Mini Monday

Dennis and I started with the one-game playoff for the NL pennant. Cards (with Chris Carpenter) vs the Mets (John Maine). As you would expect, not many hits in this one. Tied (1-1) going into the seventh, when the wheels came off for the Cards. After Valentin whiffed, Shawn Green got on base, so I pinch hit for Maine (with Cliff Floyd) who singled. Jose Reyes singled and drove in Green. This fatigued Carpenter, but even so he was better than relieving him (especially as he batted first at the top of the 8th. Needless to say the "Strikeout (if not fatigued)" result hit, scoring another run. The Mets advance to the World Series on a 4-1 victory.

Sean had shown up, so then we played Phoenicia, Acquire, and a new game called "Fast Figure." In that one the answers are all numbers (0-100). When you answer you drop your card between the numbers already used in previous answers. So a round may start with 0 and 34. The question is "Name the number of amendments in the bill of rights." So you throw your card in ten and first scores a point. Now the #s are 0, 10 and 32, and the next question is worth two points. A reasonable game, although we should definitely play with an extra starting card (or two) at the begining of each round.

After that Sean and I played a learning game of Blood Bowl, with Dennis offering advice. I took the Norse vs Sean's Orcs. The first half saw the Orcs score, and then Norse failed a 5/6 shot to score on the final turn of the half. The second half was much more chaotic, with more missed rolls (which end your turn, usually). Despite some horrific rolls, I managed to get a touchdown, but had to score faster than I'd hoped, leaving enough time on the clock for the Orcs. Sean got the ball and built a cage around his runner, I managed to stun two of his three black orks (strong brutes who dish out the US Recommended Daily Allowance of Pain) so with them down he couldn't cover everywhere. His cage had a weak spot and I had an advantageous blitz, only to fail with snake eyes (double-skull) and no rerolls! However, on the next turn Sean had to blitz with the ball-carrier to excape and returned the favor (snake-eyes, no rerolls left). So the ball bounced around to a dead spot, at which point there wasn't enough time for either of us to score, so we just inflicted a few flagrant fouls and called it a night. Sean ended up inflicting 3 serious injuries, to my 1. He was a bit unlucky to not inflict more (the Norse have poor armor), but on the other hand he only had a few blocking turnovers (two die blocks without the blocking skill should fail 1/9th of the time)

Final List Reminder,a New League and an old one

Firstly, if you want to vote for the SABG Top 50 List, get me your votes (or let me know to wait) quickly. Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to publish that this weekend.

And now that the SABBL is in the playoffs, my mind is turning towards the Blood Bowl league that Dennis suggested. Blood bowl is a fantasy (elves, dwarfs) football/rugby hybrid game. I'd say that it has a much higher strategy content than managing baseball (even though it's still random as hell). A typical game takes about 3 hours. I'd write a detailed review, but I've already done it! (Go read).

Right now there are only a handful of people in the league. I'd like to see a reasonable number, but Blood Bowl has a big advantage over our Strato league. Games aren't scheduled. You can join in the league and play as often as you like. Want to join after a few weeks? No problem. (The league really represents something akin to football of 100 years ago, when managers just scheduled games against willing opponents. Bloodbowl is like college football scheduling, but with a straight face).

As I said, you can download the rulebook for free.

What would be ideal is to find out there are a few more sets floating around. You can scrounge pretty much everything (although having the special dice and the pass ruler is fairly necessary), but I happen to like the aesthetics of the game. [Dennis has made some paper counters, and I suspect others could, or you can buy a team on eBay].

About the only thing that needs to get decided before we start are any variants we're going to play, and traditional scheduling rules, and a count of whose interested. Lets see what the interest is, and then we can decide on any rules. (I'm actually fairly happy with the new Living Rule Book, but there are a few points of interest, in particular if there are going to be playoffs).

Dragon's Lair has another BBowl league, but I think its fairly formal. Still, there may be those with a spare set for sale.

Finally, I'm up for a follow-on Strat-o league, but after a few months break.