Whirlwind Tactics & Strategies

[DanBradford]

So..... how do y'all recommend to get the best out of this table?

I've read the instructions but wanted some comments and ideas from you better players out there.

 

[DeeEff]

I didn't like Whirlwind much in the early 90's, but I seem to go to it in TPA when I'm looking for a simple but fast "controlled" game - if you don't keep the ball under control at all times, you're dead. Whirlwind doesn't punish missed shots as much as STTNG, but it's much more unforgiving to missed shots than, say, Space Shuttle (SS's bumpers -> right outlane is another issue). Bounce passes and post transfers are easy on this table, so getting the ball trapped is usually not a problem.

I just got my best of 127M, so I can say one word: multiball

The "regular" multiball, not the quick multiball. Cellar multiball (second chance if you don't hit any Million Plus shots during regular multiball) works, too. Quick multiball is okay (Million is lit), but you really want Million Plus to be lit.

Ignore the third ball or have fun with it until it drains, and then
1. Cradle both remaining balls, one on each flipper. Cradle separations work great.
2. Shoot from the right flipper between the cellars and around the top.
2a. If you make it over the top, hit the 3-Toll ramp from the upper right flipper for Million Plus.
2b. If you hit one of the cellars instead, immediately shoot the ball from the left flipper to the eject hole under the Skyway ramp. Hold the left flipper up to catch the Cellar eject, and shoot the upper ball into the 3-Toll ramp (I tend to do the two-shot combo from here; Side Loop then 3-Toll).
3. At this point, you've got a ball cradled on the left flipper and another one leaving the 3-Toll ramp.
4. Do nothing. The ball leaving the 3-Toll ramp will more often than not land on the left flipper, leaving you with both balls there.
5. Go to step 1.

The Million Plus shots are lucrative - I've gotten it up to seven million (for a cumulative of 28M in one multiball) before choking.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

DeeEff, I did exactly the same thing as you without even knowing, and I also stacked it up with quick mball for practical spamming. Got 8 million during the multi ball, and ended up becoming #22 on the current leaderboards.

 

[Zaphod77]

Touring the cellar is worth it as well, because TWO extra balls are available from the cellar per run through. My general strategy is.

Keep shooting that three toll ramp. It relight the cellar AND spots arrows towards multiball. every time the cellar is lit, shoot it. Hold off shooting that ramp if the cellar is lit, so you don't waste a chance for progress. you may wish to drain the quick multiballs on purpose, because it's just not that lucrative compared to normal multiball, and it's better to just finish off the cellar and collect your two extra balls.

The extra ball target requires you to lose control to hit it though. so you just might want to collect it with quick multiball. Once again the game suffers from an exceedingly friendly cellar kickout compared to most real life games.

you want the ramp RAISED as much as possible, so it will feed the upper flipper for a shot at the side ramp. SO when it's not just shoot the super cellar door to toggle it.

Ignore the skill shot, it's a drain trap. if you really want to show off plunge super weak, and go for the sweep. Instead full plunge. pray it goes up the side ramp. if not it will go around to the upper flipper. shoot the side ramp.

Get control of the ball.
If super cellar door is lit, ALWAYS shoot it. It should be doable from either flipper.
If you can master left orbit to ramp, use that to relight the super cellar. But if the ramp is down, it's safer to shoot the unlit super cellar to raise it back up, then feed the upper flipper that way.
If the extra ball is lit, it's worth shooting, though if you are paranoid you might want to hold off till you start a multiball.

My multiball strategy is to shoot cellar with one ball, shoot under upper ramp with the other one, and shoot the side ramp, trap the cellar kickout. On POF, the side ramp was ludicrously easy to hit. it's not quite so easy here. Still because of how unpredictable the feed off that ramp is, it's harder to abuse multiball. IF you are good at transferring the ball to the lower right flipper, and shooting the super cellar when the discs are spinning, you can ignore multiball and just keep touring the cellar for the two extra balls and play forever. But it's less boring to take those locks and play for real.

 

[Zaphod77]

ps. kickout is entirely too predicatble, but at least you can't dead bounce to other flipper. it puts the ball back on the left flipper, and lets you backhand the super cellar from there,which is useful if it's lit, and plunge still sometimes sends the ball right up the left side ramp, which should never happen (although i played one where it ALWAYS happened!).

 

[jbejarano]

Touring the cellar is worth it as well, because TWO extra balls are available from the cellar per run through. My general strategy is.

Keep shooting that three toll ramp. It relight the cellar AND spots arrows towards multiball. every time the cellar is lit, shoot it. Hold off shooting that ramp if the cellar is lit, so you don't waste a chance for progress. you may wish to drain the quick multiballs on purpose, because it's just not that lucrative compared to normal multiball, and it's better to just finish off the cellar and collect your two extra balls.

I used to do this a ton on PHOF: The Williams Collection. I find it a little harder on The Pinball Arcade, but it's still a sound strategy.

 

[Zaphod77]

on PC, the Whirlwind instruction card has a SUPER SELLAR VALUE section instead of the proper SUPER CELLAR VALUE section.

http://mirror2.ipdb.org/images/2765/image-41.jpg

I have to wonder how some of these things get past Q.A. (chuckle)

 

[Zaphod77]

More fun facts.

If you score million plus while a ball is in the cella. it stays there until the million plus animation finishes.

If you score a second million plus before the first one finishes, it will wait for the frst one to finish, then show the animation for the second one, THEN kick out the ball in the cellar.

I think you see where this is going.

Every replay/million/million plus/extra ball/special animation must finish before it will eject a ball from the cellar. effectively giving you a one ball multiball as long as you can keep getting the ball back up the ramp fast enough.

