BlahCade Weekly Zen Tournament

Uh oh, looks like a few people figured out some scoring tricks for Moon Knight during our survival challenge! Let's see how it shook out:

1. Ty-24- 111 million
2. tritium03 86 million
3. ccl78 83 million
4. shutyertrap 70 million
5. Doerbynator 62 million
6. dave950lam
7. XAF//SMerrell
8. Rhyno42
9. Wolvenspawn
10. Randygret

So by now if you've been playing all this time, you should have all your upgrades maxed out. Good thing too, because for our final challenge of Moon Knight we'll be doing a 5 day tourney, 3 ball, any upgrades you so desire. I'm expecting to see some insane scores at this point. So have at it, tourney is live right now.

Points totals as of challenge 4:

3500 tritium03
2600 shutyertrap
2500 XAF//SMerrell
2500 ccl78
2000 NimbleLee
1400 Xanija
1000 Ty-24-
600 Doerbynator
600 tribblemom11
500 dave950lam
500 supermackam
400 dirtyepic_sk
400 ASI_METAL
400 JACKY ISI
300 TheGeedis
300 Rhyno42
200 Wolvenspawn
200 ricardo.labbe
100 Henrikf
100 Randygret
100 Callmesteam

Looks like it's gonna be a race for 2nd place as tritium03 has really started to pull away, unless of course there's a complete meltdown and does no better than 10th place (unlikely). Even still, shutyertrap would have to win this round and that would only be good enough to tie! So to those not racing for the top spots, it's on you to spoil it for those folks by bumping off their scores this week. Good times!!

shutyertrap said:

If we do this again, I might do 2 day challenges instead.

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yes. in this kind of tourney, I think one day challenge is too short. 2 days is a good period.

shutyertrap said:

Looks like it's gonna be a race for 2nd place as tritium03 has really started to pull away, unless of course there's a complete meltdown and does no better than 10th place (unlikely).

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ha ha ha! it's beautiful to dream. I'm fighting until the end of this tourney. And yesterday, I finished to maximize all the wizards. I arrived to the 200 points. this is the first table with a star.

tritium03 said:

ha ha ha! it's beautiful to dream. I'm fighting until the end of this tourney. And yesterday, I finished to maximize all the wizards. I arrived to the 200 points. this is the first table with a star.

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Damn. So like I said, a race to 2nd for everyone else

I’ve got 2 of the three wizards maxed, and I don’t believe I’ve earned the goal medal yet seeing as how I couldn’t tell you what earns it. Anybody gotten to the final mode by completing all the table modes? Table is like Iron Man, so many steps required to reach the end.

That's it folks, Moon Knight 5 part challenge is over! Kinda anticlimactic with only 12 players for this last 3 ball, anything goes tourney. Blame table fatigue? Or that it was a given who'd win the whole thing? Anyway, here's the top 10:

1. shutyertrap 516 million
2. tritium03 342 million
3. ccl78 253 million
4. XAF//SMerrell 170 million
5. THEBOSHSANG54 49 million
6. aussiepatrolman
7. dirtyepic_sk
8. W0mb4t217
9. ActiveJOEYD
10. selektor6

Here's the final point tally for the 5 challenges of Moon Knight:

5400 tritium03
4600 shutyertrap
4300 ccl78
4200 XAF//SMerrell
2000 NimbleLee
1400 Xanija
1000 Ty-24-
800 dirtyepic_sk
600 THEBOSHSANG54
600 Doerbynator
600 tribblemom11
500 aussipatrolman
500 dave950lam
500 supermackam
400 ASI_METAL
400 JACKY ISI
300 W0mb4t217
300 TheGeedis
300 Rhyno42
200 ActiveJOEYD
200 Wolvenspawn
200 ricardo.labbe
100 selektor6
100 Henrikf
100 Randygret
100 Callmesteam

So congrats to tritium03! Managed to place 2nd in 4 of the 5, 3rd in one. That consistency won the whole thing.

Did you guys enjoy this? What changes would you make for it to be more fun? Was the scoring fair or should it be tweaked? Most importantly, would you do it again?

I'll tell you one thing, I know Moon Knight inside and out now. Here was my strategy:

1. Don't launch the ball until the clock hands are at 10 and 25. This sets the hands ultimately at 11 o'clock. Hit the right ramp twice now and Nightmare multiball starts. This was hands down the easiest way to earn points quickly, especially if you had Multiball Bonus as one of your upgrades, which doubles scores.

2. Earn those extra balls! Light Police Scanner, activate any one of the modes by shooting the car on the left, finish the mode. Once the car is on fire, light your ball by shooting left ramp. Shoot every lane to light up the torches, extra ball gets lit. Never did figure out how many extra ball in a given game you could earn, but I know I had 3 stacked at one point.

3. Shoot right ramp until hour hand is at 12, then make it midnight with left ramp. Start Nightmare multiball whenever I possibly can! I'd forgo everything else to start this up again. And any time I launched a ball, this is what I went for.

