Excellent stuff. As far as I’m concerned, no one has ever put to video such a clear demonstration of the importance and how-to of nudging. The diagrams/arrows and such are really well done. Super clear.
Great work.
If there’s to be a Nudging 3, I might suggest upper playfield nudging (especially if you have an EM handy for demoing) and/or slingshot nudging. For the latter I’ve tried to explain in the past how you want to nudge in the direction of the ball towards the bottom of slings and upwards/into the ball towards the top, though that’s always been my theory. Would love to see it proven out!
Yeah thanks Mike!
I was hoping there where enough examples to take over the principles to other games or scenarios. But I am afraid I have no knowledge on how to nudge on the upper PF on EMs and I could have missed something.
I wanted to include the sling nudging, but I wasn’t really able to put it into words or on video.
I can accelerate the ball by nudging the sling into the ball, which might bring the ball faster up to the top of the PF away from the danger zone or i can push the machine with the ball to reduce the rebound to bring it down, yes.
But since I often can’t really tell beforehand if a ball will go into the outlane from a slingshot, my nudging often feels pointless. We talked alot about this here, also about the timing aspect and I tested this with self made ramps leading into slingshots with no real nudging success. Maybe its the new Sterns with those power slings making it harder to control the rebound well. However, thats definitely something I want to include in part 3!
But there will be a few other things beforehand- I want to explain how to lift up the flippers if the ball approaches the middle from different angles for best defence… I think thats super important and noone talks about it. Also alot of multiball techiques and the forbidden death save will come (I will make sure to get the etiquette right and also explain how you could damage the machine if done wrong).
Hey there,
I’m looking for the right term and title for the upcoming video on How to block balls with your flippers coming from different angles- heading towards the center drain.
Some words coming to mind are: flipper management, goal keeper, angles, blocking, preventing, cutting off…
Since english isn’t my first language I cant find a short punchy abstraction. Maybe you can help me out here.
If you’re talking during multiball, I just call it air defense and have heard others call it the same. Though I’m sure there’s other terminology out there.
I guess i was not clear enough. I am not talking about air defence.
If a ball is heading from the left side of the playfield towards the center drain, you want to lift up the left flipper so you are protecting the center. If a ball bounces between the sling shots from side to side, people are also lifting up the flipper on the side where the ball touches the sling shot, simply to protect the center drain.
“Short Sling” is another term here, thats when a ball touches the sling shot, but the sling wont fire and the ball rolls down the middle but you where expecting it to shoot away. For that reason you always should lift the flipper.
And I want to explain in which situation you should lift your flippers to protect the center the best possible way. You are doing this probably automatically and dont have to think about it, but I think its really worth to explain it for newer players.
Goalkeeping sounds right. It’s similar to a hockey 'keeper swiveling back and forth as the puck moves side to side, preemptively blocking the angle to the net.
I’m not convinced this is a good strategy. I’ve never seen a center drain from this. I have seen many center drains from this guarding technique and the sling not firing.
For me, it’s best to leave the flippers down when the ball is in the slings. Especially on older games.
And how do you prevent a middle drain if the ball hits the bottom post of the sling shot on its second bounce? (red)
Lifting up the flipper also helps if the ball is going to touch the inlane guide on its second bounce (yellow)
At least i found myself using two flips most of the time and I see this 1-2 behaviour all the time on streams.
Like here (direct link)
Or here two times in a row (direct link)
I can not tell exactly why I sometimes find myself using it more than twice if the ball goes wild from sling to sling, maybe its not needed like you said. I guess its just because i want to block the way, even if the ball technically cant go down the middle. I’m gonna research on this more.
Thanks, thats a good example and it happened to me too.
It happenes if the ball is rebounding slower than expected and you are lifting the flipper too early.
Thats why its vital to wait for the ball to cross the center line.
Hey Erik, you where lying to me, look what I found!
You are using this “shielding technique” not just twice but up to five times in a row
And its even on an older game, so thank you for this perfect example
Joking aside, why do you think you are lifting the flippers here?
Ok now I am a little confused. You are saying you trusted your slings firing here, but you lifted your flippers anyway so where is the point? IMO you did everything right here.
On your clip there was no short sling danger also, since the ball wasn’t coming from a steep angle like in this image:
So do you think shield flipping- like you did in this clip is more like a bad habit and you try to break it?
Depending on the balls entrance angle I think those shield flips are vital like in this image:
However I wanted to determine when and how to use it exactly. If you watched me playing you can see I also do not use it on every fired sling. Until now my conclution is, that if the ball isnt in danger to travel downwards to the inlane, flipper or center there is no reason to shield flip.
Shield flipping is only effective when the slings fire. And it’s not always effective in those cases imo. Hence why I’ve started to get away from it mostly on early SS and EMs.
That’s just me though. My play has improved since I’ve started this recently.
Maybe just concentrate on the specific situations where doing the shield flipping will work. I think for some (me included), they start to shield guard with every sling fire.
I was watching a Deadflip stream where Jack got some drains because he was used to trust the slings firing, but instead the ball bounced down the middle. This also happened to me so now i always remember myself to lift the flipper if the ball is about to reach the sling shot.
It would be interesting to hear some other opinions on this.
I drain a lot from this. Predicting if a sling will fire, getting it wrong and draining sucks and is probably my most frequent “preventable” way of losing a ball.
I don’t have much else to offer, other than I love the convo above and am looking forward to more tips/a tutorial on how to get better at managing this aspect of pinball. @chuckwurt, I also “shield” frequently and it’s a pretty hard thing to get out of but will try not doing this on EMs/early SS games and see if play improves.
Bowen covered this in a class we gave in 2016 at Pinburgh. In both of the illustrated cases, flip and hold the right flipper a split second after the left sling fires to protect from the speed and angle of a ball coming fast and low towards the inlane/bottom of the sling. The timing is crucial, so anticipation and knowledge of the game you’re playing helps, but this is a helpful move most of the time.
