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And here we go again.

League night tournament for the OC Pinball League. It was hosted at the house of the first event I went to, so no new pins to report. If you really wanna know everything that was there, look at my very first post of this thread!

So I got a solid hour and a half of 'practice' on the tables before the tourney started. We don't know exactly which tables will be a part of the event, so I just tried to get at least one game on all of them. I wasn't so much trying to score as I was trying to figure out how the ball bounced coming out of eject holes, doing dead flipper passes, checking tilt sensitivity, that sort of thing. Finally we got our list, and here's how it went down for me...

Round 1 - Earthshaker

Oh man, not a good start AT ALL. My first ball was over and done with in less than 20 seconds. I felt fine at first with that, as the next 2 people had only slightly better turns, but then the 4th guy put up a score of 5 million. Ouch. Second ball ended fairly quickly too with a bad bounce to the outlane. On my 3rd ball I got 2 flips in before getting a bad bounce of a post that sent the ball screaming down the middle. I don't think I even scored 350,000 on the table. Ugly, ugly start.

Round 2 - Funhouse

Well ball 1 started much the same way it did on Earthshaker. Ball 2 on the other hand, I was able to make things happen. I got multiball, I started a Frenzy, and I racked up 4 million points. On the 3rd ball, I tried for Rudy's Hideout on launch. It came up short, dropped onto the table going right between the pop bumpers, and without hitting a single thing on the table, drained right down the middle. I got a launching score and that was it! Damn does that table need a ball save timer. Because of that, I took 2nd when I easily could have locked down a 1st place score for my round.

Round 3 - Attack From Mars

This is the one table I felt pretty confident going into. I had good practice sessions on it, my plan was to just pound away at the saucer and ignore everything else, and I've had good luck on it in previous tourneys. High score in previous rounds was only slightly over a billion, so I knew what my target score to beat was. Ball 1, I destroyed one saucer and that was it. Ball 2, yet another saucer and came ever so close to starting martian multiball. Ball 3 ended with my ball rattling out of the final shot to destroy a saucer and dropping down the middle, but my final score was just over 2 billion. Yay! Unfortunately 2 other guys in my round ALSO shot over 2 billion. One of whom I lost to by only 35,000 points! At the end of the night, I looked to see how our scores compared to everyone else's. Turns out I would have taken first if I had been in any other round, but instead took 3rd for mine. Sometimes you just can't get lucky.

Round 4 - The Addams Family

Perhaps the table I was most nervous about playing. I know what a cruel beast this thing can be. In practice, I had one horrible game and one really really good game. I really haven't played it much since the 90's, so I don't know any of the tricks to scoring. The way the ball bounced while playing, I never had a chance to even fumble upon a score. By the end of ball 3, my score put me at 2nd to last for EVERYONE that had played the table so far. Talk about flaming out. I want revenge on this table something bad.

Round 5 - Cirqus Voltaire

Much like AFM, I had a plan. Punish the Ringmaster over and over again, get multiball, end of story. The real table is much more forgiving on cheap outlane drains, but much harder to hit loops and ramps on. 2 things that threw me off were (1) I play in TPA in view 2 which is much lower than when standing at the table for real, and (2) the room had gotten dark by this time and the lights really affect seeing the ball. Still, I wasn't doing bad, but wasn't doing good either. My highlight was ball 3, where at launch I had the Ringmaster up waiting to be finished off. I launched, hit the skill shot, and it bounced right into the Ringmaster hole! Man did that feel good. Never was able to get multiball going though, and finished in 3rd, which sucked because I lost to a gal who had no clue about doing a thing on the table.

Round 6 (final round) - Big Bang Bar

The thing with this machine is we're all on a level playing field. Apart from those that own it, it's not like people get a whole lot of practice on it. Nobody really knows the rules, everybody just kinda flails around on it. I was second shooter, and only scored 5 million on it for ball 1. The first shooter (same gal who just beat me on CV) for some reason played shooter 3's round, and then realized her mistake. I opted for us to just start fresh, not being concerned about losing my ball 1 score at all! Good choice, as my second ball 1 produced a nice 20 million. No sense in me describing ball 2, as I honestly couldn't describe anything to you since I have no clue what was going on! I just kept aiming for the Tube Dancer ramp and other than that trying to keep the ball alive. Ball 3 was unfortunately an epic failure, and I lost to No Clue Girl by 2 million points. The harsh part of that was, in tourney standings I'm 42nd place, she's 43rd. Now she came in dead last on 4 of her machines, but beat me on the 2 we played. Harsh beat, hopefully I don't drop a place to her.

So that was that! Another fun night playing pinball, where it don't matter how you did, because what beats playing real live silver ball? Got in games on High Speed, Cyclone, Cactus Canyon, Party Zone, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Creature, and Monster Bash too. Color DMD on AFM, Creature, MB, and TAF all looked amazing. They were talking about possibly tackling Dr Who for color DMD, and how they'd like to do LotR, but it'd make MB look like a cake walk in comparison.

Next tourney is a Halloween party not close at all to me, so I'll be skipping it. Gonna be a long wait to December to play in the next one! So until next time....