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Midlands League 2022 Round-up

Wayne J

Wayne J

Site Supporter
10 Years
Joined
Jul 22, 2011
Messages
3,031
Location
Walsall
Overall Midlands 2022.png

Here are the overall results for the Midlands League this season.

Firstly a big thankyou to the 5 hosts this season, @steve brum , @Biff , @DRD ,@DanLewell & @Telboy , along with their partners and friends who helped with the catering and setup prior to the actual meets. It's not just turn the the machines on in the morning and hope everything works out.

It's worth remembering that, when I was looking for hosts for this year back in November, Covid was still very much an issue and we didn't really know what was going to happen, so it took a bit of a leap of faith to commit to hosting.

Over the course of the season we had :
58 different people attend at least once
57 machines played (with only 6 duplicates - Addams, Banzai, Eightball Champ, Fathom, Mr & Mrs Pacman & Scared Stiff)
6 people attended every meeting
17 people attended 4 meetings
20 people attended a league meet for the first time
11 under 16s entered

The last 2 figures show that there is a bright future with new and younger players coming to play, not just because their parents are, but because they actually want to play.

Congrats to @mufcmufc for the overall win, and the 4 others who have qualified for the A Finals at Pinfest. @Wayne J , @Sven Normansson , @Kate Rothwell-Jackson & @strobey

The 4 players making the B Finals are Kirk, Paul, Andy & Dan.

I'll be sending out emails nearer the time to confirm details

A thanks also to Paul for rebuilding the website and ensuring all scores are entered rapidly. http://www.pinballleague.uk/

Next year @Dan will be taking over the running of the Midlands League and I'm sure will do a great job moving forward.
 
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Meet 1.png

The first meet of the year was held at Electric Circus with, which turned out to be, the largest attended with 34 people.

Nick set the marker for the season with a dominant display earning nearly 95% of points available and a worst showing of 5th on Turtles.
Special mention must go to Kate who despite getting the top score on 4 of the machines and earning over 90% of the available points herself could only finish in second place. The points scored there would normally be enough to secure a comfortable win (a bit like Liverpool against Man City:()
 
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Meet 2.png

Next up was John with a great range of older machines, AND the culinary highlight of the year - his homemade chilli.

This is usually the meet where I resign myself to the fact I am going to do awfully.
But, remarkably I managed to sneak out the win ahead of Phil, closely followed by Nick. Due to the nature of the games, there was a dominant performance, but a mention to Chris for managing 2 high scores and John for nearly clocking Nautilus.

With the plethora of older games it was somewhat a relief to me to find out that Ross was bringing AcDc, it was however a bit of a shock that John wouldn't let it in the house and we had to play it outside on the drive! Just as well it didn't rain.

Something you rarely see is 2 people scoring exactly the same score - with the possible exception of NBA - however it happened twice here, on games with more spread out scoring - Farfalla and Nautilus.
 
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Meet 3.png
Next it was off to the Lewells, where it was expected that Phoebe and Effie would dominate, perhaps because they had a friend playing with them their focus wasn't as sharpened as usual.

This was another closely fought meeting. I started out well and the 4 games in the main room I was top. However it all changed later in the day when the games in the conservatory were played :( with the trigger tilt on Roadshow screwing me over, and a poor game on Shrek while I was still raging about the tilt on Roadshow, followed up with a distinctly average game on Flintstones. However I was still top, until Kate set a league high score on Lethal Weapon denying me top score (and a bonus point) to allow Nick to edge the win and Paul to take second place.
 
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Meet 4.png

We were back at Electric Circus for the fourth meet. Due to the size and number of machines we were able to play entirely different games from the first meeting.

I had been over on the Tuesday competing in the Classics League and had checked and chosen games which were playing well and without fault. Unfortunately the pinball gremlins had arrived and been causing issues. A number of games had to be pulled before we even started, then right at the start Dr Who and Eightball Deluxe had terminal issues - I tried to stifle my smirk seeing as Nick and Leo had already played their games and Nick had set the GC on both of them, Andromeda also developed a fault near the end with the left binding and sticking up. It was so bad that Aid, Phil and myself had to play the game with the glass off to reset the flipper by hand when it stuck - the only other option would have been to pull that game as well, but as Nick had the GC on that I felt I couldn't.

Stuart, who is a local in Nuneaton and I don't think even knew there was a league meeting until he arrived to play some casual games, played some great games to finish second.
 
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Meet 5.png

The penultimate meeting was held just outside Newark at David's.

The games David has are generally 'middle era' and always immaculate, although Banzai did develop an issue late on.
Again Nick dominated confirming his league win with 4 meet wins out of 5 for a maximum, 80 points.

