History Maker Baseball Review

The last couple of posts have dealt with some nostalgic games from my past.  Now, we'll take a look at a game I was just introduced to - History Maker Baseball.  Let me start by saying HMB is different than any other baseball game I've ever played.  It's great at some things and doesn't do other things as well as other games on the market.

How is the game different?  Well, the primary difference is the player cards don't have tons of number on them.  The only numbers are the season the set is from, the team the player is on (for fictional sets), and the year in the trademark.  So, how do you play a game without numbers on the cards?  I'm glad you asked.  Let's find out.

Each player is rated at a position like most games.  Additionally, hitters are rated for right handed, left handed or switch hitter.  Pitchers are also rated on which hand they throw with.  There's a fielding rating for each player and a baserunning rating.  That all sounds the same as the rest of the baseball sims, right?  Here's where it changes.

Players are also given qualities.  For instance, Joe Morgan, MVP from the 1975 Reds is rated at as Semi-Champion, Semi-Slugger, and Patient.  Meanwhile, my childhood hero, Johnny Bench, is rated Semi-Hero, Semi-Slugger, Semi-Home Run King, and Semi Whiffer.  If you're like I was, you're probably wondering how can those qualities drive the game, and, oh yeah, what do you mean Semi?

These qualities are the engine that makes this game go.  To initiate an at bat, you roll three six sided dice and cross reference the result off a chart from the game book.  There are three columns in the chart.  The first is the pitcher column and it might ask if the pitcher has a certain quality or it might be blank.  If the pitcher has the quality, a result will occur.  If not or if the column is blank, you move on to the batters column and follow the same procedure.  If that doesn't produce a result, you move to the fielder column which will produce a result.

For instance, on a roll of 1-1-1, you will check the chart under the pitcher's column.  It asks if the pitcher has the ACE quality.  If so, the hitter grounds out to 3B.  If not, you check the hitter's column.  It asks if the hitter has the SCRAPPER quality.  If so, he hits a double.  If not, you check the Fielder column for the result.  For this die roll, the result is a Home Run to LF.

OK, but what about all those semi qualities?  This is a great innovation that designer Keith Avallone came up with.  Any of the qualities of players can be semi qualities meaning they are somewhere between possessing that quality and not.  So for any given at bat, if a player is semi at a given quality and the chart is asking if the player has that quality, you roll the decider die.  The decider die has three blank sides and three sides with a dot.  If you roll the dot, the player has that quality for that at bat.

I'll roll a quick at bat as an example.  We'll go back to the 1975 season and look at a World Series at bat between Joe Morgan and the Red Sox ace Luis Tiant.  The dice roll is 1-4-6 (always go from lowest die to highest).  The chart asks if Tiant has the Flash rating.  He is semi-Flash so we roll the decider die.  It comes up blank so he doesn't have the flash quality.  If he did, it would have been a strikeout since Morgan doesn't have the Good Eye quality.  Since it didn't, we go to the batter column and it says to check if Morgan has the Champion quality.  Morgan, as we stated above, is a semi-Champion.  A roll of the die indicates he is a Champion for this at bat at and as a result bloops a single into left field.  Had the decider come up no, we would move to the fielder column which would result in a ground out to 2B.

One aspect of this game that I love is the Game Day feature.  Each day before the start of the game, you need to determine the teams' mood and chemistry for the game.  The roll is dependant on the teams' success over the previous game or games.  Next, you determine based on your prior game (or games) who each team's hot and cold batter is.  This can come up in the game and can help players on a hot streak or hurt those that are slumping.  Finally, you check the message board.  This is done based on your team's mood.  A team in a stormy mood might get bad news while a team in  a sunny mood will likely get good news.  Very cool feature.

There are multiple charts in the game book that affect the game besides the main play chart.  You might be directed to the Infield Drama or Outfield Drama chart in which a player's fielding quality will be checked and will impact the result.  Similarly, Plate drama tends to look at pitcher and catcher qualities.  The Baseball Right Now chart looks at the batter/pitcher to see if they are hot or cold either as a result of the Game Day decision or the result of the prior at bat.  There's a player experience chart and team chemistry chart that impacts the game.  Finally, there are ballpark,umpire, and rare play charts.  So much good stuff.

