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The Peanuts Begins this Tuesday had Charlie Brown and Shermy admit to Patty that they played marbles all wrong, but wouldn't think of changing, as this is the way they've always done it. I tweeted that as ``me on the Game Of Thrones pinball''. Several hours after that, I proved myself wrong. As part of the league finals I had to play Game Of Thrones. This in a match against JAB, the player who'd finished on top of the regular season. And who's an expert on Game Of Thrones, one of those people who can routinely put up a billion-point game.
I have a rough understanding of how to play Game Of Thrones, but somehow there's a limit on how much I can do, and my games usually peter out, at best, around 250 million, and more often 100 million. And I don't know what to do to get any better. This time, though? ... Well, I knew that if I hit the drop targets on the left side of the game enough, it'd light the House Baratheon Battle, and that battle is about shooting the spinner on the left orbit. And maybe then a ramp, I'm not sure? Nobody plays House Baratheon Battle in our league. I don't know if it's that the expert players know other modes are more reliable points mines or whether our gang just doesn't happen to like the drop targets you have to hit to get there.
But, I did go for that, getting things qualified on a mediocre first ball for me. On the second ball I got everything I could hope for: the Battle started during multiball. I'm not precisely sure the best strategy for the battle, but I had something right because I got the thwacking noise of a replay almost right away. The mode finished with me at 750 million, great except for how JAB was sure to do the same.
The crazy thing is he didn't. He eventually got a battle going and a multiball going, but neither of them did anything much. His game petered out at a hundred million. Somehow, I managed to beat JAB on his game, and on a game I am at best okay on.
I would get knocked out of the very long league night in the next round. But the amazing thing is I was playing pretty well throughout. Not good enough to beat RED, ultimately, but ... well, I got beat by him on Kiss with a score of 191 million points, and that's a killer score. (We also got delayed when Star Trek: The Next Generation stopped registering ball drains, giving me the chance to take a game I was almost certainly going to lose for a game of Walking Dead that ... I did lose, but that I was in fighting form for.) There were a couple games over the night that I did poorly on, but overall, I had a good night that just saw me finish at I think fifth place in the league. I went in seeded fifth. And I had things where, like, I went in down nine million points on Tales of the Arabian Nights --- nine million is typically a high enough score to win --- and came back on the last ball to win it. My play was somehow good, even when it lost.
That's just my deal, though. I'll share more of the saga.
How about some pictures of our pet rabbit? Who doesn't love those?
Her favorite spot in the world is huddled up underneath the coffee table. She hasn't forgiven us for taking away the tablecloth that's just there for the Christmas season.
She takes a moment to groom her paws despite the flash photography.
She tries to figure out what I'm up to with this camera business.
Trivia: Among his jokes while performing as ``The World's Worst Juggler'' in 1917-18 was for Fred Allen to announce he would roll this hoop around the theater. He rolled it off-stage. A stagehand on the opposite wing would roll a new hoop on stage; the new hoop would be noticeably smaller than the old, and look nothing like the original. Source: Fred Allen: His Life And Wit, Robert Taylor.
Currently Reading: Across The Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift.
pinball, rabbit,