#ShotsFriday Strategy Options
We have a very crowded
leaderboard early one in this year. @Youngfarm got on the board going with
Justin Upton. Another Braves player went deep. No one has pulled away early
this year, which is nice. The free color set and 3 custom cards is still in
reach for everyone. There are rumors that people trying to jockey for position
to get third place and the 5 David Cones 2000 and 5 Greg Maddux 2000s. Remember
to tweet us or put a comment at the bottom on who you think will homer tonight
using our hashtag #ShotsFriday or my handle @MLBShowdownguru
Those who have
followed us for longer than a year are aware that I have not been satisfied
with the original strategy card system for MLB Showdown. The largest complaint I
hear and tend to agree with is it doesn’t feel like “baseball” it feels more “card-gamey”.
Those are paraphrases from a many people I have heard over the years. We have
finally decided to put a concentrated effort toward a real solution. Before we
propose our solution I wanted to spend today to get the vocabulary straight for
everyone. Sometimes I work on things for so long that I assume you all
understand perfectly what I am doing because, well I spent so much time on it.
So here are the three main ways to play with strategy cards in MLB Showdown.
Deck/Draw: Deck draw is the original
play style. If you are interested in over decade old literature there is a serviceable
review of all the 2000 strategy cards below. I disagree with him in some areas,
but that is not the point of this article. The point is you had a 40 card deck
with a maximum of 4 copies of each card per deck. You started the game with 3
cards and drew an extra card at the end of each half inning. You would see
about 20 cards during the game assuming no draw or “looting” strategy cards.
There were plenty of those so you would often get many copies of your most
powerful cards. The was also no “stack” limit in the early game. So
double-digit +to swing was not unheard of. Not an awful style, and if you like
it please don’t let me stop you. It just felt like it could be improved.
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/event/61.html
Stud: I named this after the common
poker format that does not involve drawing. The point of this is that you start
with a certain number of strategy cards. You then are not allowed to draw during
the game. Obviously cards that allow you to draw cards are banned. Also cards
that force a discard are limited or banned in most instances. It allows for
some fun strategies but the cards have less of an impact. I usually choose a
stud hand of 10 cards. That is something that can be tinkered with to fit
needs.
Pure: Actually has many variations. The
core principle is there are no strategy cards. This usually means you can steal
whenever you want, intentionally walk whenever you want and attempt to bunt
whenever you want. One frustration with this is special rules need to be made
for common baseball practices like playing the infield in.
Twitter-Board
2: @BucNforthecard
1: TherealJohnR
1: @Piatz1019
1: @KyleVanPelt – 2011 Champ
1: @TomWyliehart – 2012 Champ
1: @Roktikitiki
1: @GregLeasure
1: @Youngfarm
0: @MLBShowdownguru – I write the blog. I can put myself on the
leaderboard with 0 homers. I do what I want.
Player Board
2: Mark Trumbo
2: Pedro Alvarez
2: Miguel Cabrera
1: Josh Hamilton
1: Mike Trout
1: Justin Upton
My brother and I use an alternate style of card play. We each begin with the exact same 100 card strategy set, of course shuffled. Each player begins with five cards. If you play a card/cards in an at bat, you draw back to five at the end of the at bat. If your opponent plays a card that makes you discard, you can only draw back to the new number of cards (ie Choke: discard three cards, so you can now only draw back to two). If you then in turn have pep talk and are down by three or more, then you can move it back to five. However, you can't draw to more than 5. Example: I have five cards in my hand and I'm down by 4 runs. I play pep talk to draw four cards, putting me at 8 in my hand. I don't re-draw cards again until I get below 5.
ReplyDeleteI find it a lot of fun and it limits the number that can be added to a die roll. You also run the risk of drawing very specific cards (like Pep Talk...you can't play it if you are winning) that just sit in your hand. An alternative style of play that we found and like. (Sac bunts and intentional walks don't require cards, but steals do).
My friends play with a "momentum board." You need to have strategy cards because otherwise there are no errors, blown calls, diving catches, etc. we took all the cards that incorporate these kind of situations and put them into a communal deck. You each start out with 2 of the cards and line out another 9 or so face down. These cards have to be earned through momentum swings. If you get a strike out you get to flip over the next card closest to you and it becomes playable whenever you want. Both players work their way towards the middle so by the 6th 7th inning you start fighting over some of those cards in the middle and momentum becomes really important. Momentum plays are things like homeruns, inning ending strikeouts, etc. For some plays (like GIDP) you gain a card on the board and your opponent loses one, so there you can start high jacking cards from your opponent. It slows down the game considerably but adds a lot of excitement. Sometimes we supplement the board with our individual stud system to incorporate other aspects of baseball, like platoon splits, or types of hitting approaches (ie go up hacking v. patience is a virtue). It feels more life like because strikeouts and GIDP start to hurt a lot more.
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