Regular readers of this blog know that the RBION on location at Third Rail Bar & Grill (where I play in league) is particularly evil and often confines even world-class players to seven-digit scores. Part of this is due to its blinding LED package; it's often hard to see what's going on, especially when active lightshows are running like 2X Playfield.
So I was both ecstatic and mystified when, coming off a horrible horrible game of Banzai Run (189K...just terrible...I flipped maybe 3 times), I proceeded to run the table for 25.3 million. Ten million of that was skill shots, and quite a bit of the rest came from hitting the idol a lot and running up the main multiball base jackpot value to 1M. I don't recommend this as a strategy - the idol is normally quite deadly - but when you're facing an evil RBION and you know Ripley's letters are but a dream, cranking up that multiball doesn't seem to be a half-bad way to go. Twenty-five million is good for a league high score so far; we'll see if it holds up the rest of the season.
I still lost the group (the second-highest one...consisting this week of the machines' owner/operator Brian Bannon, a strong player named Ace Akers, and a not-quite-so-strong-but-getting-better player named Sean DonCarlos) with the aforementioned travesty on Banzai Run, a 15M score on Iron Man that normally would have been fine had the other two players not decided to clean the playfield with the Iron Monger's face (Ace ended up with 66M!), and a 15M score on X-Men LE that again probably would have had a good shot at winning in a lower group but was inadequate against strong players. However, to escape with 7 points out of 20 against such competition...I'll take it and run!
Apparently, I am also considered by the computer that runs the league to be part of the trailing edge of A Division now, instead of in B Division where I normally hang out. Sounds impressive, but having played most of the A players before, I still have much to learn.
So I was both ecstatic and mystified when, coming off a horrible horrible game of Banzai Run (189K...just terrible...I flipped maybe 3 times), I proceeded to run the table for 25.3 million. Ten million of that was skill shots, and quite a bit of the rest came from hitting the idol a lot and running up the main multiball base jackpot value to 1M. I don't recommend this as a strategy - the idol is normally quite deadly - but when you're facing an evil RBION and you know Ripley's letters are but a dream, cranking up that multiball doesn't seem to be a half-bad way to go. Twenty-five million is good for a league high score so far; we'll see if it holds up the rest of the season.
I still lost the group (the second-highest one...consisting this week of the machines' owner/operator Brian Bannon, a strong player named Ace Akers, and a not-quite-so-strong-but-getting-better player named Sean DonCarlos) with the aforementioned travesty on Banzai Run, a 15M score on Iron Man that normally would have been fine had the other two players not decided to clean the playfield with the Iron Monger's face (Ace ended up with 66M!), and a 15M score on X-Men LE that again probably would have had a good shot at winning in a lower group but was inadequate against strong players. However, to escape with 7 points out of 20 against such competition...I'll take it and run!
Apparently, I am also considered by the computer that runs the league to be part of the trailing edge of A Division now, instead of in B Division where I normally hang out. Sounds impressive, but having played most of the A players before, I still have much to learn.
