Best Strikes

What a night at Replay Bar! 27 players came out for Best Strikes, matching our biggest turnout yet at Replay and making for a packed night of pinball, friendly competition and the occasional bit of machine chaos. It was also a pretty handy warm-up for what’s coming next on the TAPP calendar — Pin Diemen’s Land!

The action actually started before the tournament did. While everyone was warming up, Wes Keys absolutely blew up Deadpool, putting more than 2.1 billion on the game. By the time he was navigating his second Mech Suit Multiball, a crowd had gathered around the machine and play on pretty much everything else had stopped. Wes held it together, finished with the Grand Champion score and gave everyone an unexpected show before we’d even started. Unfortunately for Wes, being early has its drawbacks — the score didn’t count for Best Game qualifying! But he still went on to put up an impressive Deadpool score once qualifying was underway, just in case anyone thought the warm-up was a fluke.

Once the competition officially kicked off, Tom Fonda set the pace in qualifying ahead of Royal Murray, with Jamie Axelsen and Lily McShane also putting together strong cards. There were plenty of battles further down the standings as everyone tried to find those last few points needed for a better finals position, while Alice Cooper provided its share of upsets along the way. The machines joined in on the fun too, with several ambitious multiballs producing enough pinballs around the trough to cause some impressive jams.

The A-Division knockout eventually came down to Tom and Royal on Star Wars, and the final game delivered. Royal produced a huge Level 2 video mode run at 40x, collecting around 600 million points and putting some serious pressure on. Tom though had found another gear, completing a perfect Level 3 video mode at 40x for an enormous 1.2 billion points in a single sequence. It was a spectacular way to help decide a hard-fought final, with Tom Fonda taking the A-Division win ahead of Royal, followed by Joshua Hesketh in third and Adrian (ACE) Evans in fourth.

There was plenty happening in B-Division as well, where Jacob Mackay came through to take the win ahead of Aaron Bloodnut, with Emmett Smith and Patrick Carlisle sharing third (an impressive first showing for Emmett!). Away from the finals prizes, Lynden George picked up a free drink from the door prize draw, while Stuart Solzberg scored a free re-entry for another TAPP event.

A huge thank you to everyone who came out and helped us match our biggest turnout at Replay Bar. It was especially great to see some new faces giving tournament pinball a go. We hope you had a great time, and we’d love to see you back at another event (perhaps even PDL!).

Finally, a big thank you to Replay Bar for once again hosting us and looking after the TAPP crew, and to Stern Army for their continued sponsorship and support. Congratulations to Tom and Jacob on the division wins, to all our prize winners, and to everyone who helped make it such a fun night. 27 players, some monster scores, a few very full troughs, and plenty of stories to take into next fortnight's Pin Diemen’s Land — thanks everyone!