Stately Balls Of Steel

Ok, I think we will start with Sorcerer’s Lair in Zen Pinball (iOS)/Pinball FX (consoles). It’s probably been played to death by a few of us, but it is absolutely free and may be good as a jumping off point for anyone who is interested but has no tables and/or experience.

The format is simple. Play as much or as little as you want and post your high score from now until the end of the month. It’s all honor system-based. I will try to maintain a leaderboard in the above bolded post.

@TheDukester, your request is noted and unless anyone objects before then, we can probably make it our April table. I’m always up for buying new tables and I have little interest in dictating what table we play each month other than wanting one of the new Zen tables next month.

I’d encourage anyone who doesn’t regularly play pinball to join us and give it a shot. Zen tables, in particular, have fairly accessible missions which, in my opinion, help newer players to understand the game beyond just scoring points.

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So that they don’t get lost in the thread, I have edited my original post to be our current leaderboard.

I had a quick blast and got 114.5mil. I’ve played this table a few times on Xbox so I kinda know my way round it. Pretty sure this is the best I’ve ever done though. I managed the entire story/mission cycle on my first ball which is absurd for a warm up game. I’ll have to try it on Xbox when I get home and see how I do there

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Okay, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I like the idea of trying out some digital pinball … I’ll be a “participant” with no illusions of being competitive but along for the ride for some Stately Play fun. :sunglasses:

February 2018 Table: Sorcerer’s Lair (Zen/Pinball FX3): @Falkenstein 35,082,390

Last edit for score update: 12 Feb 2018

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Sorry to set the bar so high this early, but I just about quadrupled my previous high score. I got wizard mode on my first ball and managed 2 extra balls. On top of that, I completed quite a few of the mission and I think they multiply the wizard bonus because when I got wizard mode the second time around, I got a bonus of about 250M. It’s an aberration of the extreme order, but I scored 592,342,777.

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After scoring a whopping 10k, I came back with 939,894,013.

I don’t know if it’s the spirit of competition or the Wheeties I had for breakfast but I’m hitting scores 10x better than my previous best of 3+ years. One thing I did notice is that there is, indeed, a multiplier bonus for midnight mode based on the obsidians you’ve obtained. However, after you reach max obsidians, the count starts over. Therefore, my bird midnight mode actually scored significantly less than my third. I was a bit bummed because I had 1B in my crosshairs.

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Wow! Congratulations! :+1:

I’m enjoying the Sorcerer’s Lair table. What platforms do folks prefer for their digital pinball? I’m thinking my iPhone is too small, for me, an iPad is a better fit, but the table looks gorgeous on my Windows PC (I just have to be sure to choose the correct “Classic” single player mode for Pinball FX3, looks like FX3 introduced leveling up tables, RPG style, to increase the scores on subsequent plays of that table).

Guide Jake and his sister through an ever-changing labyrinth of twisting corridors, secret passageways, and terrifying encounters with the castle’s denizens.

For those who, like me, are trying to figure out what’s the deal with “Obsidian Stones”, spiders, ghosts, skeletons, etc., I found this PDF guide to the Sorcerer’s Lair table on the Zen site: http://blog.zenstudios.com/press/assets/table_guides/Sorcerers_Lair_-_Pinball_Guide_By_ShoryukenToTheChin.pdf

On my iOS friends high score list, while @Snotty128 is way up there, it has me chasing @athros on the Sorcerer’s Lair table. @JammaTal is also listed, but his score looks like more of a drive-by test drive than working on the table.

I’m looking forward to acquiring new tables for this group journey. My initial thoughts are along the lines of weekly may be too short, monthly too long? Perhaps every two weeks would be a good fit, for me, but am up for whatever schedule and tables folks prefer. :sunglasses:

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Yeah, monthly might be too long. Maybe 2 a month? 1-15th, then 16th-end?

Of all my devices and consoles and PCs, I prefer my iPad the best for digital pinball. My phone is decent in a pinch, and it is great for travel, of course, but I usually only play tables I know fairly well because the screen is a bit too small to learn the ropes of an unfamiliar table.

The really cool thing about pinball is that there is a whole lot more to it than keeping the ball alive. Pinball is really a whole bunch of flow charts that award you for progress. I am often more interested in beating a mission than I am in overall score. He subtle depth is also nice because it comes with an element of mastery and one table can last you a long, long time.

Each table you play will have a guide somewhere out there. You don’t need to memorize the guides, but they can help you figure out some of the inner workings of he table. Practice and familiarity will have you understanding the ins and outs of most tables, even when you struggle to make your shots.

