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, and happenings in the competitive pinball world, while also sharing direct stories of me as I go forth on my pinball tournament adventures. Hey, welcome back to Do or Die. It's been a while, huh? Almost a year, I would say. That's because there just haven't been any pinball tournaments. But I got to go to a pinball tournament recently, the Winter 2X up at District 82. And that's what this episode is going to be about. I'm basically kind of just doing a live here. I'm going to go to match play, go round by round, see what my result was, and see if I can recall any interesting things I remember about the game. And just kind of walking through my thoughts as I'm playing in a pinball tournament for the first time in a while. So jump right, or actually before we jump right in, I just want to mention District 82, excellent location up in Wisconsin. It's up in Green Bay, and it's just amazing. It's like a big warehouse with tons of games, and I was super impressed. The games all played great. There was not really any issues. You could hit all the shots, all the switches worked, you know, and everything was great. and that's saying a lot because there was games from all different eras. There was Modern Stearns, there was classic Bally Williams from the 90s, there was some older games too, and everything worked great, and the variety is just unparalleled. So I was able to get my fix on all sorts of games I hadn't played in a long time. So I highly recommend checking out District 82. I believe Fridays is their public day, so they're just open to the public on Fridays. Otherwise, you can probably check their website or Facebook page for events. I think April 17th might be one of their next tournaments, so check that out. This tournament was done under very strict safety guidelines. There was masks required at all times. There was no food allowed in, so people weren't eating. You could have a bottle of water and you could take sips out of it, which was good. And speaking of which, there was a fridge with free soda. So I took advantage of that. That was great. And yeah, so District 82, check that out. All right, let's jump on in. So my first round, I guess the format of the tournament that I was playing in was a simple strikes knockout tournament, where the bottom two players in each game got a strike, three strikes, you're out. if it was a three player group then I think only the bottom, only the third place person got a strike so that's always nice so you don't feel like you get ripped off when you get a three player group. So the first round I got paired with Tom Graff who Fox Cities Pinball he provided the stream for the tournament that's twitch.tv slash Fox Cities Pinball. So I got to play with him on KISS and, you know, Stern Kiss. My main strategy for that game is, I guess I choose Deuce, because that mode, Deuce, once you get going, you can just repeat the same shot. It's not worth as many points if you repeat the shot. I think it's better to, like, chase them. I'm not quite sure, but all I know is I choose the Deuce song, and that way, as I'm hitting shots, I can kind of, like, you know, loop the center ramp twice and get credit twice and then hit the Demon Lock, hit the Demon Lock. It's a good way to just kind of be in the groove and get some points. So I chose Deuce, and at the beginning of Deuce, the only shots lit are the Left Orbit and the Star Child. And knowing what I remember about Kiss is that if you do a nice little soft plunge that goes around slowly and then trickles into the bumpers, it'll give you credit for that Left Orbit, which is crucial. So make sure you do that to get that Left Orbit, and then you basically just go after Starchild, which you were going to do anyway, because that's the easiest multiball to get. So, you know, I shot Starchild. It bounced around up there so much, it actually went into the hole, started Starchild on my first shot. I didn't get any points out of Starchild, but it was still kind of a nice surprise. Overall, I did pretty mediocre. I got like 30 million. Tom put up like 200. But it was enough to get second, 30 million, so I avoided a strike just by using my, you know, kind of what I remembered about KISS. So moving on to round two. This tournament alternated between modern games and older games. So round two I got paired on a older game. Looked like, oh, Cyclone. I knew going into this, every Cyclone I played, it just comes down to skill shots. Like, you just don't really get to flip very much. I don't know, the game just houses you left, right, and center. And that's exactly what happened. I was in first going into ball three because I got my skill shot every ball. But I never actually flipped the ball at all. I took one shot on one of the balls and bricked and drained. And so going into ball three, I was like, well, maybe I'll sneak by with a second place just off skill shots. But no, two people actually got to play and they put up a million and it beat my, you know, 600,000 I