 

[Zaphod77]

And yet more info.

1) the instructions say quick multiball can only be activated three times per game. This is false... However, once quick multiball has been activated the third time, the light quick multiball light will never light again at the tornado target. the maximum number of quick multiballs per game is much bigger. A perfect game will collect three from the tornado target, and two from each of the nine possible trips through the cellar, for 21 sessions of quick multiball.

2) the instructions say there is a max of six extra balls per game. It's NOT KIDDING. Once you collect six extra balls, no more will light for the rest of the game. This has a few strategy implications. One is that you can only go through the cellar a maximum of nine times, since you can only play nine balls total and go through it once per ball.

you will get two extra balls from the skyway, one from points, and one from the fifth lock, which leaves two collectible from the super cellar.

With this in mind, do not worry too much about clearing the cellar, since it is NOT an unlimited source of extra balls after all. Yes the 2 million bonus is nice to collect on every ball, but since there's no limit to the number of times you can start normal multiball, and you get 1 million for release, and 2 million for your first million plus, which same as the million from the cellar and your 2 million bonus, it's a lot more important to learn that side ramp. and if you fail to collect an extra ball from the cellar... you can try for it again next time through. Once you light the special for multiball number 3, it never gets any harder to start multiball.

 

[ScotchYeti]

How do you shoot for the cellar? From the right flipper I get a lot of drains as it's easy to miss and the ball gets out of control. From the left flipper it's also not so easy to hit it...

 

[Zaphod77]

Yeah, it's a dangerous shot that takes practice. But i just said that it's not so important. one trip through for the entire game will let you cash in on every allowed extra ball. eventually it will find it's way in on it's own.

 

[ScotchYeti]

Well, this worked more or less - and I finally nailed the last Wizard goal on that table.

 

[fromduc]

Multiball and nothing else. It's possible to backhand the hole to the side ramp with the right flipper, when u got it the multiball is almost a piece of cake.

2 bugs that happened to me :
-A "good" one: on my 1st game the table didnt realize i lost 2 balls quickly and let me play in multiball with only one ball. I was so scared to face a game ending bug that i didnt really take profit of it, but after have called the attendant he gave me back the ball. This is a huge possibility to abuse the game.
-A bad one: after a very good MB on my 2nd ball, multiball targets didnt light anymore, until the end of the game, i tried everything (draining, tilting, playin a useless quick MB) but nothing to do. Without the main MB this table is almost scoreless, i was at 270M on my 2nd ball with a couple of EBs remaining, really frustrating.

 

[vikingerik]

It's possible to backhand the hole to the side ramp with the right flipper, when u got it the multiball is almost a piece of cake.

I found that, but here's an easier method. Shoot the hole from the left flipper, then quickly post pass right-to-left before that ball ejects, to free up the right/upper flipper for the million shot. I found shooting the hole from the left much more consistent than from the right.

And yes, nothing but multiball on the table scores anything worthwhile. (Actually a common problem for System 11 era games, Funhouse and Bride and Elvira all have scoring dominated by one particular feature.)

 

[fromduc]

I'll try your way more seroiously, did it a couple of time but i was more consistent on the backhanding shot, and regain control when i miss was easier for me.... but not for now, a dozen of hours of play this w-e and my arms and hands are broken again, i think i'm condemned to be a casual player now and i HATE that.

And as i dont think the same bug could happen 3 times in row by pure bad luck, i think i can say now that the number of multiball u can play is limited. I'm not sure about the number, but it's around 6-7-8 After that, MB targets do not light again, so the game is more or less over.

 

[vikingerik]

-A bad one: after a very good MB on my 2nd ball, multiball targets didnt light anymore, until the end of the game, i tried everything (draining, tilting, playin a useless quick MB) but nothing to do. Without the main MB this table is almost scoreless, i was at 270M on my 2nd ball with a couple of EBs remaining, really frustrating.

I just got this too, had never seen it before. It also happened to me around 270M on my 2nd ball with a couple EBs remaining. I don't know exactly how many instances of multiball it was, but somewhere between six to eight. It was a short multiball, just a couple million shots. After that MB, the directional targets never lit up again. Drains, cellar doors, and quick MBs didn't affect that state.

I don't know if this is a bug or a limit on the number of times you can start multiball. There had been a lot going on when multiball ended - I had just shot the left cellar with the other ball, and there were light shows going on from a million-plus shot and I think also a collected EB. It seems possible that the game was processing all that and buggily neglected to relight the direction targets, but it also seems that such a bug would have turned up more often so it might be a limit.

 

[invitro]

And as i dont think the same bug could happen 3 times in row by pure bad luck, i think i can say now that the number of multiball u can play is limited. I'm not sure about the number, but it's around 6-7-8 After that, MB targets do not light again, so the game is more or less over.

Just for completeness, here is your post from another thread, talking about this:

"I'm pretty sure i also had more than 6 EB on a game... but on a high end, it doesnt matter that much, what does (and is not in the rules) is that at some points u cant play anymore multiball, maybe after 8 or 10 multiballs, targets stop to switch on. At this point, the only way to have decent points is the quick MB, and compare to the standard MB it's so slow... I dont know if it's a ROM bug or not, but that stopped my love story with this table."

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...k-16-WHIRLWIND?p=207418&viewfull=1#post207418

 

[vikingerik]

I played again and carefully counted multiballs, and had this happen again. It was after 8 multiballs, which seems like a round and ordinary number. One of the MBs was restarted by the cellar but that probably didn't matter.

No idea if this is a ROM bug or intended behavior. Either seems really weird.