Dale Yu:  Sports Games of All Sorts Part Two

Over the past two years, I’ve sort of slipped into the role of the default sports game reviewer here at Boardgamenews.com.  Many of the sports-related games that we have received for review have eventually made it across my desk.  This is a role that I’m happy to take on as I have a high level of interest for games with a sporting theme.

This love of sports games likely springs from the fact that I pretty much have a love of sports.  More often than not, my non-boardgaming time is spent watching/participating/coaching sports of all types.  My primary sport is soccer (Football for you Europeans), and I try to keep tabs on both the domestic league (MLS) as well as the Bundesliga, EPL, and Champions League.  I also certainly love the major American sports and my hierarchy of those is:  NFL > NCAA Football > NCAA Basketball > NHL > PGA > MLB > Auto Racing > NBA.  (As the author of this column, I get to decide what sports I see as “major”!) My travels abroad (and friends from abroad) have also cultivated a love of less commonly known sports such as rugby (both league and union), Aussie Rules, Cricket (though preferably one-days or 20/20 as opposed to Test Matches), Gaelic sports (especially Hurling), Cycling and a multitude of other sports.

Lucky for me, there are many boardgames available that tap into this interest.  Some of the games merely use the idea or theme of the game and paste that onto the game itself.  Other games try to provide a simulation of the actual sport.  Others might give a more simplified or stylized version of a game.  There is also the rare game that gives a dexterity based recreation of the game.  However, like boardgames of any other type, there are winners and there are losers. 

So, what makes a sports game good?  In the end, the same things that make any game good or bad.  Is the game fun?  Does it have nice components?  Do I want to play it again after a game?  Some special considerations that I take into account for a sports game include:  Does the game capture the flavor of the real sport?  Would the game succeed if it had another (non-sports-based) theme?  But in the end, I judge a sports game on essentially the same criteria I would for any regular game.

What I thought would be fun to do is to go through the different sports and look at my favorite games involving each one.  As you’ll see, there is a host of different criteria that cause a game to appeal to me. 
I’ll try to classify the games a bit by explaining what sort of “sports game” they are and why I like them.

In the first installment, I looked at Football (Soccer) Games and American Football games.
This week, it’s time for Baseball, (Basketball), and Hockey!

Take a look at the list and see what you think.  I’d also be very interested to see if there are any games out there that I may have missed! 

Well, what about the Great American Pastime, Baseball?  Baseball can be an all-encompassing hobby – given that the regular season stretches over 6 months as each profession team plays a staggering (or mind numbing) total of 162 games!  The game itself is a statistician’s wet dream, and there are all sorts of ways for fans and addicts to crunch the numbers to evaluate how their teams and players are doing.  While many of the baseball games out there play on the baseball fan’s love of statistics to generate a realistic replay of a game, most of the games that I like stray away from that uber-realistic angle.

Diceball
Type of Game: dicefest simulated game
Why I like It: Well, as my introduction likely made clear, I’m not into the super realistic baseball simulations. This game uses dice rolling (a lot of dice-rolling) to simulate a baseball game.  To start, the pitcher rolls a d6 – which generates a ball, strike or hit.  Hits only occur when the pitching die is a 6, so there’s a fair amount of striking out or walking.  If there is a hit, the batter then rolls a d6 to determine how many dice he will roll (between one and six) to generate the hit result.  The appropriate number of dice are rolled and the ball is placed on the board to see what happens.  Most of the numbers 20 and under end up in an out.  Numbers in the 20s are generally hits and any result over 27 is a homerun.  If the ball is a hit, it is placed on the appropriate spot, and there is now a race between the runner and the fielder.  The runner rolls a single d6 and moves between the basepaths (8 spaces between bases) and he fielder has to use a single d6 to move towards picking up the ball.  That’s pretty much all there is to the game… and yes, it sounds like a lot of rolling.  But, it’s fun and engaging – and the rolling never seems like it’s too much.  The game was also improved in my youth by a full set of house rules where we generated house rules to give each player a speedster, power hitter, contact hitter, defensive specialist, etc – all with special rules to modify the dice rolls.  This is still by far my most favorite baseball game, and I guess it’s a bit damning that my favorite game of the great American pastime is made by a Canadian company based in Montreal.  Oh well, c’est la vie.

