All-Star Break

What a difference a few more games can make! We're at the halfway point of my first season of nineteenth-century baseball -- with each team playing a 16-game regular season -- and the Canaries are no longer looking like a world-beating powerhouse. After eight games, the Haymakers have pulled out in front with a 5-3 record and a +12 run differential; they've scored the most runs in the league and also allowed the fewest. Ace pitcher Cy Young is looking like our league MVP, and his work includes a 13-inning complete-game victory. The red-hot Blue Legs have moved up to second place, with a 4-4 record but a -5 differential that reflects their early struggles. The Canaries have fallen into the basement, with a 3-5 record and an ugly -7 differential. I'm still not confident that the teams are balanced appropriately, but I think we're pretty close. The teams are starting to exhibit their own unique flavors and character, so it will be fun to see how things shake out in the second half of the season.

Small-Sample-Size Alert!

Each team in my nineteenth-century league has now played four games. In baseball, that's not a lot. Intellectually, I know that the sample size is so small that I can't draw meaningful conclusions about the relative strengths of my three teams...but I can't help it! It feels like the Canaries are significantly better than the others. They're sitting at 3-1 with a +5 run differential. The Haymakers are next at 2-2 with a -2 differential, and the snakebitten Blue Legs are 1-3 with a -3 differential. (For the boys in blue, the only highlight of the season has been King Kelly's home run -- the only one hit in the league thus far!) I've made a minor swap of pitchers between the Canaries and Blue Legs to try to even out the staffs a bit, but otherwise I'm just going to keep playing and see what happens. Are the Canaries really good, or just really lucky?

Game On!

In the first game of my nineteenth-century league, Cy Young of the Haymakers opened the first inning by giving up back-to-back extra-base hits to the Billy Hamilton and Nap Lajoie, but then settled down to toss eight straight shutout innings. Meanwhile, Blue Legs starter Kid Nichols had a few shaky frames and allowed the Haymakers to string some hits together. The end result was a 4-1 win for the Haymakers, with Wee Willie Keeler flashing a big bat despite his tiny stature. Next up, the Haymakers try their luck against a Canaries team that features the legendary Honus Wagner, one of the five original Hall of Famers.

Team Names

They had some pretty wacky baseball team names back in the day. I've decided to use the names of real-life Major League baseball teams for my league of nineteenth-century Hall of Famers, although with the stipulation that the teams can't currently exist in MLB under a different name (sorry, Brooklyn Bridegroom at St. Louis Perfectos!). So, without further ado, say hello to Cap Anson's Haymakers, Nap Lajoie's Blue Legs, and Monte Ward's Canaries.

Movie News

A bit of news on the still-in-development-hell D&D movie.

Pitchers Are Hard

My little three-team Strat-O-Matic Old Timers' League is now taking shape! I started with position players. After a bit of finagling around the diamond -- for example, Deacon White was primarily a catcher but I'm using him at third base, where he played far fewer innings -- I ended up with between three and five Hall of Famers at each position. Ranking the players at each position was fairly easy. Looking at their game stats, I weighed offensive prowess, defensive abilities, and base running skills (super-duper important for nineteenth-century ball).

As for the pitchers, well, they're another story. I've got 14 of them, and although poring over Strat-O-Matic game stats confirms that, say, Cy Young is better than Amos Rusie, it's been challenging to rank them with any confidence. For one thing, even within the narrow span of nineteenth-century baseball, the earliest stars -- Al Spalding and Candy Cummings -- don't correlate well to their peers in the latter part of this era. The biggest question mark, however, is Rube Waddell, whose real-life dominance as a strikeout artist doesn't (in my estimation) come across in the game stats. I've tentatively broken them all up into staffs of five, five, and four pitchers (the team with innings-eaters Cy Young and Old Hoss Radbourn will have to make do with four), but it still feels like a shot in the dark. I'll draft my ranked position players next and add them to these teams, and then we'll see what we get.

Old Timers' League

I've had a passion for nineteenth-century baseball since I was a kid. I have distinct memories of my twelve-year-old self trying to create a text-based baseball simulation game in BASIC, and then using it to replay the first recorded organized baseball game -- a dust-up between the New York Knickerbockers and the Nine York Nine from way back in 1845.

Fast-forward to today: The Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame edition has given me the opportunity to explore the simulation of nineteenth-century baseball in a far more realistic fashion. You might have seen posts last fall about our Hall of Fame League, in which the boys and I divvied up the all-time greats into teams based on twenty-year time periods. We had some very memorable games, but Matthew and Nathaniel don't have quite the same zeal for baseball that I do, so it's been hard to get them back into Strat-O-Matic.

After reading another baseball history book while I was on a business trip in Seattle last week, I decided to create a new historical league that I can run all by myself. For this one, I'm using all Hall of Famers who debuted between 1871 (the beginning of Major League Baseball) and 1899. I have just enough players to create three full teams. I'll rank the players at each position and then conduct a draft with the hope of getting three relatively equal teams. Then we'll play ball!

