I’ll just point out (again) that by saying “death saves are legal” you render this ENTIRE thread moot, because only what the tilt bob says matters. Then we’re not going over every totally absurd and (possibly) edge-case situation wondering if it’s technically legal or not (awesomeness notwithstanding).
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I’ve seen this setting before but I can’t remember where. I think maybe at Modern when they had Avatar?
To enforce any kind of Death Save rule the game would have to have a camera / monitor showing the action and someone watching it in orderr to enforce. Good luck with that. Of course a means to replay the footage as well.
I think we all know a death save when we see one.
After being firmly against Bowen at the outset, and even arguing the difficulty of judging these type of things, I may have come to his side in the end. Long story short, I watched the videos of the ‘bang back’ and the ‘death save.’ For years I have avoided a move that saves the ball because I thought what I was doing was a ‘bang back’ but it turns out it isn’t.
When I lose a ball down the right outlane, if it is moving fast enough, I can nudge forward as the ball is hitting the left side of the trough, causing the ball to pop up between the flippers, sometimes high enough to hit with one of them and resurrect the ball. After watching the two maneuvers I realized that I was wrong in thinking I was doing a ‘bang back’ which is apparently outlawed due to its propensity to harm the player. It is also not a ‘death save’ because I am not moving the cabinet right and left.
So does that mean I am free to do it? I would argue that NO I am not free to do it, because I cannot move the machine to cause the return of the ball once I am beyond any features designed to save the ball. What if there is a post down there (the deep down kind), does that then open the game back up to me? I don’t know - I feel like this discussion has opened up a can of worms, and I can no longer tell myself to stop attempting to save the ball once I am below the outlane switch. Here is the point I am trying to make - what if on Avatar, the player had been attempting to shove the game forward to get the captive ball to register a hit, and instead inadvertently caused the drained ball to lazarus? He would be DQ’d right? How is this different?
EDIT - Also, am I allowed to shove the Simpson’s forward after draining in order to get an extra Daredevil Bart mode?
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Biff wires! I just learned what those are the other day thanks to the Toss Up round on WOF pinball.
I can’t see @sk8ball hand so I am not sure if it was a straight up bang back or an assisted death save but it was well executed!
https://youtu .be/wtcbvJLWDEY?t=30m7s
Not taking anything away from a great example of his skill on this game 
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That is brilliant, but is it even a “bang back?” This is where I was having issues. The move Keith made is nothing like this:
That’s not an assisted death save or a bang back. That’s a death save. You can see him push the game up and to the right at the point where the ball hits the apron. He doesn’t have to do much, because the ball is moving very fast past the right outlane.
One thing’s for sure, this is a lot more subtle than the Avatar move!
What if he only pushes forward as the ball hits the apron - what is it then?
It’s a death save.
AKA the “Gagno nudge” 
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Many people aren’t strong enough to perform a death save, or don’t have strong enough wrists to perform a bang back. And the risk of injury is real. I think banning these maneuvers is justified on those grounds alone.
So, all nudging should be banned because not everyone is as strong as everyone else, right?
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Bangbacks I can definitely understand banning as they can very easily result in major wrist injury (you’re punching wood attached to metal, don’t do that if you value the functioning of your arms in your “golden years”), but death saves IMO are no different from slide saves apart from timing. They’re also very easy to kill; just set the tilt tight and they’re no longer an issue. If someone still gets away with one on a tight tight, then are they really exerting some insane force on the game that we need to ban? Sure, death saves extend game times but so do regular nudges. I don’t really see a clear justification as to why one is more acceptable than the other. At major events up here that are run at shithole bars with loose tilt games I’ve definitely pulled off some incredibly egregious violent slides (including accidentally shoving the corner of a Monster Bash lockdown bar through drywall) that would have never happened if someone had simply set the tilts tighter. Ultimately if the goal is to prevent player injury and machine abuse I think it makes more sense to make tilts tight instead of arbitrarily deciding that one kind of violent physical shove is more acceptable than another based on timing.
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I’ve always agreed with the justification that it has gone past the outlane switch, so you’re done. Aside from kickbacks and some oddball games where skillful outlane saves are a feature, this makes plenty of sense to me.
I mean, “you could hurt your wrist” isn’t really a clear justification, either. Same could be said for all kinds of nudging.
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Based on that logic, do you feel that a Lazarus ball should be drained, because it’s gone past the flippers?
I do not. I guess I should clarify that I meant “activated” the outlane switch.
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“Past the flippers” logic would also make center post saves illegal.
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