Northstar Pinball Collective: 55 games in Savage, and one player has won 110 tournaments

There is a stat on the Northstar Pinball Collective page that stops people the first time they see it. The venue has hosted 355 tracked tournaments since it opened. Luke Nahorniak has won 110 of them.

Not finished in the money. Won.

He has also run 351 of the 355, which is the other half of the story and the part that explains the place. Northstar is a collection in Savage that opens Friday evening through Sunday and puts a tournament on most of the days it is open, and for almost three years one person has been both the tournament director and the hardest out in the building.

The room

The Pinball Map listing calls it the second largest collection of pins in Minnesota, which sounds like a boast until you look at the lineup. Fifty-five machines, twenty dollars at the door, everything on free play. Open Fridays 5pm to 11pm, Saturdays and Sundays 11am to 7pm.

What sets the floor apart is how far back it goes. Most rooms in the metro that call themselves classic-heavy top out around 1980. Northstar has a 1972 Granada and a 1972 Spanish Eyes, a 1973 Pro-Football, and a 1976 Grand Prix sitting alongside Royal Flush and Sure Shot. Then a wall of late-seventies Bally and Stern: Black Jack, Eight Ball, Lost World, Mars Trek, Prospector, Wild Fyre, Supersonic, Space Invaders, Gorgar, Meteor, Paragon.

The modern side is not an afterthought. JAWS, King Kong, Venom, Rush, a Spooky Scooby-Doo, Avengers: Infinity Quest, Jurassic Park, Iron Maiden, Guardians of the Galaxy. Enough to run a modern-only event without repeating yourself.

What gets picked

Twelve thousand completed tournament games later, the machines that have carried the most weight are these:

A Stern Mustang LE with 331 tournament games on it is not something you find in many databases. Neither is Black Jack at 270, a 1977 Bally two-inch-flipper machine that has decided more matches here than most modern games manage anywhere.

If you are heading over and you want one machine to study, look at whichever of those eight you have the worst record on. The venue page lists the whole bank, and every machine name links through to its own page with the local leaderboard and the score record.

The schedule

Friday at 7pm is the anchor: 83 events have started in that slot. Sunday at noon is right behind with 78, Saturday at 2pm has 39, and Thursday at 6:30pm accounts for another 36. Format varies more than at most venues. Group knockout leads with 139 events, group match play has 68, group brackets 67, plus a run of pace match play, Amazing Race qualifiers, and two double round robins.

Fields average 15.2, which is smaller than LITT or Broken Clock, and that is by design. Many of these are weekend afternoon events that eight to twenty people drop into. The big ones are genuinely big:

• Opening day, 3 December 2023: 68 players, three-strike, won by Neil Graf.
• NPC Amazing Race qualifying, September 2024: 58 players.
• Sam and Jared's Farewell Pinball Party, April 2024: 57 players, won by Eric Fryc.
• Hammond's 40th Birthday Bounty, June 2024: 50 players, and Daniel Hammond won his own birthday bounty.
• Super Ball XL, September 2026: 43 players in qualifying, with David Marcis taking the final.

The Super Series events rotate around the state and Northstar hosts a leg most years.

Who wins here

Nahorniak sits 15th in the IFPA world rankings, so the home-field dominance is not really an upset. Winning 65 percent of the events you enter at any level is still remarkable, and it does not soften when the field gets deep.

Keith Hanson at 35 wins from 135 starts is the second most feared name in the room. Neil Graf, IFPA 27th, has only played 31 events here and won ten of them.

Paul Tvedt leads attendance with 169, one more than Nahorniak. Brian Spencer has 160, Joe Heil 144. Angie DonCarlos has nine wins across 61 events, and Belles and Chimes Minneapolis has brought four of its own events here.

Before you drive to Savage

Check the current lineup first. Fifty-five machines is a lot of surface area and the venue page keeps the list synced from Pinball Map, so you can see what is on the floor before you commit an afternoon.

Then look at your own numbers. Your profile's All machines tab scores every game you have played in tournament conditions, and at a venue this classic-heavy the gap between your modern game and your seventies game matters more than usual. If you have never put a ball through a two-inch-flipper Bally, Black Jack and Lost World are going to come up.

The scouting report takes the venue, you, and up to three opponents, and hands back picks and bans off the current bank. The arena report is the full document: every machine with a local leaderboard and every regular's best and worst games here.

And if you are wondering whether you can just show up and enter, the answer at Northstar has been yes for three years running. Bring twenty dollars.

Other rooms worth reading about: LITT Pinball Bar in Minneapolis, Blainbrook in Blaine, and the monthly Broken Clock three-strike.

More from the blog: where to play competitive pinball in Minnesota covers the rest of the rooms, and how WPPR points are calculated explains why a deep field here is worth more to your ranking than a bigger one somewhere else.

Featured photo from the Northstar Pinball Collective listing on Pinball Map, which is also the source of the machine lineup shown on this site.