Renaissance?

In addition to pulling the APBA games off the shelves, I also pulled the Strat-O-Matic games as well.

I was surprised to find that I have the 1994-95 NHL season set for Strat Hockey.

Arguably my favorite Sharks team, at least in the early years of the franchise.

I mean…

I may replay that Sharks season, in addition to the 1991-92 Sharks season (ordered earlier this week from APBA).

I ordered a new set of parts for Strat Hockey, in addition to the 1945-46 NHL season, in honor of

I’m not sure why I’ve been going back to the roots of tabletop sports gaming, first with APBA Golf and Soccer, now with the hockey games.  I just seem to be wanting something more in my game play, as much as I enjoy playing similar, newer games of the same sports.

Oddly enough I have no desire to go back to APBA or Strat-O-Matic Baseball.

I also don’t feel like going through the 1995-96 hockey teams and reversing trades to get accurate rosters, so if I end up playing that season, it will be with existing rosters.

I noticed the inaccurate opening rosters when I was about to play Blackhawks vs Sharks, and Sandis Ozoliņš was not on the Sharks roster, having ended the season with Colorado.

He scored the first goal for the Sharks that year.  I only remember that because he also scored the first goal for the San Francisco Spiders that season.

Anyways, I felt a little miffed that the rosters were wrong, so I went looking for a list of transactions for that season, and then decided that to heck with it, and will just play with the existing rosters.

Another pair of games that I pulled off the shelf and put right back: APBA and Strat-O-Matic Football.

Never learned to play either.  Maybe when the football season rolls around I’ll pull one of them out, but Second Season and Inside Blitz are good enough for me for now, to scratch the football itch.  Which doesn’t come up too often, TBH.

So is this a tabletop renaissance?  Maybe.

We’ll see how it goes.  I think I’ve played more tabletop sports games this year already than I had in the last 3 years.

Future Plans

I plan on continuing the following ongoing replays:

Baseball
1921 NY Giants (Payoff Pitch Baseball)
1971 SF Giants (Ball Park Baseball)
Soccer
2015-16 Tottenham Hotspur (APBA Soccer)
2020-21 AFC Richmond (Dice United)
Racing
1984 Winston Cup (Red White & Blue Racin’)
2012 SCRAM (Red White & Blue Racin’)
Football
1960 Denver Broncos (Fast Drive Football)
1967 Denver Broncos (Second Season/Second Season Express/Inside Blitz/Grid Iron Wars)

At some point I plan on adding hockey and basketball into the mix, as time permits.  I just have to decide which replays to include:

Hockey
1966-67 NHL (Hockey Blast)
1969-70 Oakland Seals (Hockey Blast)
1991-92 San Jose Sharks (APBA)
2013-14 IHL (Hockey Blast, fictional)
2022-23 Central Cities League (Stone Cold Hockey, fictional)

Basketball
1960-61 Syracuse Nationals (Bank Shot Basketball)
1966-67 San Francisco Warriors (Inside the Paint)
2022-23 Basketball League of America (Highlight Maker Hoops, fictional)

And of course I’ll be tracking all the games right here.

Stay tuned!

1960: Broncos Replay, Game 2

I played the second game of the season because it’s against my friend Lando’s team, the Bills.

I’ll play the first game next.

Final from War Memorial Stadium:

Since this is a quick play, game, there’s really no stats generated, except for TD passes/runs, XPs made, and FGs made.  So I’ll just keep things simple with the box scores.

Football

Al Wilson released a free print-n-play football game.

Fast Drive Football is a drive-by-drive quick play game.  Each possession/drive is resolve with a single roll of the dice, using charts much like many PLAAY games like History Maker Baseball.

I downloaded the rules, charts, and all the seasons available (more added periodically), and printed the 1960, 1972, and 1981 seasons.

I’ll give it a spin soon, after I go over the rules.  If I have time I may replay the entire 1960 Broncos season, even though I’m going to start with their week 2 opponents as a ‘tutorial’.

And it may be obvious which teams seasons I’ll try to replay for the other two seasons that I printed out.

Stay tuned!

Friday Night Legends

I’m surprised I didn’t post about this game until now.

Friday Night Legends, a *high school* football game.  The game comes with a sampling of Texas high school teams, since the game creators are from Texas.

It doesn’t have individual players, and just 6 plays on offense and 6 plays on defense.

It took me the better part of two and a half weeks to get though one game, but it’s a fun one.  I made a few mistakes as one does when trying out a new game.

I randomly picked 2 teams that came with the base game: Sealy 1978 and Kerrville Tivy 2010.

It wasn’t until I looked for graphics for these two teams and saw the significance of them.

Sealy Tigers 1978:


Some running back named Eric Dickerson.

Tivy 2010:


A quarterback named Johnny Manziel

And the results of the game I played reflects these two players.

Sealy Tigers 37
Tivy Antlers 10

Seally scored 5 rushing touchdowns (plus one FG and one missed XP) to Tivy’s 1 passing TD.

Did Dickerson score them all?  Maybe.  And Johnny Football probably threw that one TD pass.

I didn’t take very good stats, to be honest, But I’ll try to next time I play this game.

Though I should try the college counterpart to this game as well.

Stay tuned!

GFL 2020 Season

Final Standings:

The top two teams from last season finished at the top again this season.  However, a playoff round was added with the 2nd place teams.

This year’s East expansion team would meet last year’s East expansion team.

The Porgs edged out the expansion Blurrgs based on point differential in the West.

Playoff round:

As expected, the top two teams met again in the championship game.

Championship:

The Tauntauns avenged last season’s loss to the Dewbacks, claiming the newly named Skywalker Trophy for the 2020 season.