Stray Dog: eight machines on Hennepin and the Alley Cat series

Stray Dog is the newest room in this record. The first tournament there ran on 16 May 2026. As of mid-September there have been nine, and they have already pulled 150 entries from 60 different players.

It is at 401 East Hennepin, the games are in the back, and the Pinball Map listing includes the line "top tier food", which is not something you usually get to say about a tournament venue.

Eight machines, and they all get used

The bank is small and deliberately chosen: Pokémon and Transformers from 2026, The Uncanny X-Men in Premium trim, Jurassic Park, Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, a 1995 Attack From Mars and a 1977 Bally Lost World. Hansen Pinball Repair operates it.

Four months of tournaments have distributed across those eight about as evenly as you would expect:

Total Nuclear Annihilation and a Stern Transformers from 2011 appear in the record but are not on the current floor, so the bank has already rotated once.

With eight machines and fields that average 16.7, you play nearly everything in a single event. There is no ducking Lost World because you do not like two-inch flippers.

The Alley Cat series

Eight of the nine events have started at 1pm on a Saturday, and most carry the same name: Alley Cat. James Skelley directs them, usually under the Stern Army banner.

The format that gives the series its shape is target match play, which the site records as its own type. Three of the nine have used it, each feeding a group bracket final the same afternoon:

The Transformers launch party is the venue record at 28, and Skochinski won both the qualifier and the 14-player final.

The September womxn's night was run by Belles and Chimes Minneapolis and went to Allison Thompson, her first title in the record.

Who is winning early

Four wins from six starts is a hot streak by any measure, and Skochinski has been doing the same thing across town at LITT this year. His player page is worth a look if you want to see what a run like that does to a rating.

Attendance is tightly bunched, as it has to be after four months: Angie DonCarlos and James Skelley have seven each, then Brendon Hertz, Skochinski, Melissa DonCarlos and Daniel Hammond on six.

Sixty distinct players through nine events means the room is pulling new faces rather than recycling the same twenty. That is the number to watch over the next year.

Getting ready for a target match play

Target match play scores you against a target rather than purely against your group, so a strong game still counts when you lose the four-player match. Two things follow from that.

First, machine knowledge matters more than usual. You want a number on the board, not just a win. The playbook tabs on X-Men, Jurassic Park and Deadpool are the ones to read, since those three have taken the most games here.

Second, the Scores tab on each machine page tells you what has actually been posted on that machine in this room. On a bank of eight, that is eight numbers you can memorise in five minutes.

For the group comparison, the scouting report takes Stray Dog, you, and up to three opponents and returns picks and bans off the current bank. The arena report is the longer version with every machine's leaderboard.

Saturdays at 1pm. Check the venue page for the next date.

More from the blog: where to play competitive pinball in Minnesota is the tour of the other rooms, and head-to-head records covers the part of scouting that the pick-and-ban lists leave out.

Featured image generated for this post. The machine lineup comes from the Stray Dog listing on Pinball Map, which is the place to update it if a game moves.