Welcome to Do or Die, a podcast about competitive pinball. I'm your host Raymond Davidson here to help you stay up to date on the latest strategies, tournaments, happenings in the competitive pinball world, but also sharing direct stories of me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. Out pinball Welcome welcome welcome back to another episode of do or die This week we're going to be talking about the 420 tournament at fabulous Atabal, Seattle. And I'm going to walk you through the format of the tournament and what happened and all my ups, downs, left and rights and really dive deep into some of the games. Alright, so the format of the tournament was a bit of a mixed bag. So it started, the first part of the tournament was a sort of Papa style run where you got to play a bank of four games. There were three different The game was a game of two different banks, so you were randomly assigned one of the banks, and you played your four games in a group of three or four, and even though you were playing in a group, it was kind of like pin golf because it was using sort of open qualifyingifying scoring across everybody who played that bank. So the social aspect was pretty cool because you're competing against people, but you weren't directly competing against them. The game is a game where you play a game of the four best games you could and each one is ranked against everyone else who played that game. Your total scores are added together for your qualifying ticket and the top 14 from each bank got to move on to the finals. I really thought this was a cool way of doing it because I had never really seen this holy union of the pump and dump ticket style and the socialization of match play. and it's a good way to get started. You need to be a good player. I have a few tips for you. You need to be a good player. You need to be good at what you do. You need to be good at what you play. You usually hear about, I love pinball. It's all about playing in your group and talking and socializing. I don't like pump and dumps because you're just playing against yourself. I thought this was a really great way to combine those two. I think it's really fun. So yeah, we were playing, you know, three player games, four player games, but they were getting written down as if they were a pop-up pop-up card for each individual person. So after you qualified, the next phase of the tournament, phase two, was a giant three strike. and the game was called 3-Strike. So there was 42 people who qualified and you got to play just heads up, 1v1, on random games against random people, Swiss pairing, so as you got strikes you played against people with strikes. And after tons and tons of rounds of knockout with 3 strikes, the final 4 got to play one final game. So it didn't matter how many strikes you had at this point, if you were in the final 4 and you were in the final 5, you just had to play one game. Out in the final four, you moved on to phase three. And phase three was a single game on Wizard of Oz, the prize machine for the tournament. And the winner of that game won the whole tournament and won the Wizard of Oz. Pretty high stakes, pretty exciting. It's pretty do or die moments there. So let's dive into what happened to me and my journey at the 420 tournament. I was in a group of four and we played Iron Maiden and I was just kind of dialed in on it. Honestly, it was it was also very loose tilt. So I took advantage of that, you know, I got some big big shoves out of the way to save the ball a few times. I started some modes and did pretty well in them and I just kept cranking through modes and multiballs and eventually ended with a score of 640 million. which I think was probably the highest of the day on that machine. So that gave me a nice, good buffer at the beginning of my pop-up ticket, you know, getting that hundred pointer out of the way. The only real competitive tips I can give on Iron Maiden that maybe people don't know about is how your mode is chosen at the beginning of the game. And on this machine, since it was on route, it was randomly decided for you, and luckily I got aces high as my randomly decided mode. So because of that I, you know, obviously was not going to try to aim for that revive spinner. I wanted to make sure I played my free aces high. Shootinging the revive spinner will change your mode. So you want to make sure not to do that if you already have a good mode. If the game is on competition settings but not competition install, there is a difference. Competition settings is just a single setting in the menu whereas and the game is set on competition install is in the utility section and it changes a whole bunch of things. So if it's on competition setting then the starting mode is Flight of Icarus and if it's on competition install I believe the starting mode isFear of the Dark. So pay attention. Sometimes seeing what mode it's starting on can give you a clue on how it's set up. If you see everybody play and everybody start with Fear of the Dark, there's a good chance the game is set on competition install which means no super secret skill shots. So that's just