Thank you so much everyone for the kind comments - and especially to those who organised a very special neon 'PinHaus' sign for our newly decorated pinroom! I really struggled not to burst into ugly tears in front of everyone and feeling quite overwhelmed everytime I look at it today. I really enjoy hosting these events (plus running comps at Pinball Office, and more recently at Medway and the ladies comp at Pinfest), so I am just glad that people enjoy coming to them.
Big thank you to
@Jmac who brought Scared Stiff on the day for the competition - it was awesome to have something totally new to play, and it was a big hit!
Definitely my favourite part of the PinHaus events is finding the prizes for the now traditional raffle - everyone who attends has their name on the spinning wheel, and gets to pick a prize. This event had all Flash Gordon themed prizes, and I was pretty pleased with what I managed to find! Prizes included a Flash Gordon soundtrack on vinyl, a Ming the Merciless Funko Pop, and a 1980 annual (and a Pin Gulp!)
For the trophies - our past PinHaus events, David has created trophies using old pinballs. This time around, I had some USB-powered acrylic lights created instead - I think they worked really well (just a shame I couldn't find any battery powered ones!) - plus I had a wooden spoon made, I found an Etsy seller who will engrave 'any star on a spoon' for you... Not quite sure why anyone would want that, but definitely worked to our advantage as I think it looked really good! The back had Ming the Merciless on it.
Oh and - never thought I'd be creating special t-shirts to commemorate PinHaus events - big thanks to
@PAZ for the idea, as everyone seemed to really enjoy them and had way more demand than I expected! A limited run of just
24 shirts!
Thank you so much to
@Kirpan / Lee for making the food, as always - an amazing vegan curry and chilli, and to
@Jmac for bringing a chicken curry too. I also bought four trays of sandwiches, made 2 cheesecakes and bought a vegan cake (plus lots of snacks - sausage rolls, crisps, etc) and we had almost nothing at all left!! Thanks too to
@Benleigh250 who brought two biscuit trays (again, all gone by the end!). I think that's definitely a sign of good food when people want seconds!!
We also had no game faults over the day, which is a first!, but we did have a broken tap. Poor
@Fubar was left trying to hold the tap on while water sprayed everywhere and
@Dave Playman tried to fix it and switch the water off! Dave managed to fix our tap and so play could resume, which we were super grateful for!
The whole event went super smoothly - thank you so much to everyone who attended, and for some amazing pinball moments throughout the day. Everyone played 25 head-to-head games (once against each attendee) making it a really social day. Special shoutout to
@Kirpan / Lee, who did all 25 of his in the afternoon after lunch, as he was working in the morning! The finals were especially exciting, with lots of nail biting moments. Me, David,
@Spandangler,
@Doggard and
@OTRawrior were all tied for places 6-8, so all 5 of us had a playoff on Flash Gordon (in 2 groups), with top 3 scores going through to the finals - I was thrilled to get through (just)!
We then had 3 x 4 player games, with the first two games chosen by the top 2 players of each seed and the last game chosen randomly. Top 2 players from each group then went through to the finals, which was the same format. The Attack from Mars game especially sticks in my mind, with it all coming down to ball 3 - Martin (player 1) was on 2.1b after a house ball after an amazing ball 2. Nathan passed his score at 3.3b, then Jeremy just squeezed past him - and then Reece, who had started ball 3 on 800m, managed to have an incredible final ball with Total Annihilation and multiball, jumping to 3.7b! Really amazing play and gripping to watch. And, after such an awesome final,
@NateG119 and
@OTRawrior then had to do a playoff on Black Hole (chosen randomly) for 1st place. Goodness!
Huge congratulations to
@OTRawrior for his first win - very well deserved! Well done to
@SPLITKING,
@NateG119 and
@StandUpAndFight for amazing, consistent play throughout the day!
As always - I've added photos to this Google album, so do feel free to add your photos -
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KRUGacCsFgCtk1226
Here's the final standings - I have submitted these to the IFPA but they seem to be having an issue with buying credits in GBP at the moment (I have emailed them!):
1,Reece Powell
2,Nathan Garwood
3,Jeremy Baynham
4,Martin Bedford
5,Gareth Shiells
5,Chris Granby
7,Jon Carolan
7,Claire Lickman
9,David Bowery
9,Steven Dale
12,Pete Bennett
12,Jim King
12,Phil Stokes
12,Andy Brock
16,Alan Jones
16,Sergio Olave
16,Paul Woollard
16,Dave Ashton
19,George Bennett
19,Clare Johnson
22,Nick Clark
22,Lee Parkin
22,Ben Leigh
24,Roy Smith
24,Isaac Granby
26,Thomas Calvert
looking forward to seeing you all again soon
. Great vibes, great food Lee and @Jmac, another vote for the vegan green curry from me.
). Congrats to @OTRawrior and @NateG119, and a special shout out to Martin who played up a storm all day, great to see after hitting a barren patch, obviously the laser eyes have bedded in!
it was a stunner and a joy to play one of the best classics in such good shape.