Strat-O-Matic Baseball
Type of Game: statistical based replay
Why I like It: Well, though I generally stray away from the realistic statistical games, I was sucked into Strat-O-Matic (SOM) for one summer, and this game remains my favorite of the stats based games.  The beauty of SOM is that each game is a realistic representation of a real baseball season.  Each player has their own individualized card with their actual statistics represented on that card.  So, if you have the 1975 set, you could replay the greatest world series of all time pitting the Big Red Machine up against those loser Boston Red Sox.  However, the cards from different years can be used with each other – giving gamers the ability to create historically impossible games such as the 1975 Reds versus the 1927 Murderers Row Yankees.  Anyways, each card has a set of results on it that statistically represents the actual stats from that year.  For any given at bat, the result will come from the pitcher’s card 50% of the time and from the batter’s card 50% of the time.  Three dice are rolled (1 white and 2 red) for each at bat.  The white die tells you what column to use (1, 2, and 3 are found on the batter card – and 4, 5, 6 are found on the pitcher card).  The red dice are totaled and tell you which result to look up in the column which was determined earlier.  Apply the result and move onto the next batter.  In any event, I like SOM as it incorporates real-life statistics while keeping the game easy to play and manage.  I had a really good summer replaying the 1975 World Series over and over and over again with a friend who grew up near Boston.  For another description of how the game works (and a view of a sample pitcher card), you can look at:  http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/atg2/about/popup_faq_pitchers.html

Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game
Type of Game: Card Game with a Baseball theme
Why I like It: OK, let me start by saying there’s nothing realistic about this game at all – it’s just a nice card game which has a baseball theme added to it.  In this game, players alternate playing cards for batters in a game.  Each player has a hand of three cards from which he chooses a card to play from (which represents the result of a player’s plate appearance), and then a new card is drawn to bring the hand back up to three.  The cards have results such as: Single, Double, Triple, Homerun, Walk, Hit By Pitch, Wild Pitch, Passed Ball, Stolen Base, Ground Out, Strike Out, Fly Out, Double Play, as well as a few others.  If a hit occurs, the card is placed on the bases.  Once there is a runner, he follows the time-honored rules of ghost running by moving ahead the same number of bases as any hits made later on.  So, as you can see, the player who is batting tries to play hits or other cards that advance the runners while the player who is pitching tries to play outs or other bad cards.  Of course, when you have a hand of only three cards, you might have to play a card which isn’t in the best interest of your team – but that’s the great thing about the game – having to make these hand-management decisions.  The game plays quickly (about 15-20 minutes), and there is constant activity in the game as you have to play every other card.  This is one of my favorite games to pull off the shelf with a non-gamer as the baseball theme is generally appealing, and I find that it’s easier to teach them a game where they already know the basics of baseball so that the rules don’t seem overly complicated.

MLB SportsClix 2005 Baseball
Type of Game: Collectible game with simplified gameplay
Why I like It: Well, this game is getting hard to find because some of the components are/were collectible, it’s a fun little game to play.  WizKids made a bunch of players, each with their own stats built into their bases – and to play a game, you draft a team together (sometimes with even strengths – as each player is rated somewhere from 1 to 4 stars).  Gameplay is fairly simple – each player has 3 different stat categories (red, blue or black).  Each player secretly chooses a color die and then rolls it.  The number is modified (based on the individual’s stat modifier for each color) and the total result is figured out.  Whichever player rolls the highest total number then uses that number to determine the result of the at-bat.  Since this uses the Hero-Clix like figures, the statistic modifiers will change during the course of the game depending on how that player does.  The main reason I like the game is that I think the little 2-inch-high figures are nice, and I like the way that the stats of the players can change during the course of the game.  As long as you can remember the 2005 season, the statistics add a realistic touch to the game. 

