a multiball going, and ordinarily I’d be a bit embarrassed by a score that barely cracked six-digit territory. Starting off with a second place that didn’t miss first by all that much is pretty good given some of the first game stinkers I have had from weeks past.

Our second game would be on Tales From the Crypt. I was able to get multiball lit; that’s the good news. The bad news is I couldn’t get it started, and really didn’t get much of anything going on this game. If there was any hope of me making A division, it was definitely gone when I posted a stinky 17.5M+ in this contest, last behind David’s 35.0M+, Blake’s 76.5M+, and Leon’s damn impressive 183.0M+. Two games, four points, and I’m a bit unhappy.

We would move on to Diner. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be proud of a 2.5M+ score on this game. But, in this case, it was good for first, with none of the other three players able to even break 900K. In fact, looking at the machine stats, only Phil Grimaldi was able to put up a higher score during league play (8.4M+). Given we were playing at his house, and thus Phil gets to play that exact machine a lot more often than the rest of us (different machines of the same title often play differently), that shouldn’t be a big surprise. I have a first place, and even if I’m only playing for pride, I’m starting to feel a lot better. Three games down, nine points, two games left to go.

Our next game would be Whirlwind. I have a terrible first ball, and a rather lacking second ball. Meanwhile David is hitting everything but the kitchen sink. I’m staring down David’s 5.39M+ score when I have something like 1.5M+. At this point I am realistically just thinking about second place. I manage to start multiball, but can never hit the Million Plus shot (the left ramp was very difficult to hit for some reason on this particular machine). I do manage to hit the cellar shot to restart multiball, but still cannot cash in.

At this point I am just thinking to keep the ball in play for as long as I can, and score whatever points I do in the process. I’m looking up and see the score counter pass somewhere in the 4.7M range, closing in on David’s potential winning score. At that point I’m still thinking to myself “back to basics, ball control, low risk, keep it in play.” I do manage to make both NE and SE shots toward lighting the next lock, but then I find out I have to light SW as well, so for the moment I forget about going for another multiball. (Hopefully those are the right directions, this is strictly from memory.) I catch a glimpse of the score counter briefly enough to see the millions digit at 5, which gets me to relax a bit knowing at least I’m not going to embarrass myself with a 4.8M+ or 4.9M+ score. The ball finally drains, and my final score is 5,790,190. Not a big huge lead, and certainly a score that either Leon or Blake (or maybe both) could top. As it turns out, they did not. Four games played, fourteen points, one game left. At this point I have clinched a personal best league night of the season (going back to week three, where I put up 13 points).

We would end the night on Dr. Dude, which was being livestreamed on Twitch for the first time ever. I made sure to tweet out the stream URL, but I don’t think too many people watched it live. I do have the video saved. I get one shot away from having multiball lit (the Mix Master shot) on the first ball, and put up a first ball score of 900,300 thanks in large part to a 200K outlane bonus, good for an early lead. My second ball isn’t that great, but I am still sitting at 1,185,650 going into ball 3, with the next highest score being 831,460. Not a huge lead, but still a lead.

The third ball of this game, however, wound up being one of my bigger failures of the night. After a botched post pass, I wind up draining straight down the middle. The save after the botched post pass put the ball in the bumpers, and I got a really unlucky bounce which wound up being unrecoverable. I sign off with 1,335,280 (not quite 150K on the third ball). Leon would jump in front with better ball control skills than I was able to muster the entire game, winding up his game with 1,769,070, which easily could have been much higher if he didn’t tilt out (the tilt on this machine was set rather conservative). Blake also tilts out early, with a final score of 385,190. David gets a very unlucky down-the-middle drain and would finish with 1,032,810. So my rather lame score is still good enough for second place, and I finish the night with 17 standings points.

The final regular season standings put me in the fifth spot in B division, with 69 standings points. All other things being equal, I would have needed 19 more points at some time during the season to finish ahead of Preston Moncla who snagged the last A division slot with 87 standings points. Put another way, Preston’s 87 standings points is a consistent average of 14.5 every non-dropped week, with a couple of allowable absences or garbage performances.

