Nice. Agreed on the big scores not being long ball times. A welcome change from the usual Stern scoring mechanisms that were on the grind end of the spectrum.
I've gotten 6.5B here on location, EB turned off. Posts wide. It's a fun pin.

Not an owner... but played a number of games on location.
For your skill level, you'll want them wide open, tight tilt, and after you've gotten to Iron Throne, take the rubbers off of the outlane posts.

At Buffalo Billiards, we had wide open with rubbers, medium tilt, and the ball times could get pretty long.
You can also make the Lord of Light feature harder.

Stepping up to it cold, you'll brick enough shots off of the stand-ups of death to keep games relatively short. But particularly in a home collection, getting dialed in on the game, ball times will go through the roof.

I think so. The game isn't NEARLY as deep as the epic rulesets of LOTR, TSPP, and WOZ. ("Deep" being how far and skillful you must play modes/MB's to get to a wizard mode) I made it to Iron Throne in the first 10-12 plays on the settings listed above.

But GOT has a lot of great "in the moment" choices when it comes to what house to choose (and how to take advantage of that), when to battle certain houses, which house battles to stack, which ones to stack with which MB, etc.

And the risk/reward from the combo X and the PFx (battering ram) is fantastic. This risk/reward causes you to play faster and less controlled, helping to cut down on ball times.

There's also a decent variety to the length and skill required to complete modes (House Battles). One mode can be finished in two shots -- but if you want to milk it for max points, you'll need more than 10. It's your CHOICE.

The element of CHOICE is where GOT shines. I can choose to cash out my Stark battle for only a couple mil if I simply want to progress faster toward their house sword, Hand of the King, and Iron Throne. Or I can take it to max value, plus spend some extra shots (without accidentally hitting an orbit) to max out my multiplier before cashing in.

Not to mention that if you choose Tyrell, then you don't have to QUALIFY the house to battle it. It's definitely the most difficult and dangerous to qualify.

Great question. I wish I knew. The pin plays too fast/furious (because I'm trying to take advantage of not letting my combo/PF X expire) for me to look up at the DMD to notice.

I did notice that the Iron Throne wizard mode has cool dots (not video clip grabs!) to begin each stage.

I don't recall if I posted it here or on Tilt Forum --- it's because playing as Greyjoy makes all the other house battles MORE DIFFICULT. So you have to clear all the purple flashing shots during Stark in order to have the orbits count as your final "cash out" shot. Otherwise, the orbits will behave like a ramp and just keep adding points to your Stark cash out value.

I believe so, yes. It's unique.
But potentially very rewarding, because you enjoy the house benefit from any house battle you complete.

In your settings, disable "Casual Mode"

When will Nickelrama learn to install tilt bobs? Lol (assuming this is from there based on your comment and my prior experience -- most of their tilt bobs are still in the envelope in the coin box.)

Definitely. For this, as well as stealing the other house abilities. The reward for getting multiple house abilities outweighs the negatives:
- the added difficulty of each mode when playing as Greyjoy
- not having a battle lit to start your first ball
- foregoing the ability to stack two house battles together.

Immediate fix to make the game challenging for good players, with more reasonable times for ops:
Easy = remove the outlane post rubbers
Also easy = remove the outlane posts entirely
Easy = change Lord of Light settings to difficult
Easy = turn off EB's, or limit it to one EB per game.

More difficult = maybe GOT is a good candidate for lightning flippers?

^^^ this! I got the chance to play an LE for first time yesterday, and the mini-PF is underwhelming to say the least. I will say this: it's not an exploitable PF that someone can camp out all day on mini PF and rack up ridiculous risk-free points.

Castle Multiball is incredibly LAME, points-wise, compared to other difficult to achieve MB like Wall or Hand of the King.

Has anyone figured out what series of events lead to the Targaryen #3 (Drogon) battle bug? The one where there are no lit shots left to hit, yet Drogon still has health, so you're stuck.
Seems to happen most often when playing as Greyjoy.

Yeah, it's pretty fun ratcheting that up. I like to save my Stark for later balls so I can get the higher multipliers, and in match play, I also know what kind of Stark payoff I need to catch/pass someone. I dropped a 675M Stark in a match. It's tough to keep the high level PF multipliers going long enough to let you spam the center ramp to get it to max combo X. And if you take a break to shoot the battering ram, you run the risk of running out of Stark mode time.

