🎰 Tilt Studios Thursday Night Pinball League — Season 6, Week 1 recap

Five Rounds, Some Serious Pinball Shenanigans & One Very Confused Fitbit

Season 6 is officially underway! 🎰💜

Thursday night was the first week of the new season at Tilt Studios, and apparently everybody got the memo because we started with a packed house of 32 players battling it out over five rounds of four-player group match play.

There were 21 machines in the lineup, five rounds, and plenty of opportunities for the machines to remind us that pinball is, in fact, controlled chaos.

And this night definitely delivered.

—

🦖 Round 1 — Godzilla

2nd Place — 32.5M | 5 League Points

My first game of the night was Godzilla, and this machine was playing HARD.

The group was:
Jesse Munch
Hailey Buhrman
Christy Kohtz
Wendy Anaya

Ball 1 — 6.5M

No skill shot.
I did manage to hit both ramps, hit the building twice, got a top loop, and then… out.

Not exactly the start I wanted, but I was sitting in first after Ball 1.

Ball 2 — 27.4M

Still no skill shot, but then…
GODZILLA MULTIBALL. 🦖🔥
And I got lots of jackpots.

That pushed me all the way to 27.4M and put me firmly in the lead.

Ball 3 — 32.5M

This ball was frustrating as hell.

I tried for the scoop about five times. The ball was bouncing in places I absolutely did not expect it to bounce, and I just could NOT get that damn scoop.

The really frustrating part was that all I needed was the scoop to start a mode.

Instead, I got shenanigans.

I did, however, manage to save myself from the Oxygen Destroyer, which felt like an accomplishment in itself. 😂

Final score:
🥇 Hailey — 135.5M
🥈 Christy — 32.5M
🥉 Jesse — 24.9M
4️⃣ Wendy — 8.6M

5 league points.

And honestly? I’ll take second. That Godzilla was being a jerk.

—

👾 Round 2 — Stranger Things

🥇 1st Place — 58.1M | 7 League Points

This game was NAIL-BITER CITY.

The group:
John Magyar
Christy Kohtz
Elaine Hecht
Andrew Kohtz

Elaine pointed out she was in a Kohtz sandwich for this game. I said yep, with some Magyar on top. Yum! 🥪🤪

The machine was also playing weird and clunky. I spent a lot of time during the first two balls watching the ball bounce in directions I wasn’t expecting.

Ball 1 — 3.3M

No skill shot, but I got:
All the drop targets
Left scoop
Mode scoop
Far-left ramp
And then… out.

Ball 2 — 4.5M

Again, no skill shot.
I tried for the center shot about five times.
The ball bounced around it and just absolutely refused to go through.
OUT.
At this point I was sitting at 4.5M.

This game was not exactly looking promising.

Ball 3 — 58.1M

And then I apparently decided:
FINE. I’LL JUST DO EVERYTHING.

I got the skill shot, Bust Out, a mode, Telekinesis Lock, two hits to the Demogorgon, the 10M mouth shot, Upside Down World, more drop targets…

And then I drained.😂
But it didn’t matter.

Final scores:
🥇 Christy — 58.1M
🥈 John — 57.1M
🥉 Elaine — 55.8M
4️⃣ Andrew — 22.7M

I came back from 4.5M to 58.1M on the final ball and won the game by roughly a million points.

7 league points.

That was one of the craziest games of the night.

—

🤘 Round 3 — Metallica

🥈 2nd Place — 25.04M | 5 League Points

Next up was Metallica.

The group:
Dave Landro
Kevin Geoghan
Jim Smith AZ
Christy Kohtz

Ball 1 — 1.58M

I got the skill shot, hit Sparky, got Fuel…
And then out.
Not exactly spectacular.

Ball 2 — 8.18M

Another skill shot, and then…
SPARKY MULTIBALL. ⚡
Much better.

Ball 3 — 25.04M

The final ball was where I really got things moving.

I climbed all the way to 25.04M, but Jim Smith AZ finished ahead of me at 31.26M.

Final:
🥇 Jim Smith AZ — 31.26M
🥈 Christy — 25.04M
🥉 Kevin Geoghan — 17.60M
4️⃣ Dave Landro — 13.34M

Another 5 league points.

So three rounds in, I had:
5 + 7 + 5 = 17 points.

Two second-place finishes and a win.
Not bad at all.

Much better than the 4th place I took on the Metallica at the Electric Bat Arcade Tuesday!

—

🎸 Round 4 — The Beatles

4th Place — 717K | 1 League Point

And then came The Beatles.
😂

Let’s just say this was the round where the pinball universe decided I needed to be humbled.