I’m not particularly ashamed of it, given it’s my first time playing in a league, but I know I’m capable of better. If I had been able to put up an average of, say, 17 points for at least four weeks out of the season (68 points, leaving another 19 split between the other two weeks, which I’ve proven I can do with no problem), I would have had a decent chance at A division going into the final week. Showing up for weeks 2 and 7 probably wouldn’t have helped as much as many readers think it would; I wound up with two weeks with 10 and 9 as my potential drop scores, and realistically I don’t think a performance of higher than that was forthcoming in those weeks had I showed up to play, due to various factors. I would have needed to put up an average of 19 those two weeks to have had a decent chance at A division (due to the two lowest weeks getting dropped).

Several pictures of pre- and post-league play games are included. I will caption as time permits.

This week’s league night came up much sooner than I expected. I arrived pretty close to the nominal 7pm start time (which as we all know, means actual league play starts around 7:30pm).

This week the game lineup would be: The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones LE, The Hobbit, Kiss, Mustang, Wrestlemania LE, and X-Men. I would be grouped with Cory Westfahl, Michelle Costa, and Mark Hernandez. On the league standings going into this match: I am in 24th place with 33 adjusted points. Michelle and Cory are well into the middle of A division at this point in the season (9th with 54 and 10th place with 52 respectively), with Mark Hernandez in B division in 30th place, 24 points, only 9 points behind me.

Our first game was supposed to be on Wrestlemania. The game started off okay, but then this happened during the middle of Cory’s second ball:

Yep. Your eyes are not deceiving you: that’s a busted rubber. The game was voided and replaced with Mustang in our rotation.

We would play our first completed game on The Hobbit. As well as I played this game during warmups, I’d pancake here with a score of 31K+, only good for third place topping Michelle’s 16K+. One game, two standings points. I’ve started off nights worse than this, but it’s still not reassuring.

Second game was on The Walking Dead. I had a fairly decent game, but didn’t get a multiball started or anything terribly high scoring. Given how well I did in warmups, my score during actual league play would be a disappointing 5.2M+, but Mark would only put up 2.6M+ giving me, again, in third place. Two games, four points…

We would continue on Game of Thrones. I did get a late, relatively high-scoring multiball which kept me in the game. I had a momentary second place with 80.9M+, but Michelle would come back to re-take second with a 91.0M+ before it was over. Three games, six points…

Our fourth game was on X-Men. Despite not having a clue what the ruleset was on this talble, I get an early multiball for a nice early lead. I bomb the second ball, and my third ball was not quite good enough to retake the lead, but I did put up a 9.4M+ behind Michelle’s 10.0M+. Four games, nine points, and there’s a chance I’ll be able to finish the night with a decent tally.

Before we could play our last game, which was on Mustang (replacing Wrestlemania), we had a situation where another group had an absent player. I don’t know the full story, whether he was frustrated at doing poorly in previous games or what. I didn’t even make note of exactly who it was. Either way, I only mention it here as an example of the kind of thing not to do during league play or a tournament. If you’re going to withdraw, tell your group and the director. Don’t just “ghost” or “poof”.

So we finally get to play Mustang. On top of the delay, we have a glitch where the game starts cycling through players in the middle of the first ball. At first, the ruling by Phil is that the affected players (Cory and I) would get another ball at the end of the game. We decide as a group that we would rather void the current game and start over.

As much as I really could have used a first place here, it simply didn’t happen. My best ball control is looping a nearly worthless ramp shot. Once I switch off of that and try to make anything else, I drain. I would sign off with an outright embarrassing 4.3M+. Mark put up 13.4M+, Michelle put up 19.6M+, and Cory took first with a 21.5M+. That’s how badly I did… At least I wind up with a total of ten standings points on the night, so the 9 from week 4 and the goose egg from not showing up for week 2 are still the two scores dropped for my adjusted total.

