Aerosmith competition play: to disable/enable the Toy Box

Games
1

Having now had the chance to play AS in competition under both of these scenarios, I’m now firmly in the camp of NOT disabling the Toy Box functionality for either head-to-head or group matches on AS. Here’s why…

  1. Lock “stealing” isn’t really stealing in this case, and has low probability and minimal impact for both the thief and no impact for the victim:
  • The victim doesn’t lose their Toys locked ball progress: they’ll simply get those balls served up from the auto-plunger at the MB start instead of releasing from the Toy Box if/when they eventually start Toys MB.
  • The victim does lose their chance at turning their Elevator MB into a 5+ ball affair. But I consider this a low probability and low impact.
  • The thief still has to qualify their own minimum requirement of locks (3 in both cases of Toys or Elev MB).
  • The thief only stands to gain additional physical balls in play to begin the MB. It’s quite difficult to keep 4 or more balls in play on any pin, and certainly on factory outlane settings. In my experience with 4+ ball Toys MB, after ball-save, I typically drain down to 3 or 2 balls left quite quickly.

< Can someone do a glass-off test to see if the Thief gains the Jackpot value increase of a 6-ball Toys MB if they start a 3-ball MB but steal the additional 3 balls physically locked in the Toy Box? > Or @sk8ball: do you already know the answer to this?

  1. Allows a (if not “the”) major feature of the game to function properly. It’s cool having the balls launch into the toy box.

  2. It brings skillful plunging more into play, and the possibility of being able to skillfully plunge your locks 2-6 (outside of the plunge that starts your ball 2 or ball 3) also opens up the possibility of choosing an earlier play order than the typical “last available.” You may also want to choose an earlier position to decrease your likelihood of dealing with a Toys lock eject that gets shot at Jacky’s chin and out of control. Strategic choices are good!

  3. It brings into play the awesome reward of parking a ball out of play during your Toys MB. If you disable the Toy Box, you can still get the Toys MB PFx, but you won’t get to park a ball in the Toy Box.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

6 Likes
2

Agree. We had it in qualifying and the playoffs last weekend, box on, and there were no issues and it frankly plays more fun that way. The ball parking in particular is something that I would really miss, as that’s one of my key strategies during TBMB.

3

Does the game ball save all 4+ balls, or only the 3 that you earned. It feels like the software could do the right thing.

4

There may be additional balls but the rules would apply to however many you earned.

Or you can go for the ultra rare 2 ball toybox multiball. I’ll let you ponder how that can happen :wink:

5

That’s a good question. I wonder if it’s the same for the 5-6-ball Elevator MB, if the game ignores your first 2-3 balls drained during ball-save period, and only bothers to save one of the 3 balls intended for that MB.

6

It ignores them. Once you drain the “bonus balls” of that 5-6 ball Elevator MB, you don’t get them back.

7

What you describe doesn’t sound overly bad, but obviously is not 100% fair.

I will springboard off of your conclusions (which I tend to agree with) and point out that disabling physical locks, in general, sucks. At least on our games, you get the benefit of another skill shot, which can be a pretty big deal. Do you want that opportunity? Then choose to go first. Risk/reward and all that.

Yes physical locks aren’t 100% fair, but I personally can justify making the case that choosing to go first to have skill shot opportunities at the expense of knowing how everyone ends up is a conversation at least worth having with myself.

I have more to say on this matter, but it’ll have to wait several months. :wink:

2 Likes
8

The dangerous return from balls launched at a closed Toy Box, and the inability to skillfully plunge into locks you’ve already qualified is a pretty big downer for me.

If I could choose, I’d trade that for my opponent possibly having a few extra balls for the first few seconds of MB (especially if software isn’t returning those during the ball save time).

2 Likes
9

It’s called strategically choosing to go first :slight_smile:

10

Exactly. I think this makes for a great strategic choice of order. It also adds an additional wrinkle to the choice of starting your 3/4/5-ball Toys MB vs trying to lock more balls, because leaving those balls locked in the Toy Box plays defense at first (good for you), but could eventually gift your opponent a couple initial additional MB balls in play (bad for you).
It prevents at least one of your opponents from getting to skill-plunge their subsequent locks until the Toy Box gets emptied.

1 Like
11

This is a cool feature of this game, IMO, and it’s more fun and strategic with it on. Definitely makes a 4-player game more interesting! I just wish there was an easy way to tell how many balls are currently in the box.