This game is extremely fun to play.  I was worried I wouldn't like this game as I'm a bit of a simulationist and I didn't see how qualities could accurately simulate a game.  And, to be honest, I still don't think this game would be as statistically accurate as most others on the market, but this game doesn't attempt to recreate a past history but to create a new history if that makes sense.  The results should be close enough that it will pass the sniff test, but you shouldn't expect to have players do exactly what they did in real life.

Where this game truly shines for me is the fictional card set.  Keith has created a fictional card set so that you can create your own universe.  I've created my own league using the twelve team fictional set I bought from Plaay.com along with the card creation instructions (yes he sells this for a very small fee so you can create your own cards).  I've created a league of the six largest cities without an MLB team in California (where I'm from) against the six largest cities in the rest of the US without a team.  I plan to play a season and then "advance" my players.  Some will retire, some will get better, some worse, and new players will be called up from the minors.

Why a fictional universe?  There are no expectations tied to player cards.  I don't have to concern myself with statistical accuracy.  I don't have to decide if I'm using as played lineups or not.  My players and teams will grow and change.  But most importantly, it's a blast.  It's a completely different experience than playing Statis Pro or Strat-O-Matic.

So what's my verdict?  This game is a home run all the way.  No doubt about it.  I'm not sure there's a funner game of baseball out there.  I personally wouldn't use HMB to replay a MLB season, but for fictional leagues, History Maker Baseball is the top dog in my book.

Statis Pro Basketball Reviewed

If you read my last post, you will see I started playing Statis Pro Baseball as a Freshman in college. Well, after discovering Statis Pro Baseball, I heard there was also a Statis Pro Basketball.  Being almost as big a basketball nut as a baseball fan, I decided to spend some of my hard earned money to get this game.

Unlike Statis Pro Baseball, I never was part of a Statis Pro Basketball league.  But that doesn't mean I didn't have fun with the game.  On the contrary.  I played this game a ton.  I played with at least four different people from my dorm.  One friend and I started a replay of the season.  Unfortunately we never finished it, but we had a blast.

Well, after cleaning out my garage, I found my old copy and it was pretty beat up, but everything was there.  I decided to play a game to see if the game was like I remembered.

Statis Pro Basketball, like it's baseball counterpart, is driven by a fast action deck.  The game flows quickly and is probably the fastest tabletop basketball game I've played.  Everything runs quickly and smoothly, but it feels like it's simulating most of the results well.  If you are coaching a team with outstanding rebounders, but poor defenders, you will find yourself yelling at your players to play some defense so you can take advantage of your rebounding.

I replayed an early season game between the Knicks and Celtics from 1988 and was pleased with the result.  The Knicks won 109-100.  The score was a bit low, but there was probably a good reason for that.

Each team had a starter injured.  Robert Parrish and Johnny Newman both got hurt and are also scheduled to miss their next games.  Additionally, Trent Tucker and Danny Ainge got into a fight and were ejected.  Finally, there is also a mechanic that forces you to sometimes rest players for the remainder of the period.  That occurred four times including twice right at the beginning of a quarter.  There were a lot of minutes played by subs.  I love these rules, however the amount of roster juggling I had to do to play this game was extreme.  I'm going to chalk this up to chance and say it won't happen anywhere near this bad usually.

There is a home field advantage chart that allows you to ignore or change certain results depending on how strong your team's home court advantage is.  It seems like a good innovation that allows teams to have records more reflective of how they actually played at home and on the road.  Every once in a while there's a team that actually performs better on the road, however, so maybe they should have home and road ratings to balance things out for the road warriors.  Overall, I'm a fan of this mechanic regardless.

What would I change?  Well, I'm not a huge fan of the stamina rules.  It's based on shots attempted.  So if you have a guy that is gunning because the FAC deck keeps calling his number, you might have to sit him a lot longer than he'd regularly have to sit.  I much prefer a minute based fatigue system such as the one in Strat-o-Matic.

There are a few other aspects that Strat-o-Matic did better than Statis Pro.  First and foremost, there's not a system in place to get the ball to your highest volume shooters.  On occasion you get to choose who gets the ball, but there's no mechanism in place that gets the ball to your shooters.  Second, the assist system is practically non-existent.  The rules as written will get you nowhere near the number of assists the players actually made.  Finally the only distinction between shot types is two or three point shot.  There's no differentiating between outside shots, inside shots or penetration.