got from skill shots. So, yeah, Cyclone. Super critical. Learn that skill shot. And always undershoot. Don't overshoot. So just kind of what I would do is I tested the plunger, you know, a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, and then just went a little bit further. And that was how I was able to get those. Otherwise, for Cyclone, you want to just be hitting the right ramp and the Ferris wheel. If you can just hit those, you know, back and forth, you're probably going to be okay. those are kind of like just some points and in that game any points is is good points and of course you get double scoring if you um you know hit the three lanes up up by the bumpers uh so i got a strike one strike going to round three uh round three i got to play twilight zone all right so twilight zone uh so i on the plunge i always try a dead pass because it's kind of the safest out of the slot machine. You know, if it goes wrong, you're not going to drain, but you might not get full control. And this slot machine had the kick out that I think most Twilight Zones have, which is if you dead pass, about half the time you can get it to come to a cradle on the left, and the other half, it's moving too fast that the cradle slips away, and so you have to kind of just take a shot at it. Either way, I was liking the dead pass just as a starting point. and so I was able to, you know, hit my left ramp, hit my right ramp, ended up getting like a four-way combo, which was pretty cool, um, and on that game, I just, I just, you know, gumball it up, gives you 20 million, 25 million, 30 million, I don't even pay attention to like, oh, you need to light your two gumballs because you don't want to leave the powerball for someone else, I, I, I don't buy into that, I just get my gumballs because they're worth points, you get powerball, you get Powerball. You leave Powerball for the next person, well, they still have to deal with it. So that's kind of how I got started, was just, you know, Gumball, and once I built up a nice base score, then I was able to play Multiball, and I had, like, the best Multiball in that I think I'd ever had. Unfortunately, it was Baby Jackpots, because on Twilight Zone, if you start Multiball by locking it, by shooting the like, robot shot to the right, kind of up up in the piano area. If you start multiple with that, you get like double jackpot values as opposed to if you start it from the easier ramp shot. And I could not hit that lock shot to save my life, so eventually I shot the center ramp. But then I got like five jackpots. I was like in a perfect rhythm of like upper flipper, piano, and then like right orbit, magnet catch, and then side flipper into the camera and then repeat And so I came away with a big score I think I put up like 600 mil or something so that was an easy first which I was excited about I was like, yeah, this is why we play pinball. Woo! Alright, so round four. Oh yeah, I had to play Stingray. Stingray, the Solid State. I think by Stern, it's basically an EM, because you're kind of just throwing it up top and hoping you get in the saucer, and you hope you get 50k. Also, your bonus advance is just done by, like, these random rollovers in the middle of the play field, which is unfortunate because the bonus can be big, can be relevant. So, you know, I was just kind of playing, and then I saw one of my opponents actually just took a crack at the center saucer, just, like, nailed it with the left flipper, and it just stuck. and once I saw that you could hit that center saucer on purpose, I released my eyes lit up. I started paying attention. I'm like, okay, all right. Whoa, wait, I have 50k lit. I'm gonna take a shot at that. Boom, 50k. Boom, 50k. So that was a crucial moment where I realized you could actually hit that center saucer. And so if the ball was on the left flipper, I would just shoot the center saucer. If the ball was on the right flipper, I'd shoot the left orbit. And that was basically the game, um, and I ended up, you know, pulling it out there, I think I got first or second, um, so that was good, thanks, thankfully I was paying attention, and notice you could hit that, uh, the center scoop, I don't know if all of them were like that, but that one was, all right, moving on to round five, the theater of magic, all right, so theater of magic, uh, this one was set up standard, so I figured it would be no problem. And Ball 1 and 2 just evaporated. I think I had like 8 million after Ball 1. But my basic strategy on that is use the left flipper to select Levitating Woman before you plunge. Plunge the Start Illusion skill shot. Hit the trunk to start your illusion, then just loop the center ramp until you miss. That'll give you Levitating Woman points and light your locks. And then you lock, you get multiball, and it's a party. And then after that first multiball, I usually just shoot the left orbit all day. And so basically I was going into ball three with nothing, and I was able to start multiball, and I actually got the 100 million. So at the