Pinball goals for 2017

[ScoutPilgrim]

@ScoutPilgrim

Fix a Delta Queen in my place, or actually get someone to help fix it.
Write/produce a series on pinball tutorials, strategy, and competition.
If I have the time off, go to 3 majors outside of Pittsburgh.
Qualify in A division in a major.

Win a notable local tournament (tricky to do in Pittsburgh).

PPL Season 28 champion, I guess I went big on that one?

Make the Pittsburgh Pinball League A Finals.

…and win them, too!

Beat every frequent Pittsburgh player in a tournament once.
Make the top 250 in IFPA ranking.
Make the Pennsylvania State Championships. Also, go to Vegas.
Don’t fudge away a Classics ticket at PAPA over a scissor drain.

DQ got rainchecked on a repair date, but it has one!

I may have the time and motivation to produce… someday soon.

(Note: “majors = circuit events”) Pinvasion and CLEPIN mark the list, with OBX and Magfest booked!

At Pinvasion I pulled this off! Does basement of Pinburgh count?

(Skipping the next 2, they completed in January)

I think I have enough tournaments to safely say I did this, although I have not taken a formal body count

Just broke the top 200 at Superelectric! Woo!

I’m well off on the first part of this…the second is up to a lot of thinking and good play.

Roll Safe you can’t fudge a classics ticket if you don’t play one.

[GravitaR]

@GravitaR

Help local league members play better.

Proud to state I’ve been very successful on this goal. Hope to continue on it.

[unsmith]

It’s always nice when we have new players join our league and we see them blossom into really good players. Good on ya!

[yancy]

Time to take stock of my achievements, or lack thereof.

Qualify for C division finals at PAPA
Started strong, but decided not to light money on fire in the waning hours of qualifying. Probably should have tried B division, based on how much I like those games vs. the C lineup.

Reassemble my Farfalla, which I left unfinished 5+ years and one home ago
No progress, no excuses.

Finish top 8 at Pinball at the Zoo (PAPA circuit?)
Nope.

Qualify for B or C division finals at Pinburgh (depending on how day 1 goes)
Played meh on day one, crushed day two to get a bye in C division. Played like hot garbage in finals, which is mercifully outside the scope of this goal.

Win B division of Chicago Pinball League (tough, considering the roster)
Finished 5th for the season and qualified for A finals, which is way better than I could’ve hoped, so we’ll count this as a win.

Score 1 billion on The Walking Dead
Nope.

Find a nice BSD
Found a kid instead.

Stop being a baby about the queue at Expo and compete
Put up nearly 4 billion on BM66 as part of a pretty solid qualifying run. Limited entries combined with starting ASAP Thursday morning allowed me to skip most of the waiting. Made A finals, got destroyed by Sunshine and New Zach.

[Frisbez]

• Win a tournament. I had 4 or 5 top 4 finishes this year but no wins.
  Did this in January of 2017 at a weekly and haven’t repeated it since. Lots of second place finishes though.

• Hit top 500 IFPA ranking. This should be doable.
  Currently at 431 and will go up a bit after Seattle Pinball League results are posted to IFPA

• Travel outside the PNW and qualify for a tournament. Might be too lazy to do this one.
  Went to Vancouver Flip Out in September so that kinda counts. I am also going to INDISC in January so I think I am going to consider this a success as well.

I think accomplishing all of my goals means that I didn’t make them hard enough. I’ll have to set harder goals for next year.

[chuckwurt]

@chuckwurt

My only goal of 2016 was to be in the top 2,000 before year end and I was able to get that done.

For 2017:

Make A division of the cincy league.

Qualify in A for at least one tournament (classics or main) at the Louisville show and Cleveland show.

Have a winning record against players ranked higher than me (ifpa rank) at Pinburgh. Not sure how easily I can track this one.

Make A division of the cincy league. I did and I won it all!

Qualify in A for at least one tournament (classics or main) at the Louisville show and Cleveland show. I missed out on LAX, but did qualify for Cleveland classics. That was a bright spot as I did it with an absolutely stupid score on Medusa. 2.5 million when second place was 900k. Flamed out in the first round of finals though. Oh well.

Have a winning record against players ranked higher than me (ifpa rank) at Pinburgh. Not sure how easily I can track this one. I did so bad at pinburgh I don’t even need to calculate this one. Fail!!

Also pretty happy that I went from just under 2000 at the end of 2016, to now being in the low 700s.

[ChubbyGoomba]

@ChubbyGoomba

Make A Division in both Cleveland PInball League and Kidforce Pinball League
Made A in Cleveland Pinball League, but came up short in Kidforce.
Fix up my Lost World. I’m basically just procrastinating this, 10 or so wires from the transformer connector were cut and rectified for some reason? Ugh.
I still haven’t done this… re-pinning a connector is among my least favorite of pinball repairs.
Attend at least 3 annual tournaments. I’m aiming for PAPA, maybe Sanctum, and there’s the Ohio and Cleveland ones.
I dropped the ball on this one! I made it to PAPA, which was a total blast, but I didn’t plan far enough ahead and had to miss the Ohio and Cleveland Pinball shows.
Related to PAPA, since it’s my first time I’m going to start with C, and see how that goes or if I need to bump up. Qualifying is my only goal there, heh.
C had a huge qualifying base, I was a little overwhelmed with just how many participants there were! I didn’t qualfify, or even come close.
Crash another area’s tournament last minute. I’ve got a buddy with that “let’s do it!” mindset for everything and I know one day soon I’ll just be in the car headed for Toronto or Pittsburgh to make a last minute entry.
Yup, missed this one too because of poor planning on my part.
Hopefully crack top 1000 this year.
I was close for a second! But I’ve been bumped down to the 1100s now.
Become more aware of when I need to slow down my game. I start to get too pumped up on certain games and make too many on-the-fly or moving shots that end up missing.
Still working on this. I’m more aware when I need to slow down to make my shots, but I have so much fun just doing combos it’s something I’ll forget about if I get too into it.
Lastly, put upward nudges fully into my consciousness. I’m tilting frequently on tight machines because I’m doing downwards nudging. It’s good for loose games, which I play a decent amount of, but not a great habit on unfamiliar machines.
I feel pretty confident I’ve added this into my skillset now, especially concerning nudging around the outlanes. Someone even complimented me about my saves at a tournament recently!

Figured I’d check in and hold myself accountable. The 2018 list will go into that thread when I’ve got a few minutes to type it all up.