something to be aware of. Also Competition competition install makes the trooper locks one level harder and makes the revive I think you use both of them as soon as you use one of them and maybe a couple other changes as well. So my high level strategy on this game, I noticed right away that I had the ace is high freebie so I kind of took this to my advantage on ball one and I like to do this anyway, honestly, which is just go for loops. Inner orbit, innerloop, innerloop, innerloop. And it was especially true with the Aces High SafetyNet because I knew that if I botched it I would still have a multiball available. You know, it's not the end of the world. And I just like getting loops especially when, just to get your score started. InLS, there's also a communication standard to check the transaction cần crypt textile Civil exploration cooldown. keeps Take some time to sign The only exception to this would be a game that is playing really really hard and has no ball saves, super tight tilt, and it might be a little riskier proposition. But if you're good at that inner loop, I'd still probably start the game that way honestly, but that's sort of my thing. I know some people like to play it more safely and they'll just shoot up the middle over and over and over again. My only thought there would be at least light your mummy lock before you do that. That is on a pro at least. On a premium, lighting your mummy lock doesn't matter because you have to hit that left ramp. So mummy multiball is kind of its own beast on the premium. But on a pro at least, I would at least try to light your mummy lock. And then of course, light your trooper lock at some point. And then just keep an eye on things as you play the game. You know, Iron Maiden, it has plenty of opportunities. And the best thing about that game is if you blow an opportunity, there's always one right around the corner. Sometimes your power jackpot just sporadically gets up to like 30 million. You know, make sure you cash that in before draining. Keep an eye on that. And of course, check your progress towards Cyborg to see if you're really close to starting that, which you do by completing all of the power features. Sometimes, all you have to do is hit that power jackpot target and it will Subtitles by PW I think I kinda housed myself on ball three. You know, kinda how that is where you do like a flip or fumble or maybe you just have one flip and it's a bad flip sort of thing. And so it took me, you know, a little bit to get used to the flippers. It's kinda got a different arrangement than most games. At least for me, I was struggling to try to do my drop catches, live catches, that sort of thing. I had to kind of adjust a little bit. But I did end up managing to put up a pretty Z pinkieしく no enther ductругane rism sponsored is the brief Centreptyou can't moacaly t'at svaj and that was just probably all in one ball honestly where I got double bonus and then shot a spinner and that was it that was like my whole game If you not familiar with Nitro basically it a game of two holes and a spinner You want to plunge the center hole that lights your spinner and sometimes lights double bonus and sometimes lights the left hole for bonus collect And then of course you shoot the left hole to advance your bonus and sometimes collect your bonus. So the general rule of thumb is if the ball is on the right flipper you shoot the left hole, if the ball is on the left flipper you shoot the right spinner. This game was particularly hard to transfer the ball from the right to left flipper. I think you'll find that actually true with most nitro groundshakers. I don't know what's up with the geometry of those flippers, but if the scoop doesn't drain you down the middle, like shooting the left scoop, I think I'd recommend just shooting that scoop from the right flipper rather than trying to do anything fancy. If you do need to do something fancy though, I'd probably go with either the alley pass or a tap pass. and this is a game that I'm gonna try and get into. I mean, it's not going to be a fast game, but I doubt it's gonna work. Anyway, that's about it for Nitro, it's a pretty simple game. Next up was Adam's Family and this game unfortunately, it had the thing disabled. So, if you ever come across an Adam's Family with a thing disabled, what this means is thing will not come out and grab your ball. So you have to lock the first ball the hard way. You have to shoot it into the vault. And when you do that, you can still lock the second ball in the swamp and then the third ball can go in the chair or the vault. So it doesn't make multiball that much harder, it just makes it hard at first because you have to hit that vault. This can actually be a blessing because a lot of people just play mansion rooms. Out in the corporate world, lol Court realizes8 message is posted on it. Beside the 팅i помощ�п distinguishedowi¿¿¿?? I'm a multiball player on Adam's Family, I like to play a multi-baller too, because I'm also kind of drawn because it's more fun to play that way. I'm okay with saying that objectively in mansion rooms are better and if you're dialed in