Basketball Games – Sadly, there isn’t a single Basketball game that I can think of that I love.  I’m not sure why there isn’t a single game that I really want to play – but the sad fact remains that Basketball is the black hole of my sports game collection.  There was once a basketball themed game designed by my friend Rick Vonderbrink which was pretty good, but that game hasn’t been picked up by any publishers quite yet.  Any suggestions for what to try?

NBA Interactive TV Card Game
Type of Game: card game that you play while watching Basketball on TV!
Why I (kind of) like It: This is a quirky little game that I picked up at a KB Toy Outlet many years ago.  This Mattel game comes in a small metal tin, and all you get in that tin is a deck of cards.  This card game is intended to be played while watching a televised basketball contest. Each player is dealt a hand of seven cards, each with a basketball “event” such as slam dunk, blocked shot, free throw, and rebound. When a player has a card that matches the event that just occurred on the televised game, they must be the first to play it, thereby scoring the points on the card for that event (the rarer the event the more points). When a player plays all seven of their cards, he gets a seven point bonus, everyone tallies their scores and a new hand is dealt. Play continues until the end of the game and the player with the most points from completed rounds is the winner.  The game ends up being more of an adjunct to watching a basketball game, so it’s not the best game ever.  It remains in the game collection as there are a few beer-drinking variants that we’ve come up with over the years, but I’m honestly not sure if I’ll play this one ever again.  Sadly, it’s still the most-liked published basketball game I can come up with.

Maybe one of the reasons that I don’t have a favorite basketball game is because I spend most of my winters watching hockey.  I’m a big fan of both the Red Wings and the Canucks – and I must admit that it’s been harder to catch games on the TV ever since the NHL went with Versus as the TV partner (instead of ESPN).  Eventhough, I don’t follow hockey quite as avidly as I did in the past, there are still plenty of good hockey board games to help me make it though the winter season.

Phantoms Of The Ice (aka Slapshot or Power Play)
Type of Game: card game
Why I like It: This is one of the first hockey games that I came across – little did I know that it would eventually end up with a signed copy from the designer.  The game itself is a card game with a hockey theme loosely pinned on it.  There really isn’t much realistic hockey action going on here!  Each player is the coach of a hockey team (your hand of cards) comprised of a goalie, two defensive players and three forwards.  Each type of player can be numbered from zero to eleven.  On your turn, you choose between drafting a player (discarding a player currently on your team and replacing him with a random card from the top of the draw pile of that type), trading a player (taking a random card from the hand of an opponent and giving him a card of the same type back), or playing a game.  When you play a game, you take turns selecting cards from your team:  if one goalie is played, no goal is scored; if both players are goalies or neither is a goalie, then the highest number scores.  Whichever player scores the most goals in the six rounds scores a victory.  The winner is the player who first reaches 9 victories.  I have always loved this game as it was one of the first sports-related games that I came across, and it was right when I was starting to play Eurogames.  The game takes about 60-90 minutes, but the game length can easily be shortened by saying the winner is the first to 5 or 7 victories.

Finger Hockey
Type of Game: dexterity
Why I like It: This is a relative of Carom or Crokinole with a hockey theme.  This flicking game has 5 disks for your players and a goalie who is can rotate around an anchor in the goal crease.  The object of the game is to score goals (duh).  On each turn, you get three flicks.  With these flicks you can pass the puck to players, use your disks to move your opponent’s disks out of the way, or take a shot.  After your three flicks are up, if you haven’t scored – your opponent then gets three flicks of his own.  There is a surprising amount of actual hockey strategy that comes into play in this game.  Most important is working on keeping your forwards onsides as you push forward.  If you go too far (with a careless flick), you’ll end up wasting some of your flicks getting back onsides.  There is a lot of planning that goes on in the game as you often have to set up your men in advance to generate a real scoring opportunity.  Also, if you end up committing too many discs forward trying to set something up, you might find yourself having to scurry back in defense.  The game is fairly hard to acquire now, but I believe they can still be ordered from the guy in Victoria, British Columbia who makes each copy of the game.  If you like Crokinole or other carom like games, this is definitely worth a try.  A nice touch is that each game comes on a rotating base to make it easy to get the angle you need to line up your shot.