As for Sorcerer’s Lair, my advice would be to learn how to activate missions. You need to hit he three targets above the spin table to raise the table. Sink a shot in the hole to activate the mission. Sorcerer’s Lair is forgiving because you get credit for the mission even if you fail, and after all 6 missions, you will enter wizard mode, which will net you most of your points very easily. Other table elements will certainly award you some good points, but work on those missions.

Another way to get some decent points with little risk is to learn the table’s skill shot. Skill shots are shots off your plunger that hit a specific target and will get you 1M or so (depending on the table) points right off the bat before play has even started. In SL, you want a weak shot that rolls over the target without going too far. Then hit the lit top lane for a super skill shot. I have trouble with the top lane, but combined you’re looking at 1.3M to just put the ball in play.

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Thanks! I do like the Sorcerer’s Lair table. :sunglasses:

And, yeah, I need a guide since I’m not physically standing in an arcade watching others play and getting explanations from the accomplished experts on what the heck is going on with the table’s layout. :grinning:

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I agree mission mode here is quite forgiving, the target is big and in the centre of the board so could be a regular target for balls from the left flipper. The cog mission stands out as an easy 5.8mil once you’ve figured out the puzzle, no pinball skill required.

The GHOST letters on the ball returns don’t cancel themselves either when the ball rolls over a lit letter. That makes it much easier to spell ghost and get those all important ball savers up to protect your outlanes (I’ve probably completely garbled the pinball terminology, so my apologies)

I got to have a quick go of this table on Xbox and I remember why it was one I hadn’t spent a lot of time with. The camera angles are completely different, much shallower than the iPad version, and that seems to effect where I hit the ball. On the Xbox I’m forever hitting the ball in the whisper hole, to the point it annoys me how much the sfx keep banging on about whisper. On the iPad the whisper hole is one of my trickier shots to pull off.

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Heh. Yeah it does, but I happen to like Zen’s creativity with their tables, and the physics is tolerable.

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I managed 575mil with 2x wizard mode and 12 obsidian on the second one. I’ve not quite reached my skill/patience ceiling yet, so hopefully that will go up a bit.

The game is afoot!

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This!

Two per month, minimum.

Maybe even weekly, especially if one of the apps has a sale. We could all jump in and grab a handful of tables.

Or … every 10 days? That’s three per month. #math

Alright, I decided to give this a shot, and I have a good game going, but I seem to be stuck where it tells me to Shoot Again, but all I can do is activate the flippers. Is this salvageable?

Very strange. I can only assume it wants you to swipe down, but ts always zoomed in on the launcher for me to do that.

I was on track!

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Ok, here’s how I think I’m going to do this just for my own convenience; if anyone has any objections or wants to propose a change, please let me know and we can work it out.

Tournaments will be run twice a month. The first table will start on the 1st and run through the 15th, and the second table will run from the 16th through the end of the month. This is easiest for me to track and works out to about 2 weeks per table. I will update the title of his thread to reflect the current table and I will try to keep a running leaderboard in the first post as well as a list of winners. Because this is just getting under way, I’m going to keep it as Sorcerer’s Lair for the remainder of this month; I think this allows those of us who are newer to pinball to grow a little more accustomed to it without having to switch up tables in a week. As for future tables, we will start March with one of the new Jurassic Park tables (Zen) and finish the month with Black Knight (Pinball Arcade). If anyone has any tables they want, just post and we will play them; I really don’t care which tables we play.

Finally, Pmball FX has a nice tournament mode on consoles. If anyone who plays on consoles wants to set up a tournament to run concurrently with ours, feel free and let us know so anyone who plays on consoles can join in.

Does this suit everyone?

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Most of my tables are on the X-Box (which has not been plugged into anything in almost 2 years now) and my iPad.

I did download it for the Switch, so that would be fun to try tournament mode on. Even if I am going to get hammered. My high score so far for this competition is only 34million.

As of this past Christmas I do now have an Xbox One, and in my brief tinkering on a few platforms find that I’m inclined to purchase my tables there (I see Pinball FX3 is part of “Xbox Play Anywhere”, so purchasing from Microsoft gives both Windows 10 PC and Xbox access), the main reason being that I really liked the ability to either collapse in the La-Z-Boy, sit more forward on the couch, or, most of all, stand up while playing some pinball … I do more sitting during the day than they now have determined is healthy, so I appreciate the opportunity to pinball/game while not sitting.

I see from their FAQ that “Tournaments and Leaderboards are cross-platform enabled between Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows 10 and Steam.” So, I would join in the tournament mode, recognizing that I’m a “participant” and not a “competitor”. :smile: