OT - Does anyone have the 1911 Strat-O-Matic Card set?

[milkit1]

neat!
which do you think i shoudl go for? Is there accessories that i need besides the team cards?

[familytoad]

I don't know how well it has aged now that we've all got computers, live streaming action, and XBox etc to compare it to, but I "rolled the dice" from 1976 up to about 1982 or so. I played complete seasons, compiling stats on notepaper and even joined a mail-league where we would play a portion of the schedule and mail the results off to our opponents for the "road" games.
Very sophisticated!
The amazing thing was, as you played out a season, the players would come remarkably close to their real regular season stats for the prior year...while I remember some anomalies, there were many hitters who ended up pretty darn close.
It was a big part of my teenage years...I invested in the old-timers and played the greats against each other. Oh how I can remember how hard it was to get 1922 George Sisler out!

So, I recommend APBA for purely selfish reasons. I still have my game and all of the cards somewhere...I never played much Strat, but I know their fan base is just as fanatic!

[Butch7999]

Sean, can't (won't...) recommend one over the other -- they're both evergreens with loyal followings. Both have computer versions as well as the standard boardgame versions, and there are loyal camps for both methods too -- although we will say that we much prefer rolling dice on cardboard to clicking icons on a computer screen. Follow the links at the webpages in our previous post (#7) for more info on what's included, what's needed, and what options are available for each game.

Have to add, too, that they're far from the only tabletop sims out there --
Pursue the Pennant [http://www.designdepot.com/] is hugely popular and highly regarded,
as is Replay [http://www.replaybb.com/], Sherco's Grand Slam!, and
Baseball Classics [http://www.playbaseballclassics.com/], among many many others.
Four other games you might want to look into, all officially out of print but kept alive by their own legions of fans, are
Statis Pro Baseball [http://statisprobaseball.wordpress.com/],
All-Star Baseball [http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/...BaseballGame/],
Big League Manager, and the Sports Illustrated Baseball Game.

[milkit1]

awesome, I think im gonna try apba. I like the idea of playing it and writing it out as opposed to a pc doing it. Maybe I can get some of you guys to play me via text I want to try to get any season between 1906-1922 so ill let ya know what I end up with

[milkit1]

does it matter what edition of the actual board game I get? i plan on buying a particular season and I noticed the board games from the 90's are pretty cheap. Can I play a 1910 season on a 1994 board game?

[vintagecpa]

I'm not as familiar with the other game, but Strat-o-matic is a wonderful board game, although I don't think it would translate well to text or mail. I've never played the PC game. Years ago, My friend who is addicted to the game use to bring over a couple of teams and we would play a 7 game series together. Whenever he would get a new season of cards, we would replay the playoffs and world series. The games only take about 25-30 minutes, so you could play a whole 7 game series in 2-3 hours.

The game has all the strategy a normal series would have. The cards have actual lefty-righty stats for different players. Slower players will bounce into more double-plays. You can't use the same relief pitchers every game. Injuries, fielding errors, intentional walks, max-innings for different pitchers, etc. etc. It take a few practice games to get the hang of everything, but once you do, it is an amazingly detailed and realistic game.

If you are more into PC games, and you simply enjoy being the GM having to deal with trading, free-agents, budgets, etc, I would recommend Baseball Mogul. I would hate to imagine how many hours I have killed simulating season after season.

[barrysloate]

I grew up on Strat-O-Matic and just loved it. I would play an abbreviated season, and kept a notebook with complete stats that I inputed after each game. I still have the cards for the 1927 Yankees, but lost the game many years ago.

[bbcard1]

I work on a computer 12 to 16 hours most days. The last thing I want is a computer sim baseball game. Give me my APBA cards and let me roll the dice.

I played several games sitting in a beach chair on a beach in Jamaica with people bringing me cold Red Stripes last summer. It didn't suck.

[barrysloate]

Cy - I'm pretty good at math too and if I remember correctly I may have designed some of my own Strat cards when I was a kid. And of course Bonds will pick up his singles from the 4-5-6 columns. Strat-O-Matic is a statistician's dream and that's what I always found so appealing about it.

[milkit1]

ok reallllly wanting a stra o matic now. Anyoe got one they arent using? lol

[milkit1]

is there any way to download the actual cards for a season?