Alf's Revenge

My Strat-O-Matic hockey season continues apace. The Thistles have languished in the basement from the beginning, mainly due to bad luck in goalie Paddy Moran's rolls on high-risk shots and a general inability to put the puck in the net. The former would be addressed simply by waiting for regression to the mean, while the latter required a trade. I scoured the rosters for a swap that would benefit both teams.

I quickly zeroed in on Alf Smith, a second-line winger on the Bulldogs who had put up one measly assist in four games along with a league-worst -6 rating. Yikes! But looking at the game stats, though, Smith reminded me of Gord Roberts. They're very different players in many respects, but they both have an Offense of 4 and a Penetration of 4, meaning that they're at the top of the heap in terms of generating good scoring opportunities despite their middling shooting percentages. I sent Smith from the Bulldogs to the Thistles in exchange for Ernie Russell, another under-performing winger. It was a classic "challenge" trade.

With Smith now on the Thistles, I inserted him on the Tommy Gun line with Tommy Dunderdale and Tommy Phillips. Their next game, as luck would have it, was against the Bulldogs. Facing his former team, Alf Smith promptly tallied his first goal of the season and racked up two assists, not to mention an eye-popping +4 rating. The Tommy Gun line ran roughshod over Gord Roberts and the Bulldogs, giving Smith a bit of vindication. The Thistles picked up their first win of the year, but they're still in the cellar and have a long way to go. A resurgent Alf Smith, however, would definitely speed things up.

Painted Planes

I haven't forgotten about Aeronautica Imperialis. One of these days, Nathaniel and I are going to have dive back into the rules and learn how to play. In the meantime, I finally got around to taking photos of the planes that I painted a few weeks ago. They turned out...okay. The Imperial planes look way better than the Ork planes, but maybe that's in part because I chose some, well, loud colors for the Ork fleet.

First up, the Dakkajets...

And now the Fighta Bommers...

Now we have the planes for the Imperial Navy, starting with the Marauder bombers...

My favorites are the Thunderbolt fighters, built as Fury variants...

The Ballad of Gord Roberts

I'm no balladeer, but if I were, I'd compose a ballad to tell the tale of the also-ran who became an all-star: Gord Roberts -- no, not this Gord Roberts, but rather this Gord Roberts. In my Strat-O-Matic league of pre-NHL Hall of Famers, Roberts is by far the most interesting narrative here in the early part of our first season.

In my initial assessment of the players, Roberts rated highly as a forward with a well-rounded game. When I looked deeper into the numbers, however, I was surprised by his rather pedestrian shooting percentages. He got bumped back to the pack and ended up as a second-line winger with the Thistles. He played pretty well in the pre-season mini-tournament, scoring a goal in the Thistles' 7-3 thumping of the Comets in the championship game.

Despite their win, however, the hard-hitting, hard-shooting Thistles had a problem: their lineup was full of guys who were very likely to take penalties. Given that the Bulldogs seemed to need offensive support, I thought a trade was in order. I sent Jack Ruttan from the Bulldogs to the Thistles in exchange for Roberts. Ruttan and Roberts have very similar shooting percentages, and while Ruttan is less likely to take penalties, Roberts has a higher raw score in the Offense category, which is something akin to hockey sense -- guys with higher scores in this stat tend to find the puck on their stick more often. The trade seemed like a good deal for both sides, and it turned out to be the only player transaction that I made between the pre-season and the regular season.

Fast-forward three games. Jack Ruttan is, well, I don't remember if he has even a single assist yet. Gord Roberts, meanwhile, is now leading the league in scoring with seven points (3 G, 4 A) after three games played. Last night, he even scored a breakaway shorthanded goal against the Thistles, the very team that traded him away. This is starting to look like the most lopsided hockey trade since the Oilers swapped Gretzky for a bag of pucks.

So how did the Thistles -- okay, how did John -- miss the boat so badly on Roberts? I leaned too hard on the shooting percentages. That Offense stat comes into play quite often, and various game situations result in the puck ending up with the guy who has his team's highest Offense score. Roberts has a 4 in that category (among just a handful of players, including Cyclone Taylor, to have that score) and plays on a line with teammates who both have a score of 3. That means Roberts is going to get the puck a lot, and that possession translates into tons of scoring opportunities. So although his shooting percentages are nothing to write home about, the sheer volume of chances is going to result in a lot of goals -- goals for the Bulldogs, that is. The Thistles are dead last in the league and could really use his help right about now!

Two Games In

The season is underway, and each team has now played two games. The Victorias are 2-0 with a +3 goal differential on the strength of Cyclone Taylor's league-leading five points (3 G, 2 A). The Comets and Bulldogs are each 1-1 with a +1 differential, while the Thistles -- the champs of the pre-season mini-tournament -- are languishing at 0-2 with a -5 differential. Goaltender Paddy Moran has been nothing short of dreadful. Their next game will be against the first-place Vics, so that will be a major test for the Thistles here in the early part of the season.

