There's only so much one man can do, oh yeah

And with March Hare Madness wrapped up I can turn to talking about ... another pinball tournament. In this case, the Lansing Pinball League finals, postponed two weeks on account of a law-abiding gun owner who changed his mind at the Michigan State University campus a month ago. Still, our league had a good season, with 21 people playing the necessary four or more nights (half the season) needed to qualify for the A Division finals. This meant ten people got in and that meant bunnyhugger, despite her declarations that she would never play in A Division again, would play in A Division.

I had printed up scorecards when bunnyhugger told me she'd be running the tournament using the Matchplay software, so I felt bad at the waste of paper. Then it turned out Matchplay couldn't do the tournament style we wanted --- double-elimination tournaments, where someone has to lose twice to be knocked out --- so we needed the scorecards anyway. Always glad to not be wasteful even by accident.

And we had the chance to take American Doll tiny pinball game The Flip Side out again. At every league night we normally run a side tournament, and this way, the side tournament couldn't interfere with anyone who was still playing in finals. In the end only five people would participate in the tournament at all, me among them; I bowed out so one of the others, a guy enjoying his first season in competitive pinball, would have a chance at winning the playoff. He did not. But since he had won a ribbon as the most-improved player of the season he can't have fel too bad. Also because he won a trophy for his B Division finish. We give out three trophies for both A and B divisions, and with ten people in A, only five people showed up for B, so the trophies were abundant on the ground.

For me, now. My first opponent was IAS, riding high off their win the week before (and wearing the same, presumably lucky, 'Open to fae pacts' t-shirt). They had an all-too-easy win against me on Batman, a table I like and normally do well on. So that gave me a pick and I chose Metallica; I'd had a killer game on it a couple weeks back at the Brighton Arcade and, like, nobody practices it. Here IAS had a couple unlucky balls, yes, but I also had a runaway good game, managing all the game's multiballs in my first ball alone. I didn't get to the high score table, but it was a close thing, and even considering we weren't playing extra balls. IAS then took me to Ghostbusters, which I kind of expected. I did my best against a mediocre game on their part, but the strategy I'd worked out to manage an okay game on my own didn't work at all, and I took my first loss.

I wasn't knocked out yet, but it would take a long string of wins to get me into trophy position. And I might have to go through bunnyhugger to get there, if she managed to win the round she was in. (For seeding purposes she had to play one more round than I did, too.) When she came to me after a loss despairing of her chances I advised to take her opponent to Tales of the Arabian Nights, another of those games she (and I) love and that people don't practice enough. That went well enough.

But, still, she got a loss and the seeding arrangement managed what always seems to happen: we had to play each other, loser knocked out of the tournament. I had high seed, so picked The Beatles, a game we both like and are good at, but, so what? You're usually better off playing to your strengths rather than trying to find your opponent's weakness. Although I did prank by hanging out near Guns And Roses, a game I like that she doesn't (though her best scores on it way exceed mine) before going to my real pick. Anyway, despite weak starts on both our parts, she came out and won, getting to plunge her last ball.

As the loser, I had another game pick. I considered The Simpsons but decided on Lord of the Rings, another table where my same old rationale holds. The one external factor here is there was a group having a birthday party nearby and they were an appropriate level of raucous for people who broke up the party by saying it was 9:15 ``unironically''. Yeah, that was the expression on my face too. The game started off weird for me: the Orthanc skill shot, which I can make asleep, in the dark, or while turned around and facing the wrong way? I couldn't find at all, which wrecked my basic strategy of using that to build up the Return Of The King multiball. bunnyhugger had some not particularly distinguished balls, but she didn't have anything she was particularly missing either. Finally, ball three, I started to get my game together, starting the Two Towers multiball --- and losing it when the game suddenly tilted. Not a game malfunction, per se, just that sometimes a table is more sensitive than justice dictates. Well, I lost, and while the tilt made it easier for bunnyhugger to win she might well have made it anyway. She had all three multiballs ready to go when her score finally topped mine and she could stop.

So I was knocked out after two rounds, although that did clear up my schedule to sit and track everyone's play and make sure they were assigned to the right groups. (People are not good at figuring out how the double-elimination brackets, and most any tournament benefits from a traffic manager anyway.) bunnyhugger would make it through one more round, being finally knocked out by defending league champion MWS.

MWS would make it another round himself, but not go on to finals. IAS would go home with third place. RED would take second and DMC --- still not sure that a new finals rule that you could pick a particular table once per night wasn't aimed at him and his reliance on Godzilla and Rush --- triumphed, finally, on Tales of the Arabian Nights.

We were out past midnight, though not as far past midnight as March Hare Madness had taken us. And disappointed, after neither of us got farther. But bunnyhugger improved on her seed going in and me? Well, I did better than last season at least, and that's something. I can live with that.

Trivia: There was no formal declaration at the start of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Source: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848 - 1918, A J P Taylor.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 5: 1943, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In Judge Parker? How was that a detective story? December 2022 - March 2023 as I get ahead of my Tuesday deadline on things for a change.