Tuesday night, after some day-filling events I'll get around to, was time for the close of the Lansing Pinball League's season, with the split-flipper ``Super Ball'' zen tournament. In this nonsanctioned, for-fun event, teams play, one person working one flipper. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I were a team, naturally, and while we got to the venue late for our own tournament we did pretty well considering.
The unexpected twist this time around was two guys we didn't really know who were hoping to play as a team. The tournament's meant as a little bit of fun for league members and not just anybody, but, they did say they were hoping to join the league and intend to be there next season. We've seen them around some before, too. bunnyhugger yielded on the point, allowing the two in and reassuring league folks that this was okay because they pledged to make good their pinball league connection.
The tournament structure was identical to that of finals, a double-elimination bracket with teams having to win two games out of three to move on. I'd like to brag that bunnyhugger and I finished the first round with two straight wings but turns out all four brackets that round ended 2-0. We went 2-1 in the next round, against PCL and DRG, with a game of Indiana Jones that turned out well thanks to bunnyhugger's skills at the jackpot-collecting right ramp, and with a game of Cactus Canyon, one of the games that I alone of the league understand or like.
Our next match was against the team-of-destiny of DMC and RED, two great players who blend magnificently. This one we lost, although we did get one win by picking to play Metallica against them. On our choice RED said yeah, that's exactly the game to pick against him. That's one of the other games that's usually surprisingly nice to me. We lost on Deadpool, but my recollection is it was closer than we had reason to expect.
That put us in the second-chance bracket, although by then three elimination rounds had gone on and we had to win only one to move into finals. And what do you know but those brand-new-guys were our competition there. We picked The Addams Family as our first game, mostly on the strength of my being good at the skill shot, and that skill didn't fail me. The brand-new-guys never got the skill shot dialed in and sent too many balls into the too-dangerous pop bumpers. Their pick then was Star Wars, the 2017 Stern game. That one seems like it should move too fast and be too complicated to play worth anything split-flipper, but, you know? At heart, the layout is a simple fanfold, shots reaching from the left side of the playfield to the right, and most of the shots can be backhanded. And since I'm confident in the complicated use of the Action Button to set a multiplier of shot value on chosen shots, well, we blew things up and they thanked us for a good night.
This brought us to finals, against the undefeated DMC and RED, and they chose Godzilla, a game where both of them are just on a much higher level of skill than we are. But, wow, we got some good shots in, got a Kaiju Battle completed and won, and somehow ended up ahead of them by the end. They picked King Kong, a game they similarly understand on a level we never will. We played the dumbest possible strategy, starting this easy-to-start-but-low-value two-ball multiball over and over and over, while they played with skills for a strategy that would have paid off if they didn't get a bad couple bounces. We beat them, two games to nothing.
So that put us into the second round of finals, winner taking all, and they picked Jaws. I'm not sure RED plays it enough to have the higher-order-of-magnitude understanding than we do, but DMC certainly does, and they beat us soundly. We had choice of game and the question, ``if we do get knocked out, what's a game we feel okay being knocked out on?'' I suggested Black Knight: Sword of Rage, since it's been so nice to me lately and mostly on this shot in the upper playfield that would be my responsibility. We started that and the game malfunctioned, giving us credit for a multiball we hadn't started. RED, in his role as repair guy for the machines, gave his opinion that the game was just going to keep doing that; he hadn't had the chance to fix that particular problem. So, with the approval of assistant tournament director MAG (making the ruling), we picked a different game.
This would be Attack From Mars, which everyone understands and can play on an expert level, but that's also really good for split-flipper play. And the heck is that through two balls, we were doing great and they were not getting it together. We had a fair shot at winning this, but I bricked a shot and ended the third ball at short of two billion points, which for that game is a respectable but not great score. And, sure enough, they got their control back, shooting the flying saucers (the attackers from Mars) for ever-increasing payouts until they finally beat us.
So, too bad. But it was still a great run, and it didn't even take too long into the night. Still a good way to close out the night.
And now, in photos, we're on Friday of our big European trip already and travelling from Rennes to De Panne.
Trains. The TGV inOui would bring us to Brussels Or Wherever and then we got another train to get to De Panne, on the Belgian coast. There's a red flag hanging out the edge of a panel containing the train number, which is why you can't quite see the inOui logo clearly.
And here we are! We got off the train to our first glimpse of what was then still Plopsaland De Panne. (A few weeks after our visit it was renamed Plopsaland Belgium, even though there's another park in the chain that's also named Plopsaland and in Belgium.)
Here's the train station in De Panne. I couldn't swear that we were ever inside the building, though. There's vending machines outside for ticket-buying that were all we really needed.
And a view of the observation tower and a coaster I would later know was The Ride To Happiness, before we set out to walk to our hotel because we thought it was a shorter distance than it was.
Here we go, a we-just-arrived photo of our hotel room in De Panne, and done artistically, which means through a reflected surface.
Then we went walking into town to find somewhere to eat. This fine building looks like it must be some kind of science museum center given the Fibonacci Spiral sculpture out front.
Trivia: In 1886 there were 3,500 elevators in New York City, 114 of them running a hundred feet or more. Some could carry thirty people at a time. Source: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 79: A Viper Called Le Burgoo! Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Bluto back in for his second story in like three tales, after being out of the comic for a half-century or so.