Shadowspear

Shadowspear, the new 40k boxed set, was unveiled today -- and damn those models look cool! Not sure I want to buy yet another boxed set, but I really dig those Primaris scouts!

Halo Honcho

Not to be outdone by his younger brother, Matthew completed the Halo game that he's been working on. It's funny to see them arguing over which franchise -- Halo or Call of Duty -- is better. I like to pipe up that the Baldur's Gate series is the best of all, but no one ever seconds that motion.

Duty Done

I'm proud to announce that Nathaniel successfully completed his Call of Duty game on the Xbox, and with very little assistance from Matthew or myself!

The Adventures Begin!

Today we received our copies of the first two books in the Warhammer Adventures series. I'm excited to have a fun series to share with Nathaniel!

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Matt, this one's for you! Keep those nautical-themed characters handy!

TV D&D

I don't quite "get" The Big Bang Theory. I've caught bits and pieces over the years and it seems amusing enough, but I'm not sure why people go gaga over it. At any rate, apparently they had a D&D-themed episode tonight. You can read about it here. 

This Is a Thing I Must Have

Sunday's Simpsons episode included a Stranger Things riff that the boys totally didn't get because, of course, they haven't seen the show. During a commercial break, I gave them a quick overview of the series and its connection to D&D. Turns out that was a timely discussion because there's going to be a new D&D starter set that ties directly into Stranger Things. Very cool indeed! And here's hoping that the upcoming season of Stranger Things features more D&D and less Dig Dug.

How Irons-ic

Nathaniel is playing one of the many Call of Duty games on our Xbox, and a major plot twist in this installment is that a character played by Kevin Spacey -- military contractor Jonathan Irons -- turns out to be the villain. "You're a monster!" one of the characters shouts at him. This game came out in 2014, so the twist is rather ironic today.

Hot Stove Season

Not saying that the Xbox was a bad idea, but there's definitely less interest in board games these days at the ol' Sutton homestead. (Halo is definitely the flavor of the month!) In particular, I'm really itching to get back to our Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame League. Somebody needs to take down Nathaniel's as-yet-undefeated juggernaut of stars from the Live Ball Era. 

Bestiary Notebooks

I'm not sure who the intended audience is for this product, which means that it's probably me! I can see the boys (and even Amy?) enjoying these little D&D notebooks, each of which features a different iconic monster from D&D lore. But will they include my favorites, the hook horror and the owlbear?

"Sticks to Snakes!"

I'm definitely not a Halo guy, so after the boys blew me up a dozen times in a multiplayer scenario, we decided to switch over to Chronicles of Mystara for some cooperative Xbox action. The first game in Chronicles is called Tower of Doom, and it involves heroes battling against a lich called Deimos. There's probably more to the story, but Matthew clicked through all the dialogue, so we were a bit fuzzy on what was going on. Nevertheless, our stalwart party -- with Matthew as the cleric, Nathaniel as the fighter, and me as the spell-slinging elf -- hacked and slashed our way through hordes of kobolds, skeletons, gnolls, and other classic D&D monsters. (Shout-out to the owlbears, yo!) It took us a couple of hours, but we defeated the lich and saved...whatever we were supposed to save!

The hands-down most entertaining aspect of this game, however, is the cleric spell Sticks to Snakes. When Matthew would cast that spell, his character would call out "sticks to snakes!" in a very authoritative voice as he tossed some brown rectangles onto the ground (remember that this arcade game first came out in '93, so the graphics aren't that great!). The sticks then animated into snakes that zipped around and attacked the party's enemies. Matthew would often burn through a full day's allotment of Sticks to Snakes spells in a single battle, giving us legions of slithering allies. I'm not sure how effective they were (especially against flying foes like the lich), but it was definitely hilarious to watch! 

Russian Revenge

It was a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon, so we decided to start World War III. In the alternate-'80s setting of Tanks: The Modern Age, Nathaniel took command of an American M1A1 Abrams, while I led a pair of Soviet T-64s. As we rumbled into a quiet village in West Germany, my attempt to flank the Abrams resulted in the quick, merciless obliteration of my first T-64. Figuring the game would soon be lost (the Abrams is far superior to the T-64), I just plowed ahead with my remaining tank and chased Nathaniel out of the village and into the forest. Along the way, I was lucky enough to score a critical hit that injured his crew, which helped to even the odds a bit. Our tanks traded devasting shots as I charged toward his position. Here's a photo of the final turn, when my resolute Russians destroyed the Abrams and avenged their comrades.

Nathaniel was none too pleased to lose after what had seemed like such a certain victory. I'm sure tomorrow will bring a rematch!

Chronicles of Mystara

Remember those awesome D&D arcade games from the '90s? Neither do I, because they never made it to Horseheads, New York. I learned about them years later, after coin-gobbling arcade games had gone the way of Blockbuster Video. At long last, I have the opportunity to scratch that itch, thanks to our Xbox. Last night I downloaded Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which contains both arcade games from that series -- Tower of Doom (1993) and Shadow Over Mystara (1996). As old-timey side-scrolling games go, they're not half bad! I think the boys will enjoy joining me for some multiplayer action.