Looking at the standings, I can see that I did move ahead of both Chris Dyer (who put up a 7 this week; I’m ahead due to the tiebreaker) and Joe Cuellar (didn’t play) compared to the prior week. Unfortunately that seems to be the only real ground I have gained. As long as I do no worse than 10 points next week (third place all the way across, or something like one first place, one third place, and three fourth places), I can’t possibly do worse than 9 points toward my adjusted score the following week (as I scored 9 in week 3 that’s currently being dropped to calculate my adjusted score). Granted, a performance like that probably won’t help me make it up to A division barring a miracle in week 7.

Realistically, I’m looking at B division this time around and after that, hoping I do better next season. I don’t even know if, after taking a realistic look at the big picture, I should be disappointed. I put up quite a few scores that aren’t embarrassingly bad, but it happens that other player(s) in the same game was/were able to put up better scores in that particular game, pushing me down to second or third (thankfully I have not yet had all three players in a four-player group push me down to fourth when I’ve had what I would call a good score; every fourth place finish was usually because I put up a horrible score). It is my first time playing a league as opposed to a single-day or weekend tournament, and I missed the entire first season so I have a bit less experience than most of the other players.

Another week, another league night. This week we were promised a “surprise blast from the past.” I was thinking we were going to get to play something, like The Addams Family, Attack from Mars, Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Space Shuttle, or Genie. You know, a true blast from the past.

The game wound up being The Sopranos, one of the earlier titles after the Sega factory became the Stern factory. I got to watch it being played, but would never get to play it the whole night for a variety of reasons. The dot matrix animations still have that “late Data East/Sega era” look to them, and it’s not just the orange gas plasma display as opposed to the more modern red LED display that the new Sterns have. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly; maybe it was the dot matrix animation artist working on the games from that era, and/or the font(s) they were using. (For whatever reason I find the Williams/Bally displays from the same era, up until Pinball 2000, much more appealing.)

Anyway, I was manually late-added into the group originally consisting of Rusty Key, David Pollock, and Cory Westfahl. I had not played against any of these players in league play yet, and was sick of the software’s “random” groupings putting me against at least one other player who I had played in earlier weeks. So, I asked Phil to put me in that group and he agreed. (I forget what the alternative was, it may have been the group Ruben was in.)

So things get off to a slow start given that we are waiting for a machine to open up for our first game. Luckily, The Walking Dead opens up relatively quickly. Rusty and David happen to blow it up with scores of 23,131,430 (first) and 23,049,360 (second). By some miracle I eek out third with 13.9M+ despite barely making the extra ball shot and (I think) not getting a multiball mode going at all.

If only I could say it got better as the night went on. It did, but not in our second game on Metallica. I managed a paltry 11,300,020, only good for fourth. Rusty, on the other hand, took first place again with a whopping 119.5M+, which was good for one of the high scores, and is a league record for this table. Anyway, so that’s two games, 3 standings points.

Our next game was on Kiss, and I put up some respectable scores during warmups, so certainly I should be able to repeat that performance, right? I manage a personal best for league play. Unfortunatsely, it’s a paltry 4.0M+ good for fourth (again). This time it was David with the runaway first place of 44,993,630, missing the 45M mark by less than the value of one pop bumper hit. Three games, 4 standings points… and one pinball player/blogger wondering if he needs his head examined.

Next up would be Game of Thrones. Oh, and did I mention this was the game on video for the week? Well, as you will see when you watch, it’s a performance I’d rather forget: all of 2,303,380. The malfunctioning kicker really didn’t help. Given I’ve put up much, much higher scores on this game, this was a huge disappointment. Obviously, this was yet another fourth place finish, putting me at 5 standings points on the night after four games. I would need a first place finish on The Hobbit to still be able to drop the 9 points from Week 4 (which is bad enough already).

And so, we would play the last game of the night on The Hobbit. I got the only stuck ball of the night. I had run up a 40K good enough for an early lead after ball 2. The ball had gotten stuck about ½” up on a lit kickback (on the bottom of the outlane switch), which is held in place by a post during play. The post had dropped because the game had fired the kickback already. Phil’s ruling at the time of the incident (the “ruling on the field”) was that the ball was essentially over and it was “normal course of play.” I’m obviously not happy about it, but I try not to let it throw me.

