Transformers Pinball Championship: Player Rules

Everything you need to know to play, survive, and (maybe) become Grand Champion.

The Premise

You’ve been placed on one of three teams (Autobots, Decepticons, or Quintessons) for the whole competition. No swapping teams once you’re in.

You’re a Transformer, and you run on Energon Battery. Every week, you have a personal Target Score to beat on the club’s Transformers machine. Beat it, and you’re fine. Miss it, and you take damage. Run your Battery all the way to empty, and you’re out of the running for Grand Champion, but you’re not out of the game. You keep playing and keep helping your team for the rest of the season.

There’s no fixed number of weeks. The competition runs until only one player is still standing: that player is the Grand Champion.

Your Target Score

Your Target is yours: it’s not the same number everyone else is chasing.

• Week 1: everyone starts on the same baseline, the machine’s average score that week.
• Every week after that: your Target is built from a blend of the machine’s average and your own average best score so far. If you’re a strong player averaging in the hundreds of millions, your Target reflects that. If you’re just getting started and averaging 20 million, that’s your number instead.

That means a brand-new player and a club veteran are both chasing the exact same thing: beat your own number. Nobody’s target is easier or harder because of who they are. It’s built from their own play.

Every week, the bar creeps up a little for everyone, gently at first and more noticeably as the season goes on. The challenge escalates at the same rate for the whole field.

The math, if you’re curious: your best single game each week is what counts (play as many games as you like, only your top score matters). From Week 2 on:
Target = ((Machine Average + Your Own Average) / 2) × that week's difficulty multiplier.
You can always see your exact Target, and the numbers that built it, by tapping the Target card on your My Status page in the app.

Energon Battery (staying alive)

Everyone starts the season at 100% Battery.

• Beat or meet your Target: no damage. You’re fine.
• Miss your Target, or don’t play that week at all: you lose Battery. The further you miss by, the more you lose, up to a cap of 34% in a single week. Not playing at all always costs you the full 34%.
• Hit 0% and you’re in Stasis Lock, locked out of Grand Champion contention. Since one bad week can cost at most 34%, it takes three rough weeks (missed, no-showed, or some mix) to end your title run.

The only way to recover Battery is your team winning the week (see below). There’s no other way to heal.

Stasis Lock (out of the title race, not out of the game)

Hitting 0% Battery doesn’t mean you’re benched:

• You still get a personal Target every week, calculated exactly the same way as everyone else’s.
• Beating it still earns your team Energon Surplus (see below): you can still directly help your team win, every single week.
• Your own Battery and Rust are frozen the moment you hit Stasis Lock. Nothing that happens after restores your shot at Grand Champion, but nothing more can happen to you either.
• Even if your team wins the week, a Stasis-Locked player doesn’t get a Battery recharge. That recovery is reserved for players still in contention.

Rust (the cost of sitting out)

Skipping a week doesn’t just cost you Battery. It also makes your next Target harder to hit.

• Skip a week: +1 Rust point.
• Play a week, win or lose: −1 Rust point (down to a floor of 0).
• Each Rust point adds 5% to your Target. Three Rust points means your Target is 15% higher than it would otherwise be.

Since three missed weeks in a row ends your run anyway, two in a row is about the longest you can disappear and still be in it, and you’ll come back to a noticeably tougher number.

Energon Surplus & the Team Energon Ranking

Beating your Target doesn’t just protect your own Battery. The margin by which you beat it becomes Energon Surplus, and that Surplus feeds your team.

• Every player’s Surplus that week (Stasis-Locked or not) gets added up per team.
• The three teams are ranked by their combined total.
• The top team’s members who are still in contention each get a Battery recharge, the only source of Battery recovery in the whole competition. The size of the recharge is strongest early in the season and fades to nothing by roughly the halfway point, so it’s a season-opening boost, not a permanent safety net.

This is the whole reason teams exist: even once you’re out of the Grand Champion race yourself, every point you score above your Target is still fuel for your team’s recharge next week.

Grand Champion & Ties

The season ends the moment only one player remains outside Stasis Lock. That player is the Grand Champion.

If two or more of the last players standing get knocked into Stasis Lock in the exact same week, whoever missed their own Target by the smallest margin that week wins. If it’s still an exact tie after that, a club admin resolves it manually.

Joining Mid-Season

There’s no signup form and no roster to add yourself to. The moment your Stern Insider Connected username shows up on the club machine’s leaderboard, you’re automatically placed on a team and given a Target, whether or not you’ve linked it to your club account yet. Link it whenever you like (My Status page in the app) and everything you’ve already earned under that username carries over untouched.

Joining after Week 1 has already started? You’re treated as if you’d been here the whole time and simply missed the weeks before you joined:

Weekly Schedule

Each week closes automatically every Friday at 2:00 AM Eastern, and the next week opens immediately after. Check the countdown on your My Status page, the Broadcast page, or the TV screen in the club to see exactly how much time is left in the current week.

Where to Check Everything

• My Status (in the app): your team, Battery, Rust, this week’s Target and score, and your full week-by-week history. Tap any card for a breakdown of how that number was calculated.
• Broadcast (in the app): full team standings and rosters.
• The TV screen in the club: live team standings, updated continuously.

Good luck out there. Protect your Battery, beat your number, and carry your team.