Presumably most of us have various gaming projects going that haven't been given the full dynasty treatment but still have cool moments in them that seem worth sharing. That's the intent of this thread ... well, that and I wanted to mention this without threadjacking anybody else to do it ;)

TEW 07, taking a crack at Mid-Atlantic with the D.O.T.T. mod, a promotion I've never actually run before.

Nice little sequence where World Champ Flair avoids giving Dusty a title shot (usually bringing in big names on loan or what not, deeming them more worthy), Terry Funk has been helping keep Rhodes battered & bruised. The Funkster finally gets his fill of Flair's botched interferences in his matches, an errant chair shot in a U.S. title match vs Steamboat eventually being the last straw. Dusty finally gets his match, only to see Funk attack Flair with a chair which both turned Funk face but also gave Naitch a DQ win (thus denying Dusty yet again).

Move forward to the next monthly big show, Funk vs Flair in the main (where Terry eventually wins the title clean) but Dusty/Blackjack Mulligan open the show with a World Tag title shot against Slater & Bob Orton, Jr ... only to be attacked & brutally beaten by the newest arrival to MACW: Bruiser Brody.

Which brings me to the cool part I wanted to share:
Can you imagine the first interview with The American Dream afterwards?

"Bruither Brody, you come down here and stick your nose in my bidness. Buss me in my head, stomp on me while I'm down. You a big man Bruither Brody, attack a man from behind like that. It's bad enuff to be in a ring with two sneaky snakes like Dirty Dick Slater and Bob Owton Junior, then you gotta put your nose in where don't belong. I don't know what yo prollem was Bruither Brody, but I know what yo problem is now."

{volume begins to rise as Rhodes continues, yanking off his cowboy hat to reveal a bandage high on his forehead).

THIS RIGHT HERE IS YO PROBLEM. You buss me in my head, fo'teen stitches on this son of a plumber. Sent me to the HOSPITAL, didn't know where I wuz. But they stitch me up and I know where I'm gonna be ... right up in YO FACE Bruither Brody. I'm gone take this Texas medium fist right here (a trembling Dream brandishes a fist to the camera & pauses for effect), I'm gone hit you in you left ear ... and see if I can't make it come out on the right."

I haven't enjoyed imagining anything in TEW so much in a long time as imagining interviews where Dusty tries to say Brody's name :)

Six years into my latest Racing Breed career and I've had my best crop of two-year olds ever.

Gettysburg, a colt out of Mystic's Lee (dirt router in the game) was just named Two Year Colt of the Year with two G1 wins in a row -- the California Fall Futurity by 9 lengths and the Breeders Cup Juvenile by 3.

He is my best Derby prospect ever. But that's not all.

Out of my seven two year olds, six raced and four were stakes winners. In addition to Gettysburg we have:

Fleur de Lis -- filly by Pulpit. In four starts she has three wins and one place, with two stakes wins. She may be best on turf but will be pointed towards the Oaks along with

Holy Smokes -- filly by Smoke Glacken. Winner of the G3 LA Lassie, with two places in G2 competition and fourth in the G1 Debutant despite a troubled trip.

My fourth stakes juvenile is Napoleon, a colt by Not For Love. Freakishly fast out of the gate, he has taken leads into the stretch in two graded races and won a shorter stakes. If he can learn to pace himself more effectively he could turn into a very good miler.

All in all, really looking forward to the three year old stakes schedule this next year.

I'm going to add something here because I think it's a great idea. I love to hear snippets from others games and I always have things I want to add from mine, but they aren't worthy of a full dynasty. So.....

I've been playing OOTP 10 as manager (no GM duties at all, just game to game stuff, that means minors are completely off limits and I get the hand I'm dealt) of the Los Angeles Dodgers, with real players. I ran the game from 1975 to 1982 and took over in 1983. Right now it's 1984, and deep in September. We were in first, but the wheels have come off and we sit 3 games in back of the Atlanta Braves.

The good news is that we have one of the best offensive teams in the league. Between Dale Murphy (.266, 35, 101) and George Brett (.338, 27, 94) we have two of the best weapons in baseball. Our standard lineup looks like this:

SS Hubie Brooks (.291, 6, 30)
2B Jim Morrison (.275, 17, 68)
3B George Brett
CF Dale Murphy
RF Ken Landreaux (.263, 13, 54)
LF Gary Matthews (.258, 7, 30)
1B Steve Garvey (.260, 9, 45)
C Bob Brenly (.238, 12, 46)

We have had terrible production out of our 1B, LF and RF slots. Ken Landreaux has been an 8 year starter but is way down after 2 killer years. Garvey and Bob Watson have shared time at first but neither are very effective. Al Bumbry has been mixed in with The Sarge.

That brings me to our pitching staff. We have Rick Rhoden (18-11, 2.66). That's about it on the front line. Rhoden has had a sub 3.00 ERA for 6 years straight and won the Cy Young in 1981.

The rest of our rotation looks like this:

Joel Finch (15-10, 4.10)
Mike Witt (13-12, 3.54)
Dennis Leonard (3-8, 3.82) (Waiver pickup from the Blue Jays)

Our #5 slot has gone back and forth between Mark Lemongello (4-7, 4.71) and Pete Vuckovich (5-12, 3.94).

On the back end we have been blessed. Gene Garber had 48 saves last year in his first year with the Dodgers since coming from the Reds. Garber (2-1, 1.47, 4 Saves) has been all over the place and done well being the closer for the Phillies, Red Sox, Yankees, Brewers all since 1975. Even through all of that he lost his job to super-stud closer Goose Gossage (2-2, 2.05, 28 S), who was the big offseason signing last year.

That brings me to our September call-ups. All year long Nick Esasky killed pitchers in AAA. He hit .294, hit 43HR, and drove in 109 RBI's. He could play 1B better than either Watson or Garvey and I salivated all year hoping the GM would bring him up. When I got the chance he started right away. He hit .244, with 0 HR and 4 RBI with 12 K's in 41 AB's, before tearing a quad and ending his season.

The other big hurt was Dave Henderson was promoted mid year when injuries opened up a spot. Henderson was drafted by the Dodgers and got some early shots in his first two years as a professional. He wasn't anything special and spent the next two years in AAA where he blossomed into a player with 20/20 skill and a near .300 average. He finally got his chance again this year and he immediately paid dividends in our lineup. Of course, our GM sent him back down as soon as Gary Matthews came back from his injury (BOOO!). Henderson is back and has hit .290 with 6 HR and 17 RBI on the year.

The other youngsters getting looks are Mike Lavalliere (hit .310 @AAA) and Dick Schofield (a 21-year old, former 3rd round pick) who has gotten better and better. Now, Lavalliere doesn't have much competition in front of him with Bob Brenly and Earl Williams, so he has a shot next year. But Schofield is still young and is behind Hubie Brooks who is only 27, and is arbitration eligible this year. There's not much in the farm system after that.

I wasn't really going anywhere with this, just wanted to share some of the trials we have been enduring.

One more funny thing. Doc Gooden, only 19, was actually drafted by the Mets and has lead them to first place, no hit us earlier this year. He worked his record to 18-5 and posted a 1.80 ERA before tearing his triceps. He may still win the Cy Young award. As a rookie he went 13-4 with a 1.85 ERA and 193K's in 165 IP and didn't win Rookie of the Year. That went to Greg Walker, the Reds first baseman, who hit .309 with 42 HR and 105RBI. Walker also won league MVP in his rookie year and then fell into a sophomore slump hitting .289 with 9 HR's and 36 RBI. He can't hit lefties now and is platooning with Pat Tabler. There's some other good stuff, so if anyone has any stories they would like to hear I'd gladly tell.

I gotta tell about this game.

Dodgers hang in the division race and it comes down to the last game of the year, as we are tied with the Braves. The Braves lose an afternoon game in the finale against the Padres and it all rests on Mike Witt's shoulders in our finale.

We pick up a run in the second inning after a Jim Morrison double. He scores after a single and a balk. I feel good with a 1-0 lead as Witt looks good.

Top of the 5th the Giants come back as Jim Eisenreich hits a double and scores on a Gary Ward single.

Bottom 7, still 1-1 and Darrell Jackson is still on the mound for SF. Jim Morrison falls in a hole 0-2 and fights back with a 10-pitch at bat ending with a double. Hendu gets walked and we pinch hit for Earl Williams, and bunt to move the runners over. Steve Garvey flies out and we go up 2-1.

Top 8 and we are 6 outs from winning this and making it to the playoffs. Our bullpen has been lights out. Gene Garber comes on in the 8th. First batter, first pitch, Mike Pagliarulo homerun ties the game again. I kick myself for not using Tom Gorman for the lefty on lefty matchup. Garber gets out of the inning but we are knotted back up 2-2.

Fast forward to the 10th inning and Garber goes back out to the mound. Andres Gallaraga leads off with a single to bring up Pagliarulo again. With Garber tiring and the lefty up it's time to go to Gorman. Ron Kittle pinch hits and takes the second pitch of the at bat out to left field for a pinch hit homerun. AAAAAAGH!

4-2 Bottom 10, and Kevin Gross is in to lock it down for the Giants. Gross had 43 saves on the year and posted a sickening 1.19 ERA. He converted 43 of 47 saves opportunites. Mike LaValliere leads off with a texas league single. Steve Garvey comes up and crushes the second pitch into the seats for his 10th on the year to tie the game.

Gossage comes in for the top of the 11th and doesn't allow a hit, while Gross shuts us down. In the bottom of the 13th, Hubie Brooks reaches and takes second on an error, is bunted over to 3rd, and then is driven in on a Dale Murphy base hit to win the game and clinch the NL West on the last day of the year.

Gossage was a war horse going 3 innings to close it out and pick up the win. He allowed no hits, walked one and struck out 3.

Here is the boxscore from it.

Following up on my previous post, it is now early April and the stakes possibilities are becoming clearer for my 3-year-old crop.

Gettysburg had a disappointing start to his year, getting beat a nose in the G3 San Mateo and by a half in the G2 Gold Nugget after leading at the top of the stretch in both. My fear is that he may not have the distance for the Triple Crown, and finishing a dull fifth in the G2 Stepping Stone while racing wide was further cause for concern. Another dull finish in the G1 Pacific Derby and we'd have to forget about Kentucky.

As the 9-2 fourth choice he broke sharply from the rail, grabbed a length and a half on the field and never let anyone closer than that, winning with a 97 speed rating.

We're goin' to Kentucky, baby!!

As for the other horses I mentioned in my first post, it looks like the fillies Fleur de Lis and Holy Smokes, while good, may not be G1 material, not being able to grab wins at higher than G3 so far this year. Napoleon knows nothing but going as fast as he can as far as he can. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be far enough to win. He is looking more and more like an allowance/high claiming sprinter who might once in a while be able to grab part of a minor stake.

I've about had it with 1985. The owner says we need to win it all, and we have the offense with the addition of Claudell Washington to go with Murphy and Brett, but........

The big offseason acquisition was Dan Quisenberry. His presence with Gossage and Garber and we should have the best bullpen in the league. Idiots can't finish a game...none of them.

Garber has 4 saves in 6 chances with 2 blown.
Gossage has 7 saves in 16 chances with 5 blown.
Quiz has has 4 saves in 13 chances with 4 blown.

We aren't even to the break yet and we are 5.5 back and 2 games above .500. Last year Gossage blew 5 all year. The year before Garber only blew 4. And Quiz blew 8 playing for the Angels. Of course, he also had a 7.24 ERA in 1984. Our former first round pick Tim Burke came up from AAA for a short spell, but the GM sent him back down after a short look. It's frustrating.

Gettysburg is the third choice at 6-1 in the 2013 Derby Classic. He breaks from the eight hole in a full 12 horse field on a bright Saturday.

He breaks slowly, losing a couple lengths right out of the gate and then actually swerves outside two lanes to end up 6 wide passing the crowd for the first time. I don't know that I'd ever seen that before.

The field thins a bit by the first turn but Gettysburg is four wide and still 7 back of longshot leader Berry Zorro who runs the first half in :46.4 seconds. He and the other 6-1 shot Newspaper Star advance together up the backstretch and by the far turn they're coming up on the leaders.

Problem is that the leader directly in the path of Gettysburg is the rapidly tiring Berry Zorro, forcing Gettysburg to check sharply and then swing wide through the end of the turn. By the time they hit the stretch he is fifth, four lengths behind the new leader Newspaper Star, who continues on for a 4 length win as Gettysburg has nothing left for the final furlong and fades to ninth.

Dang it.

path12, do you have a link to the horse racing game you are playing? Thanks!

path12, do you have a link to the horse racing game you are playing? Thanks!

Unfortunately no. The site (hxxp.theracingbreed.com) vanished shortly after the new year.

Really solid engine. Really needed interface work. I always had a faint hope that a bigger studio could have taken that basic engine and made the ultimate horse racing game. I've never found another one that hooks me the way The Racing Breed does.

Last one I swear then I'll stop hijacking this thread.

Preakness (called Middle Jewel and in California in the game). Again Gettysburg is a 6-1 third choice. He breaks much better this time and sits behind two horses dueling on the lead (one of which is Berry Zorro who you may remember blocked him badly in the Derby).

Gettysburg makes his move towards the end of the backstretch as the leaders start to fade and although he is briefly blocked yet again by Berry Zorro he manages to get around him without much trouble and takes a length lead into the stretch.

Derby winner Newspaper Star is coming hard at him as is Eldritch Seven but Gettysburg manages to hold them both off in a hard stretch drive to win the Middle Jewel by a head over Newspaper Star!

My first Triple Crown win after playing this game for two years. Sweet.

Last one I swear then I'll stop hijacking this thread.



lol kinda the point of the thread isn't it? This is THE thread for hi-jacking! Nice win btw.

Last one I swear then I'll stop hijacking this thread.


You ain't doing no harm afaic, if anything you're helping by keeping it bumped.

I still think it's a thread worth keeping around even if there's only a handful of us using it right now, hopefully it'll get more contributions over time. Just like not everything is in a dynasty, not everybody is playing outside of dynasties either, so ppl will probably come & go.

Me? I'm just astonished that I hit 5th Prestige in COD:Black Ops earlier today. I still suck a lot of the time, it's just determined grinding that levels me (although I am a helluva lot better than I was). I've never stuck with any multi-player game this long, probably not even close.