Even with these flaws, the game is still a ton of fun to play.  If I was going to teach someone how to play a tabletop basketball game, I'd pull out Statis Pro.  It's easy to play and much quicker than some other games.  The Home Field Advantage mechanic actually gives the home coach some extra strategic choices to make.  Additionally it will make teaching other basketball games a bit easier.  It's not a slam dunk or a three pointer - just a nice soft mid range jumper.

Statis Pro Baseball Review

Statis Pro Baseball brings back many fond memories for me.  It really catapulted my involvement in the table top sports hobby.  I started playing Statis Pro Baseball my Freshman year in college.  My buddy was joining a league and asked me if I'd be interested.  Of course!  Well, little did I know then, that I would still be playing in these leagues almost thirty years later.

So how does Statis Pro hold up in today's world?  Would I still join a Statis Pro league?  What's good about the game and what would I change?  Let's examine these questions.

The first thing I noticed about Statis Pro Baseball upon playing the game again is how cool the mechanics are for pitchers.  Each pitcher is given a PB rating which is used to determine whether the result of each plate appearance will be read off the pitcher's card or the hitter's card.  Additionally, prior to entering the game each pitcher makes a check to see if he's got good stuff, poor stuff or average stuff.  I'm a huge fan of the PB rating as well as the concept that pitcher's sometimes have a little extra and other times are just a bit off.  Score a HR for Statis Pro on this area.

You also immediately notice there are no dice!  The game's engine is a Fast Action deck.  This FAC deck lends itself to a quick resolution of games once you get the hang of the game.  I can knock out a game of Statis Pro quicker than I can with any other tabletop baseball game I've played and I credit the FAC deck with a lot of that.  Not quite a homer as randomizing cards is not as simple as randomizing dice rolls, however I love the speed.  Give them a triple for this innovation.

The other thing I love about this game is it is fun.  The game might not be as statistically accurate as other games and it does feel a bit dated, but the game is still a blast to play.  This would probably be my go-to game if I was trying to introduce someone new to the hobby.  The game is easy to learn and is mostly intuitive.  To me it's much funner to play Statis Pro with someone that playing it solitaire.  Perhaps that is because I cut my teeth on this game and always played it with others.  Fun factor is a solid double.

Now a game of baseball is not complete without some outs.  Statis Pro makes quite a few outs.  As I said before the game feels a bit dated and there are some rules that feel pasted on.

How is the game dated?  Well, there are no lefty/righty splits or ballpark effects.  Both are practically required for a baseball game I'm going to play.  Statis Pro includes a simplistic lefty/righty rule, but it's the same for everyone.  There are no hitters that crush lefties or one out lefty relievers.  I really miss that depth if I'm playing a season or a tournament.  The lack of ballpark effects is also disappointing to me.  I want the Padres to play completely different in Colorado than they do at home.  I don't get that.  For me this is a strikeout.

I'm also not very enthusiastic with how some of the strategies available to managers are implemented in the game.  The base stealing system doesn't include any way to differentiate between how well pitcher's hold runners on base.  It's a minor quibble, but a quibble nonetheless.  Bunting for a hit seemed like it was a bit too good.  Of course, maybe that's because there was a guy in my league in college that abused that and the hit and run.  Oh, the hit and run.  That chart needs some major help.  A great hit and run man is extremely valuable in Statis Pro as the hit and run chart is very kind to him.  I'll give this a groundout since much of this stuff is fixable with a couple tweaks.

Overall, I'd rate Statis Pro as a solid single.  It's a quick, fun game that will always remain in my collection and have a soft spot in my heart.  This game is my game of choice when I'm teaching someone how to play tabletop baseball because it's simple, elegant and quick.  There are some people that still sell Statis Pro cards online so you can continue to play the game with today's players.  Some of those people have even included lefty righty splits which is a huge plus for me.  I haven't tried these out so I can't speak to the quality of the cards.  Regardless, I recommend everyone at least play Statis Pro once and yes I would join a Statis Pro Face to Face league in a heartbeat.  Have you played Statis Pro?  What are your thoughts on the game?