I start ball 3 with a deficit of around 13K and change to overcome. Thankfully, I have a great ball and get all kinds of points everywhere I need them. Knowing I have more than enough points, I relax a bit and pile on to my lead, signing off with a total of 90,003. Note that last week, I scored a bit higher and it was only good for third place. This time, next to Rusty’s 27,977, Cory’s 50,687, and David’s 53,629, I would finish the night with a first place victory. Five games, 10 standings points.

(Of note, Phil later admitted the ruling was incorrect, and he also noticed I won in spite of it. Like I would expect most players to be, I’m not as easily upset about these kind of rulings when they don’t wind up costing me a game.)

It could have been much worse, of course. As it is, I still slip back a bit and I am now 11 points back from the cutoff from A division to B division. I would possibly need to gain 12 points, depending on which player I need to out-seed due to the tiebreaker (season outscored percentage; mine is currently 41.63% and this loses against all but one player currently at 44 adjusted points, and is probably behind most of the other players higher than me).

The takeaways from this week are:

1. I feel I have finally gotten the hang of Kiss and The Hobbit, two games I felt were not exactly my strongest games last week (and in the case of Kiss, going back to week 1).
2. I can win games in the clutch at least some of the times in league play, and even in the face of an adverse league/tournament official ruling.
3. I have underestimated the competitive level of pinball in Houston in general. There apparently has been a lot of pent-up demand for tournaments and leagues and any illusion I had of just waltzing in and taking first place in a tournament within a couple of months was quickly dispelled. We’re at a little over a year, and the best I’ve been able to pull off is a second place.
4. If I really want to make the A division playoffs, I have little room for error. Probably more like no room for error, in reality.

Here’s hoping I finish the season on a high note.

The more astute observers will note this entry is two weeks after my entry about what happened in week 3. Due to weather-related concerns on March 8, week 4 was postponed until this week (March 15). It was well worth it, though, as we got to play the new game from Jersey Jack, The Hobbit. I had heard about this game and was genuinely excited for a chance to play it.

I had one chance to play The Hobbit during warmups; my other warmup games were on Wrestlemania (this time an LE) and The Walking Dead. Curiously, I wound up being in a group that did not play The Walking Dead during league play. My first game on The Hobbit wasn’t that great, so I’m glad my paltry score of 24,926 came during warmups. (Jersey Jack games are very low scoring, and unlike Stern games, score using the ones digit; the “free game” award on The Hobbit was at 190,000 at this point.) The other games in the lineup were Game of Thrones (LE), Star Trek (Pro), and Kiss (LE).

So, we would get down to business at 7:30pm. I would be grouped with Ruben (again), Robert (again), and Michael. We would start out out the night playing Kiss. This was another game where I really never got much of anything going. I would manage all of 3.3M+, good for fourth (last) next to Michael’s third-place 4.2M+, Ruben’s 5.0M+, and Robert’s amazing 29.8M+. Not a good start, to say the least.

The second game was on The Hobbit. Phil was running video of everyone playing The Hobbit (which is on YouTube now), so I was just a bit more nervous than usual. Surprisingly, I was able to settle into a groove and run up 90,457. A lot better than my warm-up game, but again Robert and Ruben were able to top it with scores of 184,261 and 115,184 respectively, so I would wind up in third. I honestly feel like I did better than my third-place finish would indicate. However, both Robert and Ruben were able to get multiball going whereas I was grinding out points from ordinary one-ball play. Had I been able to get a multiball going I might well have been able to pull out at least enough for second.

On we would move to Star Trek. I was able to stay in this game the whole way. I was facing Robert’s 13.0M+, Michael’s 14.0M+, and Ruben’s 22.4M+ with a score of 9.3M (I think, it was definitely between 9M and 10M). I got a reasonably good start to ball 3, but wound up signing off with a 11.3M+ which wasn’t good enough for anything higher than fourth (last). This is probably the most frustrating game of the night, as I had a legitimate chance to come in higher and I was not able to convert. I know I need to work on this as it’s only going to become even more frustrating to have this happen as the stakes get higher. So after this game, that’s a fourth, a third, and a fourth in a four-player group. Four standings points in three games.

