Grand Slam Baseball

Cool beans! 1 play solitaire to learn, 5 real plays against 4 different people. Rating could rise. Update: more plays confirms this is a solid design, and fun, but depends on player's reaction to the unusual mechanic.

In my solitaire game I saw how deliberate card choices over time beat random card choices--decisively.

First f2f game score was:

-Inning-----|1|3|5|7|9| TOTAL | ERR ..VISTORS..|0|1|0|0|0| 1 | 0 ..HOME......|0|1|2|0|-| 3 | 1

With 1 HR, and 2 beaned-batter walks.

2nd game score had few hits, final 0-1. If the difficulty of hitting doesn't improve as we improve our play, it's a problem. Still like the game, though. It was easy to absorb the rules. I think the way the game skips/samples innings was a smart choice to make the amount of time the game takes feel right. The game also samples the experience of baseball by focusing on the batter v pitcher, as there is no lineup, no decision to steal bases, adjustment of defensive formation. It doesn't bother me that it's not that kind of simulation, but I would like it better if it had those elements. Still this is an engaging, elegant card game with a reasonable baseball theme. I worried about the hits, though. Maybe that will change. Some real baseball games don't have a lot of hits. But not all! [Update: August 2016: achieved a high scoring game with a new player, 9 to 10. I don't know what to conclude but it shows that it isn't limited to low scoring game.]

If this game warranted it, it would be possible to add some rules for a lineup, with individual players offering card adjustments of some kind.

Needs more plays. I like this game, but my opponents seemed to have mixed opinions.

Like Raj, I think the game flies or sinks on the psychology part of the mechanic. So if a player plays random cards, it will lose its fun--and the player will probably lose (just like Raj, as I have seen).

I love this game- feels like real baseball to me- it captures the batter pitcher confrontation really well. I play 4 out of 7 with many of my friends and its great

Basically takes the same system used in the classic game Marrakesh by the same author and applies it to baseball. Somewhat repetitive...works OK....worth checking out if you love Marrakesh (like I do) and you like baseball.

Using the same deck he pioneered in Marrakesh, Joli Kansil has created a game that feels like baseball without being a slavish simulation. This is a very light game based around the pitcher/batter paradigm, while other elements are almost non-existent. I prefer Marrakesh by far, but this is still an enjoyable and portable game.

Feels a lot like Cribbage except there's a bit more tension with the rock-paper-scissors mechanic.

Surprisingly thematic considering it uses ordinary playing cards. The focus on the game is the interaction between the batter and the pitcher. The suits are arranged in a hierarchy similar to rock-paper-scissors. The pitcher plays a card face down. If the batter chooses not to swing, he tries to play a card with a lower suit to get a ball. If the batter chooses to swing, he tries to play a card of the same suit (for a hit), or at least a higher suit (for an out but an opportunity for other runners to get more bases).

For all other events -- fouls, stolen bases, errors, etc. -- players calculate the difference of the two cards played and look at one of several tables to see what happens.

One gamey yet effective mechanic this game uses is hand management: each player gets a hand of six cards at the start of an inning. Players only get new cards after all six have been played. So players' have to decide whether or not to play or hold their "high" and "low" suits. It adds a bit more excitement -- and chaos -- to the rock-paper-scissors mechanic.