on that chair you should probably go mansion room. The other thing you can do is do a combination of mansion rooms and side ramp. So what you do is you shoot the chair, you dead pass to the right flipper, you shoot The thing eject and then you shoot the upper ramp and then you somehow get the ball back to your left flipper and backhand the chair again. If you can do that over and over again, you're going to have a great Addams Family game because the thing ramp is lighting your mode, giving you millions and lighting the thing bonus award. So that would be my recommended way to play Addams. My particular game, I was in a scary spot. I had about 20 million after two balls. I could not find the I had one skill shot to save my life. It was like a really hard Adams where the plunger was really stiff, so I was overshooting almost every time. But I managed to somehow basically slap Save a ball into the vault to lock a ball and then I was able to shortplunge into the swamp to lock the second ball. And then I think I had another crazy Slapsave that flew into the vault to start multiball. Either way it was not pretty, but I managed to do it. So here I am, twenty-something million starting multiball. I'm like, okay, I've been given this gift. I need to capitalize on it. And funny enough, I think the first thing that happened was the ball came out of the swamp and I flipped towards the center and it did a perfect bank shot into the jackpot train, which is actually something you don't want because it uses your single jackpot and now you have to hit the hard volt shot to relight. I was able to actually do that. I hit the vault, got another ball up there, shot the side ramp, so I got a double jackpot and I was cooking with gas. I think I ended up finishing with like 85 million, which was pretty much my target score for the game anyway. It's always good to have a kind of a target score in mind, at least in this situation since it's a best game qualifying. You know, I wanted to definitely get like an 80 million game. I didn't need 500 million or whatever. Un sculptures Butterfly Blugh Trans milliseconds The fourth game was Medieval Sadness, or Medievalmadness rather, and you know I basically just shot the castle forever and ever and ever because that's what you do in that game, you just shoot the castle. I think at some point once I had like maybe 20 million I started shooting joust loops to light my joust madness to sort of kind of have that in the bank and I eventually started joust multiball and just kind of kept I was just plowing through the castles one right after the other during multiball and I ended up finishing with like 80 million. So medieval was, it was just very nice to me. The castle wasn't draining down the middle. I was also stacking my Joust Madness with multiball to get more castles and that kind of wrapped it up so I was definitely into the finals or at least the knockout portion of the tournament. you know going into medieval i just needed about maybe ten or fifteen million basically i needed a score that was slightly better or at least average uh... and then i would i was gonna lock up my position so as soon as i crossed that fifteen million twenty million threshold i think i just loosened up and just kinda played my best and that helped me really get that crazy score uh... it's it's funny i wish i wish you could turn that on at any time you know that that i don't care i'm just dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance dance, dance The game was a bit of a mess, so we decided to play Nitro Groundshaker instead. I was like, oh, can I go back to game show? Nitro can be scary in a tournament setting. Luckily, I had played it in my qualifying run, so I had a feel for the flippers already. Q&Aated format If you want to get a free pinball you can try this out at www.sportland.net, link in the description box. www.sportland.net.com www.sportland.net.com www.sportland.net.com www.sportland.net.com www.sportland.net.com On the day of the PNB TOUR entendu sabean atn mora預은은 traditions나으로는 도미안아 בר 기예 uncomfortable ayaryuyeeniz, stalls양가맃아 martial becomei 삶 hectareaman aivhy interactshiya h בסçDr dokumentas Alabama kalana 억 sé DIY쪽 waqa 최대 I think he ended up being ahead about two or three million. So I had to play my ball three and this was like a real do or die. It was like I just needed a skill shot just to win. Just walk off with a skill shot. And as I had mentioned, this one was super tough. The plunger was super stiff. So I purposely made sure to go a little bit less than I had been going because if you're going to miss a skill shot, you want to miss early. You do not want to plunge into the bumpers. Luckily, it perfectly swirled around, landed in the thing scoop, gave me that skill shot, and I got to turn around, shake hands, and go on to my next match. Oh man, the next match... Next match was against a guy named Jermaine Mariol, and it was on Attack from Mars, the remake, and good god, we were struggling. But we kept the ball alive, the tilt was loose, so we were actually able to get away with a lot of good saves, but man we could not hit a damn shot. Until