Our fourth game of the night would be Wrestlemania. Having played the Pro version in week 3, I felt more confident about being able to put up a decent score and maybe turn the night around. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Again Robert and Ruben would finish in the top two slots with 32.3M+ and 8.4M+ respectively, and I would manage 7.6M+ good for third, saved only by Michael’s even worse score. Given my performance on the Pro version of Wrestlemania in week 3, this is disappointing but to be fair the LE version makes the wrestling ring much tougher with the spinning disc.

We would wrap up on Game of Thrones. Despite mistakenly picking the wrong house (I wanted Martell but wound up with Stark from accidentally hitting the button too soon) I would rack up a pretty solid 95.5M+, good for second behind Ruben’s 112.7M+. I was aided by a multiball where I hit quite a few jackpot shots (I originally wrote “just about everything but the kitchen sink” but that’s kind of exaggerating). This was also a winnable game at the end, but I couldn’t keep the ball in play long enough on the last ball to actually make it happen. This would bring me up to 9 standings points (more on that later).

I wrapped up the night with a round on Ice Cold Beer and a game of Ladybug on a multi-arcade unit, both also set on free play. I was too exhausted to play much else. I don’t think fatigue was a factor towards my lacking performance; my only second-place score of the night was the last game. If it were about fatigue I would have simply gotten worse as the night wore on, certainly not better.

Anyway, about the standings. If the league season were to end now, I would be in B division, 5 points from the cutoff for A division. Not a good spot. If I can make the remaining weeks and do better, it’s almost certain the 9 points from this week will be dropped from the final tally in favor of a higher score. (The two lowest scores are dropped, though I effectively have a zero for my week 2 score since I was unable to attend.) The margin for error here is more like a distinct lack thereof, if making A division is still part of my plans. Of course right now it is, but that could well change between now and the end of week 8.

Either way I feel I will be a better player for the experience. I wish a league like this had been around in Houston in the 1990s. For all I know, there was one and I just never knew about it, or they were targeting a slightly older demographic. (Most of the players in SCPL appear to be no younger than about 30. It is difficult to say when my pinball skills were at their peak, or even whether or not I have peaked. I definitely remember putting up some monster scores in my early to mid-20s though.)

I’m learning that league play is a different beast. It requires a lot more focus and consistency than tournament play. Winning a tournament just requires that you be the best player that one day; winning a league season requires one to be a reasonably good player week in and week out (well, in this case, at least 6 out of the 8 weeks of a season) and then to be the best player during the playoffs.

Four down, four to go… here’s hoping the last four weeks are good ones.

Earlier in the day, I really looked forward to returning to pinball league night. I had missed week 2 due to illness (there were a couple of other reasons as well, but feeling ill was probably the overriding concern of mine). I had gotten the news that Wizard of Oz would be in the lineup. Indeed, I was able to get in a few games during the warmups, including one score of 287,992, also good for Yellow Brick Road Champ of 26 (I think? I didn’t get an actual picture with the score, silly me). I also got in a rather smashing 245.6M+ on Game of Thrones in warmups. Unfortunately, for the most part my good fortune did not carry over through to actual league play…

The announcements were started with the news that Wizard of Oz would not be in the lineup for league play due to it “acting strangely” during warmups. To be fair, the outhole kicker was taking multiple tries to put the ball in the plunger lane for whatever reason (weak or failing coil?) and there was a point where the game went down and would not boot back up. I suggested to leave it powered off for about five minutes and then turn it back on, which fixed that problem, but not the others. So the lineup wound up being KISS, Mustang, Game of Thrones (LE), Wrestlemania, and The Walking Dead.

I was in a three-player group this week with Bruce Hilty and Robert Clauson. I knew very little about either of my opponents going into this, so I was hopeful I would be able to put up a decent performance and get back toward the top of the standings.

Our first game was on KISS, which I had some familiarity with from the first week. Surprisingly, for whatever reason, I had just a decisively awful game. I would sign off with a 3.6M+. Bruce managed a somewhat better 7.8M+, while Robert would blow it up in multiball with a 62.5M+ good enough for first place.

