We’re excited to announce the initial game list for both the IFPA Pin-Masters and 2014-15 US National Pinball Championship.Nationals will be played on Thursday March 26th, with the IFPA Pin-Masters starting the following day.
A reminder that registration for the IFPA Pin-Masters closes March 1st.Here is the tentative game list. Please note that this list is subject to change, and that at maximum, only 9 games will be used for the IFPA Pin-Masters.
Bank-a-Ball (Gottlieb – 1965)
Cross Town (Gottlieb – 1966)
Old Chicago (Bally – 1976)
Evel Knievel (Bally – 1977)
Rock Star (Gottlieb – 1978)
Firepower (Williams – 1980)
Royal Flush Deluxe (Gottlieb – 1983)
Elvira and the Party Monsters (Bally – 1989)
Indianapolis 500 (Bally – 1995)
Medieval Madness (Williams – 1997)
Tron LE (Stern – 2011)
Just curious … why such a heavy emphasis on older machines for the US National championships? Only 3 machines from the past 25 years, and only 1 from past 15 years, yet 6 machines from the 15 year period 1965-1980?
Having hosted IFPA5 at Tim’s place (and for anyone who played in IFPA5), that older era of games are in far better shape compared to his DMD era equipment.
With that said, our goal was to try and get close to a 50/50 mix of ‘classics’ style games and newer more controllable games.
There will be an additional modern machine added, but Sal from the PHOF didn’t think any of the other games on the floor were rock solid enough to use. He is most likely bringing in a collector quality machine from the outside to fill out that 12th game.
That would make 5 ‘modern’ machines and 7 ‘classics’ machines, so while it’s not a 50/50 mix, it’s close.
Within a 7 game series I feel perfectly fine about this because the higher seed if pushed to the limit will get to make 4 game choices. If they are a ‘modern’ player, they have the ability to play 100% modern machines. If they are a ‘classics’ player, they have the ability to play 100% classics machines.
Is quality of machines really that much of a concern at PHOF?
I haven’t been since it moved, but I thought they had 100 - 200 machines on the floor and it’s actually necessary the limit tournament players to 12 of them?
If that is truly the case is PHOF really the best location for the conclusion of a year of pinball play? I know nothing can change the location this year, but perhaps this is a discussion for next year?
I thought Lyon’s was awesome and was envious when I didn’t get a chance to actually play in the Nationals (Though Eden and I’s Grand Finale was pretty fun as well). But seeing a list of 12 machines out of 100’s and being limited to those doesn’t make me envious that I’m unable to attend this year.
Quality is definitely a concern, but so are the other logistics regarding Zach and I being available to even run Nationals in the first place:
It has to be at a place that Zach and I are already going to be at (this can’t be a ‘new trip’ for us or the wife and wife-to-be will cut our balls off). We have been to Vegas every year since 2000 for this trade show, with no signs of that changing, so it ties in nicely to having the industry out there for this.
Machine prep time. Making sure that we get machines dialed in for the IFPA WC makes us want to shoot ourselves every year (60 games). We were fortunate with Lyons last year in having that community able to make sure the games were good enough for us to work with, but that isn’t something we can consistently rely on. We don’t have a full setup day, or the energy to try and kill ourselves getting some crazy amount of titles dialed.
Being able to broadcast the entire National Championship. Limiting this to 12 machines makes it possible for us to do that. Making it an ‘any game in the hall thing’ does not.
12 machines should be more than enough for players to work through a 7 game match and decide a winner. PAPA Circuit Final does it with less, and many of the SCS Finals did it with less.
It then allows us to try and build the IFPA Pin-Masters into something consistently fun/big/special out in Vegas. The Nationals become that play test for the day for us to weed out 3 games (or know we have SOLID back ups), and to help us set up Par scores depending on the kind of scores we are seeing from the Nationals match play.
And did I mention the quality of machines at the PHOF is really a concern? I actually woke up in a cold sweat a few nights ago remembering that nightmare of setting up for IFPA5
Your married and have two kids, you don’t really need your balls anymore anyway
You could reach out to your country directors to help with the setup for the WC’s, I’m just saying
That makes sense, but the only thing is circuit does it with 12 machines and only 1 group of 4 running at a given time. I can see wait times getting possibly out of control when everyone is lined up to play Tron, MM and I500. That will obviously go down as the day goes on, but the first round could be a nightmare unless you plan to try and force players to play on open machines and let players pick by rank.