finally, you know, we slowly started dialing it in and I think on our ball two we both played Total Nuclear Annihilation and I had a better Total Nuclear Annihilation and then I also followed up with strobe and so I ground out about five and a half billion. I had five billion after two balls and Jermaine was around like maybe three and a half or so and so going into ball three I had five billion I just kind of wanted to pad my lead because I knew I I wasn confident that I was able to start another Total Nuclear Annihilation or another multiball because I was basically far away from everything right so what I wanted to do was just pad my lead enough so that if Jermaine somehow got out of jail and played another multiball, it wouldn't be enough to beat me. He might need to do a little bit more. So I went for the saucer, got a couple of saucer hits, eventually drained, ended at about $5.6 billion. So Jermaine steps up and he's finding that the best thing to go for on this is more Total Nuclear Annihilation. And he perfectly sets up the four shots like boom, boom, boom, boom. He needs only the cow 8 and 9 Glenji product lineHmm The Win on that one and You know I don't know if it was partly because I decided to press that extra 500 million in saucers I like to think it was because you know it he was almost to the point where he could have ground out This work in bonus X or something, but instead he was going for that billion and and maybe the extra pressure got to him or something and you know just fell short just a little bit so that was lucky for me I was definitely happy to take that. Next up was the Fathom and Fathom I got to play against Kaylee and we both just completely sucked. I think I won with 250,000. We just could not figure out how to transfer the ball from the right to left flipper. We tried all sorts of different ways. None of them worked. All of them put the ball out of control and it just, it was pitiful. I ended up winning just because I shot the spinner once and that was it. That was like enough points just from the single spinner rip. So, not much to talk about there on Fathom. The only thing I'd mention is pay attention to that spinner because on some Fathoms it can be worth a lot of spins. And this one in particular, you're getting probably like 100k, 150k just for shooting a spinner with no multiball. So sometimes in Fathom you can kill yourself going for the multiballs when it's just not necessary. You know, if you happen to bounce into that light spinner target and your spinner's lit and you can backhand it especially, I'd be tempted just to keep hitting that. Just put some points on the board because, you know, the multiball's great and all for those really marathon games, but when you just need, you know, maybe 500k to beat somebody, just hit that spinner. Next up, I got to play Medieval Madness again, and unfortunately this time I lost. I only got 11 million to like 12 million. It was really sad. We both just shot the castle until we died, and unfortunately I died a couple shots sooner. The only thing I could say about my medieval game that I could have done differently is ball two I decided to pivot from the castle and shot a right orbit to try to get joust lit. serierungs the regret came ballot Answer safeguard for the IfFishNHK evaluation A Questionライ Scarifani tomariniMusukuri Task &ators GrantLnier Jordan Are of AD Raum Because if I just survived one more orbit shot then the next shot to the joust always diverts to the pop bumpers So when you light joust madness it diverts to the pop bumpers and the feed was super easy out of the pop bumpers so I should affect that into the equation I think on ball three and shot for a joust orbit because then it would have been completely in my hands assuming I survived that one joust orbit and You know, I just I was snake bit I didn't want to shoot the orbit, but in hindsight, I think I should have. Or like I said, I should have just not tried for that in the beginning. Anyway, so now I got a strike. Now I have to play 8-Ball Deluxe against a guy who's really, really good at older games, and I'm just like, oh no, oh no, this is bad. And I kind of just... I drained in just really unusual ways. I think I... I'm used to playing 8-Ball Deluxe's where there's like a giant flipper hop, Unusual Unusual Unusual Unusual Unusual and I'm just like, well, okay, here we go. You know, I started with Quill. I got through Quill all the way up to where I needed three shots left to finish Quill. And three is a magic number because that is exactly how many Hadrons you can store when you get your Hadron Collider. That's like the button in the middle that spots you targets. So when you collect all the yellow targets around the playfield, you get three hadrons, which can basically finish the mode for you at that point. Unfortunately, I didn't have the hadrons, so I drained out of quill back to one ball, but I knew I only had three shots left. So what I did was I started working towards Groot. I got my Groot one shot away. Then I was, my plan was I was going to shoot it in the scoop and then shoot Groot and play Quill with Groot to ensure