Do you actually use the mini-flipper?

[fromduc]

OK tx.

 

[vikingerik]

I found a productive use of it. With every eject from the top scoop, try to use the red flipper to backhand one-time the ball up the right orbit. This works surprisingly consistently, about 2/3 of the time. And most misses yield a fairly safe rebound with several railroadable catches.

This works well because the bumpers are a good place to be. Coming out of the bumpers isn't exactly perfectly safe, but it's as good as anywhere else on the table. This gets you bonus X, and also picks up green bug hits when it comes out the left side of the bumpers.

This also gets a lot of bugs. The one-timer will very often glance off the yellow bug target before going up the orbit. It's also possible to hit green and red bugs on the rightmost bank with a steeper backhand. And all these are doubled by the red flipper, of course.

Other than this one-timer, yes the red flipper is very useful for deadening and controlling balls. On any right ramp shot, just hold the mini-flipper to get a catch on the right main flipper. That's the easy way, but there's also lots of other deflections that it can do. I can't find anything useful to shoot with it though, it's always less accurate than just dropping a pass to the right main flipper instead.