Yea see that is what would have me worried, if PHOF is as bad as I’ve heard it is quality wise, I’d be worried trying to run anything there, but wish you the best of luck all the same
Amen to that . . . although I think there may be some pressure down the road to have a third, so for now the balls need to mayyyybe perform one more time
Luckily things have gotten a ton better since Vegas. We’ve been fortunate to partner with groups that have taken pride in their games being ready, and taking those months leading up to IFPA to really dial them in. The group in Denver was amazing, the group in Seattle was amazing, and the German/Swedish contingents have been equally amazing.
I will keep this in mind the next time we show up to the WC site and we have 60 games to raise all the outlane posts and jack up all the legs and readjust the tilts with only one day to do it, because that’s easily an 8 hour job. I’ll bring a pair of knee pads for you
I’m not concerned with the timing of the first round. Even in Colorado we were dealing with matches where players were still in the Spring Classic final, so that hurt not only the first round, but when we ran into a situation where I think Werdrick kept winning his Spring Classic matches and fell a round or two behind in Nationals.
If there’s a link 16 deep on Tron for Round 1, at least we know what we’ll be broadcasting
I’m hopeful this will work out well. The balance of games will allow for some interesting strategies in those matches where it may become a Modern vs. Classics battle depending on the match up (versus both players wanting to grind out on all 5 of the Modern games in that given match).
I forgot to mention that I’m now fully expecting to be able to show up Thursday afternoon for the practice session for IFPA Toronto, as surely everything will be ready to go when we get there
I’ve already got the space filled, buddy of mine has over 100 games sitting in storage folded, he said he is going to empty his storage and fill my place once it’s up. I figure with 2,000 sq ft I should be able to fit at least 90 machines
I would respectfully ask that we ratchet things down a notch in this thread especially with regard to “assholes being bitches” and references to our genitals being cut off. Keep it classy folks!
This, very much so. I heard about a state championship held on 7 machines, and there was just a ton of waiting around for the longer-playing games, which kept getting picked. In this case, you’ve got Tron LE and Cross Town … probably seat open on Cross Town almost the entire time, while every match will have to go through Tron at least once. Who’s not picking Tron sometime during a 7-game series?
Also, thanks to @pinwizj for breaking the “make a bad joke about balls” threshold on Tilt Forums. Somehow I thought we would last longer.
Last but not least, won’t someone please recognize how bad Old Chicago is?? Can we stop playing that already?
Oh god no . . . the 10 stroke max, and the 18 holes per round still haunts me.
Rules are available here:
It is actually still a 10 stroke max, but we’re doing it a different way:
For example, the target score of CSI may be set at 10 million points. A player will continue playing the game until he reaches 10 million points. If reached, the number of balls it took to reach that score will be recorded for that Pin-Hole. If the player fails to reach the target score after 5 balls are played, they will be awarded a score based on how close they were to that target:
8,000,000 – 9,999,990 points = 6 strokes [80% of par]
6,000,000 – 7,999,990 points = 7 strokes [60% of par]
4,000,000 – 5,999,990 points = 8 strokes [40% of par]
2,000,000 – 3,999,990 points = 9 strokes [20% of par]
0 – 1,999,990 points = 10 strokes [<20% of par]
A maximum of 10 Pin-Strokes per Pin-Hole will be enforced. Scores will be cumulative across all rounds played.
It allows us to set high target scores and really still make it about who plays the best ‘full game’. I know a ton of Pingolf events where really it’s about avoiding a dreaded house ball to be able to just get a hole-in-one or settle for a 2. With this being the Pin-“Masters” we definitely wanted to make sure the challenges were higher than “2 million on TWD”.
With regards to minimizing lineups in the US nationals: What we did in state finals could help. Based on whoever is picking machine, if you had no losses, you must pick an open machine. With one loss, you can wait one deep. With two losses, you wait two deep. With three losses can wait three deep.
What this did is that it generally allowed all players to pick the machines they wanted, but not necessarily in the order they wanted.
If we did this at national championships, might need to adjust how deep; e.g. one loss can wait 3 deep, two losses can wait 4 deep, three losses can wait 5 deep. While it doesn’t prevent all 16 or more matchups from playing Tron, it will spread that out so that they don’t all play it as their first game.
