Best baseball boardgame?(1-2+players)

Subject says it all. Possible league play? Does it have to stay out, or can it be put away till played next? depth? Etc.

Thanks!

Donan wrote:

Subject says it all. Possible league play? Does it have to stay out, or can it be put away till played next? depth? Etc.

Thanks!

I'd have to research the current market, but I would have to assume Strat-O-Matic would win this hands down. I'm not even sure if APBA is still putting out games.

I played in a Strat league at Kansas in the mid 80's. But it is pretty easy to put away. But man, keeping score and stats by hand would be brutal now. I know that with the rise of computers my very first thought was how awesome it would be to play my baseball games and have the computer track stats.

My personal favorite was Avalon Hill's Statis Pro Baseball. But Strat was always king of the hill.

And looking for a good page to show Statis Pro took me to that website.

http://tabletopbaseball.org/

It seems like a nice overview of the genre.

The two big names for baseball board games are Strat-O-Matic Baseball and APBA Baseball. Both of them put the player in the role of the on-field manager and at-bats are resolved through dice rolls. The results of the dice rolls are compared against charts or player cards, which outline various in-game results like strikeouts or groundouts, etc.

I'm not familiar with APBA, but the little bit I remember of Strat-O-Matic was focused on in-game management. When we played it as a league around 15 years ago, we had to manage all of the league-level particulars (standings, trades) ourselves; the game didn't offer any additional mechanics or game structure at that level.

EDIT: Both Strat-O-Matic and APBA have their own company websites and it looks like they're still publishing versions of the games.

Thanks for The information folks.

Does anyone know why the Strat-O-Matic site list their most recent edition at $47 something and Funagain games list a 2011 game for $15 something? Is the later an older version with just updated cards? Or...?

Thanks again folks.

note: So as Jay' mentioned, if you play a seasonal league, all the stat keeping would be manually done by the players? Streaks, player stats etc.

(did somebody notice a praised, free game called Strategic Baseball Simulation(SBS)? Unfortunately Windows only and smaller in scale, but evidently lot's of fun.

Donan wrote:

Does anyone know why the Strat-O-Matic site list their most recent edition at $47 something and Funagain games list a 2011 game for $15 something? Is the later an older version with just updated cards? Or...?

Thanks again folks.

note: So as Jay' mentioned, if you play a seasonal league, all the stat keeping would be manually done by the players? Streaks, player stats etc.

It's cards and dice. I know there are iPad programs that will scorekeep for you, but that's the down side of playing the old game. When I was a kid, we had stacks of wire notebooks filled with boxscores and compiled stats. We dreamed of a day in which the stat compiling was automatic. But it seemed like a dream in the 70's.

While I might find it fun to sit down and play some old school Strat these days, I don't think I would do it on a regular basis.

And the reason the Funagain version is so much cheaper is that you don't get current teams. You get cards of six historical teams and a coupon for six teams from 2010. If you want all 30 teams from MLB with last year's ratings, it's going to be the $47. These companies make most of their money by selling seasons. That is what takes time and effort to produce. The board is basically the same as it was in the 70's.

I think you will get the historical teams even if you buy the full version. They want to encourage you to buy old seasons of cards.

Jayhawker wrote:
Donan wrote:

Does anyone know why the Strat-O-Matic site list their most recent edition at $47 something and Funagain games list a 2011 game for $15 something? Is the later an older version with just updated cards? Or...?

Thanks again folks.

note: So as Jay' mentioned, if you play a seasonal league, all the stat keeping would be manually done by the players? Streaks, player stats etc.

It's cards and dice. I know there are iPad programs that will scorekeep for you, but that's the down side of playing the old game. When I was a kid, we had stacks of wire notebooks filled with boxscores and compiled stats. We dreamed of a day in which the stat compiling was automatic. But it seemed like a dream in the 70's.

While I might find it fun to sit down and play some old school Strat these days, I don't think I would do it on a regular basis.

And the reason the Funagain version is so much cheaper is that you don't get current teams. You get cards of six historical teams and a coupon for six teams from 2010. If you want all 30 teams from MLB with last year's ratings, it's going to be the $47. These companies make most of their money by selling seasons. That is what takes time and effort to produce. The board is basically the same as it was in the 70's.

I think you will get the historical teams even if you buy the full version. They want to encourage you to buy old seasons of cards.

O.k. Thanks for the imput. I was wondering about Funagain games one because it does say, 'new 2011 version'. I just can't find anything where my brother and I can play face to face in a league play environment for management only, electronically. OOTP does not seem to have it. APBA I'm not sure about, but that is Windows only. There's 'Rivalry' mode in, 'The Show', but that is not management. (my brother is not a 'gamer', so trying to get him to hit, pitch, field is a loss cause. I've tried) I love stats, so I would be less then happy with all the book keeping that Strat-O-Matic would have one do, but I just don't seen any other option. OOTP (which we will get), seem's more of a all in and go for it competition, which is great, but we want more emphasis in interplay between us.

Not strictly a 'boardgame', but from one, has anyone had any experience with, ' Dynasty League Baseball On-Line'?

Looks like my brother and I are zeroing in on Strat-O-Matic Baseball. Any folks play it, or familiar with it?
One box can have how many playing (i.e. I'm sure it's at least a 2 player game, but could two more using same set be playing another game next to us?)

