22 August 2015
Final from King Power Stadium:
Next: Spurs v. Everton
Stay tuned!
Category Archives: APBA
APBA Soccer
“Captain’s log, Star date 1312.4. The impossible has happened.”
I’ve found a game that, to me, replicates what I see on TV in a soccer match as much as most tabletop baseball games do for me.
I do still like playing Dice United and Soccer Blast, it’s just that to me APBA Soccer simulates the build up that usually results in a goal more accurately than the other two do.
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The other games do one thing better, and that’s give you the amount of stoppage time to add at the end of a half.
With APBA, they have maybe a couple of instances listed on the ‘special play’ chart for injury, but that may not even come into play.
Checking the APBA Delphi Forums, there’s no definite answer either, though there are some suggestions that I may consider adapting.
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The fact that I can play a game of this level in a little under 2 hours, even with distractions, is surprising to me.
It takes almost twice as long with or without distractions to play a non-quick play game of American football or basketball or hockey, though like most PLAAY games I can get a game of Hockey Blast finished in maybe an hour.
Golf is it’s own thing and can take as long as it needs to on any given course.
Same with racing, depending on the type of track I’m running on.
Perhaps I should revisit some of the APBA and Strat-O-Matic football and hockey games to see if the time to play has changed for me.
1-2 hours for a sports game seems to be the sweet spot for me nowadays. It allows me to set up in the morning or when I get home from work, and play before I go to bed, with time to compile a post game report that I can post here.
2015-16: Come On You Spurs! Match 2
2015-16: Come On You Spurs! Game 1
Final from Old Trafford:
I just find it weird that I constantly move toward a more complicated and/or time consuming sports simulation after years of playing a quick play or less complicated game.
Scoreboard Baseball to Ball Park Baseball.
Final Score/The Beautiful Game to APBA Soccer.
ASG Golf is pretty much the same complexity as APBA Golf,
And in the middle are the PLAAY Games, like History Maker Baseball/Golf, which I still enjoy playing.
Anyways, I’m still learning APBA Soccer, and I need to remember to keep track of stats that have spaces for them on the scoresheet.
Next up for this replay: Tottenham v. Stoke City.
Stay tuned!
2015-16: Come On You Spurs!
AHA! Moment
A couple of days of surfing the web in search of APBA Soccer aids and I stumble upon the APBA Soccer Facebook group.
They, along with a few YouTube videos and posts in the Delphi APBA forums, have helped me understand where I made mistakes during play over the weekend.
I may or may not replay that first game, if I don’t simply abandon that replay altogether in favor of the 2015-16 EPL cards that should be arriving later this week.
But for now, I think I may be playing as much APBA Soccer than any other sports game/replay that I currently play.
Stay tuned!
2009-10: Spurs Replay, Game 1
12 August 2009: Tottenham Hotspur v. Liverpool FC
Final from White Hart Lane:
I didn’t track stats too well in this one, I’ll try better next time, maybe even include the starting 11 for each side.
Two Spurs players (Huddlestone, Suazo) received 2 yellow cards a piece, resulting them both to be sent off.
4 Liverpool players received yellow cards (Gerrard, Kuyt, Leiva, Skrtel).
Mascherano suffered an injury late in the match, replaced by Spearing.
I do feel the flow better in this game than I did 9-10 years ago, even though it took me most of the day to finish this one match.
Hopefully I’ll be able to play a match in much less time in the future.
Next: Spurs pay a visit to Hull City.
Stay tuned!
Ready
As I start to make time for playing sports games again, I feel that it’s time to go back to some games that I’ve ignored for some time, specifically APBA Golf and APBA Soccer.
I remember trying APBA Soccer out something like 8 years ago, and while I was able to get through a complete game, I found that I liked the quicker play of other soccer games like Soccer Blast and later Dice United.
Same thing happened with golf, to a lesser degree. I was a bit intimidated by APBA Golf, especially after playing a similar game, ASG golf, which led me to History Maker Golf, another quicker game than the others.
Fast forward to now, with more than a few dozen soccer games and a couple of golf games rolled, and I finally feel ‘ready’ to tackle what I consider the ‘big boys’ of the respective games.