From my OOTP12 fictional dynasty:

I am up 5-3 in the top of the 8th. They get the first 2 men on base and I am thinking this is it. Because my team isn't that good and give up leads often. The next batter hits a line drive to our 2B, he leaps and catches it. He sees the runners too far off base, he runs and steps on second base and whips a throw to 1st for the TRIPLE PLAY!!!!!!!

And we won the game.

The 1985 Cincinnati Reds have quietly built one of the most impressive rosters around, and most of it through the draft. Why can't my scouts pick like this! Check this team out!


Ruppert Jones (2xGG)

LF Tim Raines (5xAS) RF Rafael Palmeiro (Rookie)

SS Gary Templeton (ROY, 2xGG, 3xAS) 2B Willie Randolph (1xGG, 2xAS)

3B Gary Gaetti (1xAS) 1B Don Mattingly

C Gary Carter (3xAS)
Onn the bench they have Don Baylor and this young first round draft pick named Will Clark.

The starting staff isn't as hot, but still impressive in it's ownright.

SP
1- Oil Cab Boyd (Former 1st rounder, 3rd year pro, (31-19, 3.66 ERA Career)
2- Fred Kuhaulua (Former 1st rounder (Braves), toiled in the minors for 5 years before being cut. 1981 ROY, 1983 AS and CY Young winner. 70-48, 3.10 ERA Career)
3- Roger Clements (Former #2 overall pick, 27-27, 3.89 ERA Career)
4- Gary Nolan (37 y/o Reds lifer, 1xAS, 1975 and 1976 Cy Young winner, 2 WS Rings, 218-151 3.14 ERA Career)
5- Roger Mason (Former 1st rounder, Rookie, 4-5, 3.38 ERA Career)

BP
CL- Dave Righetti(Transitioned to closer last year, 1st year with the Reds, 58-46, 59 S, 3.29 ERA Career)
SU- Don Aase (Former starter (Redsox) and closer (Expos) 3xAS, 79-68, 89 S, 3.69 ERA Career)
MR- Ken Daley (Former 1st rounder, spent 4 years in the minors, had 2 cups of coffee, and stuck this year, 2-4, 2 S, 1.86 ERA Career)

The Reds franchise hasn't made the playoffs in 1978, but from '70-'78 they had 6 playoff appearances and 2 titles. They are currently in 1st in the West but the Astros are hot on their heels before the break.

Pete Rose and Johnny Bench are considered the greatest Reds players. Pete Rose retired 1979 with the Cubs and had 3087 career hits. Johnny Bench is still playing for the Blue Jays at the age of 37. He has 478 career HR's. Gary Nolan is considered the franchise's greatest modern day pitcher.


I'd be happy to rundown any other teams or players if anyone is interested. This kind of stuff gets me excited.

This game is completely broken!

I just had Eddie Milner, Greg Gagne and Craig Reynolds all hit 2-HR in a game on the same day. That has to be more rare than no-hitters on the same day. If you know your mid '80's baseball players you will realize how impossible this is!

1985 All Star Break is here.

The Dodgers have 5 players on the team.

1B Nick Esasky (.273, 21 HR, 55 RBI) 1st AS
2B Jim Morrison (.252 15 50) 2nd AS
SS Hubie Brooks (.321 10 41) 2nd AS
CF Dale Murphy (.256 15 45 13 SB) 4th AS
RF Claudell Washington (.308 14 46 12 SB) 2nd AS

Note, no pitchers, our staff is still struggling. On the other side of the coin, we have big time power. Every single starter, with the exception of one, has over 10 HRs. That one, is George Brett, who happens to have 9, but isn't have a good enough year to warrant the All Star game.

The Reds sent 2 players to the All Star game, Don Mattingly makes his first game and Dave Righetti also makes his.

Time for another update from OOTP land.

So it's coming toward the end of May now, 1986. Last season we finished second in the West, but due to some injuries and some declines, the Dodgers have a decided lack of firepower. Kinda the opposite of what we has last year. Pitching has carried the team so far, but we are still below .500.

Currently in a series against the Phillies. Longtime Dodger Ace, Rick Rhoden takes the mound. Nick Esasky was traded in the offseason, and George Brett is down with an injury. Dale Murphy is in a terrible slump. He hasn't gotten back to form since he missed the first month with his own injury.

Rhoden gives up 6 by the 3rd inning, but the 'pen is strained and I figure the game is over at this point so he stays in. By the middle of the 4th it's 8-1.

Second basemen, Jim Morrison, hits homeruns in the 4th and 5th inning's and we somehow tie the game 8-8. Rhoden manages to go 7, and Dan Larson, a middle reliever who is having a good year, comes on, as we aren't sure when we are going to score. We score in the 8th, but Kent Hrbek ties it with a HR in the 9th and it's 9-9 going to 10.

Things fall apart in the 12th as we give up 3 and it looks bleak until Cesar Cedeno drives a 3 run HR off of Joe Sambito, with 2 outs to tie it up again. Gossage falls apart in the 13th as the Phillies get another 3 runs to go up 15-12.

Steve Howe comes on to close it out for the Phillies. We have been struggling against lefties, but we get hit after hit and with 2 outs, Gene Tenace, who came in for Bob Brenly in the 8th comes up. Tenace takes the ball out of the yard for a walk off Grand Slam in the bottom of the 13th for the 16-15 win.

Murphy struck out 5 times. Just the way it's been going lately.

Here is the box from the game:

After having to make the heartbreaking decision to let go of my Apple IIGS yesterday, I was able to find an emulator and most of my favorite games last night.

Played Revolution '76 for the first time in years via this method. Won the Turn 1 battle in Boston, which is the basic decider for how the game will play out, thanks to Nathaneal Greene.

Turn 2 always sees a massive British force attacking an American city (or, if you're really unlucky, a province), so I did my usual token defense there and thought I saw an opportunity to go for a quick momentum changer by attacking Canada with Greene. Greene loses and Disgraces himself in the process, while the British overwhelm New York as expected.

Turn 3 sees them take Charleston as expected, although with noticeably lower troop amounts because I successfully laid the groundwork for Ben Franklin to convince King Frederick to crack down on Hessian mercaneries in the Turn 2 diplomacy phase. Turn 3 I think is also where Benedict Arnold routed the Native Americans in the Northwest territories to protect the settlers.

I forget what turn it was after that, but Arnold managed to take back New York on the same turn that George Washington successfully saved the Carolinas from being taken over by the British, which would have crippled us. That was the big turning point of the game, as the turn after that, Arnold successfully reconquered Charleston, leaving the British only Canada.

By that point, it was simply a matter of waiting for the French and Spanish, who I secured alliances with, to send troops (Note: I've never seen the Spanish send troops in all my games, much to my disappointment). The French sent troops and I went for Canada with Arnold. He lost in the first attempt, taking a hit to his popularity, but won on the second attempt.

Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to administer Canada, because World Hero Benedict Arnold's conquest of Canada caused the Tory party to fall in the diplomacy phase and Shelbourne's Whigs quickly agreed to Expansion, which means the US not only won Independence, they won control of Canada as well, and had a future where they ruled the entire North American continent except for Mexico.

My final score was 7 (Fair), which was my best ever. Was hilarious to see Benedict Arnold as the World Hero. So contrary to real life. :D

Fun thread and a very good idea as I go through a bunch of undynasties myself right now..

So I have a long running WMMA 3 game going, where I've taken control of a no-name company and taken it to the #3 in the US with some reasonable house rules. The UFC and Strikeforce (still independent) are the #1 and #2.

I wanted to share about the career of Randy Couture so far. Here is a guy that when the game started 5 years ago, was looked to be on the backside of Hall of Fame career. He was the 3-time Heavyweight champ and 2-time Light Heavyweight champion and coming off of a win over Mark Coleman.

His next fight in 2011 was a title shot against Shogun Rua. Couture won the Light Heavyweight title for the 3rd time with an armbar submission over the champion, and then went on to defend his title with a TKO over Rashad Evans.

Couture dropped the title to Phil Davis when he was TKOed in the third round. Couture showed up to fight fellow former champ Rampage Jackson after a year and a half layoff, where many had speculated that he would retire and his career would end. At this point, Couture was 51 and well, well, well, beyond his years as a 6-time champion.

His fight with Jackson ended in the second round with another TKO loss, and again, retirement loomed for the superstar. But he did not go away, even though he had dropped out of the top 25 Randy Couture came back to fight a few months later.

His return fight was against a Japanese fighter by the name of Ryuta Noji. The Natural knocked him out in less than a minute. His second fight came in October of 2015 where he scored another win, a TKO, over Brazilian Alexandre Ferriera.

Phil Davis held the title for 2 years, having made 2 defenses over that time, and then ran into the buzzsaw that is Jon Jones in July of 2014. Jones had lost a decision to Rashad Evans back in 2011 that had delayed his run a title, but since had not lost. Jones TKOed Davis in the first round to win the title.

Since then he had beaten Tito Ortiz, Alexander Gustafsson, Rashad Evans, Stanislov Nedkov, and Kyle Kingsbury. Only Nedkov took him the distance, the rest were armbar or triangle submissions.

Jones has made 4 defenses of the title when Couture was given another shot at the title. At the age of 53 the UFC legend was set to take on the 29-year old Phenom who came in with a 19-2 record.

Jones took the first round and nearly finished the legend by putting Couture on his back and then taking his back. Jones answered in round 2 with more of the same. Couture looked overmatched and it looked like it was going to be a blowout.

Round 3 saw Couture catch his second wind and in true to life fashion pushed the bigger man around the cage and scored a takedown of his own. He controlled most of the action.

Round 4 was close, both men were getting tired and the fight turned into a dirty boxing/grappling fight. Couture even locked up Jones in a Muay Thai clinch, which if you can imagine the height disparity (Randy is some 5 inches shorter) would be hard to do.

It went to round 5. Both men were exhausted, and the fight was a war. Neither man could force his will on the other and the fight was largely played out against the cage with each man taking turns at holding the advantage.

In the end, the judges saw the fight a very close 48-47 fight for Jon Jones, as he retained his title. But the fact that 53-year old, Randy Couture, who had nearly quit the sport at age 50, came back again, took the top fighter in the sport 5 full rounds, and nearly pulled off an upset of monumental proportions was amazing.

So as of yet, Couture isn't planning on retiring. He is taking 6-weeks off and then will be ready to fight again. I wonder what direction his career will go from here?

I love this stuff.

big dola

So in my newest OOTP 11 game, Zach Greinke comes off a 17-4, 2.44 year and becomes a free agent. I see that he signs a new, huge, 5-year $143 mil deal. No surprise with the New York......uh, wait a minute, the Mets. HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Like that would EVER happen!

This was just a blowout. It's not bad enough that you gave up 23 runs, but on top of that, you were shut out on 4 hits. Reminds me of a Reds game that I went to here, where the Dodgers put up 10 in the first before people were even in the gate.

Other highlights. There were only 3 extra base hits for LA, and Jerry Reuss, the pitcher, lead the team with 6 RBI's!

This was just a blowout. It's not bad enough that you gave up 23 runs, but on top of that, you were shut out on 4 hits. Reminds me of a Reds game that I went to here, where the Dodgers put up 10 in the first before people were even in the gate.

Other highlights. There were only 3 extra base hits for LA, and Jerry Reuss, the pitcher, lead the team with 6 RBI's!

Ouch

Too awesome.

Pretty funny.

Just a couple of weeks into the start of the 1984 season, the California Angels found themselves down a starting pitcher with the loss of Dick Ruthven (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthvdi01.shtml) to a torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament. Forced to sign a free agent, the team settled on journeyman starter Jim Slaton (http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/slatoji01.shtml).

Slaton had last pitched for the Brewers in 1982, having gone 0-3 with a 5.76 ERA over 50 innings, that included 3 starts. That's right, he sat out the entire 1983 season as a free agent.

So with the injury to Ruthven the Angels came calling. On the day he signed a minor league deal with the team, the team made him the starter on the road against Oakland.

The A's lineup this day looked like this:

Tony Fernandez - SS
Enos Cabell - 1B
Rickey Henderson - LF
Mike Davis - CF
Wayne Gross - 3B
Tony Phillips - 2B
Larry Herndon - DH
Mike Heath - C
Doug Loman - RF

On the mound was 1983 ROY winner and future stud closer, Jeff Russell.

The Angels got to Russell early with 2 in each of the first 3 innings. Meanwhile, Slaton was perfect through 3.

The first runner for the A's didn't reach until the 5th when Slaton walked Gross and Phillips back to back, then got Herndon to ground into the double play. The A's made him work for it in the 8th and 9th but they still couldn't crack the old vet.

PH Darrell Brown flew out to right field in the bottom of the 9th to finish the game, and give Jim Slaton, the 33-yo, listed as a middle reliever, 111-123 career record, sat out all of baseball the year before, signed and pitched on the same day, the first no-hitter of 1984.

The next day, the Mets' Mike Scott, would face one over the minimum and get the second no-hitter of the year against a Cub lineup that was:

Ryne Sandberg - 3B
Kirby Puckett - CF
Mell Hall - LF
Leon Durham - RF
Tim Teuful - 2B
Pat Tabler - 1B
Butch Wyneger - C
Scott Fletcher - SS
Dicke Noles - P

Been playing FOF again recently and I have my very own Tom Brady, or at least pretty close to. Green Bay drafted Jamie Benson out of West Virginia University with the 29th pick in the 6th round of the 2021 draft. He played in 3 games in his first three years, throwing only 18 passes.

Green Bay lets him go and he starts 14 games in 2025 for St. Louis putting up a 85.3 passer rating while winning 5 games.

Meanwhile, my Arizona team is 8 years removed from a SuperBowl title with a superstar, douchebag starting QB. I bit the bullet in the off season and did not resign him.

I sign Jamie that offseason as a still raw player, but with decent enough potential. It is now 2030 and in 5 years, Jamie leads our team to:

15-1, Conference Title game
15-1, Superbowl Winner
14-2, Divisional Round
13-3, Superbowl Winner
14-2, Superbowl Winner

No MVP's or Pro Bowls, but he has been the reason behind these seasons. His passer rating has been from 95-105 each season. The rest of my roster is not much different than it was prior to him arriving.

