Tag Archives: Football

Vulcans? In Birmingham?

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I was browsing a site selling t-shirts of defunct sports teams, and learned that there was a team in the World Football League called the Birmingham Vulcans.

So of course I looked for the team in any team sets available for games that I play.

I learned that they played for one season, or rather part of a season before the league folded.

They were the team with the best record when the league ceased operations, so a bunch of sports writers declared them the champions of that shortened season.



I may replay the entire season, or just the games that were never played.

Stay tuned!

PLAAY Holiday Sale 2020

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No sign of the two missing MLB NL card sets.

But did pick up a few PDFs from PLAAY.com‘s 2020 Holiday sale, including:

  • a new jai-alai game
  • the NFL/AFL 1969 season for Second Season football
  • the MLB 1975 season for History Maker Baseball, which comes full circle since the sample teams in my original boxed game were the 2 World Series teams from 1975
  • the 1960 SCRAM (fictional) season for Red White & Blue Racing

Of the 4 I’ve already printed out the racing set, and am currently making the schedule for the Replay To Be Started Soon™.

The funny thing is that just last week I was wondering if PLAAY was ever going to come out with a 1960s season set for the game.  Hopefully a NASCAR set will be produced from that era.

I’m still hoping that those two season sets show up.

Stay tuned!

Friday Night Legends

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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!

Print-and-Play

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One problem I have is finding time to play games.

A further problem is preparing print-and-play games for play.

Case in point:

I originally purchased this game during PLAAY.com’s 2018 holiday sale, and even printed out the game and the expansion team set that was sold separately.

The original teams:

  • Houston Hombres
  • Los Angeles Lunatics
  • New York Nukes
  • Detroit Rippers

The first 4 expansion teams:

  • Minnesota Chill
  • Seattle Droids
  • San Francisco Heroes
  • Cleveland Stevedores

I let the game sit on a shelf, and every time they released another expansion, I’d get it and print it out, but I only ever cut out the original 8 teams.

By the time I collected the rest of the teams they had released the game as a boxed edition.  And since I already had everything in print-and-play format, I decided against buying the boxed edition.

I finally did get around to cutting out the 16 remaining expansion teams, and have yet to cut out the international expansion teams.

  • Vegas Bada Bings
  • Miami Maelstrom
  • Pacific Dreadnoughts
  • Phoenix Inferno
  • New Orleans Big Fun
  • Chicago Binge
  • Boston Malcontents
  • Denver Wild Blue
  • Dallas TNT
  • Gulf Coast Splash
  • Kansas City Drifters
  • Atlanta Gems
  • Milwaukee Buzz
  • Washington Panic
  • Philadelphia Mongrels
  • Nashville Twang

I did manage to print and cut out the coach cards, and assigned a coach to each of the 24 teams.

Now I just need to figure out a play format, and a league format, though 12 teams per conference and 4 teams per division makes the most sense, I suppose.  At least until I introduce the International teams into the mix.

And I suppose I should play an exhibition game or two so I can learn how the game plays.

Stay tuned!

Grid Iron Wars

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I ordered the Fast Action System and Advanced Game for Grid Iron Wars, along with the other two AAFC seasons available (1948, 1949), and Downey Games threw in the 1969 AFL season as an extra.  Cool!

I wonder if it’s because this year is the first time the Kansas City Chiefs have been in the Super Bowl since then, 50 years ago?

Of course now I should get the 1969 NFL season so I can replay Super Bowl IV.  Then again, I didn’t get the 1967 NFL season when I got the 1967 AFL season.

Stay tuned!

Football Status

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So.

I have to get off my ass and get back to what I started 4 years ago, the 1967 replays.

It’ll happen.  Hopefully sooner rather than later.

That 49ers replay may or may not start before Super Bowl LIV.

As for the other type of football:

These replays will get as much attention as I can muster, when not busy/distracted.  I’m less inclined to play the 2008-09 replay due to the fact that Spurs did so poorly that season, and the game engine for Net Results Soccer is slightly different for 2008-09 than from the 2017-18 seasons.  It can get a bit confusing.

Basketball and hockey have never been started, so no need to make a post about either of those sports replays.

Stay tuned!

The Big Guys

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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.

GFL 2020 Season

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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.