If we attempt to playing a short series or season, what extra materials are needed? Score pads? Is there an app of some kind where you can input game statistics for a running tally? Etc.

Thanks!

p.s. Oh, just buying the 'current' edition is good enough, right? We're not into historical play, but is there any other tools we need to buy?

Oh, and can you get it from a store front, or just Amazon and Strat-O-Matic?

Can anyone suggest an electronic statistics tracker for imputing Strats results so to track for a series or a season of some sort? Preferably an Apple app, (which after looking quite allot have not really found one).

Thanks

There are MANY baseball games besides Strat and APBA and you may want to inspect a little further before taking the plunge. I own both of those and like them both, but a few others you may want to look into would be:

Replay Baseball: http://replaybb.com/
Inside Pitch Baseball: http://www.insidesportsgames.org/
Dynasty League: http://www.designdepot.com/
Ballpark Baseball: http://www.bpbaseballgame.com/ and http://ball-park-baseball-fan-site.com/
Advanced Statis Pro (updated of the old game): Forum site -- http://forums.delphiforums.com/stati...?

My favorites of the 6 mentioned would be Replay, Inside Pitch and Advanced Statis Pro. A great forum to get some info on what's out there is: http://forums.delphiforums.com/table...?

A great scorekeeping app is iScore.

dkscpa wrote:

There are MANY baseball games besides Strat and APBA and you may want to inspect a little further before taking the plunge. I own both of those and like them both, but a few others you may want to look into would be:

Replay Baseball: http://replaybb.com/
Inside Pitch Baseball: http://www.insidesportsgames.org/
Dynasty League: http://www.designdepot.com/
Ballpark Baseball: http://www.bpbaseballgame.com/ and http://ball-park-baseball-fan-site.com/
Advanced Statis Pro (updated of the old game): Forum site -- http://forums.delphiforums.com/stati...?

My favorites of the 6 mentioned would be Replay, Inside Pitch and Advanced Statis Pro. A great forum to get some info on what's out there is: http://forums.delphiforums.com/table...?

A great scorekeeping app is iScore.

Wow! Thanks much for this information. I have checked out about half of these so far, but will check out the others for sure (and go back and check out your favorites that I may have not looked closely at.)

I have been using GameChanger and looked at iScore (that's the ESPN one, right?). I took GC because it was free and stated more clearly that you could input past scores and it kept cumulative statistics. But of course there are hidden costs that one has to pay to make all stats available to someone else etc. It was hard for me to gleen that iScore did the same, but I'm sure it does. Can you tell me that stats inputed can be seen by more then one party. And if I remember correctly, this is for iPhone/iPad and Android devices. So I imagine a central server holding the data, allowing folks who may have different devices to still be able to see data from others. Right? But I'll check again.

Thanks again for this list AND the links. Much appreciated.
(oh yea, I have a Mac, but I'm going to either use Boot Camp or Parallels to set-up a Windows environment. I was going for the former because it's a Mac applet that comes with the system, thereby free. But I just noticed P6 offers control of your desktop from a mobile device. Whoaaa, that is way cool!!!! and probably, if I confirm it, a sell...AND the forum link!

Wow! Thanks much for this information. I have checked out about half of these so far, but will check out the others for sure (and go back and check out your favorites that I may have not looked closely at.)

I have been using GameChanger and looked at iScore (that's the ESPN one, right?). I took GC because it was free and stated more clearly that you could input past scores and it kept cumulative statistics. But of course there are hidden costs that one has to pay to make all stats available to someone else etc. It was hard for me to gleen that iScore did the same, but I'm sure it does. Can you tell me that stats inputed can be seen by more then one party. And if I remember correctly, this is for iPhone/iPad and Android devices. So I imagine a central server holding the data, allowing folks who may have different devices to still be able to see data from others. Right? But I'll check again.

Thanks again for this list AND the links. Much appreciated.
(oh yea, I have a Mac, but I'm going to either use Boot Camp or Parallels to set-up a Windows environment. I was going for the former because it's a Mac applet that comes with the system, thereby free. But I just noticed P6 offers control of your desktop from a mobile device. Whoaaa, that is way cool!!!! and probably, if I confirm it, a sell...AND the forum link!

Happy to help out. Tabletop sports are a favorite pastime of mine.

iScore is actually not my scorekeeping/stat program of choice, but was the one that came to mind when you said you preferred Apple. I do believe the stats can be seen by more than one party and that a central server holds the data. If you are open to a Windows application (which would only be for a laptop/PC) then you will love BallScore and BallStat. These are companion programs that allow you to keep score for the game and accumulate stats -- more stats than you'd ever know what to do with. If you just want to enter stats and not use the scorekeeping function, that is possible too. It is $20 with free upgrades for life. It has a web-builder function that makes it easy to create a webpage for your stats, but this would be the only way that I know of to share stats with someone else. http://ballstat.com/ Excellent support provided through this forum -- http://forums.delphiforums.com/ballstat/?

edit: Haven't quite figured out the formatting on this forum. Sorry if it's hard to follow.

dkscpa wrote:

edit: Haven't quite figured out the formatting on this forum. Sorry if it's hard to follow.

It will come. Formatting is turned off for new folks until they get certain number of posts or been a mber for a certain number of weeks. They do this to combat spammers.