He has a 92-17 career record (0.844). The next closest to him in winning % is....Tom Brady at 61-26 (.701).

My latest version of WW2 is...different.

Hearts of Iron 3, playing as Germany. After the usual happenings (annexations of Austria & Czechs), we invade Poland. The UK had elected not to guarantee Poland's independence, thus the Germans hordes roll through Poland rapidly.

The Soviet Union takes this as a good sign and invade Finland. Unfortunately for them, Finland signs a treaty with the Allies, and UK, France, and their buddies declare war on the Russians.

Laughing, Germany spends a year building up further, while the USSR/UK war stalemates. We declare war on the Netherlands, kicking off the main war. 4 months later, Netherlands, Belgium, and France are under German control, with the UK basically doing nothing. They sue for peace. Germany directly annexes Netherlands & Belgium, and release France as a puppet state.

At this point, all of Europe except for Scandinavia & the British Isles are members of the Axis (Italy having conquered Yugoslavia). The UK / Russia was is going nowhere, and Japan is stuck in China.

The US? A year after Germany establishes hegemony in Europe, they decide those Russian sons of bitches are going down as well, and declare war on them.

So...1943. Germany & its allies control Europe, with the UK and US screwing around in Russia. Whee.

In my 4th play through of Commander The Great War, after 2 draws and 1 through ass whipping at the hands of the Central Powers, the Entente is victorious at last, ending the war in November of 1917.

I am playing Rome: Total War atm and I just had Captain Titus (A non character Roman Captain) lead his 60 legionaries and 1000 mercs into a mini beast mode. Capturing 2 cities and defeating 3 Greek armies. It triggered "Man of the Hour" even and I took him in as my own. Making him a character and a Commander. Shortly after, he was assassinated by the Spanish.

True to Caezar! AHOO! AHOO! AHOO!

I have a love/hate relationship with FM. I love the game, I hate soccer. I mean, I don't understand tactics, positions, nothing. FM 2013 has classic mode so I bit the bullet and bought this year's version. It is like FM, made just for me!

I took over the Wolves in the Championship Division and with an already good roster and a rich owner, I was able to win the league in year 1 and move up to the EPL. The first 3 years I was able to avoid relegation, but there was nothing to write home about. It was around this time that I decided to sell off a bunch of players and buy up a bunch of young guys who my scouts felt would be good. I threw a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds out there and they had their moments, enough to get me up to 11th. As this team grew up together, they started to become pretty good.

I used my transfer money to make some key moves, add a few more youngsters and work my way into Euro Cup qualification. Made the quarterfinals. Next season, I actually won the Euro Cup and finished 4th in the EPL. I played well in the Champions League and was bounced in the quarter finals, but I slipped to 6th in the EPL so back to the Euro Cup, which I won again!

During that season, I was moving from 4th to 5th all season long. I had a 1 goal differential advantage over Man City heading into the final game, against them. I got the win and 4th place and qualified for the Champions League for the 2nd time ever. Man City is a hated team of mine since they took my best DC from me by making a huge bid that was automatically accepted. I was pissed at them.

In the Champions League the next year, I went on an amazing run and won the whole thing! Along the way, I've picked up 2 FA cups, 2 Cap Cups and some Sheilds. In my current season, I am battling Man U for 1st place. It keeps going back and first as we hit January. 1st place in the EPL is the only thing I have not won.

I highly recommend FM-Classic mode!

From my current FM13 playthrough as Bishop's Startford. Riding a 17 match unbeaten run in Blue Square North league matches...Of course posting this will proably jinx it.

Notes from the recently played 1985 All-Star Game in my alternate universe:

- Dave Dravecky (NL) and Ed Whitson (AL) started the game.

- The NL lineup featured Sandberg, Schmidt, Clark and Murphy, but the only HR for the NL came from Jeff Stone who hit a PH HR.

- Tony Gwynn is hitting over .400 at the break and was held hitless in the game.

- Both Doc Gooden (NL) and Orel Hershiser (AL) were charged with blown saves.

- Donnie Moore (AL) ended up with the save, RIP.

I'm still playing the same dynasty as above. Just won a game on 4 hits, all extra base. I had 2 solo homers, and back to back doubles. Otherwise, Bob Ojeda shut down my "on pace to lose 90" Dodgers.

Of course, the owner is pissed. He thinks we should be winning it all, but dude, it's 1985, and behind my stud ace's Valenzuela and Pena we are throwing 42 year old Tommy John, a pre-1988 Dave Stewart (think Phillies and Rangers, don't remember? That's why) and 36 year old Jerry Reuss. All three of those guys should be in the pen. Get me some real pitching!

And stop trading for first basemen! I have Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner, and Jason Thompson. Buckner is having a terrible year, Garvey has been on the reserve roster, and Thompson won the starting job because he has some occasional pop and walks consistently. Both Garvey and Buckner are pissed and have asked for trades. I've had to start Garvey at third for almost 30 games due to injuries. It's a no win situation.

The owner was pleased 2 years ago cause his big free agency acquisition was Thad Bosley. Yeah, Thad Bosley. Now, he has been pretty good for us but we have had to resort to trotting out 36 year old Dusty Baker to hit cleanup cause he is the only guy who has been hitting for any power all year.

I think we drafted catchers high up the last couple years. There are 6 on the limited roster right now. FUCK! Really? No prospects, unless you like John Mizerock, Jeff Reed, and Dave Sax.

I can't win like this! I'm just hoping to get through this year and that the team will be smarter in the draft and with the off season stuff.

In my OOTP 14 36 team fictional major league just had 'Wrigley' wind game against Seattle. While there was a 10 mph wind blowing left to right, it was also 38 degrees and drizzling throughout the game.

None the less, 8 homeruns between the two teams, with Seattle smacking grand slams in both the first and second inning that put me in a 10-2 hole I could not climb out of. Still a fun game.

Box score attached.

Had a fun thing happen at the end of my second season in an College Hoops 2k8 career last night.

I'm coaching Dartmouth (we suck but hey, so does the rest of the conference), my 2x Ivy League Player of the Year SG has graduated. I'm going through the post/off season stuff & what have we here? An 84 rated transfer who leaves Duke to head to Dartmouth.

After sitting out the required year, he'll be the highest rated player in the conference. I just have to avoid getting fired in the meantime :)

edit to add: He was actually one of 4 players to leave Duke via transfer after a season where they were a #12 seed in the tournament (and then made it to the Elite 8). My guy hadn't seen much playing time in his first two seasons but one of the transfers (I forget where he ended up going) was a former starter who went from 27 mpg to like 6mpg.

I'll post an update to my Dodgers Dynasty here soon as we are just at the end of 1986. In the meantime, this epic affair between the Cubs and Phillies took place.

The game was 19 innings and saw Dave Parker hit 4 HR's. Not only that, but his 2nd homer saved the game in the 9th, his 3rd saved it in the 17th and his 4th won it in the 19th.

There were a total of 18 pitchers used and the game was a massive 6:31.

Check out the special notes at the bottom:

Special Notes: MR Joe Sambito (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/) was injured while pitching.J. Cruz ties the NL regular season extra-inning game record for hits with 5. K. Hrbek sets the PHI regular season extra-inning game record for at bats with 8. P. Householder sets the CHN regular season extra-inning game record for at bats with 8. D. Parker sets the NL regular season extra-inning game record for home runs with 3. D. Parker sets the NL regular season extra-inning game record for RBI with 7. P. Householder sets the CHN regular season extra-inning game record for at bats with 9. K. Hrbek sets the PHI regular season extra-inning game record for at bats with 9. D. Parker ties the NL regular season extra-inning game record for hits with 5. D. Parker sets the NL regular season extra-inning game record for home runs with 4. D. Parker ties the NL regular season extra-inning game record for runs with 4. D. Parker sets the NL regular season extra-inning game record for RBI with 8.

Good stuff PM, that's a typical Phils/Cubs game from the 80's. Seems like they always had these wild battles going back then.

After last year's weak pitching the owner of the Dodgers went out and got us some pitching. The team started the year with Danny Darwin, Steve Trout and the addition of future Hall of Famer, Steve Carlton added to the staff. Doug Drabek became the first round pick for the team last year, and rounded out the staff.

The bullpen got top closer Don Aase to support Steve Howe, and then he added tough lefthander Rod Scurry too. Former ace Alejandro Pena joined Tom Niedenfuer and the bullpen looked tough.

On offense we lost Lou Whitaker, but the owner went out and got us Frank White as his replacement. He also added Dave Winfield and Milt Thompson in the outfield, giving us some power in the middle and a bonafide speed demon leading off. Well at least on paper that's how it was supposed to go.

The rotation stayed intact for the entire year, and it was impressive finishing 3rd in the NL in starters ERA while the bullpen finished 2nd. The team went from last to 2nd in defensive efficiency a huge improvement over last year. Good right?

We were just primed and ready to go, but injuries were the death of us. Dave Winfield started slow, missed the last couple of months and lead the team with 16 HR and 70 RBI in 96 games. Mike Scioscia's .288 avg lead the team. The only other bright spot was Dick Schofield being the only all star on the team, and leading the NL in SB with 70.

Milt Thompson stole 35 bases in 46 games, missed the rest with injuries. At one point we were so depleted in the outfield that we traded Clint Hurdle for Johnny Grubb who was having a killer year coming off the bench. Grubb got injured his 4th game with LA and was out the rest of the year. Safe to say, the whole season was a mess.

Finished 2 games better than last year at 77-85. Rough year.

Oh, almost forgot. The absolute highlight of the year was Steve Carlton throwing a no-hitter against the Braves. That was personally, the first no-hitter my team has had in OOTP, and the 3rd I've had overall playing out the games. It was Carlton's 3 no-no in the last 4 years which is totally amazing by itself.

Outlook for '87 will be interesting. We have zero young talent outside of Drabek, and Valenzuela will be a free agent. Next year could be even longer. Bonds is in the draft. Wonder which team he will head to?

dola

forgot to add the Cubs still make me laugh cause even in fakeland they still cant do anything right.

This offseason saw them make a trade with the Astros. One for One. The Astros send heavy hitting first basemen Bob Horner who had hit 20+ 4 seasons in a row for 1983, 37th overall pick Kirby Puckett. Puckett hadn't done much in his first 2 seasons in Chicago hitting just 2 HR and a .280ish avg. Well he went off and played in 160 games, batted .320, hit 20 HR and 66 XBH for the division winning 'Stros. Lol

Horner played a platoon, hit 18 HR in only 275 AB, but clearly isn't going to have the kind of career from this point forward that Puckett will.

The 1986 Champions were the Montreal Expos.

They featured a lineup card that looked like this:

Tim Raines, LF, .313 11 71
Marvelle Wynne CF .246 17 69
George Brett 3B .307 26 123
Ken Phelps 1B .283 33 102
Ruppert Jones RF .281 31 113
Gary Carter C .279 29 102
Tim Wallach 2B .238 13 53
Ozzie Guillen SS .282 1 45

The middle of their lineup also had 3 of the top 5 in the NL in walks, always giving them guys on base which made then nightmares for the opposition.

They also had a top shelf rotation:
Burt Blyleven 18-11 3.09
Bryn Smith 16-4 2.92
Zane Smith 16-9 2.76
Scott Sanderson 16-9 3.10
Milt Wilcox 12-7 4.36

and closer

Bob James 47S 3.33

Apparently Tom Niedenfuer gives up homeruns to light hitting middle infielders in alternate universes too. Screw you Alan Wiggins and your walk off Grand Slam in the bottom of the 13th. Screw you.

A sixteen seed knocks off a #1. Don't see that everyday.


Sacred Heart 88, Syracuse 79

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sacred Heart (19-16, 8-10):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Buster Daniels C 23 2-4 2-2 2 3 2 4 6
Loyd Herald PF 28 7-13 0-0 2 5 0 1 15
Jack Ewers SF 37 8-13 1-3 2 13 2 4 21
Harry Dowden SG 37 5-14 5-5 3 9 11 0 18
James Furr PG 20 4-8 0-0 1 2 2 3 9
Jame West PG 19 3-6 0-0 3 5 2 1 8
Vito Bergen PG 8 2-2 0-0 0 0 2 1 5
Stanley Veach PF 19 3-4 0-0 2 2 0 2 6
John Kindred C 10 0-1 0-0 1 2 0 0 0

Turnovers: 20 (B.Daniels 5, L.Herald 1, J.Ewers 4,
H.Dowden 4, J.Furr 1, J.West 3, S.Veach 1, J.Kindred 1)
Blocked Shots: 5 (B.Daniels 3, J.Ewers 1, J.Kindred 1)
Steals: 6 (L.Herald 2, J.Ewers 1, H.Dowden 2, V.Bergen
1)
3P FGs: 12-25 (L.Herald 1-2, J.Ewers 4-8, H.Dowden 3-7,
J.Furr 1-2, J.West 2-5, V.Bergen 1-1)

Syracuse (27-6, 15-3):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Michael Martinez C 27 5-10 2-4 0 2 3 3 12
Lloyd Olson PF 28 2-4 1-2 1 8 2 2 5
Ray Tapp SF 29 4-10 1-2 1 3 2 2 9
Robert Whitt SG 35 7-13 6-9 4 4 1 3 21
Chris Leclerc PG 36 6-10 0-2 2 3 9 1 16
Maxwell Nobles PF 26 2-7 0-1 0 3 4 2 4
Sarahi Magdaleno PF 7 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 2 0
Joshua Harlan SG 10 6-6 0-0 0 1 0 2 12
Tiffany Long PG 2 0-1 0-0 0 0 1 0 0

Turnovers: 11 (M.Martinez 1, L.Olson 1, R.Tapp 2,
R.Whitt 6, M.Nobles 1)
Blocked Shots: 8 (M.Martinez 2, L.Olson 4, R.Whitt 1,
M.Nobles 1)
Steals: 7 (L.Olson 1, R.Whitt 2, C.Leclerc 3, J.Harlan
1)
3P FGs: 5-11 (M.Martinez 0-1, L.Olson 0-1, R.Tapp 0-1,
R.Whitt 1-2, C.Leclerc 4-6)

Player of Game: SG Harry Dowden (HEART)

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this post, as I'm kind of asking for advice but I'd like to share a little glimpse of my long-term FM save.

