I want to take Banshee or whatever the loop mode is into either MB points are massive.
You can also play Navi, most shots are lit from lighting the rollovers and then making a **** so you d9nt have to hit the stand ups.
That then opens up wizard mode which is way more valuable than grinding out MBs.
I played against Viggo and Arvid with this strategy a couple of years ago and was close to beating both of them. When they're clearly better players.
The issue is people see a top player blow up a machine using a certain strategy, and then repeat it in comp themselves, which more people see etc. almost as if it goes viral. Blocking out all other strategies.
One of the reasons I've been as successful as I have been is by not following the same strategy as.everyone else, having worked out a better strategy myself.
This is super-interesting!!! Way more interesting than I ever imagined
We’ve been playing for a couple of years and I’ve only just got to the point of not (always) flailing the ball around in a blind panic, and knowing some rules. So, generally, we (mostly me) have a bunch of popular ‘hacks’ for grinding out a non-zero score that someone has been kind enough to teach us. From what you’re saying that, presumably, means a strategy that originated at some point with a top player in tournament.
Interestingly, my best score (I think) in the UK Open came from a strategy taught to me by my seven-year-old son, which he’d picked up by playing casually in PBR.
I’ll give Stern Avatar another chance. I did have a go with the ‘lanes, multiplier, multiball’ approach on the PBR Avatar a weekend ago.
Neither Avatar or Elton John did it for me. It’s probably unfair to base any opinion on just a few plays.
Also any game you can’t hear is going to be at a disadvantage.
EJ looked poor. I just didn’t like visuals of it. It felt like I was just randomly flailing with no obvious progression
EJ has a really weird ruleset for a modern machine. I can see why it was going to be in the comp because it’s utterly counter-intuitive if you’re used to modern Sterns. Even now, we’re still working out the subtle details of how you get better scores playing certain songs/combinations of shots than others.
Avatar looked far more impressive. I still had no idea what to do but it gives up its multiball ridiculous easily. First plunge locked a ball. Second plunge did the same. I hadn’t even used a flipper and I was already one shot away from a multiball. The underplayfield already being broken also isn’t reassuring given the insanely high price point.
As with modern Sterns, the latest JJPs now seem to have a low-scoring ‘n00bs multiball’ and then other multiballs that are more lucrative, but which you have to work at.
I thought JJP Avatar was beautiful, was smooth to shoot, and had an interesting layout with the six flippers, but I simply couldn’t work out on three plays what was happening with the ruleset beyond starting ‘n00b multiball’, and collecting stuff at the standup targets to begin a mode/unlock the lower playfield (JJPs are big on ‘collect X stuff to start a thing’). I got the crab mech suit battle going at the lower playfield, which I’d obviously had to unlock by hitting the standups, and then I started a battle (mode?) somehow, but - to be honest - I’m not sure how.
I think, if you love the theme (of the second movie), you’re not going to be disappointed with Avatar, but - to me - it didn’t have the ‘lightning in a bottle’ feel of EJ, a classic flowy Steve Ritchie layout complemented by JJP light/sounds. It was just a decent pin.