The group:
Christy Kohtz
John Shopple
Drew Fones
Jared Harris

Ball 1 — 118.9K

Yep.
118.9K.
Not exactly the score I was hoping to see.

Ball 2 — 512.8K

Okay, better!

I got:
Skill shot
Spinner mode
Lots of drop targets
Several big spinner rips
Loops
I climbed to 512.8K.

Ball 3 — 717K

Another skill shot.
Then Multiball.

And then…
SLOP.
😂

Final score: 717K.

That earned me 4th place and 1 league point.

And you know what?

We’re just going to call this one John Shopple’s comeuppance.

After I gave John two strikes on Sunday, apparently the pinball gods decided it was time to collect a small debt.

And luckily, John and Jared were both putting up their big scores in this round, so I got those two out of the way at the same time.

We shake it off.
Move on.

—

🕵️‍♀️ Round 5 — James Bond 007
🥉 3rd Place — 40.04M | 3 League Points

The final round was James Bond 007.

The group:
Andy Olson
Eric Weber
Christy Kohtz
James Turner AZ

And after The Beatles?
I just wanted to finish the night on a better note.

Ball 1 — 2.9M

I got a Super Skill Shot.
Then came shenanigans.
Out.
Ball save.
Top lanes.
Pop bumpers.
Out again.
😂

Final Ball 1 score: 2.9M.

Ball 2 — 7.1M

Much better.

I got:

Another Super Skill Shot.
Jetpack lit
Left spinner/ramp combo
All three drop targets
Lock lit for Lady Bird Multiball
I was finally getting things moving.

Ball 3 — 40.04M

And then…
THERE WE GO.
Another Super Skill Shot.
JETPACK MULTIBALL.
And three Action Button missiles.
I pushed all the way to 40.04M.

Final:
🥇 Eric Weber — 23.06M
🥈 James Turner AZ — 58.22M
🥉 Christy — 40.04M
4️⃣ Andy Olson — 11.7M

3rd place.

Three more league points.

And after that first ball, I was pretty damn happy with the comeback.

—

📊 Week 1 Final

So the five-round journey looked like this:

Round Machine Finish Points
1 🦖 Godzilla – 2nd – 5 points
2 👾 Stranger Things – 1st – 7 points
3 🤘 Metallica – 2nd – 5 points
4 🎸 The Beatles – 4th – 1 point
5 🕵️‍♀️ James Bond 007 – 3rd – 3 points
TOTAL 21

21 league points.

The standings after the night had me sitting at 11th place with 21 points, in a very tight cluster of players.

And after Week 1, I’m currently sitting inside the Division A Finals cutoff.

It’s only Week 1, so there’s a LOT of pinball left to play. But that’s a pretty damn fun place to start Season 6.

—

🪜 Meanwhile, Fitbit Thinks I Played Golf

Of course, no Thursday night pinball recap would be complete without the Fitbit subplot.

Because pinball isn’t an available Fitbit or Google Health activity, we have an arrangement.

When I say Golf, I mean Pinball.
Fitbit knows.
I know.
It just works.
😂

Tonight Fitbit recorded:
⛳ Golf™
3 hours, 30 minutes
1,292 steps
0.59 miles
391 calories
88 bpm average heart rate

Incidental Exercise Receipts

But there was another little detail Fitbit wasn’t quite capturing.

I was going up and down two flights of stairs between rounds. ( I have made a habit of doing this for 6.5 years)

And not just once.

I did the stair shuffle repeatedly throughout the night, ending up with approximately 24 flights of stairs worth of up-and-down travel.

At one point I tried to get Fitbit to track the stairs and the pinball separately.

That was a mistake.
Its brain froze.
There was arguing.
It was ugly.

So we’ve reached a diplomatic agreement:

The stairs are a bonus. 😂

Pinball is forever more golf.

I’m not fighting with Fitbit anymore.

—

💜 Week 1 Is In The Books

Five machines.
Five very different games.
Two second-place finishes.
One win.
One fourth-place disaster.
One third-place comeback.
21 league points.

And a whole lot of evidence that sometimes the best thing you can do in pinball is just shake off the last machine, take a lap, and walk up to the next one.

Because Godzilla was weird.
Stranger Things was a nail-biter.
Metallica made me work for it.
The Beatles tried to ruin my evening.
And James Bond let me finish with a 40-million-point comeback and Jetpack Multiball.

I’ll take it. 😎

Season 6, Week 1: DONE.

The machines may have been playing weird.

The balls may have been bouncing places they absolutely shouldn’t have.

Fitbit may still think I was golfing.
But I showed up.
I played all five rounds.
And 21 points are in the bank.

Structured voluntary chaos continues.