I'm still playing FM11 and the reason for that is a glorious saved game that has lasted 8 full seasons, starting in 2010/11, with my team having just completed the 2017/18 season.

I began the game in the Blue Square South division with Dover Athletic and I've stayed with Dover for the duration of this "dynasty". I've enjoyed phenomenal success with the club throughout the years, winning four trophies during the early years:

FA Trophy Winner: 2011, 2012, 2013
Johnstone's Paint Trophy Winner: 2016
Johnstone's Paint Trophy Runner Up: 2017

In league play, I've made the sure and steady climb up the ladder, hitting a bit of a wall upon reaching League 1 but eventually breaking through the glass ceiling:

2011 - Blue Square Bet South Champion (promoted)
2012 - Blue Square Bet Premier Runner Up (lost in playoffs)
2013 - Blue Square Bet Premier Champion (promoted)
2014 - npower League 2 Champion (promoted)
2015 - npower League 1 7th Place
2016 - npower League 1 5th Place

After that fifth place finish, I actively tried to look for other jobs, getting frustrated at the lack of support from my board at Dover, which continually refused my requests to expand my stadium and any other requests to improve the youth or training facilities. I felt like I couldn't advance any further without those things, including the ridiculously low wage and transfer budgets but in the end, I didn't get any job offers from any larger clubs. At one point, it looked like Birmingham in the Championship was going to come calling but it never came through.

So I soldiered on and finally broke through the next year with Dover:

2017 - npower League 1 Champions (promoted)

Then, in a shocking turn of events, everything came together for my team in 2018 and we burst out of the gates winning at an incredible rate. We were neck and neck at the top with Bolton for most of the year but faltered late, needing a win in our last game of the year at home versus QPR to hold onto 2nd place, avoid a playoff and guarantee promotion.

We'd lead 1-0 early but a red card from one of our star central defenders, who has been with us since my first season in charge and gone from U18 prospect in the Conference to a well-regarded star in the league, knocked us down to 10 men only 20 minutes into the game. We'd give up a goal on the resulting penalty but somehow prevailed 4-2 in a thrilling match to do the impossible...

I took Dover to the BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE!!!

2018 - npower Championship 2nd Place (promoted to Premier League)

I absolutely adore this dynasty - I've kept a little spreadsheet of player ratings changes, along with notes on every season I've played about my progression as a manager and the team itself.

Dover started out as an obscure, semi-professional team with an estimated value of £450000 and eight years later we are worth about £4.7 million and have a national reputation.

We've somehow succeeded with a stadium capacity of 6500 and only 1000 of those are actual seats! The board just notified me that they will be finally increasing the capacity of the stadium in order to meet Premier League requirements, with a £750,000+ expansion that will add 6000 more seats in a new terrace that should be completed in November, bringing our capacity to 7000 at Crabble Athletic Ground.

From a personal perspective, I've gained much respect in this save game, starting off as an obscure, Sunday League Footballer and now have elevated myself to "Continental" status. My first year I made £18,200 and I've increased my yearly salary to £93,600. I've always taken what was offered and never pressed for a higher salary, simply due to the fact that the club is not cash rich and I wanted all the money I could get for my players and their salaries.

Well, with all of this success in bringing Dover to the Premier League, I finally got noticed by other clubs. Stoke came calling first, offering me £20,000 PER WEEK to manage at Britannia Stadium. It didn't take long for me to decline this offer - Stoke just finished 19th in the Premier League and will be relegated to the Championship in 2018/19 so it's not a move that makes sense, even though they are a much larger club.

Well, a couple days in-game pass and I get an email that I never thought would come.

Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in football, have come calling, offering me £45,000 per week to manage at Anfield.

My transfer budget last year at Dover was £120,000...Liverpool is offering me £30 MILLION.

My wage budget at Dover last year was £50,000 per week...Liverpool is offering £1.8 MILLION per week.

Liverpool looks to be in great shape, with most of their key personnel under contract and coming off a 3rd place finish in the league, they are destined for Champions League play in the upcoming season.

I don't know if I'll find a better opportunity in this game. I've loved my time at Dover and would love to see what I can accomplish but I really don't think I can turn this offer down.

What would you do if you were in my position??

I've always regretted jumping ship in that type of situation. You always have that "What would have happened if I'd stayed?" nagging at you. Plus I imagine you'll have the pressure of much higher expectations at Liverpool.

On the other hand, if you can poach a few of your favorite players from Dover to come with you to Liverpool, then I'd be tempted to make the jump.

Uhh, save an extra copy of the league file. Then decline, go on with Dover, hit a ceiling, and switch to the other copy and take the Liverpool job. :D

Short answer: I would absolutely stay at Dover. I find the climb way, way more fun than living at the top. As long as you feel there is more room for Dover to climb stay.


Longer answer: In the long dynasty I ran I ended up leaving Woking because I felt like I'd hit a ceiling. It wasn't that the board refused stadium upgrades, but when going to that option it told me that because of the location of the stadium it was physically impossible to ever upgrade the stadium. So I left. I don't regret that at all, the journey with Ipswich to the top of the EPL was incredibly fun... but it was the beginning of the end.

Once I had built Ipswich into a team that was going to finish top 4 in the EPL every year with a massive budget it got kinda boring quickly. I felt like I was just going through the motions for the majority of the season to get to the end to see if I was going to get unlucky in the champions league quarterfinals or semifinals or if I would finally win the tournament. The only interesting part of league play after a point was to get to the end to see if I was going to finish 2nd or 3rd or if I wss going to win the league again. The only interesting thing about acquiring players was "is this player willing to play for me?" because for a superstar player there was no transfer fee I couldn't meet, and no salary I couldn't pay. So if a player was willing to play for me and I wanted him bad enough, he was mine. No budget management left to do.

That was my experience at least, others may of course vary.

dola,

possibly most important of all that hasn't been mentioned yet... you got your little team into the EPL. You *have* to at least manage them their first season to see if you can stay up there, you can't take them to the top and leave them there! :D

Wow, so the vote is unanimous! :) And to think I would have been coming into Liverpool just as they are moving into a new 61,000+ capacity stadium...seemed like a good time but I think the sentiment here is correct...

I have some unfinished business with Dover! It will be fun to see if I can keep them up in year one against long odds (mostly financial in nature I'm sure).

Thanks for the advice everyone!

Just a quick update - I've reached the preseason friendly stage of Dover's first year in the Premier League.

The board have increased my transfer budget from £120,000 last year to over £9,000,000 (!!) this season and my wage budget has shot up to over £130,000 from about £50,000 last year.

It's amazing how much difference in revenue there is between the Championship and the Premier League, with television revenue being the most eye-opening change (I believe we are receiving over £36,000,000 this year just for television rights...incredible!).

I'm still in the process of adding new, premier league-quality players to the squad - it's fun having world-class players being interested in my team for the first time and one of my additions is Ashley Young, who in-game is an aging left winger/attacking mid in the twilight of his career but has great experience at the international level with England.

I'm tempted to start a dynasty post here about my exploits.

Do it!!

FM2013 hadnt grabbed me like previous versions, so I thought I'd try a different kind of game. Normally I play fictional universe and start from the bottom, but for a change I thought I'd try real players and go for a team with cash to burn. Had a couple of abortive attempts (Man City, Bayern Munich, Liverpool) before I got a game that I stuck with.

I've just started season 8 as Man Utd manager, I've won the league all 7 times so far and have won the Champions League the last 5 seasons too. It's all got a bit boring, the EPL is such a cakewalk that Man Utd havent lost a league match in any of the last three seasons. My plan now it to stay at Man Utd til they lose a league game, then quit and try leading a formerly big team back to glory. Leeds United, Aston Villa, Birmingham City and West Ham have all dropped down a division or two, so one of them is likely.

So with the streak at 125 League games without defeat, Man Utd are 1-0 down at Millwall and it's looking like my reign is coming to an end. 90+1 and Man Utd equalize, 90+3 and Man Utd score the winner. And my reign goes on.

p.s. Stay at Dover.

p.s. Stay at Dover.

I took everyone's advice and stayed and I'm definitely happy I did. Like many of you mentioned, I would have started the "what ifs" almost right away.

It's been a fascinating journey and my first year in England's top league has been a great learning experience (and humbling). I think I'm going to start a dynasty post about it - I figure at the very least, it will give people hope that you *can* make it to the top leagues by going all the way with a very small club starting at the lowest level in-game.

So I'm playing 2 different games of FM. One is in 14 on my laptop and the other is FMH 13 on my Nexus. I get hooked into one then forget what I was doing in the other. Lol. Hard to keep them apart even though one is England and the other is Northern Ireland.

I'm having a blast playing in NI, but this post is about my FMH game. I swear I think this thing is broken. I'm playing as Maidenhead and it's 2020. I've taken this team from the BSS to the Championship. This is our second trip to the Championship. Last season in League 1 we absolutely crushed the division. I think we scored somewhere close to 150 goals.

I wasn't expecting to do as well this season as we have. Currently we ride in first but we are nowhere near ready for the Premiership. Anyway, we got stuck with Man U in the 4th round of the FA Cup, but at least the game was at home along with our packed 12k fans. Went with a 4-2-3-1 formation in an effort to pack the back and hope for a counter. My keeper, who is only valued at 80k but is the team captain played is heart out and we played to a 0-0 draw.

Two weeks later we played the return match in front of 75k at Old Trafford. I set up the same formation and tactics with a couple of personnel changes. We got the first goal at about 12 min. I knew what was coming next and boy did it ever.

Manchester got it back in about 2 minutes. We picked up our second goal just before the half and carried the lead at the break. The second half was just nails. They came hard at us. I tried to keep my guys fresh and sub out guys who were tired but about the 85th minute we just couldn't manage any longer. I was disheartened. I had subbed everyone out, I knew there was no way we were going to hold on now.

We played into extra time and suddenly nothing was happening. We played to half, and then to the end of regulation with a 2-2 tie.

We were up first for PK's and I've never seen our keeper stop one and I've never seen our team take them so this can't be good against Man U. We score, they score and so on. Nobody misses after 5 tries.

We go 6, they go 6. We go 7 they step up and miss.

Holy crap my little team from Maidenhead just beat Manchester United at Old Trafford in the FA Cup. My reward?

Arsenal. First place in the Premiership.

Fuck yeah.

Awesome :) Love it PilotMan!

Well we won the Championship and won promotion. I guess it just got real. I can't imagine that we will last more than 1 season without some more money and some roster turnover. The biggest problem we had was getting reliable scoring from the players that we had relied on in the past. Our leading scorer was on loan from Derby.

Oh and I will add that we did all this players no older than 25 (most are 22 or so), and our wage budget is about 1/3 of what I was authorized. At least there will be some money to spend. It's still going to be hard when some players have a bigger salary than our entire club budget. LOL!

OK so our first year in the Premiership was a success. We were expected to be respectable, but only with a transfer budget of 3.2M. HAAAAAAAA! We were still way, way below our salary budget. In an effort to spend some of that money and give our offense some punch we signed 31yr old, Jozy Altidore on a free and got a young Italian striker on loan.

The board hated Altidore. In fact, the board hated every move I made in the offseason. We spent the year bouncing between 3 keepers (Trying not to burn out our 20 yr old who is getting call ups from England but yet to get capped, and our other guys), and mixing and matching strikers to find some combination that clicked up front. I found that most of my young guys were just out matched and aren't really Premiership quality. Altidore lead the team in scoring but never really got it together. He was maddening to deal with. Our Italian striker despite looking great sucked. He had 1 goal in 14 games. Ugh.

We got hosed in the Cup drawing Chelsea early. So that didn't go great. Despite all that we played really good defense most of the time and finished just over .500 and good enough for 8th place. We even qualified for the Euro Cup qualifiers! HOT DAMN!!!!!

We added some punch this last offseason, a young Turkish international who is already the best striker on the squad and we added an aging 35yr old Luis Suarez who hadn't had a regular starting job in 2 years for depth, and bought an 18-yr old kid off of Manchester United hoping he develops into something offensively minded.

Our opening friendly is against Roma and they lay the smack down to the tune of 5-1. Next thing I know I get a letter from the Board and they tell me they think I could be doing better!!!!!

WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!

We took this POS, semi pro team from the BSS to the Premiership in about years. We brought the team to financial prosperity, more than doubled the size of the stadium, added a kick ass training program, and took the team to a Continental competition! I COULD BE DOING BETTER?!

The board of Maidenhead is officially smoking crack.

UConn's recent NCAA victory has made me want to see if I can take an elite program to the promised land by recruiting only guys who below Top 50 in the game. I'd probably have to turn on players leaving early to my current league, to create the same kind of parity we have in the real world, but...it'd be interesting to see if I can pull that off.

So after a few years, that's what I'm gonna do.

Alternatively, I need to really get a better handle on Kentucky geography, so I'm considering creating a running recruit database from around the state since there are so many counties, so I can get a better handle on towns and so forth, then recruiting for my teams from amongst those players.

We'll see if it works, I've already begun doing the 3-star dynasty.

OK so our first year in the Premiership was a success. We were expected to be respectable, but only with a transfer budget of 3.2M. HAAAAAAAA! We were still way, way below our salary budget. In an effort to spend some of that money and give our offense some punch we signed 31yr old, Jozy Altidore on a free and got a young Italian striker on loan.

The board hated Altidore. In fact, the board hated every move I made in the offseason. We spent the year bouncing between 3 keepers (Trying not to burn out our 20 yr old who is getting call ups from England but yet to get capped, and our other guys), and mixing and matching strikers to find some combination that clicked up front. I found that most of my young guys were just out matched and aren't really Premiership quality. Altidore lead the team in scoring but never really got it together. He was maddening to deal with. Our Italian striker despite looking great sucked. He had 1 goal in 14 games. Ugh.

We got hosed in the Cup drawing Chelsea early. So that didn't go great. Despite all that we played really good defense most of the time and finished just over .500 and good enough for 8th place. We even qualified for the Euro Cup qualifiers! HOT DAMN!!!!!

