Woodbury, MN
My wife and I just had a pinball party last weekend with 40 people at our house, 38 of whom were not previously very pinheaded. I reviewed the forum here for some format ideas. Our party was derivative of some of those ideas in some ways, and different in others. Here is the run-down of what we did and what we learned.
We divided up into two-person teams (mostly spouses in this instance). Each team played three games against other two-person teams in 4-player games in "pool play." Then, we seeded teams for a single-elimination tournament bracket based on how they did in pool play. The 1st and 2nd place teams (with championship game) and 3rd and 4th place teams (with consolation game) ended up playing a total of 8 games, including pool play and the tournament. The format was basically modeled after the Saturday-Sunday softball tournaments when I coached my daughter's teams.
I think we had enough games for a decent tournament but not so many that everyone was overwhelmed with pinball. The entire tournament ran about 4 hours with people playing at a fairly leisurely pace and stopping for conversation, food and refreshments.
The lineup was . . . every machine I have, depending on what machine was assigned to a team in pool play or tournament play. I managed to not have most people play games on any machine more than once. The championship and consolation games were played on Game of Thrones LE, which had just arrived a couple of days earlier.
We combined the pinball party with a whisky tasting (several different Laphroaigs in case anyone is interested; I would probably provide more spacing in future tastings as some of the Laphroaigs were a bit too similar to some palates). I had a bar in the middle of the action and just stayed there to converse, pour whisky and receive win-loss reports from the party goers.
I posted pool play pairings so everyone could find their opponents and play whenever they were ready. For pool play, I initially had everyone turn in game cards with winner and scores, but I decided it was much easier to just ask them on their honor what their record was in pool play - same thing once we got to the tournament. I did not track scores as all of the machines are different, although high scores on individual machines could have been an extra prize or recognition category if I put the effort into it.
The prizes, some derived from ideas in other posts here, were 1st prize: whiskey tasting glasses, scratch off lottery ticket, whiskey mini-bottle, pinball, in a little Christmas stocking, 2nd/3rd/4th place: same without tasting glasses.
In the end, we had our hands full with 40 people, but it was manageable. Here are some things I learned:
1. People need to be told how to activate multi-player and to play in ball/player sequence; I had a few instances where player 1 played through ball 1 for all of players 1-4 before they figured out something was not right.
2. Two players who had not seen multiball before advised me that my machines were broken. So, I need to let people know a little bit more about what to expect.
3. Newbies can have a pretty fun time if the pinball pace is leisurely and not too over the top.
4. Everyone has a different favorite game based on my polling, and none of them coincided with mine (TWD).
So, it was a really fun night. We might do it again next year.