I would do better on The Walking Dead. I certainly felt like I was in pretty good shape with 24.4M+ before Robert’s third ball, but it would only be good for second as Robert would barely eek out a first with a 26.8M+. Bruce posted a 16.5M+, which is not an awful score by any means, but would still only be good for third.

Moving on, the 245.6M+ I posted on Game of Thrones LE in warmups had me pretty confident going into our league game on the same machine. Unfortunately, confidence doesn’t mean a damn thing in the absence of execution when it matters. I would post a 3.9M+ which is just a putrid score compared to Bruce’s 36.2M+ and Robert’s 54.9M+.

The night was not over yet. Our next game was on Wrestlemania. I jumped out in front to a huge lead on ball 2 as I had the ramp shots back up to the ring dialed in and mastered the ring flippers. (This game uses two player-activated kickers as flippers, and they are a bit difficult to get the hang of for players new to this particular table.) I would wind up with 37.8M+, eeking out first place against Robert’s 36.2M+. Bruce posted a respectable 26.4M+ but again it was only good for third.

Finally, it was time for Mustang. Robert set the pace with a 56.3M+ that was just uncatchable barring a miracle from either me or Bruce. I did eek out second with a 27.6M+ and Bruce would again post a respectable score (24.7M+) only good enough for third.

I would finish the night with one first, two seconds, and two thirds, for a total of 13 league points. This is an improvement over week 1 where I only put up 10, but still a bit disappointing. The real disappointment is a personal record I’ve set for myself in tournament and league play, and it’s the biggest disparity between my best score on a machine in practice/warmups versus the actual tournament/league play itself. My league night score was 1.58% (about 1/63) of the highest score I was able to post during warmups. It’s supposed to be the other way around, of course. This is a record I hope I don’t beat any time soon.

I am starting to like Game of Thrones and Wrestlemania, and in general I am starting to warm up to the newer Stern games. For quite a long while, I still preferred the last Williams, Bally, and Gottlieb games over what Stern was producing. In fact, I am only now discovering great Gottlieb titles I had only read about on Usenet rec.games.pinball, that I really wish I had gotten a chance to play “back in the day.”

I’m not sure why I didn’t like Stern games, though I’m pretty sure bad memories of South Park (technically a Sega game, but it was no secret Stern was a continuation of Sega the way Sega’s pinball division was a continuation of Data East) didn’t help. There are still a few of the earlier titles from after the Stern takeover that I am not a huge fan of, and many of them I never really got to play; having two of the major manufacturers fold up shop did not do wonders for location pinball, not to mention the last two games from one of those manufacturers was using a completely new concept (Pinball 2000) that I am actually quite grateful never caught on. Imagine how much a Game of Thrones, KISS, Mustang, or Wrestlemania would suck being crammed into a Pinball 2000 cabinet.

Wizard of Oz was definitely fun to play. This wasn’t the first time I got to play a Wizard of Oz; that was, of course, the qualifier for the Houston Arcade Expo tournament (which see). I am still surprised I managed to post the score I did then, though I am glad I was able to beat it even if it counted for bupkis as far as league standings are concerned. I am glad we have Jersey Jack deciding to join what many declared a dead or dying business. Heck, I am glad we have other manufacturers who have decided to step up the plate. All we need now, are operators willing to take a chance on location pinball again (and the location owners and players to make it work).

(Before leaving, I did play some Ice Cold Beer and get a 1750; that is what the last picture is. I have done better than that, but I consider that score a highlight of the night.)

This adventure begins with a journey through the Houston area’s wonderful traffic. I was using Google Maps directions to guide me around traffic as best it could, and it directed me onto the Hardy Toll Road at Little York, taking a side street to get past the worst of the backup on Little York itself.

Once I got onto the mainlanes, it was smooth sailing until the toll road was closed due to construction at FM 1960. I decided at that point the best course of action was to stay on West Hardy Road to Louetta, then cut over to I-45 there. Google Maps told me, in effect, “don’t bother getting on the freeway, just take the feeder the rest of the way to Sawdust.” Which I did, and which turned out to be a great move (traffic wasn’t really moving again until after the exit for Sawdust.)