We added some punch this last offseason, a young Turkish international who is already the best striker on the squad and we added an aging 35yr old Luis Suarez who hadn't had a regular starting job in 2 years for depth, and bought an 18-yr old kid off of Manchester United hoping he develops into something offensively minded.

Our opening friendly is against Roma and they lay the smack down to the tune of 5-1. Next thing I know I get a letter from the Board and they tell me they think I could be doing better!!!!!

WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!

We took this POS, semi pro team from the BSS to the Premiership in about years. We brought the team to financial prosperity, more than doubled the size of the stadium, added a kick ass training program, and took the team to a Continental competition! I COULD BE DOING BETTER?!

The board of Maidenhead is officially smoking crack.

Update:

Our adjustments up front paid off in spades. We had also added a young Italian striker on loan and he lit the world on fire. Our young Turkish forward suffered a major knee injury and was lost by the 5th game so we went shopping again. I figured, if we are going to have a transfer budget we might as well use some of it. We landed a young Moroccan national named Rayan Chihab. Chihab would go on to win Preimership player of the year.

The best find though was an Ivorian named Ibrahima Ouattara. We paid a miniscule 3.6M for him from Bari and he ended up scoring 23 goals in 22 games with 6 assists and an average rating of 8.3. Guy is just a monster and we have him for 4 more years.

We finished the season in 5th place. A solid spot in Europe for next year too. The biggest surprise for this Maidenhead squad was our performance in the Euro Cup. From the qualifiers, the group stage, to the knockouts, we just kept winning. We beat big teams, we beat little teams. In fact, that same Roma team that schooled us in the preseason last year? Yeah, we took them out too. We beat Liverpool in the Semi Finals and set up a final in front of 145000 fans against Juventus. We played awesome, dominated possession and outshot them 3 to 1. Nothing went in though and we were left to rue a 0-1 defeat.

Boooo. What a disappointment. Still a great year though. Maidenhead is now listed as a RICH ballclub. Our stadium just went from 15.5k to 19k, as I slowly convince the board to expand, but they are not on board with the full youth academy yet.

Things are looking good for us, but we still aren't even close to the kind of money that Chelsea (lost 1 game last season) are spending. Not really even competitive with them either. I'll take this for now though.

I've probably explained some of this before. I have a career with Salisbury in FM12, beginning in the BSS in the 11-12 season.Quickly built a defensive core (players and coaches), and won promotion via playoffs to the BSP and to L2 in successive seasons.

In L2, we were total outsiders, but still strong enough defensively to claw into the playoffs in our first season, where we ultimately lost. The next season, our professional squad expects better of itself, even though outside opinion-makers still ignored us. This season, we fade down the stretch, and drop from the automatic promotion places into the playoff. In the playoff final, we suffer heartbreak again, losing in extra time.

For our third L2 season, the board ramps up expectations to win promotion, even though they won't offer more than a midtable wage budget. That said, we had fewer bad contracts and a core that remained intact and had developed during the previous seasons. Our main obstacles were injury (we had a terrible field that the board refused to relay until finances were in the black) and competition congestion.

The plus side of the congestion was our progress and paydays in the national tournaments. We won the Johnstone's Paint handily, advanced to the third round of the League Cup, and made the QUARTERFINAL of the FA Cup, defeating several Championship/L1 teams along the way. That buoyed our budgets and finally made it possible for our strikers not to twist their ankles playing home matches. (So much alternating between the 4-5-1 and 4-1-2-1-2...)

We go through the L2 season, typically tied with Colchester with a game or two in hand. This was frustrating because of our excellent goal differential (2.1-0.7, roughly). Championship and L1 teams also swarmed around most of our first eleven (who were more or less L1 quality). But we fight all that off and take the title with 98 points on 46 matches (30-8-8). Woo!

Then, clubs come calling. Teams relegated from the Premiership sniff around, and I finally get a solid offer from Championship side Birmingham. Their offer would increase my salary from $2.1k to $22k/wk, give me a $7m transfer budget, and allow $575k/wk in wages! Wow! Sticking with Salisbury, however, I would have no transfer budget and $67k/wk in wages in our rinky-dink 3,800-person stadium.

So, what does a guy do at this point? ...dance with the one who brung him! The odds have us at 20-1 to win L1, so by all appearances, we will situate well on this new tier. I'm keeping the core together and signing new youngsters with my extra $20k in the wage budget. Let's go Whites!

I have been playing Football Manager on the iPad on and off for the past couple of years, but have really gotten into the swing of things with the World Cup recently.

I am nearly halfway through a career game with Southend United and have had a fair bit of success:

2013/14 - 3rd in League 2; won promotion playoff
2014/15 - 19th in League 1
2015/16 - 1st in League 1; promoted; made the quarter final of the FA Cup
2016/17 - 20th in the Championship; avoided relegation on final day of season
2017/18 - 15th in the Championship
2018/19 - 1st in the Championship; promoted
2019/20 - 9th in the Premier League; FA Cup semi finals
2020/21 - 1st in the Premier League; FA Cup quarter finals
2021/22 - 2nd in the Premier League; FA Cup winners; Champions League semi finals
2022/23 - 1st in the Premier League; League Cup winners
2023/24 - 1st in the Premier League; FA Cup runners-up; Champions League runners-up
2024/25 - 4th in the Premier League; League Cup winners

We achieved this on the back of a few notable players. Fernando Sanchez (Argentina) played 297 games in the midfield between 2017 and 2025 and was the captain of our club during that time. Jonathan Forde (keeper) was signed from the depths of Blue Square South in 2018 and has played over 350 games for Southend, conceding just 34 goals in 54 games during 2022/23. We are placing an emphasis on junior development in coming seasons, hence our slight dip in recent years.

The shining light of our club thus far was forward Frank Bos, who we signed from Dutch club ADO Den Haag on our scout's recommendation. Bos scored 162 goals in a little over three seasons - and just 158 appearances - before Chelsea gave us an offer we couldn't refuse. Since leaving us he has scored "just" 28 goals in 59 games. Selling Bos nearly cost me my position, such was the uproar from fans, team and board members, so I feel I'm treading a rather fine line of late!

The trick is to make astute use of Bosman signings, thereby improving the overall team without spending a dollar of transfer money. Once you hit the higher levels, the money comes rolling in, so to speak.

Edit - We came back strong in 2025/26, winning the Premier League on the last day of the season, and then steam-rolling Bayern Munich in the Champions League final 3-0. The only blemish was a FA Cup final loss to Manchester City. The story of the season was the dual threat of AMC Andres Rodriguez Alvarez (signed from Tigres for $14.5m) and S Jordan Gillespie (signed from Newcastle United for $22.5m), who contributed a staggering 82 goals between them during our season. Alvarez was voted the best player in the world, while Gillespie won the Premier League player of the year award. At just 24 and 25 respectively, these two will be around for a while.

Okay, I think I've just played the most incredible span of three seasons in FOF7 that I'm ever likely to.

I started a game about five days ago and randomly chose to use the Bucs. After dabbling for a number of seasons with various pre-packaged offensive schemes and my variation of what I interpreted the Gandalf defense to be (from the legendary 'Defense Wins Championships' dynasty on these hallowed pages), I decided that playing GM rather than GM and coach was more my thing, so I turned over all gameplanning to my coach (who, by this stage was Drew Brees....like I said, we are a few years into the game by now).

Anyhow, I had far too much money invested into only a handful of players who were on the wrong side of their careers (for example, a once-great receiver was earning $20m yet had declined all the way to 37/37). So I decided to blow it all up and start again. Literally. Every single player on my roster was either traded or released.

After making the first four selections myself in the draft (and dodging what the staff would have almost certainly chosen, a 6/31 quarterback), I had 17 rookies assembled. I padded it out with another 29 rookie free agent signings, all exclusively chosen for their chemistry ratings.

Every single player on our roster was a rookie, and the first season was a bit of a hard slog. We did end up winning 4 games however, and weasled our way out of the first overall pick.

We completely avoided the free agent market (although we did make a belated dash for a 90/90 corner), and invested heavily in the draft once again. No stud quarterback, so again I made the first pick and went for a tackle with sexy bars. The post-draft free agency signings were bereft of any actual talent, so I went for affinity and chemistry once again.

Second season done and dusted, and we finished 5-11, good enough for the third overall pick. We tried to move up to first overall but I had my doubts over the quality of the studly quarterback sitting at the top of the pile. The Saints, division rivals, held the first pick and I'm sure that was part of their reluctance to trade.

The QB goes first overall and he bottoms out at 17/40. We dodged a bullet. Tampa takes the best available player at third overall, and we have a 49/84 defensive end on our books. Our 63 rated starter who was drafted in the original "genesis" draft is ticked off a little but he's still comfortably our starter.

I limit myself to just two free agent signings who weren't rookies - both rated in the mid-40s and strong on affinity and chemistry. Camp comes and goes and we pump out an undefeated pre-season. My expectations are to maybe break even for 8-8 in our third rebuilding season.

Well, was I wrong. Very wrong. On the back of 21 sacks from the rookie DE, and 4000 yards from a quarterback that we picked off the street two years ago, we sweep all before us. Only a loss to the Panthers in the last week of the season prevents us from scoring a perfect season. That's right, we go 15-1.

We don't have any particular strength - 15th in passing, 9th in rushing. 11th defending the rush, 28th against the pass. Ten of our wins are by 7 points or less. Yet here we are with our best record in this dynasty history (easily beating the previous mark of 11-5).

The good times don't end there however, as we beat the Packers 27-17 in the division round, and then ease past the Niners 24-10 in the conference championship. We are off to the Super Bowl!

Miami are our opponents and the media gleefully talks up the "Florida Bowl", even if it is played in Texas. The Dolphins are the defending champions and play like it, opening up a 17-3 lead by halftime. However, we close the gap to just seven points by the two minute warning, and then having used up all our timeouts, intercept the Dolphins with just eight seconds to go, down by 7. First and ten on the Bucs 33.

The stadium erupts into pandemonium when we connect on our last play of the game, as our third year quarterback finds our third year receiver (also found on the street) and he runs it in for the score. The kick is good! Overtime!

Miami win the toss and receive, but their quarterback has the yips and throws another pick on the first play of their drive. We pound the ball seven yards closer to the sticks and then send in the kicker for the win! The kick is good and the Bucs win!

With $142 million left under the cap, we will be able to keep anyone who wants to stick around and develop this new Bucs dynasty.

I'm absolutely stoked.

awesome.

Okay, I think I've just played the most incredible span of three seasons in FOF7 that I'm ever likely to.

I started a game about five days ago and randomly chose to use the Bucs. After dabbling for a number of seasons with various pre-packaged offensive schemes and my variation of what I interpreted the Gandalf defense to be (from the legendary 'Defense Wins Championships' dynasty on these hallowed pages), I decided that playing GM rather than GM and coach was more my thing, so I turned over all gameplanning to my coach (who, by this stage was Drew Brees....like I said, we are a few years into the game by now).

Anyhow, I had far too much money invested into only a handful of players who were on the wrong side of their careers (for example, a once-great receiver was earning $20m yet had declined all the way to 37/37). So I decided to blow it all up and start again. Literally. Every single player on my roster was either traded or released.

After making the first four selections myself in the draft (and dodging what the staff would have almost certainly chosen, a 6/31 quarterback), I had 17 rookies assembled. I padded it out with another 29 rookie free agent signings, all exclusively chosen for their chemistry ratings.

Every single player on our roster was a rookie, and the first season was a bit of a hard slog. We did end up winning 4 games however, and weasled our way out of the first overall pick.

We completely avoided the free agent market (although we did make a belated dash for a 90/90 corner), and invested heavily in the draft once again. No stud quarterback, so again I made the first pick and went for a tackle with sexy bars. The post-draft free agency signings were bereft of any actual talent, so I went for affinity and chemistry once again.

Second season done and dusted, and we finished 5-11, good enough for the third overall pick. We tried to move up to first overall but I had my doubts over the quality of the studly quarterback sitting at the top of the pile. The Saints, division rivals, held the first pick and I'm sure that was part of their reluctance to trade.

The QB goes first overall and he bottoms out at 17/40. We dodged a bullet. Tampa takes the best available player at third overall, and we have a 49/84 defensive end on our books. Our 63 rated starter who was drafted in the original "genesis" draft is ticked off a little but he's still comfortably our starter.

I limit myself to just two free agent signings who weren't rookies - both rated in the mid-40s and strong on affinity and chemistry. Camp comes and goes and we pump out an undefeated pre-season. My expectations are to maybe break even for 8-8 in our third rebuilding season.

Well, was I wrong. Very wrong. On the back of 21 sacks from the rookie DE, and 4000 yards from a quarterback that we picked off the street two years ago, we sweep all before us. Only a loss to the Panthers in the last week of the season prevents us from scoring a perfect season. That's right, we go 15-1.

We don't have any particular strength - 15th in passing, 9th in rushing. 11th defending the rush, 28th against the pass. Ten of our wins are by 7 points or less. Yet here we are with our best record in this dynasty history (easily beating the previous mark of 11-5).

The good times don't end there however, as we beat the Packers 27-17 in the division round, and then ease past the Niners 24-10 in the conference championship. We are off to the Super Bowl!

Miami are our opponents and the media gleefully talks up the "Florida Bowl", even if it is played in Texas. The Dolphins are the defending champions and play like it, opening up a 17-3 lead by halftime. However, we close the gap to just seven points by the two minute warning, and then having used up all our timeouts, intercept the Dolphins with just eight seconds to go, down by 7. First and ten on the Bucs 33.

The stadium erupts into pandemonium when we connect on our last play of the game, as our third year quarterback finds our third year receiver (also found on the street) and he runs it in for the score. The kick is good! Overtime!

Miami win the toss and receive, but their quarterback has the yips and throws another pick on the first play of their drive. We pound the ball seven yards closer to the sticks and then send in the kicker for the win! The kick is good and the Bucs win!

With $142 million left under the cap, we will be able to keep anyone who wants to stick around and develop this new Bucs dynasty.

I'm absolutely stoked.

Wow! Looking forward to a year 4 update!

Wow! Looking forward to a year 4 update!

