There are a lot of house rules out there and not much of this is probably original. But it's compiled here and may change in the future. The first item is...Strategy.
The Manager Option idea came from Bob at GreatestMLBShowdown/Bourbon over Baseball and we tweaked a few things. We use that as our "Basic rules". The fact of the matter is that the original game used Strategy Cards as ways to influence the game and impart strategy and without these the original game came down to nothing more than a dice rolling game. But the cards were entirely too...card gamey and made a game take entirely too long. Bob's Manager Options allow for some managerial decisions without bogging things down too much. The three options are Stolen Base attempts, Intentional Walks, and Sac Bunts. You only get five options per game and no more than three at any one option. So you have to be strategic with your choices.
Our "Advanced rules" use the Strategy Cards but not in the manner the game was originally using them.
• First off we eliminated the deck building/draw deck and all cards that involved drawings. Not being able to Steal a base because all your stolen base cards just happen to randomly be at the bottom of the deck felt wrong and just added another layer of chance on top of a dice rolling game.
• Second we took away a lot of the cards that were deemed, too powerful or to gimmicky. Basically if it wasn't a decision or action that occurs on the field it was removed. So most re-rolls were removed. For instance, the defense forcing the batter to re roll the dice because they got a walk on the pitcher chart and the pitcher just happened to have "Swing at anything" in his hand would lead to an out 90% of the time...and the batter should get to decide when he's swinging at anything, not the defense.
• Next we set a hand limit of 9 cards. So no drawings, each manager builds a hand of 9 cards that they can tailor to their team. So speedy teams may carry more Stolen Base, Bunt, and extra base cards. Defensive teams may carry more defense cards. Weak Catcher arms may carry more Pick-off move and Pitch-out cards. We also have a blended variant where we keep the manager options so you don't have to build those cards in your hand. Instead you just discard any card from your hand to use one of those options.
• Lastly, we created a few more multipurpose (neutral, utility, dual purpose) cards so as to reduce the chance of cards not being used. For instance, the card "Heading for the Gap" allows a speedy great outfield defense to play this card after a double for a chance to hold that batter to a single base. Alternately an offense facing a slow, poor defending outfield can play this card after a single for a chance of that ball making it through the gap for a double.
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