that I finish Quill because I noticed my Quill's quest was already at about 40 million total. So if I could finish Quill's quest on ball one, that would give me a nice base value bonus. Luckily, during this, I somehow hit a Hadron and banked up three Hadrons. So when I started Quill, I was able to bop, bop, bop three times, finish Quill without starting Groot and I was able to throw it back into the scoop, and that i think you're a hero and then start group with your car then at that point it was just a group party with your car you know getting some big double supers getting some yaka collects uh... finish your career in that mode and it was there's a party i finish uh... maybe with i don't remember my score but it was it was pretty good as couple hundred million as well I don't remember exactly what happened between on ball two, but I know that on ball three Dave was down by like five hundred million or something and So I was kind of already smiling, you know ready to think about my next round I was like, all right, I think I got this, you know, but Dave Stewart on ball three Gets to another group multiball. So he locks four balls Gets the best group I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of good groups. He got a hundred and seventy million and I'm just like, in awe, I'm just like, oh my god, Dave finishes with just at a billion points, and I have about maybe 800 million or so. So I go into ball three, I've got 70 million in the bank in bonus and I'm just like well I have to, this is it, this is do or die, my tournament here. I got two strikes, I have to beat Dave. He had this crazy comeback but it's not over. I have one more ball, I have to beat my final mode which is nowhere and then start cherry bomb. And so I just kept shooting the left orbit and then doing this perfect live catch. It was so money. I just was so honed in. I was able to repeat that like three times. I think this is the last time I'm doing this. Thanks for watching my video. We'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. wwwWPPR ForgivePinballorit legacyPinball hinautical advertisements wärver vaccine.html wwwwINDEID.wpprintrapadsWORSTывают AssessmentGückt http http childcarely Randy Francis The I uh I just I don know I chose Hell Bells shot a bunch of ramps got multiball uh nothing really to report here um just made sure that I was getting um... jam, keeping my Playfield X going, shooting lots of ramps to get jam and then uh... every once in a while I saw like one album target left and I'd pick that off to make sure that I would have an album available to me if I need it uh... But yeah, nothing really to speak of on ACDC. It just sorta, you know, I won that. I was high off my win from Guardians so it was kinda like easy mode after that. The final game though, which would have determined whether I make the final four and go to phase three or if I'm eliminated, was Wrestle double... what's it called? Not Wrestlemania, the Dead East one. The yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, that one. We had to play that one and earlier in the week I had actually played in an add a ball weekly and that game was the only game that gave me a strike so I was actually a little scared I was like this game no but I managed to stay calm I I was shooting for modes because I wanted to put some pressure on to get some points on ball one and two I know that games all about multiple on ball three but I wanted to make sure I had some buffer just in case you know and so I actually put up a He hockey EHya atee know nei vidae prishtons. Напрane.net I Listen has side mething at-board technologies aktien list up We vous This espera!」ядутствudnyitjld activety-way'n'go Chief RedWitch Standing' I don't know what the other prizes were, but they were not worth as much as the pinballmachine. The way they did it was people with more strikes had to go first and then people with less strikes got to go forth. So I had two strikes, I lost the coin flip, so I have to go first. And then the other three people in the finals were Kaylee George, John Robinson, and Darren Stephen Lang. John and Darren are Seattle regulars. I don't know if they travel too much, but they play in Seattle quite a bit. And Kaylee, of course, great player. I was really scared of him. I had the fortune of not actually playing him since that Fathom game. I had some pretty good draws to avoid him to get to the Final Four. So now I'm staring at a Waz, ball one, player one, you know, I haven't played this game in forever. I don't, I barely remember how it, how it works, but I was just telling myself, people get really bad scores on Waz sometimes. So don't be that person, which meant I short plunge, hit the witch for a skill shot, kept hitting the witch, you know, picking up maybe five, 10,000 points, you know, not too many points, but something. And sure enough, after ball one, I had I had like 10,000 and it was actually in the lead. So the ball two, I go for the witch skill shot again and then I finally start finding those rollover shots. The scarecrow rollover on Waz is actually really cleverly designed because it's the only shot I