4. Complete the wizard mode. It's kinda a pain to do, especially if you don't know what lights the Moon Knight letters. Main mission modes light MOON, Whirlybird, Respected Citizen, Rough Customer, Taxi, Crossbow, Nightmare light KNIGHT. Complete part one of wizard by shooting blinking targets. Part two starts with glowing balls multiball like Whirlybird. Each lane is worth 1 million with multiball booster. Lose a ball and they light on fire but don't go crazy like Nightmare, still 1 million per lane.

5. Wash and repeat. My choice of add-ons beside multiball bonus was distance bonus and rewind. Bumper bonus didn't seem to score much for me, and I could never time the score bonus right to earn anything. The one mode I thought would earn crazy points but didn't was Respected Citizen. That's the stock trading mode (!) where you buy and sell stock by shooting lit lanes and ramps, changing whether you buy or sell by pushing the launch button. I started being really careful, only buying and selling at the extreme ends, and the most I seemed to ever earn was 2 million and change. This after playing the mode for minutes on end. This whole table really needs some score adjustments, because the rewards were never exponential which just made everything an utter grind to do.

Anybody else have tips they used?

hi,
it was a good challenge, perhaps a little bit too long. I don't play it the two last days.
but yes, like you, moon knight has no more secrets for me.
my strategy : nightmare multiball and the ball in fire, of course.
The main missions are easy. but arriving to the wizard mode is not easy.
During this week, I try it 5 or 6 times but I made it just one time. And my score was very bad.

Although I like the format, for me it's too much of a commitment to play every 2 days (or even every day). I wouldn't give bonus of participating every game. The players get penalized already by missing a game. I'd even suggest to go the opposite route - only counting the best 4 scores of 5, so it's possible to miss a game without having to give up on the whole tournament.

I'm agree with xanija. It's not obvious to have enough time to play every day. And with one day challenges, it's easy to miss one.

The Moon Knight challenge was a bunch of fun, thanks for putting it on and tallying all those scores shutyertrap! It certainly was a great way to study a table.

I skipped the final challenge because I was out of town, but in honesty, I was kind of ODing on Moon Knight by that point and was not entirely bummed out to have missed it.

My initial thought of giving the bonus for placing in top 10 for all 5 challenges was to encourage people to play. I kinda get that it might have worked opposite of that! I also felt like I'd reached more than my fill of Moon Knight by the end. I'm liking the idea of throwing out the low score, which would give some relief to the fatigue. I'm also thinking just making everything a 2 day tourney would help. That way we still only spend a week with the table rather than 2. I'm listening to any ideas you guys have, including other tournament formats that might be appealing.

Oh, and I'll have a new table selected for this week in a few hours.

Okay, since it is what I really wanted to play instead last week...Jurassic Park with 1 ball is what we'll be doing. No wizard, skill shot and combo bonus time are pre-selected upgrades. 5 day tourney.

what's happenning ? no result, no new tourney. I'm so sad.

Shutyertrap is busy with real world stuff at minute normal service will resume soon....make your own fun for now kids

Yeah, I’m sorry gang. The week prior I was consumed with prepping my son in getting his 1st degree black belt ( which he did ). From the highs of that we immediately sank to the lows of him having to suddenly see doctors and then get admitted to a hospital. I’ll explain all when things settle down and I can podcast again, but for now I’ll say he’s not in danger that is my only concern.

Play around with the tourney guys! Feel free to post in this thread how people can find it, because we have a good batch of people here willing to play. I’ll resume tourney duties when things return to normal for me and my family.

Okay, time to get back to some normalcy. Unfortunately I can't call up the results from our Jurassic Park tourney. Guess there's a time limit on how long Zen let's you see that sort of thing. So on to a new tourney!

We'll be playing Sorcerers Lair, which I always ignore probably because it is the free table. It's a 3 day, 3 ball tourney with no upgrades. In other words, a good way to get back into the swing of things.

Here's the results from Sorcerers Lair...

1. Estebanr19 557 million
2. NATURTALENT80 448 million
3. MazeMakes 269 million
4. tritium03 237 million
5. sebaltout 218 million

Back to our regular schedule of it being new tourney Monday! This week we'll be playing Doom for 5 minutes. This is a 5 day tourney, no wizard mods but user choice for upgrades.

Oh no, I'm falling behind again! Here's the results from Doom:

1. tritium03 77 million
2. marsvolta72 64 million
3. Schranzil1980 58 million
4. DanDaniele 44 million
5. Ohr25 42 million

So I wanted to wait to start the next tourney as Zen added some new features I'm excited to use. The first of which is I can now limit how many attempts you get. I can also turn off extra balls, play only in classic mode, even have 1 hour long tourneys (though I doubt I'll ever do that). Mainly I wanted to wait because we have 2 new Star Wars tables to play, so let's! This week will feature Star Wars: Ahch-To Island in classic mode, 3 balls, no extras, and 10 attempts. You have 3 days, so get crackin'!

Great to see they finally implemented this feature with the limited attempts.