Well, a little bit of water has passed under the bridge since I posted that update. From memory, we went back to the playoffs for the next three seasons as a wildcard each time but couldn't get over the hump. In a quest to see if I could rekindle the magic elsewhere, I went to Oakland, and managed to get the Bucs coach to come with me (off-contract) - Gruden in reverse? I cut the entire roster and tried to rebuild using the same affinity and chemistry ethos, and duly went 8-72 in five seasons before I was fired.

The grass is not always greener.

'However, we close the gap to just seven points by the two minute warning, and then having used up all our timeouts, intercept the Dolphins with just eight seconds to go, down by 7.'

What?

NHL 15 playing as the Kings, was in the middle of a pretty mediocre 10 game stretch (5-5) and my lead in the pacific was shrinking. Down 3-1 to Winnipeg, scored with 10 seconds left to make it 3-2, then scored off the ensuing face off to tie it at 3 with 5 seconds left. (They also missed an empty net from just outside the blue line with 38 seconds to play)

Ended up winning in overtime 4-3 with 1:38 to go on a slap shot from the point. The most amazing 5 minutes in the NHL series I have ever played.

Got the UNC job in an FBCB2010 dynasty after a season with Southern Miss where I had these three scores in the CUSA tourney: 59-35, 112-105, 73-22.

...Amazing variance. The team was top-3 in FG% defense for the 3rd straight year, explaining much of the first and third results. The middle one was a regulation game, amazingly! But its pace was in the low 80s (as opposed to the high 50s for the other two), and both teams shot 60% or so.

Alright I'm going to take over this thread for a little bit because there is a story that I want to tell, but it's not worthy of it's own thread. So without further ado, I give you American Baseball.

American Baseball begins in 1975 in an alternate baseball universe. There is no MLB nor has there ever been. Instead baseball is still divided into east and west geographical leagues of equal size.

In the east you have the Atlantic Baseball League. The ABL is a 12-team ML divided into 2 divisions. They have one level of support, a AAA level league called the ABL Developmental. Players are drafted every year from a pool that is fed by both Collegiate and High School leagues, dubbed the American Collegiate Association and East Coast High School respectively. Undrafted players are free agents.

In the west you have Pacific Championship Baseball. A 12-team ML divided into 3, 4-team divisions. The PCB is also supported with a AAA level minor league system called the PCB Minor League. They too hold a draft simultaneously with the ABL. Their players come from the Universities of the West and the West Coast High School All-Stars. Teams from the East and West, never player one another and are considered completely separate entities.

Since baseball is divided along coastal lines, where all the money and high exposure athletes are baseball in the midwest has developed much more of a grassroots organization. Teams from Kansas all the way to North Dakota, and Rapid City to Kentucky, have banded together to create Prairie League Baseball, a completely unaffiliated independent league. Players are signed from the available free agent pool or developed locally. The PLB is a 32-team league, with 2 separate subdivisions, broken up into 4, 4-team regions with most teams playing only games against their more local opponents to keep costs down. With much less revenue coming in than their ML counterparts they don't compete for the top talent but sometimes players can emerge from the PLB and make an impact and sometimes players can actually play in the PLB and make more money than they would fighting for playing time in the minors on the coasts.

And that's where we begin.

The year is now 1985 and after 10 years of playing I decided it was time to stop watching on the sidelines and start winning. There were a number of teams that were searching for new GM's and after considering the possibility of where to live and the real thought of possibly going back to North Dakota I decided that the west coast was really where I wanted to be.

Thinking that the only way that this was going to work was if I'd just jump in with both feet into the place that needed me the most. I found my answer and it wasn't too hard. Napa here I come.

The Napa Owls have been historically one of the most dominating teams in their division. With 7 divisional titles in 10 years and 3 championships you would think that this team was one of least likely places that I'd need to show up. But that couldn't be further from the truth. This team had finished last in 2 of the last 3 years with 98 losses and one year, 40 games out of first place.

The team had little talent considering the money that they were pouring out for players. Old players with contracts that were hindering the team, but luckily for me an owner who still was willing to spend more. His expectations weren't that grand. Coming off of a 98 loss season he really wanted the team to player .500 baseball. I felt like that was going to be a tall order, but was willing to give it a shot.

When I'm talking about bad money spent here's what I'm talking about:

4 of the top 5 paid players were 38 or 39. All were injury prone and only 1 of those was likely to even have any kind of impact on the season.

The team had some decent arms in the bullpen, but the starters were rough. The top pitcher had carried the team for a couple of years, but was injured most of the previous. There was no help to be found in the free agent pool.

In the field no real dominating player stood out and there's nothing to get excited about.

In the minors and international developmental there was a grand total of 1 high level prospect. A young starter who was a former 1-1 pick. That's pretty much it. A decent team with a number of glaring holes and an owner who's last GM clearly was wasting a lot of his money. At least in all of this I have an owner who is willing to spend some money. Too bad there's really nobody to spend it on.

Winter 1985

Seven moves. Well 7 moves plus 2 more. But not really 9. If that makes any sense. I feel like this team needs help just about everywhere. I like guys who can get on base. I like pitching. I like defense. Of course, I like guys who can hit, but I'd rather have a team of 15-20 HR guys than one or 2 who can crush it over and over.

I poured and poured over the pool. What did I find? Squat. Really. There's just not much here to turn a franchise around with. I looked at some minor league teams thinking perhaps I might pull off a trade for someone who shouldn't be down there. What did I find? Nothing. Even if I did, the only player that anyone was interested in was my 1 lone prospect. Given that I'd like to have him 3 or 4 years from now, there was no way that I was letting him go.

So that leads me to the 7 moves that I was able to make this off season and the optimism and hope that preceded each of these signings. Here they are in order:

1. SS Elmer Lund; 29; 3yr/$765,000 from New York of the ABL.

Depth and a decided lack of defensive skill was the motivation for making this move. Lund was picked 33 by none other than Napa back in the initial draft and was considered the #25 prospect in the PCB. So they traded him East to Newark, who traded him west to Portland, who traded him back east to New York. Seeing how this played out yet? Actually Lund won the Glove Wizard award at 2B back in '82 and despite only being a regular starter for 2 years in all that time was still a career .290 hitter. But last year he only hit .235 in 81 AB in New York. My hope is that he will start at 2B and get on base enough while shoring up the middle of the defense. His 255k a year is much less than the 620k he made last year with New York.

2. SP Bobby Blanco; 28; Purchased for $250,000 from the Iowa City Gardners of the Prairie League Baseball. Signed for minimum 1yr/$68,000.

Purchasing him outright wasn't cheap. But it did allow us to get him without a long trade negotiation when we had nothing to trade with. I'm convinced that there is talent playing in the middle of the country that can help us better than what else might be in the free agent pool. Blanco has been an outright stud in the PLB. He turned pro after going undrafted out of high school in 1975 and signed with the Bismarck Fire. Considered the #3 (in '77) and #2 (in '78) prospect in the PLB he would go on to start regularly. He was double digit wins and single digit losses every year since turning 21, and had a career low 1.84 ERA in '83. He was 3rd for Outstanding Pitcher in '80, 2nd in '83 and won the award in '84. He was reliable cracking over 200 IP in 4 seasons (27 starts). In fact in all that time he'd only been injured 1 time. He was signed away by Iowa City in '84; a 3 year deal worth $57,600.

PS. The biggest knock on him is his control. He throws 5 pitches, some better than others, but his control is awful. Having said that he did lead the PLB in K's for five years and WHIP for two years.

3. 1B Graham Sheffield; 24; acquired via trade with the Waukesha Volunteers of the PLB. Would sign for 1yr/$68,800.

Everything that Blanco was to the staff Sheffield represented to our offense. Granted he was playing a position that I was already set up at, but luckily that other guy could move to third. Graham was unsigned out of high school and turned pro by signing with Waukesha in 1980. Even though he was #17 prospect he didn't make his debut until 1982 when he took over starting first base and didn't let go. He finished as runner up ROY in '82, but had dropped to #65 prospect. He did however hit 64 HR's those first 2 years and then went on to win the Triple Crown in '84. He posted a .364 average, with 34 HR and 118 RBI in 124 games (no injury; the PLB plays a shorter schedule) winning the MVP with ease. He is a monster 6'7" and bats left handed; perfect for our short right field in Napa. We gave up a 22 yo first base prospect and a 20 yr old, former 2nd round draft pick, OF who wasnt' going to see much playing time in our system. Like Blanco I knew that there was no way he was going to put up those numbers in the PCB, but I thought he was best option we had to try and find some offense.

4. SP Balduino Bicalho; 27; 6yr/$840,000 from Cedar Rapids of the PLB.

Bicalho was not the top FA pitcher on the market, but he was one of the best value picks available. Originally an international signing from Venezuela he was in the Stockton (PCB) organization for 6 years before getting released. He had been the #98, #83, and #87 PCB prospect from '78 to '80 and finally made his big league debut in 1980, getting in late for 3.1 IP of mopup duty and then getting released prior to opening day the next year. He would sign on with Cedar Rapids (PLB) 9 days later and become a regular until he blew his elbow out in '83. He would bounce back, but would not be the same and would always be dealing with injury issues. So what do I see with him? I see a 4-pitch pitcher with above average control, who throws upper 80s and keeps the ball down. Even if he's only 5'9" and injury prone as a value pick goes he was someone that would at least keep our 21yo prospect from having to make the jump too soon. I need someone who can eat innings in the back of the rotation.

5. OF Jose Blanco; 27; 7yr/2.74 M from Tacoma of the PCB.

The big splash of the offseason. Blanco was the best OF available and we paid for him. He actually came up in the Napa system out of Cuba and was a millionaire from his initial signing. Considered the #2 prospect in the PCB in '79 he lit the league on fire grabbing a Glove Wizard award in LF and finishing 3rd in voting for ROY. He was on the last Napa team to win the title in '81 when he won his second Glove Wizard award, this time for RF. A speed merchant with a good glove, he has 213 career SB and was a career .300 hitter when he was traded at the deadline in '82 to Tacoma for what amounted to our #1 minor league prospect. He slumped in '84 only hitting .257 in 374 AB and 21 SB. He adds defense and top of the order production, but injuries have derailed his once bright career. We have a bunch of 2 star OF's and Blanco should be the anchor in the OF provided he can stay healthy.

6. RP Dewey Mahoney, 36; 1yr/$188,000 from Honolulu of the PCB.

A late spring addition Mahoney had put together a reputation as a fearsome closer for most of his career. He started his career in Washington of the ABL before signing with Hololulu and being the closer there for the next 5 years. He blew out his elbow and had Tommy John in '83. When he came back he went right back to his old ways saving 27 (giving him 247 for his career) and posting a 1.99 ERA in '84. I'm not sure how, but I feel like we got him for a steal. He knows full well that his career is winding down and he wasn't looking for a big money cash in. He won't be a closer here. The coach has already decided that one of our young pitchers are going to take over that roll, but a solid arm in the pen is always needed. He only throws 2 pitches but he still has good stuff and keeps the ball down well.

7. IF/OF Joe Miller; 31; 1yr/$164,000 free agent signing from the Sturgis Choppers of the PLB.

Miller was signed just before the start of the season. As prospects go he wasn't a top prospect, however he did have solid numbers in the PLB. After going undrafted out of college Miller signed with Green Bay and staying in the PLB for his entire career. He move on to Sturgis in '82 only having played more than 100 games 1 time in his career as injuries would chip away at him. Even through all of that he was a career .305 hitter with over 100 career home runs and stolen bases. He was never a standout in the PLB, but solidly productive and capable of playing the corners on the infield and outfield. He made more money signing this contract with me than he had earned his entire career up to that point.

8. and 9.

Just before the start of the new year and the end of spring training I fired the bench coach, demoted the manager and fired the hitting coach. I replaced the with guys with much bigger salaries. I felt like it was necessary for the team to progress. I'd like to get a new pitching coach too, but for now we'll stick with our current staff.

Trade Deadline
July 1985

The team is playing better than expected and by the middle of July we were a full 10 games above .500 and in the thick of the playoff race. I really didn't have any intention of making a deal here. The team was playing alright, but there was no expectation of anything and without any real bargaining chips the hope that anything was going to get done was slim. Then along came a desperate team anxious to move an unhappy outfielder just when we were in the thick of the injury bug. All of our regular outfielders were on the DL and it was getting a little slim. We landed a decent player for a song. The timing couldn't have been better.

10. OF Chris Young; 28; aquired via trade with Honolulu of the PCB.

Young was a former 2nd round draft pick by the Napa Owls back in '76. He played with the Owls for his entire career until trying out free agency last offseason. Then he moved out to Hawaii. His best year was in '81 when he hit 24 HR's and drove in 117 runs while batting .327. He finished 3rd in MVP voting that year. Since then his production has dropped, but he remained a career .300 hitter with 99 career home runs. Defensively he is about average which isn't a liability. We sent Honolulu a minor league relief pitcher to complete the trade.

August saw the team go on a tear and break open a nice lead in the division. By mid September we had pulled away and locked up the division title. It wouldn't all go according to plan though as we would limp home in September including dropping 8 of our last 10 and 3 straight against the team we would play in the first round of the playoffs, the Seattle River Dogs.

Once the playoffs began though, the team didn't look back and worry about where they had been. One player in particular would lead the charge that would help push the team further on than was ever expected.

The Regional Finals saw Napa win 5-0. They dropped game two, 6-5 despite a HR from Graham Sheffield. Napa went on to win both 3 and 4 by the scores of 4-3 with Sheffield hitting a HR in game 3 and 2 in game 4.

On to the finals against the Tacoma Tincups, the wild card team who knocked off the Victorville Serpents.

Sheffield would hit HR #5 in game one, but despite that the Owls lost 6-5. We would get it back in game 2 with a 4-1 win with Sheffield homering in his 4th straight game. Game 3 would be another loss 6-2 as the Owls fall behind 2-1 in the series. Game 4 would get evened up again behind a 6-2 win. Game 5 would again go our way 6-1.

Game 6 would be pitched by Bicalho and he would get help from Sheffield who hit his 7th HR of the post season. It's all he would need as the Owls would pull away with an 8-0 win and the return of the title to Napa!

So now that we know team totally overachieved in winning the title with a new GM and patchwork team, what impact did the preseason signings have on the season?