beginning of multiball, if you hit that trunk right away, you'll get 100 million. One thing I noticed about this theater was you had to flip pretty dang early to hit that trunk. So that was partially why I had such a bad ball one and two was when I was going for my skill shot, I missed like a little late. I saw other people missing late. And so when multiball started and I needed to hit that jackpot, I kind of knew I needed to flip a little bit earlier than maybe I thought. And so I was able to get the jackpot. And so after multiball was over, I just shot the left orbit. and lucky for me it had a perfect feed to the right flipper you just had to do like a little live catch and then i just kept hitting the left orbit until i got uh you know 10x bonus and a bunch of theater letters and and drain you know and i got enough points to get second so that was pretty pretty straightforward theater magic um let's see next up barracora okay this game was like playing super steep i believe this was on stream i was also playing against tom again and it was just set up so steep you could see me i missed the drop target like 10 times on barricora you have to hit the drop targets in a very specific order and i kept hitting the wrong one over and over and over and over and over finally i hit it and then i was able to start multiball and then uh honestly on that game you just you just keep the ball alive good things happen uh learn how to lane change with the um the top lanes because i guess you need to not complete the top part so there's one two three you want to get two out of three of them and then when you roll down the lit ones it'll unlock the four five and six so you want to get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, that lights your collect bonus. Although that never ended up happening, but that's just the one thing I know about Barakor. Basically, light your lock, get your lock, and profit, I guess. The other thing about Barakor is, I believe, if you go for the right drop targets, then that lights the lock at the top. And the lock at the top is special because that's how you get three-ball multiball. But if you've ever played Barakora, you know never actually start the three-ball multiball. Just lock the ball up top and don't ever hit the other lock, and now you've got an extra ball essentially. So that's kind of like how you would do it at a pump and dump. You try to set up that situation where you're playing with house money, and then you'd work your ladder thing in the middle. I don't actually know how it works, but I know there's things in the middle that grow, and, like, they multiply with each other or something. I don't know. You get points hitting stuff. And I was able to survive, so I got the second or first on Barakor. All right, number seven was Lethal Weapon 3. Okay, this one, I haven't really ever played this game. I know everyone's like, what, you've never played Lethal Weapon 3? No, I mean, they just don't, I don't know, never ran into one. and so I was trying to figure out how to light multiball. I guess this one didn't automatically light it, so I was like, okay, well, I guess I just have to hit these drop targets. But I misunderstood how the drop targets worked. I thought you had to... I thought each drop target was tied to the item underneath it, but instead each bank advances one item on both banks. So ball one, I hit like two drop targets from each bank and drained, but that didn't give me any progress because I didn't complete any banks. So ball two, I said, screw that, I'm just going to hit the left ramp. So I ramped out a little bit, got like some points. And then ball three, I continued to hit the left ramp a little bit. And I ended up squeaking by with a second. Poor David, man. David DeLuga. I met him up there and he's a great player. I was watching him. He was the one that beat me on Theater of Magic. And he had his multiball ready to go on ball one on Lethal Weapon 3 and never started it. And I somehow got like 15 million to his 14 million. And so I avoided a strike. It was pretty fortunate. I was pretty lucky. Honestly, I didn't deserve that one. But, you know, I did just enough left ramp action to get me some millions to give me that out. because not all the time people are going to start their multiballs. So if you can just put up anything, it just gives you that extra out, gives you that extra chance. If I didn't pivot on ball one when I realized the drop target strategy wasn't panning out and then pivoted to just try to get some millions on ball two, that ended up making the difference. So that one worked out. Let's see. We're going to round eight. All right, round eight. Ah, Swords of Fury. This one was also on stream. I got to play against Luke Nahorniak and Ryan Spindler and Brandon Filippi. And Swords of Fury, I didn't really know the rules other than the left orbit is your multiball. And then during multiball, you want to throw it up top to try to get a jackpot. And also the mini playfield can just give you good points if you kind