Strat-o-Matic Games

[LunarSage]

Strat-o-Matic is a company that designs and sells sports simulation board and computer games.  They've been doing it since the 60s apparently.  They currently make baseball, football (college and pro), hockey and basketball.  The board game uses dice and stats each player from a given year on every team. 

My friend got me into the game this year and we're doing a drafted baseball league, as well as a drafted football league. 

Has anyone else played this?  It's extremely fun.

[LunarSage]

Here's their website for those who may be curious.

http://www.strat-o-matic.com/

[LunarSage]

Not a lot of sports fans on E, apparently.   

[LunarSage]

Since my talk of this game on another thread was pretty much looked at with sardonic scorn, I'll just post all this here in case someone cares.




If you enjoy sports at all, I highly recommend checking it out.  http://www.strat-o-matic.com/

Here's a Wiki describing the NY based company, which has been around since 1961 (so 54 years).  They originally just made a board game simulation of baseball, the rulkes of which have become more and more advanced over the years, releasing updated rosters every year.

From the Wiki:

"In a Strat-O-Matic game, each athlete is represented by a player card, on which are printed various ratings and result tables for dice rolls. A player, who may play solitaire or against another player, is in charge of making strategic and personnel decisions for his/her team, while determining the results of his/her decisions by cross-referencing dice rolls with a system of printed charts and tables. (The basic scheme may be understood in connection with the adjoining images, representing the baseball game. One die selects which column is used on either the batter or the pitcher card, while the other two dice specify the outcome within the column.)

The results on the player cards are determined by a combination of the respective athlete's real-life statistics for the previous year and (mostly in the case of the baseball game) independent research of news articles and scouting reports. All Strat-O-Matic games offer a "basic", "advanced", and "super-advanced" version; the more advanced versions give more strategic options to players while taking into account additional nuances of an athlete's abilities (e.g., in baseball, differences in hitting vs. left-handed or right-handed pitchers). The computer adaptations essentially rely on the same algorithms as the tabletop games, but they have the additional advantages of faster play and statistics compilation."

Original set:



Modern set:



Pitcher card example:



Batter/Fielder card example:



Then in 1968, the company released a football game (for both college and pro), a basketball game in 1973 and a hockey version in 1978.





Then much later, they made a computer version that you can play with the same rules for any of the games but online against others in single games or leagues or just by yourself. 

Baseball:



Football:



A friend introduced me to the baseball version and I can't convey just how awesome I think it is.  I started just playing the board game version with cards and dice in a 6 player league where we all drafted our players from amongst available players from 8 teams that we chose.  I'm currently in first place as of week 12 out of 20 weeks, heh. 

I'm playing my version of the Seattle Mariners.

I bought the football board version with the same players drafting players for our football teams.  I'm, playing my version of the Seattle Seahawks of course.  Our season hasn't started just yet.  Even Josi's in the foootball league. 

Sports fans are likely to love this game.  Sports fans who are also math nerds are even more likely to love this game.  Again, I highly, HIGHLY recommend it.

[HannibalBarca]

I guess I show my age (46) to say I remember people who played this; mostly friends of my father and some of their kids.  As an elementary school teacher with the benefit of personal history, I can say that I think games like this and others in the past actually helped children learn math sooner than children of today.  I know I asked my dad when I was in 2nd grade how to do multiplication and division because first I asked what ERA and batting average were on my baseball cards, and he told me I needed to know those skills to calculate it.  Paper and pencil role-playing games were much the same.  Now that the great majority of games are computer-based, the bookkeeping is no longer necessary, and all the math that is bypassed takes its toll.

Dad also had a football game that used transistors housed in a board, buttons, knobs, and light bulbs.  No, not the vibrating kind, but this:



The knob was set to the down, both players pushed one of the buttons on their side, a light lit up, and you consulted the chart in the middle for the result.  I have to admit, when my younger brother and I actually tried to keep track of a ten-game season, neither of our quarterbacks could manage to break a 50% completion rate...then again, we were more of the deep bomb kind of coaches, and less West-coast offense

[LunarSage]

That's very cool, Hannibal! 

I really can't recommend Strat enough.  I'm hoping enough people may check it out that we can have an E league.