My Thanks To All Who Participated In TotM / TotW

In January of 2015, forum member and friend [MENTION=2620]LeRoy3rd[/MENTION] suggested he and I have a friendly competition of pinball. Having just gotten TPA on Steam after having the first 2 seasons on PS3, this sounded like fun and a good way for me to collect wizard goals. I had gotten them already on the PS3, wasn't really motivated to on PC. It was fun competing against someone that wasn't a random name on a leaderboard. Soon after starting, events would unfold that led to us not finishing our initial challenge, but the fire was lit for me.

In February of 2015, I started a thread about the Table of the Week Club. The plan was simple, playing a different table every week until there were no more tables to play. It'd take just over a year, but so what? Little did I know. The response was so good, a week later I proposed having a monthly tourney on the last Saturday of every month. This was met with tepid interest, mainly because nobody knew how it'd work. And so it was that on February 28th we had our first TotM. Just so happens as a Leap Year baby, you all were part of my first ever online b-day party.

A year and 3 months later, here we are. We have had 61 Tables of the Week, encompassing the first 4 seasons of The Pinball Arcade. Reason for not getting into season 5 is simply because not enough people own the tables. Which is to say, TotW could indeed start up again at some point, but for now I'm tired and using this as an excuse to take a break. I've got a ton of Zen tables I'd like to dive into, season 5 tables I've barely touched, and 6 or 7 TotW's I still need a wizard goal on. Plus Uncharted 4 is about to come out and when it does, I'm not playing any pinball for a few weeks!

Here's some things I found interesting:

We had 87 unique names sign up for TotM.
I can't say exactly how many of those actually wound up playing at some point, but it's probably around 67.
Our largest turn out for any of the tourneys was 37.
Our largest single sign up was around 54, but again that's pulling off the top of my head as I can't confirm it.
I chose the first few Put Up Or Shut Up tables before eventually letting you guys vote. Here's the list of all of 'em:

- No Good Gofers (March)
- Theatre of Magic (April)
- Centaur (May)
- Diner (June) [this quite possible is where voting started]
- Big Shot (July)
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (September)
- Haunted House (October)
- Gorgar (November)
- Goin' Nuts (December)
- Terminator 2 (January)
- Fish Tales (March)
- Jack*Bot (April)

Think it's safe to say you all have horrible taste when it comes to picking tables!

I want to give a huge thanks to [MENTION=2707]Xanija[/MENTION] for developing the tourney spreadsheet I used starting in April of '15. He turned what was taking me 2 hours at least into 15 minutes. On top of that, he put a formula in place for breaking ties and keeping track of stats. I honestly would have probably given up running the tourney each month if it wasn't for his stepping up and offering to write all the formulas needed.

I also need to say thanks to [MENTION=486]Bonzo[/MENTION] for providing some Steam game codes, [MENTION=3213]Mike Lindsey[/MENTION] for hooking us up with a butt load of TPA codes, FarSight in general for retweeting our monthly invites for people to play, and Mike over at Wizard Amusements for letting us give away some of his custom shooter rods. I know you guys weren't playing for the prizes, but it was nice to be able to hand out some anyways.

Lastly I want to thank everyone who bothered to play in our tournaments and participated in the TotW threads. I really looked forward to these each month and am very grateful for everyone showing up. I didn't expect TotW to bring our little pinball community together like it did, that was purely a side effect. It allows me to put a score (instead of a face) next to the name when I read posts across all the forum. Everyone really embraced the spirit of the tourney, playing fair even when there was absolutely nothing preventing them from cheating. Or maybe some did cheat, but it sure as hell never came across that way.

So here's the deal. Others have offered to run more tournaments coming up. Please, please show them the same support you showed me. TotM is not finished, it's just going to be a little different and have some new ways of playing. If anyone wants me to re-open past TotW threads, just ask. If anyone wants to take over and move on with season 5 or Zen, match the thread title to what I've been doing all along and I'll make sure it gets stickied!

Deepest thanks again, hope to play against you all again sometime on the last Saturday's of the month.

Chris Friebus
BlahCade Podcast Co-Host

Well done Chris, many thanks to you. You deserve a vacation from running these tournaments, but hope to see you back at some point.
Will of course continue to listen to the podcast anyway.

Thanks Chris for hosting this tournament for such a long time. Great to see we had quite a nice group of players turning up every month. I had quite some fun playing the tournaments. To be honest I didn't spend a lot of time in the end with the TotW, which lead to get only mediocre scores in the tournament as a direct result. But the times when I played those tables I remembered how many fun tables there are which I barely play for whatever reason.

It was quite fun developing the tournament sheet with all those macros in the end, including grouping and posting format for the forums. Probably one of my most complex sheets I've ever done and it was nice having these e-mail conversations with you about features here and easier navigation there.

I've got a ton of Zen tables I'd like to dive into

Click to expand...

Yeah, there are 2 high scores of myself in AVP and Alien Isolation waiting to be beaten (I have no doubt you will crush my scores once you start playing those tables)

I still hope there will be some better tournaments in PBA some day. But I'm realistic enough to see it probably won't happen or at least not in a way we would like to see it.

Thank you for doing it SYT. It was great fun. Hope we can get back into it afterore tables are available to everyone. Thank you to all who donated prizes, I got 2 Addams Family codes out of the deal 1 ps4 and 1 360, gave them both to friends to try to get them into the game. Great job on the tournament spread sheet [MENTION=2707]Xanija[/MENTION]!

I still want to do the tourney this month and have a Zac PC code for the the highest placing person who wants it. I will post the details in a new thread soon, hope you guys all sign up to play!

Man, Chris, you can take a ball and run with it! You've definitely earned more respect and a break. And while our little "competition" was pretty close and fierce (eyeroll, just disregard anything I say if it involves "skillz" or being a threat to anyone's pride), I recall you were slightly *cough* in the lead before we called it off. So, way to go!

-LeRoy3rd

Thanks for the 60+ weeks, [MENTION=134]shutyertrap[/MENTION]. Had a blast with your tournaments.

Without all our thanks to direct at you, you would have no thanks to direct at us. Take a bow sir.

No more to say than a big thx to you SYT and everyone who participated in the tournaments!

It's been a blast! Thanks guys. It was a good reason for us to get together and get excited about pinball. If it weren't for these tourneys, I wouldn't have gotten to have some interesting convos with certain people. Not to name names, but Switch.. He is one cool cat.

Thanks so much Chris. Even though I didn't post much lately I was always looking and playing when I had time. I checked off a lot of tough Wizard Goals thanks to you. What you did what very selfless and well run! Another amazing thing I noticed is that out of all that participated, no one was oat to cheat!! That proves that there are plenty of good people left I. This world and I am surrounded by not only some great pinball players but just downright decent people!!! Thanks again.

Reagan

Thanks also from me, great job. Without TotW I wouldn't rank #13 overall because it let me focus on one table at a time and improve myself. I think I must have upped my best in 80-90% of TotW! I would like to see another run like that, so you have my vote to continue!

Thank you!
I didn't play much at all the last couple of months; but it comes and goes.
If there is a re-run I will gladly participate!

Hey I am sorry I have wanted to post since Sunday but life has been in the way. I still want to hold a tournament this month I will post the details soon. Hope everyone joins in