Game On!

It's finally here -- the start of my pre-NHL Hall of Fame League! The first official game featured the Bulldogs hosting the Victorias. On a power play early in the first period, Cyclone Taylor of the Vics scored the first goal in league history. He tacked on another goal and an assist for a three-point night as the Vics cruised to a 3-1 win. Bowse Hutton was incredible in goal, stopping 32 of 33 shots, while Riley Hern stopped 36 of 39 in the losing effort. There was a bit of a scary moment late in the third when Taylor went down with an injury and didn't return, but he'll be back in the lineup for the Vics' next contest. Tomorrow night, however, it will be the Comets hosting the Thistles in a rematch of the pre-season tournament finale.

Pre-Season Tourney

With my four pre-NHL Hall of Fame teams -- the Bulldogs, Comets, Thistles, and Victorias -- set with their initial rosters, I wanted to get a few games under my belt before I started keeping track of stats. As such, I ran a mini tournament, and the Thistles came out as the winners. Top-line center Tommy Dunderdale tied the Vics' Marty Walsh with a tournament-leading three goals and earned MVP honors. In all, the Thistles scored 11 and surrendered only 5; despite having just the third-ranked goalie (Paddy Moran), they seemed a lot more powerful than the other teams. Granted, it's a very small sample size (each team played only two games), but I'll probably dig into the numbers a bit and see if it makes sense to transfer a good player from the Thistles to the lowly Bulldogs, who scored 3 and gave up 8 in losing both of their games. 

My Brain Hurts

Now I've re-balanced the teams to account for the differences in goaltending. Here's a look at the final table, minus the goalies and the free agents.

Am I close? Did I nerf Bowse Hutton's team enough to compensate for his superior skillset? I won't know until I actually play some sample games. But if Hutton turns into Patrick Roy and the other three guys are clones of Peter Sidorkiewicz, I'm really going to have to rethink how I'm approaching this mini-league.

Goalie Woes

So...I balanced the teams. I balanced them really well. The parity among these four teams of pre-NHL Hockey Hall of Famers was remarkable.

But then I added in the goalies.

I absolutely cannot believe I failed to take the goaltenders into account when I was balancing the teams. Of the four pre-NHL goalies, there's a clear statistical hierarchy -- Bowse Hutton is far and away the best, followed by Riley Hern, Paddy Moran, and Percy LeSueur in that order. Now I need to go back and redistribute the players so that Hutton gets the worst group, Hern gets the second-worst, and so forth, in order to cancel out the goalies' lopsided influence on the outcome of games.

Argh.

Numbers Game

With old-timey baseball behind me, I'm now moving on to old-timey hockey. I've spent the last couple of nights analyzing the pre-NHL Hall of Famers in my Strat-O-Matic set to gain a better understanding of their relative strengths and weaknesses. My first look at the game stats on the cards was flawed because the box I received didn't include the rulebook (they have since mailed me a copy). Now that I understand the rules, I'm taking a fresh look at the players and realizing that some of my initial thoughts were inaccurate. With a spreadsheet that now has twice as many columns as the first iteration, I'm well on my way to assessing and ranking the players. Although it may sound tedious -- Amy certainly thinks it is -- I actually find this part to be rather enjoyable. I love crunching the numbers and really digging in to the underlying math of the game system. Still, it will be even more fun when I get to play the game!

Stats

When I started my Strat-O-Matic mini-league, I intentionally chose not to record much in the way of data. More tracking -- every at-bat, every defensive play -- equals more time spent. Instead, I opted for fast and fun games that I can get through in a half-hour or less. I'm recording only the data that takes absolutely no effort to record, so that amounts of things like home runs (relatively rare for players of this era) and a few junk stats (errors, wins, saves, etc.).

With two seasons now in the books, I can take a look at the career leaders in these meager categories.  (For context, Season 1 was 16 games per team, and Season 2 was 20 games per team.) Below, I've listed all-time (again, it's only two seasons so far!) records for a few stats...

Home Runs

1. King Kelly - 5
2. Jesse Burkett, George Davis, Ed Delahanty, Hugh Duffy, Honus Wagner - 3
3. (Many tied) - 2

Wins

1. John Clarkson, Cy Young - 8
2. Tim Keefe - 7
3. Pud Galvin - 5

Saves

1. Amos Rusie - 5
2. Joe McGinnity, Vic Willis - 4
3. Rube Waddell - 2

The numbers above reflect only regular-season totals, as we don't really have enough playoff data yet to share anything meaningful. I could also list the career leaders for fielding errors, losses, etc., but we'll stick with the positive stuff!