It was also the first meet attended by Sam (Kate and Richard's oldest) despite being just 5 and just pressing both flippers at once when the ball was anywhere near, he managed to more than double my score on Fish Tales! (Genuinely, if I had been entering the scores from the sheet and seen a score of 4mil I would have assumed it had been written down incorrectly). My score on Space Station was almost as bad, despite scoring over twice the highscore during practice.
 
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Meet 6.png

So for the final meet of the season it was off to Shepshed and Telboys. With a marathon of 13 games.

I usually prefer, and play better, on the newer Stern games - I just prefer the way the flippers feel and react, but I started off in the shed on the older games and put up some decent scores. Perhaps the highlight of the day was seeing Barney clock Aladdins Castle on the machine next to me - a score which held up throughout the day, despite being only 3

There were some other standout scores earning bonus points (by more than doubling the next best score) Phil on Elvira HOH, kindly borrowed from Electric Circus), Kirk on both Godzilla and Mandalorian and me on Deadpool. Other highscores on the day were set by Kate, Gareth, Tony, Ian, Dave and Richard (who finished above Kate for the first time in a while :) )

My 2 poor scores weren't enough to stop me winning on the day, and securing second place overall.
 
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Thanks Wayne, loved reading all that and thanks for the shout outs! Yes Sam is 5, I expect he will want to come along next season too but his interest in playing pinball varies massively! Perhaps if I stand him next to Barney next time it might encourage him to play (and to stop constantly flipping!! :-D)

I'd also like to thank Paul Garner for all of the work he has done on the website. I'm grateful for the 2019/20 season results to be on there even though the season couldn't be completed - I I can't seem to get above 4th in the league (this is the 3rd time in 10 seasons playing) but this season i managed it even by only attending 4 meets, so I'm pretty happy with that.

Thanks again to everyone involved, looking forward to next season already.
 
Fabulous write ups Wayne … thanks to all the hosts in my debut season… gutted that there aren’t 5 places for the B Finals as well as the A Finals … happy to be on standby if there is anyone who can’t make it.
Really enjoyed the season and playing machines from old and new… thanks to all for the hospitality and warm welcomes … looking forward to coming back stronger next time … cheers Ian
 
Thank you Wayne for all your efforts in the past and the great write ups. If I may make one minor correction ACDC could have come in the house, should have meant a tight squeeze - and i though it just looked so much cooler playing pinball outside rather than in :)

Cheers

JB n Clan
 
Great write up Wayne and thanks for all you do for the pinball community, Midlands and further afield.
Thanks to all the hosts and their families for letting us invade their private spaces.
Just a final thanks to @DRD for encouraging me to join this league a few years ago, it gets better every year.
 
Thanks for all the hard work over the years @Wayne J

And to the other mad hosts.

The league is a great thing that I stumbled across a few years back l One of the most public spirited communities I have ever encountered. All the pinball but without harshness/ long faces you can get at knock outs.

One suggestion I would have for future organizers...

One guy mentioned the knock outs are a bit more social as you are thrown together with other players, rather than making your way with folk you already know. A very valid point.

Might it be an idea to have a single compulsory 3/ 4 player game on a given title (could be a different title for each group) so that noobs at least get to shake hands, learn the names and have a natter with some of the old guard ? Do this as the first game folk play so as not to disrupt things later on ? If folk come alone, they immediately get a chance to tag along with someone ?
 
DRD said:
Thanks for all the hard work over the years @Wayne J

And to the other mad hosts.

The league is a great thing that I stumbled across a few years back l One of the most public spirited communities I have ever encountered. All the pinball but without harshness/ long faces you can get at knock outs.

One suggestion I would have for future organizers...

One guy mentioned the knock outs are a bit more social as you are thrown together with other players, rather than making your way with folk you already know. A very valid point.

Might it be an idea to have a single compulsory 3/ 4 player game on a given title (could be a different title for each group) so that noobs at least get to shake hands, learn the names and have a natter with some of the old guard ? Do this as the first game folk play so as not to disrupt things later on ? If folk come alone, they immediately get a chance to tag along with someone ?
Click to expand...
A decent idea, and one I enforce at the finals with people from different regions playing together.

There is always a game you have to play as a multiplayer, to try and address this a little - but a lot of people want to play with their friends, who they might not see anywhere else, other than at a league meet.

Trying to 'force' mixing players at a Regional meet seems a bit much, especially if you get grouped with someone you end up having a personality clash with. I have to say, that everytime someone has turned up for a first meet, someone has always 'latched on' to them and invited them in to their group, often different people each time.
 
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