I arrived at around 4:10pm. (I had messaged Phil earlier saying I was on my way and that traffic was horrendous; his reply, which I didn’t see until after I had arrived at Game Preserve, was that he wouldn’t be starting until about 4:20pm.) I managed to fit in a couple of warm-up games before the pairings and a rule change were announced. (The rule change was the shift from 4-2-1-0 scoring to 3-2-1-0 scoring during the qualifying rounds, with three-player games being scored using 3-1.5-0.)

My first round game was on Tri Zone with Matt, Erich, and Brian, a game I usually feel pretty confident playing. The game itself seemed to be in good mechanical working order, though the general illumination had some bulbs burned out. My hopes of getting off to a good start quickly went out the window. I was only able to manage a rather embarrassing 49,270, with Brian’s 122,150 being good enough for third place. I don’t know if it was just nerves, getting really unlucky bounces, or a combination of both. It was quite disappointing to be at the bottom of the heap to start things off.

The second round game was originally Junkyard with James and Sarah. However, in the middle of James’s second ball, the wire came off of a kicker coil. Rusty, who had already completed his game at this point, made a heroic effort to try to get it up and running again mid-game, but the fix attempt wound up not working and we would start over again on Space Shuttle. This was a tough break for James, who had the lead at the time of the malfunction on Junkyard (I had a decent second place score), and who would wind up finishing third with a 142K+. Sarah would take second with a 178K+, and I rang up a decent score of 952K+. I would have liked to at least light up the millions digit in the score counter, but what I had was plenty to win.

On to the third round: Congo with Justin Niles, Chris, and James. Not surprisingly, Justin did about the same thing when I played against him in the first week of the league, posting a decent 372M+. I struggled to get into a rhythm and managed to post a 69M+ good for third, with Chris eeking out second with a 76M+. So if you are keeping track so far, that’s three rounds and I have 4 ranking points (0, 4, and 1 in order). I’m starting to wonder if I will even qualify for A-division at this point.

For the fourth round I was dealt Roller Disco with Joe Reyna, Justin, and Jaina. I like Roller Disco, though it is a rather difficult game to really get into a rhythm on. For those who have never seen this game, it’s a wide-open widebody playfield with two sets of lower flippers and two separate sets of inlanes. The game play bears some resemblance another Gottlieb classic, Black Hole, except there’s no lower level and no multiball, and the playfield on Roller Disco is nearly symmetric whereas Black Hole derives many more subtle nuances from its asymmetric playfield.

I manage to squeak out a third place here with a paltry 90,130 (Justin taking a very unsurprising first here with a 231K+), but the real noteworthy part of this game came with an early stuck ball I had. Joe did this whole act with “you’re going to have to bump it off of there, I’m not grabbing the keys.” I tried some subtle nudges that wound up not freeing the ball, then one that did… only to have the game tilt about two seconds layer. In a qualifying round where I got off to a terrible start and needed everything I could get, that left me Quite Obviously Not Amused. (Joe, of course, laughed his ass off.) I feel that kind of thing may pass for a joke in a social or “beer league” game of pinball, but that kind of nonsense to a fellow player is, at least in the pinball culture I grew up with, something one Just Doesn’t Do. (I’ll get back to this later)

On to round five, Lord of the Rings with Rusty, Joe (again), and Brian. The real shocker here was Rusty bolting out to an incredible lead by the end of ball 2. I had little hope of catching him, but I was going to try. As it was, I did well enough to snag a solid second place with 9.3M+, far behind Rusty’s 24.2M+ but comfortably ahead of Brian’s 7.4M+. On the third ball, I managed to get some multiball modes going, and I never really quit until I lost the ball. Had I been able to keep it in play, I was ready to do what I did back in November on my first ball on Lord of the Rings against Phil.

Going into round six, I’m starting to have some hope of making A-division but prepared for the reality that I might not for the first time under this format. I drew Rock Encore against Jaina and William. I put up an embarrassingly bad 282K+. However, William was only able to put up 223K+ and Jaina put up only a 220K+, so as badly as I did, that was still good enough for a first place. An ugly win scores the same 3 standings points as a more elegant win, so I’m not complaining.