1. Elmer Lund

.209 AVG; 0.1 WAR; 52 Games, 86 AB, 2 HR, 8 RBI.

Lund never became the force that I envisioned him being. Most of the games he played were in CF or at SS. The manager just didn't see the usefulness in having him play second base that I did.

2. Bobby Blanco

14-8; 31 GS, 223.2 IP, 3.02 ERA, 150 K's, 1.27 WHIP, 4.6 WAR

Blanco was everything that he was hoped to be and more. There were times during the season that he was the only pitcher that could be relied upon during the year. He walked 105 guys, but more importantly made it through the year unhurt. His 2 starts in the postseason were crucial to the championship run. He is a strong contender for ROY.

3. 1B Graham Sheffield

.299 AVG; 2.7 WAR; 147 Games; 488 AB; 25 HR; 83 RBI

A solid offensive producer. He was benched a lot against left handers but still managed to play in 90% of the games while remaining healthy. He lead the team in batting average and while he wasn't close to the level of dominance he enjoyed playing in the PLB his production was the best of any player on the team. His exploits in the post season will go down in lore with a .350 average and 7 HR in 44 PA. To put that into perspective there isn't a player in MLB history with that HR rate in the postseason. He will be competing with Blanco for ROY votes.

4. SP Balduino Bicalho

11-11, 30 GS, 180 IP, 4.35 ERA, 101 K's, 1.26 WHIP, 3.3 WAR

Bicalho managed to stay healthy for almost the entire season and his post season was even better than Blanco's. I think he performed better than expected and even though his numbers don't look that great he still almost pitched 200 innings and made his investment very worthwhile.

5. OF Jose Blanco

.275 AVG, 0.7 WAR, 112 Games, 440 AB, 0 HR, 36 RBI, 17 SB

Blanco was hot, hot hot early on in the year. He was the driving force behind early season success. He slowed down and then faced a 4 trips to the DL. In fact, his replacement was so successful that he was left off the post season roster due to both performance and injuries. Those numbers are pretty far off what I was hoping for. Next season could be a long one for him.

6. RP Dewey Mahoney

4-3, 4 Saves, 9 Holds, 63 G, 66.1 IP, 2.58 ERA, 45 K's, 1.34 WHIP, 0.6 WAR

Mahoney was a really solid bullpen addition this year. He ended up pitching more innings than I thought he would and his work in 5 post season games was dominant. I signed him to an extension prior to free agency. I still think he could have 1 more good year in him.

7. IF/OF Joe Miller

.293 AVG, 1.9 WAR, 82 Games, 215 AB, 8 HR, 40 RBI

Miller was never a first pick position player, but he every field position except catcher this year. With the numbers that he put up he could have made a bigger impact on the team than he did, but he was clearly good enough. He missed the last 2 months of the year with a hamstring injury and missed out on the post season as well.

10. OF Chris Young

.283 AVG, 0.5 WAR, 53 Games, 173 AB, 2 HR, 18 RBI

Young got a good bit of playing time after coming over in July and filling in for our injured outfield. As guys got healthy again he was left to fight for playing time. A little less power and production than I had hoped. He probably won't be resigned in the future.

That's it, that's all I've got. Hope you enjoyed it. Now, back to my game. :)

Sheffield did end up winning the ROY.

I do love setups like I have in this game. I just saw a 38yr old reliever from my title squad end his ML career and take a 90% paycut by becoming a closer for the independent league (PLB) champion, Madison. His contract calls for a second year if he can get 30IP.

Sounds like a cool league idea, Pilot.

Thanks, I have to admit that your creative leagues were at least some of the inspiration for the concept.

I just found a player who won Top Pitcher his Sophomore and Junior years of High School, had an injury sideline him for part of his Senior year (he was still 4-0, with a 1.25 ERA) then get picked 5th overall. He didn't sign and went to college where after a quiet Freshmen year he went 8-1 and won Top Pitcher his Sophomore year.

Going to be a fairly long post, but I hope to make it an interesting one.

Started a career in FBCB with a Level 4 coach (180 points) at Savannah State (20 prestige) for a nice challenge. Did the classic build-until-an-offer-comes job there, built around 2 #75 recruiting classes in my first 2 seasons. A 20-win season, MEAC title, and NCAA appearance in year 4 cap off a successful building job.

With conference prestige changes turned on, I'm very lucky to catch C-USA (3/5 prestige) on a down year. I get an offer from Southern Miss (75 prestige), albeit with the high expectation of making the Sweet 16. (They had made the NCAA title game 5 years earlier, and had once NCAA appearance--an Elite 8 run--between then and the offer date.) So I jump for the next challenge.

I have a transition year where we go 11-7 in conference and 4-10 out of conference. But the recruiting successes begin in earnest, as a #35 class including a 4-star recruit is the first of 4 straight classes in the top 40 and featuring a 4-star player to lead C-USA.

The on-court results follow. We win either the regular season or conference title each of the next 3 seasons, picking up at least 13 conference wins and 24 total wins every year. We make one Sweet 16 run in amassing a 3-3 NCAA tourney record in those 3 years.

Just as Southern Miss is coalescing into a threat on the national stage, alma mater comes calling for coach. North Carolina's coach has retired, and despite the high expectation of reaching a Final Four, I jump at the opportunity.

I always schedule home-and-home series against a school I've just left. In year 1 at UNC, we go to Southern Miss... and are played off the floor. It was just deserts. That notwithstanding, it was a banner year at UNC, with a regular-season ACC title, a final ranking of #9, a 2-seed, and an Elite 8 appearance. We went 29-7/14-4.

Feeding the fire, we land the #1 overall recruiting class, including 3 5-star kids. 2 of them are projected top 5 picks in the next NBA draft. Sights are set high with a #3 preseason ranking.

The first sign of trouble is when UNC shoots 38% and commits 27 fouls in a 83-72 loss to Pacific in the first round of a preseason tourney. Things level out after that, though. We happen to meet Southern Miss in the 5th-place game of that tourney, and get a convincing 85-68 win.

We take our second loss in a 90-80 shootout against Michigan. After opening the ACC slate with a tough 100-94 win over NC State, who's up next? Why, Southern Miss again!--in the return date of that home-and-home we had begun the year before. We are once again up to the task, securing an 80-71 win.

Then conference play begins in earnest. While there's only 1 or 2 head-scratchers, we take 8 losses against 10 wins in ACC play. A partial explanation for this might be offered by the fact that injuries resulted in 8 different Tar Heels starting at least 10 games over the course of the season. Regardless, by season's end, we had slipped out of the polls and landed as an 8-seed in the NCAA tourney.

Now for the tournament. First, we eke out a 59-56 win over a Houston team that we outclass, frankly. Our Round of 32 opponent is #1 Missouri--a team I saw often as a money game at Savannah State and Southern Miss. The 87-78 upset is a measure of personal satisfaction in addition to the team's accomplishment. We secure 11-point wins against 5-seed Marquette and 3-seed Tulsa to win our region.

Our Final Four date pits us against... Southern Miss. Of all people. Our 2 wins against them are true outliers, as they have otherwise gone 33-2, 18-0 in conference, earning the #1 RPI in college basketball.

Boy, do the basketball gods know how to line them up sometimes. :)

Another great three-season span of single-player FOF7.

I started a league with a preference draft and picked up a young, pass-heavy team in the Browns.

After seasons of yo-yo achievement, ranging from an early Front Office Bowl apperance in 2015, to 5-11 in 2018, we started to play with a slightly different strategy with a view to capping-out our contracts in an effort to maximise talent at our disposal.

During 2018 we traded away our Trent Richardson analogy to division rivals Cincinnati for a range of future picks. At the end of the season, foundation quarterback Floyd Coles (80/80) was traded to the Titans for future picks, and we picked up Lions backup Donovan Walker (49/49) in free agency. Walker has a great pre-season and jumps to 56/56.

We make consecutive AFC Championship games in 2019 and 2020 but can't get past the dominant Buffalo Bills, who are in the process of winning consecutive NFL championships.

2020 sees our team at a bit of a crossroads. We have a young RB, Jo Borg (25/35) who is largely a bust but is finding the end zone far more often than our starter Calvin Samuels, who we got from Cincy in the 2018 mid-season trade of running backs. We have to start over at this position.

With quarterback Walker off contract at the end of 2021, we begin renegotiation talks and it's quickly apparent that our venn diagrams of demands and prices will never meet. I start shopping for potential trade partners.

Philadephia are the only team that show any interest, at a whopping 99 (the next best team was lukewarm at best with 55 interest). I decide to bundle up a few of these future picks and swing a big deal that sees LCB Peyton Fehr (77/77) become a Brown. We also get RT Jameson Peters (55/55) from the Eagles as part of the package.

We go after Bills backup quarterback Greg Johnstone (45/45) in free agency and are fortuitous enough to get a useful stopgap running back as well.

The best player on the roster may well be LDE Thurman Tenney (76/77 in 2020). Drafted fifth overall in the previous season, he is a sack monster with 19 in his first two seasons.

All of the pieces seem to be in place for a strong playoff run in 2021, but instead we stumble into the wildcard round with a 9-6-1 record. We are blown out of the water by division rivals Pittsburgh and the dream is over.

Coach Vincent Talley (37-33-1 in four seasons) is fired and we start looking for his replacement. It comes in the form of Emmanuel Statler, all of 35 years old, who has one season as an assistant in Minnesota to his name.

Statler turns out to have great fortune in drafting Dominique Boehner at the bottom of the third round. Rated 36/36 off the draft, he explodes to 54/55 following training camp. We have a long-term solution at running back. Boehner becomes our first 1000-yard rusher in eight years of SP play.

Tenney wins Defensive Player of the Year for his 22 sacks, and leads the dominant Browns defense to a division title.

We have a scare in the division round, tying the Jaguars 27-27 on the last kick of the game and go on to win in extra time. The Miami Dolphins are seen off in the AFC Championship game 26-13, meaning we're off to our second Front Office Bowl game, this time against the third Floridan team we would face in three games, the Bucs.

Our game manager QB Johnstone has a mild shocker, completing only 13 passes for the entire game. We are down 13-0 at the main break but draw level through a pair of field goals and an intercept TD from Peyton Fehr, the CB we traded for from Philadelphia.

The comeback is sealed when Boehner crashes over from seven yards out. Browns win the Bowl 20-16!

In the 2023 off-season, we go hard after an attractive free agent QB from the Packers, and get our man when Mackenzie Akbar (54/54) signs on the dotted line. The plan is to let Johnstone test free agency in 2024.

2023 continues much like the season before, with a dominant defense and effective running game now being added to by a skillful quarterback. Akbar goes down with injury in Week 11 and Johnstone deputises well enough to propel us to the second seed.

Akbar returns for the playoffs and we beat the Chiefs 20-0 and Colts 35-16 to win another AFC Championship.

Dallas is our opponent for the 2023 Front Office Bowl and only are threatened at the end when the Cowboys stage a comeback from 30-10 to close us to 30-27. Akbar manages a great final drive to safely give Cleveland a second championship!

Johnstone leaves in 2024 to get his payday at the Lions. We play the salary cap game well, resigning Boehner and Tenney, and 2024 proceeds much as the two seasons before. This time we earn the #1 seed, and Akbar's accuracy is off the charts. 30 touchdowns and just 4 interceptions.

Disaster strikes in the playoffs though when Akbar's knee explodes under the weight of three Jaguars linemen. His season is over.

We turn to backup Logan Bierce (30/30), expecting only game management from a person who had previous experience with six other teams. Instead, we get a star-studded performance of 4 touchdown throws, and the Jaguars are put down 40-26.

In the AFC Championship game, the Titans are comfortably taken care of 27-7, Bierce 3 touchdowns.

We face Greg Johnstone's new team, the Detroit Lions, in our quest to win our third consecutive Front Office Bowl with our third different quarterback. The game isn't even close as Bierce puts in an MVP performance of 4 touchdown throws - his record in the playoffs is 11 touchdowns, no picks. Cleveland wins 34-3 to put the punctuation point on a dynasty.

Three seasons for our young (still only 38) coach Emmanuel Statler, who boasts a record of 44-13. Three championships with three different quarterbacks.

Salary cap hell is just over the horizon but for now the Browns are savouring this recent rich vein of success.

Just finished my first season of what will be my "long" game for Football Manager 15.

Finished 2nd in Serie A with Sassuolo, trailing mighty Juventus by about 16 points. Going into the final two matches, Sassuolo had 69 points, Inter had 69 points, Roma had 67 points.

Final two matches?
@ Roma 3-1 victory to clinch Champions League for 15/16
v Inter 1-1 draw to clinch the runner-up spot.

Our front four was incredible.
Domenico Berardi, even missing six weeks scored 28 goals with 17 assists and a 7.65 rating. He was named Serie A Player of the Year

His compatriot up top, Simone Zaza scored 33 goals with 18 assists for a 7.56 rating. He was top goalscorer in Serie A.

AML Nicola Sansone scored 10, assisted on 13.

AMR Andrija Zivkovic, one of only two summer signings leading into the season scored 12 and assisted on 5 before missing the final 8 weeks through injury. He was named Serie A Young Player of the Year.

Our second signing, teenage AML Dorin Rotariu only played a bit part, missing four months through injury. We still have big hopes for him moving forward.

Also in late fall, Nov/Dec we signed an 18y.o. Brazilian forward named Mosquito for depth. He ended up scoring the winning goal against Roma and the leveling goal against Inter. He has solid potential, he's a very good third option at forward.

We were given a modest budget of 15m for the summer and have been told European Qualification is a must. We may have made too big of a leap after season one, but time will tell.

Zaza, Berardi and DR Sime Vrsalkjo have all been linked to English teams, but all overtures have been denied. I'm looking for 20m+ for all three players, but especially Zaza and Berardi.

We had major weaknesses in year one at MC, DL and DC. That has been remedied a bit by signing MC Stefano Sturaro from Juve. MC Andre Ramos has also been brought in on loan from Barcelona. We also signed GK Nicola Leali on a free from them as well. We added Emmanuele Mammana at DC, keeping with the youth check, as well as an Italian DC on a free who's name escapes me.

