That’s such a good tip univac, thanks!
I’m probably done with this table for the month. I did enjoy it, even if I found the missions strangely punishing. Probably due to the short timer and it’s infernal ticking. Now I know how Captain Hook felt.
My final top score was 217,430,653. Hopefully that’s enough!
If I am your only competition it very well may be. My high score is about half that.
Have faith! My previous high score was also about half that. Then I had one outstanding run and got that score
Try as I might, my high score is only 79,208,300. I’m not a huge fan of the way every mission makes you repeat the goals 3+ times. I don’t know that I’ve actually finished one yet.
This may be only be a 2-person challenge, but I will update our leaderboard tonight and announce our board for Feb.
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It’d be nice to know how many times I’ve played that table, probably hundreds. And in the time I only topped 80 mil 7 times.
I do agree with you about the mission structure being a bit wonky. The timer was quite tight with multiple specific ramp shots to proceed. You needed to be fluent across the whole table to do the missions. I’d often have an off day where I just couldn’t hit one ramp or another for some reason, and that stopped me from doing basically any mission.
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Well done @Snotty128 on the Portal table.
February’s table will be Excalibur unless there are any objections. It is a bit older and a lot more difficult, I believe. I haven’t played it for ages and want to revisit some of the original Zen offerings.
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Excalibur 70,843,500. I remember why I hate this table. The overall theme is great but this table has a huge design flaw. The most glaring issue is that it is nearly impossible to start a main mission (Tales of the Knight). You have to spell out T-A-L-E hitting the 4 spot targets on the right side of the table. The main issue is hitting L and the E that are on either side of the entrance to the cross ramp shot (the E particularly being insanely hard to hit). It’s just difficult to feed the upper left flipper for cross ramp shots so you’re basically looking for a lucky ricochet. I didn’t start a single knights tale.
Well at least we won’t have the portal problem of the missions being a bit repetitive if we can’t even start the missions
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It was between this one or Rome for my choice and I remember Rome being hard to the point where it frustrated me.
I’m in the mid-39M range right now but still learning the ropes. The cross shot is very difficult for me to feed - I didn’t realize that was how we started missions. Sorry if I picked a bad one for the month.
Throw some suggestions my way for our March table later this month.
I have this table (Excalibur) on iPad. I had not played it in a couple years. will have to mess around with it. My first go this morning was a whopping 3mm. My all time high on the table is only 22mm though. So I don’t expect to be much of a challenge, but I will give it some more goes over the next week or so.
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There are only a few tables I dislike. So I’m down for most any table. In regards to strategy for this table, maybe just spamming the Storm the Castle mode is the best. Not sure though.
My local pinball arcade recently got avengers:infinity quest and stranger things. It’s such a change playing on newer tables! I still can’t take my eyes off the table to look at what’s going on on the fancy upper display though.
Same as in Excalibur, apparently if you hit the far left mission hole when it’s not active, it drops the ball onto your flipper and you get a skill shot. The guide says look at the dot matrix display to do the skill shot, I’d never have known because I never look.
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Managed to get 260mil on the stranger things table at my local arcade, bagging me 3rd place on the leaderboards (well 4th really because the grand champion is position 0)
The table guide says there’s a super skillshot version of the skill shot. You bounce the ball off the correct drop down target to get the skillshot, then ricochet it into a saucer for the super skill shot. I can get it in the right area but haven’t hit it yet. That being said, I’ve not got one in the demogorgons mouth yet, I just batter the poor model until the mode ends.
Are the any super skill shots in the zen tables? I make it a habit to nail skill shots, I just can’t think of any table that rewards advanced skill shots
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There are super skill shots on many Zen tables, though I can’t tell which ones or where they are off the top of my head. Most of them require you to hit the skill shot and then hit a second shot after that. Sorcerer’s lair, for example, has you hit one of the middle ramps right after a successful skill shot. There are a couple tables that have a super skill shot as an alternate rather than a follow up, if that makes sense. It has been a long time but I think the Western-themed table has one of these.
Oh, I said I couldn’t remember any but this is jogging my memory. We just played Portal; the super skill shot on that table requires you to first hit the skill shot hole and then immediately hit the cross shot on the top flipper.
Huh, now you mention it I suppose that is a super skill shot.
The audio call out says “super skill shot.”
You can check out shoryukentothechin’s table guides to find out which ones have super skillshots. They are pretty thorough. I actually helped him make a few of the guides when I was really into Zen pinball. https://zenstudios.com/pinball-table-guides/
I ended up with 54.5 million on Excalibur. What an odd table! Modes everywhere, some absurdly hard to start, others easy to get into but finicky to finish.
I started exactly one knights tale, never managed to retain the champions crown, never beat the leader of the robber knights, never activated tournament level 2. I did eventually get 3 grail quests, 2 of which were in the same run!
I echo most of your points but have only managed the high 30 millions. I think I like the table, though it is all over the place in terms of difficulty.
As Feb. is drawing to a close I’m open to March table suggestions. If I get none, it may be another Zen classic…
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