Is it just me or is the Shaman board pretty much impossible?

[Illmad]

I mean, I've bought six tables so far, and this is the only one where I constantly lose my balls to the left and right ball pits. I haven't been able to play this table more than a couple minutes at best before gaming over. Sometimes the balls hit an obstacle right after I send them out on the table and bounce right into the side ball pits.
Pinball is a game about skill, but I feel this table in particular leaves way too much up to chance.

So far I regret buying it, which is sad because I love its art style, but I'm writing here in hopes of someone maybe having some tips about how to best avoid the ball falling into the side pits. Otherwise there's also the slight chance of Zen fixing this if it turns out the table actually is unintentionally difficult.

Well, I can hope at least.

[shogun00]

They're called outlanes.

The best way to avoid those is to light up the kickbacks by spelling out "MAGIC" on the rollovers near the flippers. You can shuffle the lit letters around with the flipper buttons. The simplest way to hit those roll overs is by hitting the left and right ramps.

You can also hit the CAST holes a few times to light up the 30 second ball save.

[Illmad]

Thanks! That'll be helpful, although it still doesn't change the fact that the balls usually bounce down the outlanes before I manage to do any of those things. Even tried two games before posting this trying out your tips, and twice during the same game the ball went straight into the right outlane after being released from the CAST hole without even going near any of the paddles. The ball is dropped in an ark that often lands it on the top of the kicker which renders it impossible to alter its course before it's out.

layout.jpg

After doing some more research it turns out that Shaman is the only table I own without the small nooks above the outlanes (Perhaps aside from Moon Knight, as I haven't played it yet, I'm just looking over images right now), so it's no wonder its unforgiving.
As a newbie player I won't buy any more tables without those features. It just seems unfair and it's impossible for me to get far in it.

Perhaps the shop should display the difficulty of the tables so that newbie players aren't put off by accidentally purchasing the most difficult table available as their first DLC? Or there could be easy, normal and hard versions of each table with slightly varying layouts. Probably too big of a suggestion, but still worth putting out there I think.

[shogun00]

Perhaps the shop should display the difficulty of the tables so that newbie players aren't put off by accidentally purchasing the most difficult table available as their first DLC? Or there could be easy, normal and hard versions of each table with slightly varying layouts. Probably too big of a suggestion, but still worth putting out there I think.

You can adjust the difficulty by going into the Operator's Menu.

You can adjust the number of balls per game (up to 10), adjust the table slop, turn off the tilt (infinite nudging), adjust the difficulty on each mission, and much more.

[Illmad]

It's a bit of a turnoff not playing to get on the leaderboards, but playing Shaman with 10 lives taught me a few things about how the table works at least. I still think it's incredibly unfair the way it drops balls right into the outlanes without me being capable of preventing it, and it's still my least favorite board because of this, but at least it's somewhat playable now. Thanks

[hillie16]

Shaman is probably my least favorite table for this reason, followed closely by Tesla, and Civil War.

[Illmad]

I was actually thinking of buying Tesla. Thanks for the warning

[StewAtTheU]

Shaman is probably my least favorite table for this reason, followed closely by Tesla, and Civil War.

I would probably have to agree with those as my bottom 3 as well. Although I think that Tesla is significantly better than the other 2 and I might switch Masters of the Force with Tesla. Tesla does not really have all of the ball drain issues that Shaman has, plus it is really easy to get the ball save, so your games can last awhile. Tesla is solid, it just is more of a traditional table and is very, very, very low scoring.