Finally, round seven. I’m in 10th place in the standings, with a possibility of moving into the top 8 for A-division playoffs, but there was a chance if the wrong players won, I would not. I had to find everyone and begin my game, so there wasn’t too much time to analyze scenarios. I was assigned Party Zone with Ruben, Kevin, and Melissa. Fortunately, I drew the fourth player spot, which somewhat gave me improved odds of winning, knowing exactly what I needed to do. I caught a bad break on each of my first two balls, but still had a competitive score going into ball 3.

Early in my third ball, I got a (worthless in tournament play) extra ball from the Supersonic Robotic Comic. Just about anything else would have been better. I was unhappy enough that I flashed my middle finger at the score display, which drew a couple of chuckles from my opponents (well, I’m glad someone found it amusing). Later on, I lit the Eat-Drink-B.Merry sequence, from which I scored 3 million points, enough to secure the win. After plunging off the extra ball I would wind up with 8.6M+, good enough for first place, and enough to edge out Ruben for the 8th spot in A-division. Winning the game without starting multiball was perhaps the best thing to happen to me all night, and perhaps the biggest highlight of the tournament. Again, it’s not the prettiest win, but an ugly win and a pretty win count for the same 3 points.

My moment to get amused, however, came when I saw Joe Reyna had missed A-division by a good three places, winding up in 11th. Sure, maybe Joe wasn’t playing to make A-division. But I have to say, I found it hilarious. Call it karma, call it the pinball gods doing their thing… either way, it all worked out in the end. He who laughs last laughs the hardest, indeed.

Phil announced to all the players as the last rounds were finishing up to be back at 8pm for the playoffs. I took my meal break at Taco Bell, reflecting on how I had done so far. I was relieved to have made the A-division playoffs, though I was still unhappy I had barely eeked in, and that with a final round game where I probably didn’t deserve to take first place. I set the bar pretty high for myself, and this performance in the qualifying rounds didn’t measure up to it.

The semi-finals saw me grouped with Phil, Rusty, and Brian, with the other group being Erich, William, David, and Justin. Rusty wound up with the #1 seed with 17.5 points, which was a real surprise to me as up until now I had thought he was a good player, but not of the caliber that could win the A-division of a tournament outright. Obviously that has now changed and there is yet another player to watch out for.

The first game was on Party Zone. Unlike my previous plays on this table, I couldn’t get anything going at all. A perfect microcosm of this game was the shot that I attempted into the cottage lane (to light multiball once it is made three times), which bounced right back out, and right down the middle. I would sign off with an absolutely dreadful 3.5M+, less than half of the 7.7M+ third place score by Rusty.

The second game was on Rock Encore. It’s a table that by now, I’m starting to despise. Nothing I did got any appreciable amount of scoring going, and my final score of 194K+ didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being good enough for even third place.

We ended the night on what would be a relatively meaningless (to me) game of Roller Disco. Going into that game, I was the 0 in an 8-3-3-0 point split, with the top two players advancing. The only way I had any chance to advance was to win with Phil (8 points) coming in second. This would put me in second overall, with the point totals then becoming 10-4-4-3, forcing a playoff with either Rusty or Brian (whoever came in third). Neither of those happened, with Rusty finishing first with a 223K+, Brian finishing second with a 159K+, my 120K+ being good enough for third, and a rare fourth-place finish by Phil with a 78K+.

So there you have it, my best impression of the Houston Oilers translated to a pinball tournament. If you remember the Oilers, it’s not a comparsion I should be eager to make, though it is accurate. A tie for seventh place is definitely not what I had in mind when I walked in to The Game Preserve. It ties the lowest finish I have had at any tournament held at The Game Preserve; twice in the past, I have come in seventh place, once back in 2014 October, and again back in 2015 July. The only two tournaments where I have finished lower than seventh were the 2014 Oil City Open main tournament, where I came in 14th (though I did salvage some pride that trip by coming in third in the side tournament), and the Houston Arcade Expo tournament where I ranked 30th in qualifying (though keep in mind the field in the latter is much larger).

And the search for the elusive first place continues…

(Gallery includes some post-tournament scores. I will be adding captions as I have time later this week.)