of just rock that. So using those three pieces of information, I was able to get like four or five million. I got a jackpot in multiball. It was pretty good. And I think Luke didn quite catch me because he got multiball but he never got the jackpot In order to get the jackpot you got to hit the roving target on the upper playfield And I think he just kept dodging it like it just kept missing or something someone was saying you have to qualify the jackpot I don I don actually know all I know is it was there when I was playing and I was able to hit the the roving target and got my jackpot I think locks are shared on this game so that's interesting you have to make sure you know if you're in the lead and the person after you is up, maybe don't lock a ball anymore. You know, it's kind of weird that way. So that's one thing to take into consideration. If you've got a good enough lead, it might not be worth risking leaving balls on the table for the next person. But honestly, I don't know how to score points other than multiball in that game. So I think I threw that to the wind. I think a better example would be Black Knight 2000 that shares locks as well alright so I got through on that one going on to round 9 we got to play Dracula Bram Stoker's Dracula little rematch action with Luke and Ryan and that the Dracula was you know typical ball 1 and 2 kind of nobody did anything but then ball three I was able to you know once I found the shots I was able to start multi balls but I kept it kept timing out it was like start miss multiball um that was actually my crowning achievement was on ball three I got the ball to my right flipper and on my first shot I nailed the miss scoop which was actually unbelievable I couldn't believe I made the shot because I had never taken a crack at it so I just had to guess um but then I started mist and I think I actually missed the mist ball on the first flip but then I was able to recover and hit it on the second and I was able to start miss multiball got a couple of 10 millions so I ended up getting like 80 90 million and then I started coffin but unfortunately my mist had already expired so then I was playing a naked coffin multiball and I don't even think I got a jackpot out of it I got like six or most of the Dracula letters but I didn't get the last one and so then Coffin ended and then I started Castle it was it was kind of a sad sequence of events where I just played like four multi balls in a row but none of them together and on Dracula it's all about getting them together but luckily because only I only needed to get first or second that's totally fine so on Dracula if you just need to get first if you just need to knock it last just start any multiball, play it, get some points on the board. I made some good dividends with the bats bonus. So one way to get quick points is, you know, if you're in coffin multiball and nothing else is going on, just hit that left ramp, start bats, get your 50 million locked in. And that's what I did. So I was able to compound that and I got first. That game was actually pretty interesting. Luke Nahorniak, known for his nudging, I would say, the ball went down the right out lane, and he shook it as it was draining, and he shook it so much that a ball in the left missed hideaway, like a staging area, just popped out into the play field. And we didn't know what happened, so he trapped up. We had to, like, wait for a ruling. But, like, nobody had really seen it. Nobody really knew what happened. And so we had to go back to the tape. So I was able to go to the Twitch archive and watch it, and I showed the tournament director and let him make a decision. He said, you have to drain that ball because you shook this other one out. You didn't actually save the one that was draining. And so that ended up being the ruling, which is fine. The tournament director, I think, chose a ruling consistent to the tournament because that Dracula actually had a sticker that said, nudging missed off of magnet equals DQ. So what's funny is the official IFPA rules, unless there's a sticker on the game or a tournament director says otherwise, you're totally allowed to nudge a ball to start a multiball. The only time you're not allowed to nudge a ball is if it's a repeatable benefit. so you would not be able to nudge the Bart Simpson captive ball on Simpson's pinball party because you could just keep starting daredevil modes. The link ball on avatar, you can nudge it to start multiball, but you wouldn't be allowed to continually nudge it to just get free multiballs all day. So if you have multiball lit, I guess you can do one good nudge, I guess similar with like Well Walker on Walking Dead and so technically this rule even though it didn't start a named multiball it did free a ball it was not repeatable because once the ball is free you can't like get it back and so technically he would have been able to continue playing but I think Josh might be looking into that rule, he might make it so that the game has to, like, recognize it so that