The season is about to begin, although we have to wait until day four before the Yankees start their season opening series against the Texas Rangers. After an hour or so of seperating and bagging all of the teams from my 1979 set, I’m ready to go.
The plan is to play “As Played” with all the trades, and the original line ups. I will make new cards any missing Yankees players using the forumlas provided in the rules, but will subsistitue any opposition players using a similar position player or pitcher from the opponent I am playing. The order will be: actual player card, supplied fringe players and then new cards (I only identified 3 or 4 players who played for the Yankees that didn’t make Statis Pro’s pretty complete rosters).
As usual I will be playing C+D and inputting the results manually while playing using the Strat-o-Matic PC game. I had hoped to be able to use Replay Baseball’s game but I cannot current figure out how to input manually via the keyboad, and while I love all the summary and report pages in that game, I’m not such a fan of the in-game screen. Maybe next time.
While I will be using all of the out of the box 1979 Statis Pro rules, the one exception will be using Strat-o-Matic’s SADV pitcher fatigue rules. I’m doing this for a few reasons. Firstly, I’m not a huge fan of the Statis Pro SR and RR so am happy to let the PC game tell me when someone is ready to be relived based on the robust Strat-o-Matic rules. And, I also like to turn on the computer manager for the relevant team at that time and let them select the reliever.
So get read for Game 1 at Arlington with Guidry pitching and most likely Gossage relieving.
As they say in the classics: “Let’s go Yankees…”
Hello, I came across your article on sportsboardgamer, and wish you luck playing out the season! I own both the 78 and 79 Statis Pro baseball seasons and for the most part it is a terrific game. I don’t know if you have noticed but the 78 FAC have four different colours to choose from before you start a game. I have found that RED and GREEN produce high scoring games, BLUE and BLACK produce low scoring games. It was for that reason that I bought another edition that did not have that feature. An analysis of the cards bears that out.
One more thing that I didn’t like…I found that the hit and run strategy was overpowered and I had to house rule it get more lifelike results. Still a very good game.
I’ve moved on from Statis Pro to Replay Baseball. The latter game can be bought as a boxed dice and chart game, or as a PC game. Both are excellent. I play the PC game as it makes a season possible and the computer looks after all the stats. Shipping of the boxed game from US to UK is prohibitive too.
Regards
Hi Trevor, thanks for the kind words. I’ve just wrapped game one. I’ve tried to use Replay Baseball’s PC game to score with the Statis Pro but find Strat-O-Matic’s PC game a lot easier to use for this purpose. Have recently purchased a couple of seasons of “mint” cards from someone in the US who has managed to get old stock from Avalon Hill (or whom ever owns them) and have been shocked by the insurance costs, the VAT and the customs duties. Never again!
I would like to try Replay Baseball but right now am too invested with Statis Pro.
Re. the coloured FAQs, I have mixed them up but am finding them a bit light on when it comes to possible Errors. So I might use the 3rd Edition ones I have. I am also using the auto-2 bases rule when base hits to OF come off a pitcher’s card. This rule seems to be absent from the 79 edition.
Happy flipping! I enjoy the process too, but for a season I can’t see past a computer implementation. You are made of strong stuff if you can make it work! 78 Yankees are a great team to play with, so much colour and background reading to go along with as you play. Ron Guidry is my all time favourite pitcher, should be in the HoF!