Tournament Reflections - Flip City Weekly: Clinton Street Pub 3/10/2015

Events
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Everytime I play in a tourney I feel like I learn something, and I have been thinking that maybe after all my tournies I will come back and write about anything noteworthy I thought came out of it. A thought process around strategy for a unique situation, a rule I learned or took advantage of the first time, something stupid I tried. I figured maybe this would be interesting to others, although it is possible it will just be self-indulgent and annoying. Let me know.

Every week on Tuesday in Portland we play a tournament at a bar. It is usually double-elimination random seed, but at larger places we will do three strike KO. This was one of the former.

On my first game of Metallica, on ball 2, I started Crank It Up and chose my usual choice, For Whom The Bell Tolls. I had built the jackpot to about 30M and lit it, hit the 2X and jammed it right in for the collect … except the scoop didn’t register! I was so pissed. I think this is actually a bug in Metallica, because I have seen it on several games, and the scoop kicks the ball out immediately without awarding anything, so it obviously knew the ball was in there. Not just in this situation, but also with CIU lit and other times. Anyone else experienced this? Anyways I still collected the 30M later but I was annoyed. I did handily win the game regardless.

One of our rules at the weeklies is that when you get an Extra Ball you can execute one flip of a flipper button after the ball is launched. You can also execute an unlimited number of activations of any non-flipper buttons (gun handles, AC/DC VIP pass, skill shots, whatever.) This often brings up fun situations where you are behind on your last ball and get an EB and try and figure out how to get over the hump with one flip. In this case, I drained on Dirty Harry with Multiball lit, and behind by about 70 or 80M. So on my EB I chose Ramp Shot for 10M, hit it for 20M, and started multiball. I missed the gun for the Super, but jets and other miscellany plus 20M bonus managed to get me over the hurdle. I always love thinking those situations through.

One time we had a contest to figure out the most you could score on an EB, and I think the best I came up with was on TNG: choose Light Holodeck, launch, let it time out for 25M, shoot start mission for Battle Simulation and complete it. I think that’s a solid 250M or so right there.

The rest of the tourney was not noteworthy. Both my losses were cringeworthily bad, ended in 9th.

Let me know if this was at all interesting!

2 Likes
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I really like the EB rule. We use the same rule in our league and I love trying to work out what to do with my one flip. Advancing rafts on White Water can be very nice for example.

On STTNG I somehow (I don’t know the rules very well) got into a situation where I could use my EB flip to gain another extra ball twice in a row.

Of course on games with super bonus (at our league that means games like Bally Playboy, Black Pyramid and Embryon) the EBs can be extremely lucrative even if you don’t flip at all!

There are also tragic situations where you miss a shot on the EB flip and inadvertently starts a multiball. So frustrating to see all the balls launch and be able to do nothing :frowning:

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Oh hey, I know that feeling! :expressionless:

One thing I think could be interesting in sharing these reflections is providing a conversation space for tournament organizers, if they run into weird one-offs or want to process how they ruled on a situation. That’s slightly different from what you’re doing, which is your reflections as a player, but I think both are interesting facets of discussing tournaments.

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If someone wants to bring that into the mix I’m totes cool with it! Any discussion welcomed!

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Is the “one flip” rule for EB one physical flip? Or one single press of a flipper button (post-plunge)?

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It’s one interaction with the machine via any one flipper button after the plunge.

So using your flip to change lanes for a skillshot on Sopranos would count as your flip and you would have to stop playing.

Wildly flipping while the ball is in play but not connecting with it is frowned upon but allowed, I suppose. Getting busted playing an EB is an automatic loss of game so players are pretty careful about it.

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In the SF Bay Area we play them as one push of the button where flipper rubber touches the ball. So you can do lane changes, play video modes etc.

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I think the Medieval situation is mildly noteworthy. The game was set with the drawbridge and gate permanently down. I think most people, when they realized this, went for madness’s. By the time I played it, the left flipper seemed too weak to hit the right ramp, so I adjusted mid game and went for castle multiball, which I got on ball 3, winning the game.

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I wish Medieval was always setup this way for tournaments. I think it makes for a much better risk/reward scenario.

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The MM I have on location close to me has an unpredictable kickout from the lock/moat. It’s serves the same purpose as a gate that’s permanently down and I prefer that as well for tournament play. It’s much better when the first X hits to the castle are not safe returns.

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Got beat in the loser’s final on Medieval by a 1 mil superjets EB. Me missing 3 shots to start madness helped.

2 Likes
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I still can’t believe this happened. Sorry buddy!

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Who won the next game?

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Madness is never an easy shot…and even when you hit it, you can brick out. Until next time?

Also, where was this?

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Weekly tournament in Portland. It was at Bare Bones this past week.