Interesting (?) discussion I just had with a player who was DQd for playing an extra ball out of turn

I like the idea if only to avoid the lame situation where someone accidentally starts some huge scoring mode / multi on their extra ball, getting ripped off for the ball they actually get to play.

Another option to deal with KCB’s situation is to let the player choose which ball to not play: they can play their EB, e.g. if some high-value thing is set up and likely to be triggered during a plunged EB, but if they do so, they MUST plunge out their next “regular” ball. This option avoids the urge to tilt out.

I recall Pete telling me he had just made a ruling on a player 3 playing player 4’s ball. How does that even happen? LOL.

P3 thinks he has an EB but doesn’t actually have one.

We have had this happen on TWD pro. Player three has a really bad ball with very minimal bonus, is still flipping the flippers to cancel bonus details in disgust, the ball is fed back to the shooter lane immediately for the next player. It appears to player three that they are still up.

This can actually be kind of confusing. If you have 0 walker kills, you don’t receive any bonus and the dmd immediately switches to the skill shot display after a drain.

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Now that I think about it, this is exactly what happened. I was watching him play and I thought the same thing he did, but we didn’t realize it had moved to the next player until I saw then scores after he plunged.

The Pinburgh TDs discussed this, and basically anything that didn’t change the game state would not be ruled a play-through. However, some other non-plungy things would, like selecting the skill shot on LOTR, selecting the song on AC/DC or selecting the play level on Motordome – all of those would result in a play-through DQ.

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Yup those are all great examples where you don’t even have to touch the plunger to affect game state.

I want to DQ that “C” drop target on ACDC for selecting Back in Black for me. :wink:

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Was so hoping for stuck ball during doodle bug mode :wink:

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I was hoping you’d try to tap back and forth indefinitely. And I understand how much harder it would be without ball guides above the flippers.

Sometimes on mine the ball would come to a rest on the heel of the flipper with the bug running. What’s the ruling there?

I got somewhat of a roll going in quarter finals doing that when it was lit for 100.

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Given how hard it was to even get that thing to 100, it makes me wonder how silly that thing gets when it gets to 10,000. It also makes me wonder how many people have even gotten it to 10,000 ever. Kind of like it makes me wonder how many people have completed Doozie.

I mentioned this to Bowen after my tankfest round 1 finals, but I had a new thing happen to me on that Doodlebug: I hit the “1” target so soft, it managed to lower the post and NOT give me the 1 itself. Not enough of a contact for the switch to do everything it was supposed to.

Yes, the Doodlebug flippers were kind of spongy; I had a couple of hits on the “1” target that were too weak to register. Most of the other EMs I played had sufficient flipper power.

It’d be interesting if the flippers were powered just enough for you to tap pass back and forth while the doodlebug was going!

Yeah, that would have been an epic disaster.

I had 2 out of turn rulings in my 10 sessions.

Situation 1: Big Indian - ball 1. I was player 2 and player 1 tilted, so I stepped back and went to my bag for a drink of water. When I turned back around, player 3 was finishing their ball. Ruling - player 3 gets a 0, I get a ball, and the points stay.

I wonder if there is room for flexibility based on situational factors - a. what if player 3 just becomes player 2 since it was ball 1? or b. what if player 3 gets a 0 and I become player 3 to avoid getting free points since it was ball 1? Probably not since you don’t want officials to make different rulings for fairness and ease, but it felt a little dirty to have those points.

Situation 2: Counterforce - ball 3. I am player 1 and having a decent ball, when I look up the bonus is finishing up on player 2. At some point during my play, my ball ended (without going below the flippers) and player 2’s began. Other players confirmed that I hadn’t tilted (thru) or any such thing. Ruling - Major malfunction - players 1 and 2 will keep scores and get additional balls. Players 3 and 4 will finish their game.

During my play as player 1 of my added ball, I passed players 3 and 4 with my score, and essentially caught player 2, when once again, I begin scoring for player 2. This time I have the ball on the flipper and I know what happened. There is a “collect bonus” hole at the top of the playfield that lights when you drop a bank of targets before the timer expires. Upon going in that hole the game scored my bonus and ended my ball. Ruling - Catastrophic malfunction, game is out. Whole new game on Galaxy. I take a 0 (with 350k :open_mouth:). This is pretty brutal, since I was looking at a gtd 2 when the game was taken out.

This was talked about on the latest Tilt Thru podcast.

I had a few people almost play out of turn in my groups, and I think I nearly did once as well. Everyone I played against were great about preventing that situation. One of the games came pretty close to happening and I grabbed the guy in my group by his shirt to stop him from walking up to the machine.

As much as it sucks, this is the correct and “fair” ruling imho. Sometimes it burns you. Sometimes it will help you out.

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