@PAPA_Doug told me they pulled Fireball this year for this very reason.
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We had a player play out of turn on Swinger. Itâs a two-player Williams EM, and no one noticed that the player light stayed on P1 after P1 drained â possibly a no-switch thing*. So P2 stepped out and put up a nice ball, then had to wonder why his score didnât go up.
On one hand, no one wanted the free points via a DQ. On the other hand, P1 ended up with a pretty tough score to beat.
*But I didnât think Williams or most EMs did that, so it was certainly a weird situation.
King Kool caused at least two of them this year, one in the group before mine and one in my group. Itâs a two-player game, but it sometimes didnât properly cycle to player two. It was changed to âplay as single playerâ for the group after ours to avoid further trouble.
And despite my cautioning other people to watch to play their own turn, I brainfarted once and walked up one player early myself. Fortunately, the correct player caught me. [Thanks!]
no out-of-turns in any of my groups, but there were a few close calls on Day 2.
i didnât play that bank with Swinger, but i am i certain i saw that on Williams Hot Tip during the tournament. the plunge didnât make the saucer, dribbled off the pop bumper (not triggering a hit), and went SDTM,
can anyone confirm if there is âno-switch hitâ playfield validation on Williams EMs?
Swinger wasnât advancing players correctly and was later pulled from the tournament. Same thing happened in my group with KME towards the end of day 2, except we noticed it.
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Swinger shouldnât be in any tournament⌠Ever.
The best player of it definitely would have won our group⌠until he was DQd. 
OK so following up, the rules donât specifically mention plunging without getting ball into play (or I couldnât find it). I guess the STRICT version is that they should be DQâd, but would TDs actually rule that? (Iâm asking you, TDs.)
Actually discussed in post 77 above.
Not quite covered by the rules, but Josh lays out some reasonable guidelines.
(Click the up arrow in the post I quoted.)
I definitely wouldnât. but interested to hear from more experienced TDs on their experiences.
Generally, for me, if a ball has had zero impact on the game, then I would not consider it launched. Here are some things that I would consider impactful:
- A ball saver was started
- A timed scoring feature was activated
- The ball enters the field of play
Therefore I would consider the following balls launched:
- A short plunge on Twilight Zone which scores the red award but then falls back into the plunger
- A short plunge on Metallica which activated super skill but falls back in plunger
- A short plunge on Sopranos or Scared Stiff which enters the field of play, scores nothing, and is returned to the plunger since playfield was not validated
But not these:
- A short plunge on Metallica which did not activate super skill but falls back in the plunger
- A short plunge on Twilight Zone which does not cross the gate but falls back in the plunger
- A short plunge on Sopranos or Scared Stiff which does not enter the field of play
So yeah in @keeferâs situation since the ball didnât cross the gate and had absolutely zero impact on play, then no harm no foul.
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I heard a couple of people mention (slightly off topic) what rulings they have for extra balls, and how to play them out in a tournament.
In one selfie league we had recently, the player base all voted and agreed that a fun way to handle the situation was the usual plunge and no flip, BUT, you are allowed nudging. It might not be a good idea for serious competition, but in a league event it added an extra layer of hilarity to the proceedings as people tried to nudge their plunged ball into a scoop or off a sling to gain some extra points. Or tilt their extra ball and lose their (usually small) extra ball bonus.
Thought Iâd throw that in there if anyone thinks itâs an interesting way to handle the situation.
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 KCBâs 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 âregularâ 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 4âs ball. How does that even happen? LOL.
P3 thinks he has an EB but doesnât 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 donât 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 didnât 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 didnât 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 â all of those would result in a play-through DQ.
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