That’s not to take away from anything that I’ve played, the PLAAY games are still my favorites, for example, but I just feel ‘ready’ to take on something a bit more complex.
I also feel that I have a richer appreciation for soccer now than I did 8 years ago, having watched 4 more World Cup tournaments (men’s and women’s), Olympic soccer, and of course living and dying through Tottenham Hotspur in the EPL.
As for golf, I’m still as interested in it as I was before, which was not total indifference, but rather an appreciation for it as one of my Dad’s favorite pastimes long before he passed on. I still don’t watch it on TV as much as I did when Mom and Dad were both more interested.
For golf, I’ll probably still play History Maker more than APBA or ASG, simply because of the larger number of players and courses I have for HMG compared to the others. I don’t intend to start a full season of golf, either.
Soccer, on the other hand, has me thinking that I can start Yet Another Season Replay™, so with APBA Soccer I’m going to replay Tottenham’s 2015-16 campaign, a season I don’t own in any other soccer game that I play. This was the year Harry Kane first scored with the top team, and saw Spurs finish third behind Leicester City and Arsenal in the final standings.
:focal(1153x471:1155x469)/origin-imgresizer.eurosport.com/2016/05/08/1850631-39009851-2560-1440.jpg)
We’ll see if I can change history in my replay.
Stay tuned!
Golf
I’m either of or past the age when I should have taken up golf. I suppose I still can, Dad had plenty of sets of clubs sitting around here.
In lieu of that I of course play on my tabletop, and lately the bug has bitten me, though I have yet to actually set up and play a game.
It started with PLAAY Games’ Binge Week Golf event in late April, where I picked up the new History Maker Golf play mat and Course Collection 20, along with Course Collection 19 and 2010s Golf Stars set. CC20 contains 72 cards which allow you to create your own golf courses. I finally did that last night, and have yet to play a round on my custom course, tentatively named TPC Delta Tioga Links.
The bug bit harder when I started looking up golf game videos and came across Dave Gardner’s unboxing video for APBA Golf, which I’ve had sitting on my unplayed shelf for about 8(!) years. I dug it out and looked at it, and may give it a play through after reviewing a couple more of Dave’s videos.
The reason it sat around unplayed? History Maker Golf and ASG Golf. Both of which I’ve played a few times over those 8 years. I played HMG more because it was a much simpler game to play, as much as I liked ASG.
One of the videos Dave posted was of these ball markers for ASG/APBA Golf, which he ordered from Shapeways.
I immediately thought, ‘3D printed? Surely they’re available to print at home!’
And I found them.
$4 for the file instead of $9 + shipping.
These mark where your ball lands on the course.
APBA Golf:
ASG Golf
I’d been using ‘sign here’ flags in the past.
I also found myself on ASG’s website, and ended up ordering TPC Harding Park and the Men’s 1970s golfers set.
Now I just need to find the time to play the often postponed John Price Invitational, as soon as I get a foursome of golfers from him.
Stay tuned!
The Big Guys
I was going through some older table top sports games in my collection, like this APBA Football game from 1995, and it reminded me of why I’ve chosen to play games from companies other than APBA and Strat-O-Matic.
I went on both those sites to see how much a season set would cost, and for APBA Football they seemed to run between $50-$120 per season. Strat-O-Matic seasons ran $32-$42, but the oldest complete season was 2002.
A printed season from Inside Sports Games for Inside Blitz Football can run $42-$58, but they also offer a PDF option for $15-$17.
Downey Games offers Grid Iron Wars for $30 for a complete game with 1 season, printed, or $7.95 for the game parts in PDF. Printed seasons run for $8-$15 while PDF seasons run $8-11.
PLAAY Games has Second Season for $49, with seasons going for $25-$33 printed, and $19-$21 PDF.
The major difference between APBA/SOM and the other companies is that with the former you’re getting individual player cards per team, while the latter have team sheets with all the players on a sheet. At the moment, I prefer the team sheets to individual cards.
One plus, had I stuck with the Big Two, would be that I would have bought less seasons (in all sports games) than I currently own because of availability and price. I only own one complete season for SOM Baseball (2011), SOM Football (2009) and SOM Hockey (1993-94), for example.
And in the picture above, those are the only two *teams* that I own for APBA Football.