NHL Ice Breaker: The Card Hockey Board Game
Type of Game: card game with hockey theme
Why I like It: This is a nice game that I first saw at Origins in 2006.  It is a cousin to Card Football (a game which didn’t quite make the cut for Football games).  It uses the same rules and special 54-card deck.  In this game, each player uses a 54 card deck (standard 52 cards and 2 jokers) – and each card in the deck has a special hockey action on it.  During play, players take turns playing cards, and the highest card (or poker combination) played wins the hand and gets to use the special action printed on their card.  While this sounds like the classic card game War, there’s a bit more to it.  Players can continue to play cards (up to 5) after the initial showdown. So, if I play a King and you play a 7, you might choose to play another 7 to make a pair.  Now, I have to either play more cards or stop.  There is a board representing a hockey rink, and as you win hands in the card game, you are able to control the puck and move the puck towards your opponent’s goal.  There are also special spaces on the board which trigger special “icebreaker” rules.  But, the overall goal is to move the puck forward enough that you get into the “shooting zone” – when the puck is in this area, you now have a chance to shoot at the goal. The game plays quickly (maybe 30 to 45
minutes), and it is an enjoyable take on War.

Weykick Hockey
Type of Game: Expensive Wooden Dexterity with Magnets
Why I like It: This is one of the few games on this list that I don’t own currently or in the past.  Additionally, I probably don’t have any intention of ever owning a copy of this one – the shipping and transportation of this back from Europe would just be way too expensive!  However, I get in a few games of this each year at the Spiel Fair in Essen.  This game is a excellent dexterity game – each player controls two hockey players which are big wooden pawns that each hold a wire-based hockey stick.  There is a magnet in the base of each pawn, and the players control them using magnetic holders underneath the surface of the game.  So, during the game, you’re frantically moving your hands under the table trying to move your players on top of the surface – then when you get the puck on your stick, a quick rotation of the wrist to shoot the puck towards the goal.  The game is identical in size to the original version of Weykick (which is a soccer game).  In that game, you simply push your man into the ball to shoot it.  When we play the hockey version, we disallow any goals that are “kicked” in – as this is illegal in regular hockey as well.  Anyways, I’d love to have a copy of this – but as far as I know, this is only made in Europe – and I have no idea how I would manage to bring one back.

Strat-O-Matic Hockey
Type of Game: simulation
Why I like It: Well, I’ve already talked about SOM Baseball above, but this is played a bit differently…This was in fact the first version of SOM that I was introduced to (as I much preferred hockey to baseball as a kid).  Again, this game gives you cards for each player with results based on real-life statistics.  In this version, you first have to compose your lines – combinations of 3 forwards or 2 defensemen.  During the game, the defensive coach chooses which lines go into play, and for what length of time he wants that line to play.  Then, just like real hockey, the home team gets a chance to respond to the defensive lineup with their lines.  Once you figure out which players are on the ice, then you have a faceoff.  The puck will go to one of the players and then a card from the action deck is revealed which gives instructions (pass to a different player, take a shot, etc.).  If you take shot, a quick die roll and a chart reference or two will give you a result.  It plays much differently than SOM Baseball, but it’s a very enjoyable and action packed game if you’re a hockey fan.

That finishes my take on basketball, baseball and hockey games.  But I’m not done yet!  In the coming weeks, I’ll continue my survey of sports related games including:

• Auto Racing
• Horse Racing
• Rugby
• Cycling
• The Olympics
• Golf
• and a whole bunch of other sports!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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