you, because there wasn't any distinction between the game recognizing that you had done something versus you, you just freed a locked ball. And so I think maybe now there will be. I'm not sure. But that was fun. That was an interesting little, little thing we got to watch. Ultimately didn't end up impacting the game, the game, uh, the outcome. All right, so moving on to round 10. I got to play, oh, what was it? Um, oh, Getaway, I believe. Was it Getaway? No, it wasn't Getaway. Getaway was next. I don't remember what I played in round 10. It said Pop-A-Card, but I know I did not play Pop-A-Card. So I actually don't remember what game I played that round. Let's see. Was it more Barakora? I think it was more Barakora. I think I went back to Barakora, and I think I did okay on it again. you know that round's just a total blank so forgive me on that one uh we're gonna go to round 11 but it looks like i didn't get a strike either way so i still have one strike going around 11 and now it's down to the final four and it is on getaway so getaway i got to show off the um the drain strat so if you don't know on getaway as long as there's a ball or two in the trough which is why at the beginning of every ball i looked in the trough um and there's not balls locked up in the hideaway. Because if there's balls in the hideaway, it takes a long time for the ball to clear the trough and serve you the ball again. So if there's two balls in the trough, you can do like three instant drains. And every time you're getting RPMs. So I was on gear three before I even started flipping my ball one. And so I was able to do that and started Supercharger. and then I was able to just shoot the left ramp and just supercharge my way to victory. I got like 100 million out of it. It was pretty good. And so just by doing that, just by getting to gear four and hitting a couple supercharger shots, I had already locked in not getting last. So really important to take advantage of that ball saver to get free RPMs if you can. It's a little more dodgy if those balls in the lock. Because, like I said, it takes longer to serve the next ball. And then on ball three, after I had won, I just kind of had Redline Manual lit, played it, got a super just for fun. Because, you know, pinball should be fun. So I was able to get a super. That felt good. And, yeah, I really like Getaway. It's a simple game, but, man, it's fun and fast and has great lights and sounds and rewarding jackpots. I think it was also running one of the ROMs that doesn't have all the bugs. It was like a new ROM. So it didn't have like the multiple restart bug. Didn have like weird stuff happening And so yeah it was great all right moving on to round oh and that one was with luke ryan spindler and neil graff so tom graff uh son so it great he like a 16 year old and he's he's into pinball it's awesome we need more uh people i remember when i was 16 and i was into pinball um so it was great to see him in the final four uh we're moving on to round 12 oh boy round 12 this was black knight 2000 and oh my goodness it was just an endurance test and luke had the endurance he put up like i don't know 10 11 million just something silly just playing and playing and playing and playing i was able to put up like four or five million um and then ryan i guess he seemed pretty tired He just didn't have the stamina, so he was the one that got eliminated. My strategy on Black Knight 2000, just war hurry-ups all day. Figure out how to catch the ball coming from the upper play field. There's always a way, so figure that out, do that, and then don't miss your left orbit. And notice, as the games go on, the right flipper is going to get weaker and weaker, so you're going to have to flip that left orbit earlier and earlier and earlier. and that's kind of like the secret sauce to Black Knight 2000. The other thing you can do is you only have to hit one U-turn to light Two Knights Challenge which is a good multiball which every time you spell war you get a million. So I actually did that but unfortunately the kick out on the multiball scoop just sent it straight to the left out lane so I didn't actually get to do anything with that. But normally I'd recommend at least taking your first Double Knights Challenge at some point just because it's a free opportunity to get millions of points by spelling war, and it's just one U-turn away. And the U-turns usually aren't that deadly. Nobody shoots for them. But one shot to light multiball, I'd take that. So, yeah, I was able to avoid a strike, and then we went to round 13. It was me and Luke on Stern's Magic. And I think I was pretty tired because my reaction times were just not up to snuff, and I drained a couple balls just like not flipping the right time and um and it was just really steep and fast I was not ready for it you know usually magics are kind of slow this one was just lightning fast and I just I wasn't ready I did do one cool thing where I had the ball on the left and I shat the right flipper trapped up and had the left spinner