know in pinball where it rewards backhanding. So if you backhand the center ramp, you'll roll right over the scarecrow rollover and that will help you progress towards sliding the scarecrow lock. whereas if you shoot the ramp from the left flipper, it completely misses the scarecrow. So that's kind of a little interesting tidbit. Try to backhand the ramp if possible. The second one that you want to backhand is probably the Tin Man over by the bumpers and the Cowardly Lion I think you can get that by holding up the upper flipper sometimes or just shooting at it directly. The game was actually had a defect where Rescue multiball was impossible. The monkey was broken in such a way that the game wasn't able to compensate and so you could not get rescue multiball. And unfortunately for Kaylee, he spent his entire ball one planning around that and tried and tried to get rescue and just nothing. Just he completely wasted his ball one to no avail and so that was kind of annoying. But you know I paid attention to that. That's why watching people is so important. I was able to see that, okay, rescue multiball is not happening, so I really need to just focus on any points I can get and make sure I start the Emerald City multiball. Sure enough, I started the Emerald City and I, you know, got a couple jackpots. They had the volume cranked so loud that the announcer guy was just like, shoot the throne room, just like at the top of his lungs basically. It was kind of cool actually playing with the volume cranked up that loud. The end of the game, the game was a good game. I forgot how good they were. I was able to basically get up to about 100,000 after that multiball and then I don't think anybody did anything else on ball two. Maybe someone had maybe 40 or 50,000. So ball three, I'm like, all right, I'm already in the lead. How do I points press? And the opportunity came in the form of the crystal ball. I had, I think maybe a ball target last. I had the crystal ball lit and I wanted to make sure actually Jermaine had just told me I did some research and the red light and the green light is bad they are weak flippers and no hold flippers so sure enough the ball was showing I think a green light and so instead of shooting the ball to start two ball multiball I shot the targets to change the light color and sure enough it changed to blue or something and so now that I I had the blue crystal ball mode lit. I shot the crystal ball, started, I think, no lights multiball, and basically during that mode I just kind of pounded on the witch and collected some more rollovers to try to get my next multiball. And I think I ended up doing that. I think I stacked the Emerald City with that and got up to about 200,000. Then I came out of that and Fireball Frenzy was lit, and so I played that. The game was on this really old code. So I ended up finishing with 270,000 but man that was the hardest 270,000 I think I'd ever had to work for because I had munchkin modes But none of the horses were programmed in I don't think and I don't think any of the scoring was anywhere near what it is now So 270,000 I played for a long time. So I think it was it must have been way deflated scoring compared to modern scoring and and it ended up holding up. You know, Kaylee only got to about 110 thousand or so and no one else really did anything at all. It just, you know, that's how Waz is. Sometimes it just drains and you have like 8,000 points. Okay, that might be exaggerating. I think people got to play a little bit, but I don't think anybody started any like super high scoring modes or multiballs other than me and Kaylee. But that was it, you know, I had won. I got to be the proud owner of a Wizard of Oz and it was pretty glorious. I came to that tournament to do one thing which was win the Wizard ofOz and I checked that box. It was a long day, a lot of hard work, a lot of ups and downs. That Guardians of the Galaxy, I was on the brink of extinction there and I had to come back. I had to light Cherry Bomb. I had to beat that last I had to beat Dave Stewart, I had to make sure I didn't screw up my last couple games to get in the finals, and then of course I had to play Wizard of Oz. You know, that's the thing, I could have done all this stuff and then had a nothing game on Wizard of Oz. But luckily, you know, it was going my way. I used the center post quite a few times, people were oohing and aahing about that. So that was cool. Yeah, that was it. I, uh, we're already running a little overtime http://www.pipipi-pixen.id.com/.tags I'm here so don't want to babble too much but yea that was it Congrats to all the players in the 420 tournament thank you to add a ball for hosting and to the wonderful prize that you guys gave away I'm super happy obviously and super thankful for that and I'm glad it gave a great story to tell on the do-or-die podcast anyway I'll see you next week talking about Yegpin and all the wonderful tournaments at that show. Hope to see some of you there. It's a great show and there's a lot to do, fun tournaments and I can't wait for that. So, alright, I'm signing off and remember, Dude, don't die. Ping