Road Show Tips

[PinStratsDan]

I’m slowly but surely finding my feet with Pinball FX3 on my recently bought Xbox One.  I’ve been playing some tournaments (but am not a big fan because achievements and scores does not count in the long run) but my main goal I set myself is to see if I can get into the top-ten (or at least the top-twenty) leaderboards on classic arcade physics for the Williams / Bally tables.  The first table I tried it on is Roadshow and I finally managed a top-ten score after a few weeks of playing a bit a day (I love being able to do so on the quicker, more intense Williams / Bally tables).

New High Score (ranked 9th): 1,383,871,150 [1drv.ms]

Here is the last 5 minutes of the game as recorded with my Xbox.

https://youtu.be/Ltn804lVT5A

I don’t feel like I mastered the table yet, and I botched two big scoring opportunities and an extra ball in this game; I immediately lost all the balls on super payday (San Francisco - Monster Attack), I bricked a shot to start pay day multiball losing my last ball, and I could have gone for the multiplier multiball but didn't notice. I’ll definitely go for a bigger score again in future but for now I’ll move on to another table.

Here are some tips that worked for me in this game: 

- The skill shot into the blast / wheel hole is easy to get and the score increases each time you hit it (to a max of 25M) and reward you with a souvenir (which can pay out handsomely with an end-of-ball bonus) so go for it at every opportunity.
- Go for Red each time you can as the score also increase for big millions (to a max of 25M) each time you hit her and you also get a Cheeseburger bonus of 20M if you hit her often enough.
- My original strategy was to go for the Payday multi-ball and not worry so much about playing the city modes, but I soon realised that playing the city modes is a much better approach for advancing your score.
- It is difficult, but it is worth trying to advance the bonus multipliers as you can get big end-of-ball bonus scores (I got 360M at end of one ball).  There is some specific mechanism at play how to advance it, but shooting up the left and right ramps in combo seems to do the trick.

What strategy work for you when playing this table?

Edit: Here are some tips in reply to my post on Facebook by Bob Steele:

1) Watch Bowen's tutorial on the PAPA youtube channel and be sure to thank him if you ever get to meet him in person! The one he did on Road Show is by far the best.
2) I pretty much never shoot for Reds mouth - the main reason is I usually miss and put the ball out of control and the second one is the magic standup - see tip one to know what I am talking about there.
3) On the initial plunge, sometimes I don't go for the skill shot - instead I try to change my first city to Miami then start that mode. I've racked up over 100M many times ripping the spinner over and over again. The New York mode is not worth the risky shots to the dozer.
4) After Miami, I go for the skill shot every time to get the free souvenirs - I also shoot the bunker as often as I can to get those souvenirs as well. You can activate the bunker souvenir by shooting the right loop (up between Red & Ted) which will put you in the bumpers so be ready for that feed to fly at you once in a while.
5) I always try to advance the multiplier as the main priority - after your 2 ramp shots to advance it, be sure to get the "spin the wheel" reward before you advance to the next one. After 6x, the wheel awards go away. Sometimes I will throw in a mode start as I'm progressing the multiplier. I had a 900M+ bonus on my recent 7 billion+ game that i played the other night - that score was achieved without any multi-balls (other than the ones you get with some of the modes) so building that bonus is far more valuable than any multi-ball can be unless you are really good at hitting red over and over again.
6) Try to stay away from the risky shots in a few of the modes (New York & Nashville are the main ones). The risk/reward of those modes aren't worthwhile. You can usually get a few accidental shots in Nashville just flipping around but I don't try to aim for it. The nice thing about Nashville is as long as you have the 2 balls going, the mode doesn't end.
7) Never ever sell your souvenirs - they are worth much much more in bonus!
That's about it for what I do...... good luck to all!

and my reply...

I did watch the excellent PAPA tutorial video and initially I started the game off as he (and yourself) suggested but eventually figured out that I can just restart if I don't score or lose the ball on the New York mode (although I'll definitely play Miami if I start that up). I find hitting Red not that risky in arcade physics mode or rather not much more risky than just letting the ball drop. I'll definitely weigh it up next time I play but for now I'm first going to play some other table.