lit for a thousand and then I miss the spinner and dream. So that's how it is. But Luke actually made a good point. He was saying just hit any spinner because it'll change to the other one anyway. So you don't really need to pass it, which is totally fair. And the other thing about magic is get that plunge. You got to get that center lane to light the thousand spinner. That's basically the game is just plunge the center lane and then hit hit spinners so luke got me on that one and then i was going to round 14 and oh man we got pulled on this game called palooka i've never heard of this game never seen it i don't think anybody had i mean i have you heard of palooka and i was like oh great luck box here we go and so luke went first and luke just crushed he put up like 4 000 he was just going to town I'm like oh god I'm so dead why why not like this but then you know I stepped up and I was like reading the rule card trying to get a grasp of what's going on and as I played each ball I just learned more and more and so I was like slowly figuring out oh my god the plunge is super important it raises the center value from 100 to like 300 and then like 500. So eventually figured out, okay, plunge the center, got it, okay. And then I saw like these little drop targets that were lighting an extra ball, because I saw Luke get a bunch of extra balls. So, you know, I was coming into ball five, and by this point I had figured everything out. I had my center thing up to like 500 a pop, and I had one more target left for extra ball. So I was like, all right, I just got to plunge, got to hit the extra ball target, or hit the target to light extra ball and then I just got to hit the center and I did most of that unfortunately I could not I kept deciding between do I want to do like control moves or do I just want to bat it around and ultimately I should have just I should have just kept batting it around because I think my drain was caused by me trying to trying to control it and then just fluttering it over into the right outline um and so if I would have maybe just kept kept the upward momentum going and just try to get that center target. Because I was doing okay on the other balls. And I've got to say, this Palooka game, man, it's on doodlebug level for me. Like, I really liked it. Even though I lost on it, and it stopped me from winning the tournament, I actually was a big fan after learning how the rules were. It was really cool. So if you haven't seen that stream, definitely check out the final game of Palooka. Fox Cities Pinball. And that was it. So second place, I think I got like $50, $75 for my trouble. You know, paid for the gas money to drive up there. But more importantly, I got to play pinball competition again. And it was great. You know, I missed that so much. It was so much fun just being in the heat of battle, you know, trying to get points up on your opponents and surviving. You know, I really liked the strikes format. it's a nice way of kind of like, you don't have to like win every game and it allows you to like strategize, you know, to knock it third or fourth. And then as the tournament goes on, you get more and more strikes and the pressure starts mounting. So I was a fan of that. The other tournament they did earlier in the day was a straight match play, I believe, where they just did like 10 rounds of match play and then, you know, the most points won. I wasn't able to make that just because it started at like 9am and I was like 3.5 hours away so that wasn't happening but maybe next time I'll have to plan accordingly maybe spend the night up there the night before because I'm excited to play more tournaments at this place so District 82, formerly known as Titletown if you haven't had a chance to check it out I strongly recommend it eric thornton i believe is the name of the person that runs it all and he owns it all it's it's all his it's his his baby and he has really raised it into something incredible so highly recommend checking that out and um i think i think it's it's a good sign because he said you know with all their safety precautions of mandatory masks they haven't had any issues and they've been running tournaments for months now. As long as everyone's following the rules, it seemed to be okay. And, well, you know, knock on wood, it's been a week, and I think I got out of it. So I was just happy. You know, maybe pinball can be done safely. You know, maybe we can start doing tournaments again. I really hope so. We'll see. Definitely don't want, you know, things to open up and then everyone floods to tournaments and then cases go back up again. We don't want that. But I think in a controlled environment like this, it's just exciting to be able to play pinball again. And the stream, too. We had like 100 people watching the stream. I think people are really yearning for watching and playing competitive pinball again. So excited for the future. And yeah, thanks for listening to Do or Die. and next time you're on Palooka remember to do don't die bye Thank you.