Haymakers Win It All

The second season of my nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball league came to a thrilling end last night with the championship game between the Canaries and the Haymakers. Pud Galvin and Cy Young started for their respective teams. The host Haymakers wasted little time in getting on the board when Jesse Burkett hit a two-run shot off of Galvin in the bottom of the first. Galvin surrendered another run in the third on a sacrifice fly. All throughout, the Canaries managed to get men on base, but Young induced enough weak contact to keep the ball in the infield. In the fourth, with two on and two out, Wee Willie Keeler smacked a two-run single to extend the Haymakers' lead to 5-0. Al Spalding took over for the Canaries in the fifth, and he ended up pitching four innings of scoreless relief. Young, meanwhile, was cruising until the seventh, when Monte Ward -- the light-hitting middle infielder and Canaries' captain -- crushed a two-run homer to cut into the Haymakers' lead. The score remained 5-2 into the top of the ninth, when Rube Waddell relieved Young. The hard-throwing lefty tossed a scoreless inning to seal the deal, giving the Haymakers their first championship! The Playoff MVP award went to Jesse Burkett, who went 2-4 with the big first-inning homer; the iron-gloved corner outfielder also made a spectacular catch in the ninth to help preserve the win.

Canaries Take Flight

After the Haymakers earned home field advantage in the championship game, the Canaries and Blue Legs squared off for the right to face them. In a battle of aces, Tim Keefe of the Canaries and the Blue Legs' John Clarkson --this year's pitching MVP -- were evenly matched through six innings, having surrendered two runs apiece. When Clarkson's spot came up with two on and two out in the top of the seventh, I elected to pinch hit, but the Legs failed to score. Now the ball passed to Kid Nichols, who promptly gave up a run in the bottom of the frame. Nichols surrendered three more in the eighth, and the Legs headed into the top of the ninth trailing 6-2. On the other side, Keefe had pitched eight strong innings before giving way to Canary closer Vic Willis. Willis worked in and out of trouble in the ninth and gave up a run before it was all over, but the Birds held on for a 6-3 triumph and a date with the Haymakers for the league championship!

Playoffs Set

We've reached the end of the regular season for my baseball old-timers. The Haymakers locked up first place with a 12-8 record and +4 run differential. The Blue Legs and Canaries tied at 9-11. Since the second-place team hosts the play-in game to determine who faces the first-place team for the championship, we needed a tiebreaker game. When the Blue Legs and Canaries faced off for one final regular-season game, the Canaries came out on top 3-1 behind a complete-game effort from Pud Galvin. As such, the Canaries locked up second place with a 10-11 record, but a lousy -3 run differential. The Blue Legs had a better differential at -1, but finished 9-12 and in last place. Next up, the Canaries will host the Blue Legs in the play-in game, while the Haymakers await the winner!

As far as individual awards go, this season we didn't have a clear-cut MVP among the position players. Numerous players distinguished themselves, but I ended up giving the nod to Honus Wagner of the Canaries; he played great defense at short and provided tremendous offense all season in the middle of the order. For the pitchers, John Clarkson of the Blue Legs was the obvious choice, as he went 6-2 and led a Legs staff that allowed the fewest runs in the league. The final award, for playoff MVP, will be determined after the championship game. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

The fight against frozen beef!

Okaaaaaay...

A New Chapter

The boys are at a crossroads with both of their Shattered Realm campaigns. Last spring, in the main storyline, they wrapped up the Emerald Tablet saga. Just this past weekend, in the futuristic version (where they're playing descendants of their original characters), they reached the end of a major chapter.

Next up, we'll return to their original characters. I've been trying to scope out a story arc that will be even more epic than the Emerald Tablet, but aside from some cool character development ideas for their heroes, I hadn't really made much progress. Inspiration struck when I returned to a work of literature that has always spurred my imagination: John Milton's Paradise Lost. The new foe who will drive the plot in the next Shattered Realm phase is based heavily on Milton's most dynamic and charismatic character, Satan.

I'm also hoping to use this storyline as a way to ease Matthew and Nathaniel into the vast Druid Cycle campaign world, with its hundreds of NPCs and over a quarter-century of past adventures. As such, I've selected a powerful but minor Druid Cycle character -- an angel -- who will rebel against his god and therefore be exiled across the multiverse to the Shattered Realm, where he'll cause all sorts of mayhem. No doubt I'll find a spot to work in one of Satan's most famous lines from Paradise Lost: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

Logjam

In the latest news from my nineteenth-century baseball league, each team has completed 18 games -- leaving only two more apiece until the playoffs. The Haymakers have spent much of the season in first place, and currently sit at 10-8. The Canaries are in second at 9-9, and the Blue Legs bring up the rear at 8-10 (despite being the only team with a positive run differential, though it's only +1). A three-way tie for first place is technically possible...