Now if only the battering ram would register with any consistency, so we don't get screwed out of our HOTK Super Jackpots, frenzy modes (PFx, Blackwater SJP, etc)

Even more than eyes gouged out.... that was just the beginning. the guy gets his head crushed in.
And yes, the mode DMD is definitely revisionist history. Nice choice of words.

If you're not already a Coast 2 Coast Pinball podcast listener, I covered a little bit of the strategy for GOT in episode 216. It's toward the end of the episode. So if you don't have time to read this whole thread, listen to that segment.
Granted, with limited time, we couldn't get into a lot of the details. But I hope you guys enjoy.

Interesting. I hadn't thought about playing 2 houses for house #4 & #5 and the impact on HOTK. In your case, not having Martell as one of the houses for HOTK is a HUGE benefit (Martell makes HOTK more difficult... not easier).

I wonder how the game decides which two of co-battle houses #4 & 5 it gives your for HOTK?

1BIL base value? Or combo + PFx multiplied?
The two times I intentionally took Stark as one of the houses into HOTK (not played as Stark), my fully combo multiplied (5x) value was just over 200M.

For clarity: you get the Stark free shooting "benefit" in HOTK if Stark was one of the four houses you defeated to qualify HOTK -- you don't have to be playing as Stark. Playing as Stark gets you the higher WIC hurryup benefit.

NEVER be ashamed of getting a higher score than you've had before or having more fun on a pin than you've had in the past.
Congrats!

Depends on who the pin is for -- what skill level are they? do they like POTC theme or GOT theme? And do they like interactive toys? Or do they prefer a pin with rules with a myriad of combinations of strategies to maximize points or progress toward wizard goals?

If the primary audience is novice players that enjoy pirates and the thrill of seeing the ship physically sink into the playfield after they bash it enough times, then get POTC.

If it's for medium skill level on up, POTC will get old in a hurry.
Also, if the audience likes games with fast action from successful shots /flow, GOT is far superior. POTC only has one shot that flows back to the flipper, and the rules make the shot fairly useless if you're playing for score.

^^^^ THIS!

It was the Red Wedding of pinball. Well played, Keith. Well played.

Yeah, you must have missed the dots -- cuz you're trying to play the mode
The dots are good for Iron Throne. As you've noted, the sounds and callouts (zero, IIRC) are not.

Feast for Crows secret easter egg mode.

My son's got a good start on the flipper control skills --- now if only he could get that center ramp shot dialed in.
And he's been learning some bad rage tilt habits from playing in league. hehehehehe

(apologies for the terrible microphone/sound)

Whoa. Seriously!? These are all in there? That's some good stuff we're missing out on!

Hodor

Yeah, I'm hoping for the action button awards for houses outside of Dorne. But Dwight's still pretty tied up with GB code, I imagine, so we'll need to be patient.

Should we start a separate dedicated thread for our Action button power ideas?

??? What were your Wall MB jackpot values that you noticed? Ever since the code update that nerfed Wall MB, I've never found it to provide much scoring (even with PFx and ComboX ratcheting up the jackpot and super jackpot values).

Is there something different you did to capitalize on the Baratheon benefit to Wall MB?

Me, too. Really hoping for cool Action Button benefits for houses not named Martell.

Yeah, I watched Cayle George camp out on left orbit, live catch, repeat during Belgian Pinball Open finals after he had two castles. Essentially 7.5M per shot, and completely safe based on how the R orbit fed back to the flipper.

This ^^^. Every left orbit was feeding the upper lanes, so every two shots was bonus X.

On a very long ball 1 (two blackwater MB's), he took my advice on not disregarding spinner shots. The spinner was not very dialed at all, yet he was getting between 13-18M per spinner shot (un-multiplied). Live catch. Repeat.

Perhaps the difference was seen is because this is adjustable in the settings. If you choose not to pause timers, then you can time out WIC hurry ups.

Thanks. This explains a lot on some frustration I had when trying to hold off on my last hurry up to set up the timing of when my WHC multiball.

Agreed. Blackwater MB is so much fun to play when the SJP registers EVERY time you hit the ram.

Detail that I posted on Tilt forums re: the new GOT code changes to House powers based on watching the stream...
http://tiltforums.com/t/game-of-thrones-pinball-rulesheet/936/575

Can't wait to play it!