Baseball Card GM Review

2 weeks ago 19

Baseball fans are sickos. If you know a baseball fan, you know this. If you are a baseball fan, you have elaborate rituals you perform in private to help Jhonkensy Noel out of a slump. You know, sicko stuff. Baseball fans are the reason there are hordes of nerds with spreadsheets running actual sports teams these days.

And because baseball fans are the type of sicko who’d rather chuck dice than chuck weights, some smartypants invested in baseball cards. Ostensibly to sell cereal or something. Who knows.

But no baseball sicko out there could actually use their precious baseball cards— containing critical statistics such SB, BA, RBI, ERA, SO, BB, and maybe even xWOBA—to play a real game. Until now.

Baseball Card GM, designed by Father/Son duo Matthew and Garrett Weaver, and published by Weaver Media Group, is a 2-player game that takes about 40 minutes to play.

Gameplay Overview:

Baseball Card GM starts and ends with your baseball cards. If you don’t have any, they are readily available for purchase on whatever online retailer you prefer.

The rules offer a few suggestions on how to craft your team. Favorite players. Re-create an actual Mariners lineup from 2002. But the only right answer here is to crack a couple of packs and start drafting, baby. (More on this in a minute)

Once you’ve selected your team, you set your lineup and go through a 9-inning baseball game. The most important thing here is that players (GMs?) must declare the specific year of stats per player that are being used. And these are unique to each player.

The rules of MLB baseball apply, so no Pesäpallo shenanigans allowed.

The batting team will roll dice to determine the outcome of at-bats. The rolls are compared against a printed table, and the stats listed from a single year on the baseball card of the batter. The listed pitcher can influence this as well.

Batters become baserunners. Or outs. Or runs! Innings go by. There’s a break for Peanuts and Cracker Jack. The winner is the team with the most runs scored.

Game Experience:

Drafting a team to play with is an absolute blast. It is both AP-inducing and immensely fun to compare stats year-over-year for two different second basemen and choose whether you want a contact hitter or a power slugger (Jeff Kent, obviously).

The emotional investment is real! I truly, actively despise the Dodgers. But I’ll be damned if I wasn’t absolutely jazzed to have an Orel Hershiser that I could plunk down against whatever chaff my opponent sent to bat against him.

The visual of setting your lineup is fabulous. All 9 guys are laid out [editor’s note: phrasing!] across this enormous playmat. It has a real stadium feel to it, and I may or may not have put on ballpark ambient noise when we were playing.

The actual gameplay suffers somewhat, especially in the first few plays. As you play, you must reference what amounts to an Excel table on your playmat, then reference the stat year on the baseball card. And make sure you check the pitcher’s card too, because their stats can influence your success potential!

It’s clunky to start. Frustrating, at times. But once you get used to the layout of the board, it goes much more quickly. And if you play a series with the same lineup, same teams, your stats references get that much quicker.

This is where a comparison to Strat-O-Matic is inevitable. Strat-O-Matic’s biggest advantage here is that the player cards are built to have that reference directly on them. That’s a strength and a weakness. Strat-O-Matic is absolutely more of a spreadsheet experience and has none of the stadium feel that comes with Baseball Card GM.

Baseball Card GM does a fabulous job of immersing the players in a game. Each baseball card being displayed with action shots (or not) lends a much deeper, more personal connection to the action.

Final Thoughts:

I have loved my plays of Baseball Card GM. It has a bit of a UI on-ramp that takes navigating. Once you’ve grokked the board and how references work, it flows just like a ballgame. No replay review required.

I must mention that I appreciate that this doesn’t lean into the Collectibles craze at all, either. You are encouraged to crack packs and play with whatever is inside. There is no need to go hunting mint cards. If anything, that’s discouraged because those graded cards hang in humidity-controlled chambers guarded by lasers, and the cards you’re playing with are getting hot dog grease smeared all over them between innings.

The goal here is to be able to simulate a ballgame with the cards you already have. Mission accomplished.

Final Score: 4 Stars – Take me out to the tabletop, baby

Hits:
• Drafting a team is great
• Using baseball cards as a game component is rewarding
• It feels like a baseball game, and you can get as campy as you want to with it
• It’s not Strat-O-Matic