A single bar on MiFi? That’s awesome.
The spinner on JM was good for a couple of spins each hit, but not much more than that. It was still worth going for in qualifying if you could lock in your double hold on ball 1, of course. It played really nice and I was looking forward to seeing how the strategy adjusted for finals, but top qualifier, Robert Gagno, removed JM from the lineup and replaced it with Flash Gordon. There were a couple of great games on FG, so fair enough, but I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see some four player JM on Sunday!
Arena was pretty fun to play, although with the giant yellow rubbers protecting the spinner, it was extremely challenging to hit that shot. The million point skill shot was also super challenging to repeat. I made three in a row in one game and really thought I had it dialed in, but I then missed the next four or five over a couple of games. LOL.The outlanes and double gate configuration were brutal as well.
The ramp mod to Party Zone was brilliant and should absolutely be done to every Party Zone in the world ASAP!! It makes the game a TON more fun to play and a hell of a lot more challenging. It wasn’t generally super drainy from the pops, but at the same time, you could never relax after making a ramp shot. I got to million pops a couple of times, but never got to 10X playfield.
The flippers on R&B got progressively soggy as the day(s) wore on and the ramp shots became almost unhittable. If you watched any of the broadcast you would have seen that most of the missed ramp shots resulted in insta-STDMs. For a while the backhand was the way to go (for both ramps), but even that stopped working. Trent got his 500+ million game early on Friday when the flippers were still pretty fresh, I think.
The Blood Bath MB on TWD certainly adds a whole new dimension to the game. Instead of just focusing completely on Prison/Well stacks (with some ramp modes thrown in), when and how to bring in BBMB is a whole new Thing! If you could lock in a couple of the lights in your first two balls, even if you didn’t have much going, you still had an “out” on ball 3. Also, if you just finished up a Prison/Well stack on ball 2, you weren’t necessarily in jail for ball 3 if you could get to BBMB and then work back towards the other two. The ball saver for Prison and Well were super short on this game, so it was pretty challenging to stack them in together, but there was still a very generous ball saver for Blood Bath, and again with the two add-a-ball chances, so all the really big scores on that game came from the triple stack, I believe. I managed one decent triple stack on a game and came away with 100 million from it. And this on a machine that was generally extra drainy down the middle and pops for some reason…
Stargate had strong flippers that could make all the ramps (combos can be quite lucrative on that game), but with the outlanes removed or modified, it was super, super drainy and many, many multi balls lasted about as long as it took for the game to launch the balls.
AFM, J*B, and Congo all played like normal (fast but fair), although they struggled to keep Congo’s Volcano working all weekend long and the Grey Gorilla unhinged early on Friday.
Abra Cadabra and Wild Card played great. The spinner on WC was super dialed.(although double bonus was disabled for some reason). I never played tag-team before, but it’s a pretty fun game, and once you get the hang of it, it’s super controllable. Future Spa’s tilt was WAY too tight for my liking and pretty much a P&P game in my mind (Plunge & Pray). I didn’t play Viking much either because it too had a tight tilt and seemed pretty drainy. Cheetah with the tourney ROMs (only one Bonus Collect) is awesome and makes the game really fun to play all the shots.; there were some great matches on Sunday on that game. Beat The Clock was its usual “odd” self, and made for an interesting four player experience on Sunday.
The venue for INDISC at the bowling alley is great; there is a lot of room, and a ton of restaurants within walking distance. Jim and Karl and the rest of the crew work tirelessly all weekend long to keep things running smoothly. Karl’s software with the queuing system is a delight compared to having to always wait in a line for your next game. Games were just about always full, but really never got more than two or three players deep. I’ve been to a lot of Circuit Events the last three years, and this is definitely one of the best ones there is! (And that doesn’t even include the pleasant January Weather all weekend long!).
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Speaking of the double hold, I’d like to watch again to see what happened to Raymond on his Mnemonic game. It looked like he had the “double hold” (hold bonus from Throwing Spikes + hold bonus from Power Glove) but then on Ball 3 it wasn’t there. The speculation was his Award Bonus during Ball 2 removed it.
FYI: Mnemonic double-pays hold bonus. It’ll say “Previous Bonus 1,900,000,000” then “Total Bonus 2,000,000,000” and actually award 3,900,000,000. It’s paying by screen instead of paying at the very end. I think Judge Dredd may also do this, but am less certain.
Bowen, Award Bonus will eat up a stacked hold-bonus. So if you have the double-stacked hold bonus, don’t select award bonus or you lose the stack. If he waited till ball 3 to use the award bonus, then he would have gotten the extra award as he expected. It’s just one of the quirky “features” of the bug-free Johnny machine. 
Watched the finals and loved the variety of games! Very refreshing to see the pros on a different bank.
Congrats to Karl for pulling out the victory in dramatic fashion!