Just had my fastest ever nomination win in President Infinity (Formerly President Forever 2016). Using the 2008 scenario, I narrowly won Iowa with Condoleeza Rice, and from there it was off to the races. Lost Wyoming, which I never visited, and narrowly lost Nevada to Romney. Swept Super Tuesday and won the nomination that day. Only Fred Thompson is hanging around, and that's with none of the other candidates endorsing me.

On the Dem side, Obama and Hillary got hit with a big scandal each, which has given rise to Biden, who has gotten a lot of dropped candidate endorsements, so they're trying to rally around him. But it looks like that may play out a while between Biden, Obama, Clinton, and Warner.

Made a level 3 coach in FBCB with 100 in scouting and 20 in the other 3 attributes. After simming forward a couple years, I took the first job I was offered at Georgia Southern. To maximize my one advantage as a coach, I've kept a barebones 30k staff and exclusively gone after exclusively local players (current roster is 13 from GA and 2 from SC) so I can evaluate as many prospects as possible.

The on-court results hadn't been too special; I took over a team that had come off back-to-back 20-win seasons but had graduated all its good players. Won 15 and 12 games my first 2 seasons and 21 games in seasons 3 and 4. An injury rash in season 3 and and a bizarre late-season swoon the following year (lost 3 straight home games to bad teams to go from the 1 to the 4 seed for the conference tourney) kept me from leading Georgia Southern to its first NCAA berth.

So, season 5 is shaping up to be the usual "first recruiting class is now seniors" breakthrough (7 Georgia Southern players are among the top 20 pro prospects in the SoCon), but I'm definitely open to moving up. Ohio knocks me off my feet with an offer: the budget's 100k higher, prestige is a MAC-high 61 compared to my current 34, but I'm unsure of my ability to coach the mismatched roster up to the AD's expectations of winning the MAC. Plus, I figure that I'll have some more offers to look over once more dominoes fall.

My patience pays off big-time as some high-major offers come in round 2, including one so crazy I have to take it. Memphis is 92 prestige and has a $550k budget (along with Final Four expectations). Their now-former coach won 35 games and a title in his first season, 25 games (and a 2nd round exit) his second season, and 20 games (and a 2nd round NIT exit) his third season, and presumably skipped town in a lateral move to LSU before he could be fired. I haven't leveled up in the first four years, so we'll see how long my 69-62 all-time coach can last after making the 58 point prestige jump. Probably gonna have to start looking for some assistants that cost more than $30k.

I figure even if I flame out as quickly as possible, whichever job I'd get after being fired from Memphis would be more or less what I'd have if I stayed with Georgia Southern and got upset in the conference tournament this season.

It was a long road, but year 6 at Memphis saw me cutting down the nets... in the NIT. I ultimately experienced my first firing in an FBCB game.

In my first season, there was a lot of talent but an extremely awkward roster fit. Not only was the roster pretty much exclusively perimeter players, but everyone must have had an extremely low personal foul rating (no exaggeration, the opposing team averaged 15 more free throw attempts per game even after I dialed press and trap down to 0). The offense was #1 in points per game, but the defense was near dead last thanks to all those free throws. To make matters worse, I just completely whiffed on every single PF/C recruit I targeted, even losing out on 2* JUCO guys to teams with ~20 prestige (I don't know what it is about this version of FBCB, but I always experience a huge disparity in recruiting guards vs. big men - my 3-man recruiting class that year was a shooting guard who was the #1 overall recruit, an All-American PG who was #24 overall, and a 1* JUCO big guy I got in April after missing out on everyone else)

The 2nd season was a bit of an improvement (won like 2 more games in the regular season, snuck into the tournament, and made the Sweet 16), but the SG was one-and-done and Memphis' prestige had dropped from 93 to 79 after those two seasons. From that point, I just alternated good seasons with 17-14, no postseason years thanks to early departures (and the bad kind where you find a 3* guy who leaves after averaging 8 PPG his sophomore season) and recruiting failures. The most extreme example was after starting to reverse the prestige drop with the NIT title followed by a Sweet 16 appearance, two underclassmen left early to be the 26th and 30th picks in the draft and I was the top school and only scholarship offer for 2 top-30 SGs from September-December only to have both players blow me off in January. When you talk about being one player short, we were a top-50 RPI team that shot 25% from 3 that year and missed the postseason altogether.

I definitely house-ruled myself out of a job between not recruiting foreign players (a free 4* guy every year once your prestige is over 50 or so), playing with early departures on (I recruited more first-round picks during my time at Memphis than any three AAC schools combined), and having the lowest possible amount of points in everything but scouting. This run definitely drove home how worthless scouting is in FBCB as I still experienced some major discrepancies in years I had a 20/20 head coach and lead scout.

In one of my OOTP saves, I'm playing the hapless Dodges coach who probably has to deal with the dumbest GM and scouting staff in the history of baseball. We blew our #5 pick in the 1988 draft on Brian Holman for starters.

Anyway, I was just looking through some of the better teams. Like any team is better right now, but the current Boston Red Sox's lineup has these killers in it.

Don Mattingly (.341, 41 HR, 131 RBI) at first, Tim Teufel (.272 16 71) at second, Carney Lansford (.325 20 83, 28SB) at third, Wade Boggs (.336 3 80) at short, Kirk Gibson (.295 40 116, 34 SB) in LF, Eric Davis (.299 47 127, 67 SB, 151 R) in center, Fred Lynn (.305 41 124) in right, with Willie Upshaw (.228 8 72) as the DH and Dave Valle (.266 8 25) behind the plate.

That team did not win the World Series and Davis came in second for the MVP.

The rotation features Bruce Hurst, John Tudor, Oil Can Boyd, Joaquin Andujar, and Don Robinson.

The bullpen has Dave Smith as the setup guy with The Eck closing.

Good god, why couldn't I have coached the Red Sox instead?

Pissed at myself for not screencapping the original announcement... but I finally got the X has Momentum! headline in President Infinity after picking up the AFL-CIO endorsement in the 1968 scenario with Robert Kennedy.

Here's how it looks after that.

http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o395/Izulde08/CK2andsuch/bobbykennedymo_zps63vpj8tz.jpg (http://s341.photobucket.com/user/Izulde08/media/CK2andsuch/bobbykennedymo_zps63vpj8tz.jpg.html)

Keep in mind that I only had foot soldiers in the targeted states and momentum wasn't all that much outside of those.

Very, very exciting.

One day before the first primary in NH, and Bobby Kennedy gets this headline.

http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o395/Izulde08/CK2andsuch/gamesetmatch_zpskp6ai0ls.jpg (http://s341.photobucket.com/user/Izulde08/media/CK2andsuch/gamesetmatch_zpskp6ai0ls.jpg.html)

Not just Momentum, but Big Momentum! My first time ever in any of the President Forever/Infinity games to get that.

Wow. I won NH by less than 2% over McCarthy, despite being expected to run away with the state.

So started back into Jiu Jitsu after stepping away for almost 4 years after I blew my Achilles (playing Softball, not BJJ)

Summary of first three classes back
1st - No major issues, other than feeling like a car hit me the next day
2nd - Pulled groin working passes from Spider guard, had to skip a class
Tonight - Still tight, so took it a little easier, but still managed to get a Gi burn on my face during open grappling.

Now I know why I missed it :)

DSL 2015
Daegu, Korea, Softball (my 7th of the league's 9th year)

I had the time and energy in the past to write entire dynasties about my time playing in a league overseas. Not happening these days.

In my 7th year, age and my unhealthy habits are catching up with me. I had a pulled hamstring that caused me to sit a few games last year before coming back for the playoff tournament and helping my team to within a couple of outs of winning the championship.

This season, I tweaked a groin, but it's only discomfort rather than all-out pain. I'm still a competitor, though, and despite being old (37) and fat, I'm tied for second in the league in triples. Not too bad, I'd say.

For my team, we lost our second-best player to an ACL tear when we played a game on artificial turf. Now we're in our last regular season game where we can finish anywhere from 1st to 7th in the 10-team league based on what we do today. Win and we get a coveted Top 4 seed. Win and get some help and we can get in the highly-coveted 1 or 2 seed bracket.

Our playoff tournament is a two-weekend tournament set up this way:

Week 1 - Top 4 teams have a bye
Gm1- #7 vs #10 - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm2 - #8 vs #9 - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm3 - #5 vs #6 - winner moves to Week 2, loser moves to Gm5
Gm4 - Winner Gm1 vs Winner Gm2 - loser out, winner moves to Gm 5
Gm5 - Loser Gm3 vs Winner Gm4 - winner moves to Week 2

As you can see, being in the bottom four means you have to win three just to move to the Final 6 weekend. We aren't likely to drop to the seventh-seed, but we still need to win our game today for at least a Top 4 seed.

Week 2 - Top 2 have first-round bye
Gm1 - #4 vs Second-lowest remaining seed - loser out, winner moves to Gm3
Gm2 - #3 vs Lowest remaining seed - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm3 - #1 vs Gm1 winner - loser out, winner moves to Gm5
Gm4 - #2 vs Gm2 winner - loser out, winner moves to Gm5
Gm5 - Gm3 vs Gm4 winner - Winner is DSL Champs

The 5 and 6-seeds also have the advantage of their first game not being single-elimination (though the loser would have to LWWWW their way to the title).

One day before the first primary in NH, and Bobby Kennedy gets this headline.

http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o395/Izulde08/CK2andsuch/gamesetmatch_zpskp6ai0ls.jpg (http://s341.photobucket.com/user/Izulde08/media/CK2andsuch/gamesetmatch_zpskp6ai0ls.jpg.html)

Not just Momentum, but Big Momentum! My first time ever in any of the President Forever/Infinity games to get that.

Haven't seen this game in a long time. Cool!

DSL 2015
Daegu, Korea, Softball (my 7th of the league's 9th year)

I had the time and energy in the past to write entire dynasties about my time playing in a league overseas. Not happening these days.

In my 7th year, age and my unhealthy habits are catching up with me. I had a pulled hamstring that caused me to sit a few games last year before coming back for the playoff tournament and helping my team to within a couple of outs of winning the championship.

This season, I tweaked a groin, but it's only discomfort rather than all-out pain. I'm still a competitor, though, and despite being old (37) and fat, I'm tied for second in the league in triples. Not too bad, I'd say.

For my team, we lost our second-best player to an ACL tear when we played a game on artificial turf. Now we're in our last regular season game where we can finish anywhere from 1st to 7th in the 10-team league based on what we do today. Win and we get a coveted Top 4 seed. Win and get some help and we can get in the highly-coveted 1 or 2 seed bracket.

Our playoff tournament is a two-weekend tournament set up this way:

Week 1 - Top 4 teams have a bye
Gm1- #7 vs #10 - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm2 - #8 vs #9 - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm3 - #5 vs #6 - winner moves to Week 2, loser moves to Gm5
Gm4 - Winner Gm1 vs Winner Gm2 - loser out, winner moves to Gm 5
Gm5 - Loser Gm3 vs Winner Gm4 - winner moves to Week 2

As you can see, being in the bottom four means you have to win three just to move to the Final 6 weekend. We aren't likely to drop to the seventh-seed, but we still need to win our game today for at least a Top 4 seed.

Week 2 - Top 2 have first-round bye
Gm1 - #4 vs Second-lowest remaining seed - loser out, winner moves to Gm3
Gm2 - #3 vs Lowest remaining seed - loser out, winner moves to Gm4
Gm3 - #1 vs Gm1 winner - loser out, winner moves to Gm5
Gm4 - #2 vs Gm2 winner - loser out, winner moves to Gm5
Gm5 - Gm3 vs Gm4 winner - Winner is DSL Champs

Good luck. Go win a medal.

So the Big Mo' doesn't mean jack in President Infinity when you get it after your main challenger has been endorsed by all the dropouts. :mad:

Playing as Huckabee in 2016 since at 53%, he was the only Republican candidate to break 50 for me in the whodoisidewith quiz (Bernie Sanders was tops with 87%, followed by Huckabee and O'Malley with 53%). Won Iowa, got my ass kicked from there, managed to finally snap back with a win in Washington state and picking up a ton of Super Tuesday states... I'm back in the driver's seat, clearly the front-runner.

And then everyone starts dropping out and endorsing Bush even though I'm the frontrunner. Fucking bullshit. As a result, he came back and swept me out completely because of said endorsements.

I should also add that Clinton got hit with big ass scandal after big ass scandal, and it was looking like she was going to bomb out, but she bounced back on Super Tuesday when no front-runner emerged to displace her out of Warren, Biden, and Booker. She got the endorsements, too, from dropouts.

http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o395/Izulde08/CK2andsuch/bigpiwin_zpsafnvtdzu.jpg (http://s341.photobucket.com/user/Izulde08/media/CK2andsuch/bigpiwin_zpsafnvtdzu.jpg.html)

My first President Infinity win (I usually play until the primaries, but this time decided to go ahead. Last full game since Howard Baker).

A tip from one of the forum members to pressure candidates to endorse me once they showed signs of slipping stopped the second place candidate endorsements, and I won the nomination easily once that started happening.

Clinton looked like she was going to lose the nomination at one point - that's how badly things were going for her, but she stabilized once candidates started dropping out and endorsing her.

There was never a serious chance of Cruz losing the electoral college, even though a couple times early in the campaign the popular vote was a virtual tie. Nevada and Wisconsin were two of the most back and forth states, ironically.

On election night, though, it was Ohio that kept flipping the most, but we won that and even managed to steal Michigan, thanks to the UAW's endorsement. Our closest loss was North Carolina - 45,000 votes and a 1% difference. Otherwise, Cruz pretty much, well... cruised.

Tickets were Cruz/Fiorina and Clinton/O'Malley. I'm not sure why Clinton chose O'Malley. Fiorina on my part was a ploy to try and siphon some of the female vote from Clinton, and try for a somewhat more moderate Republican to balance Cruz's Tea Party craziness. :D

. This run definitely drove home how worthless scouting is in FBCB as I still experienced some major discrepancies in years I had a 20/20 head coach and lead scout.

This.

Just won an improbable World Cup with Neloxia over Brazil. We tied 2-2 and the penalty shootout went 16-15. I was on pins and needles. I've never seen anything like it.

Burrel of Turia

I've been on-and-off hooked on Banished (the medieval town builder/resource manager/trading/survival type game) since it was released, I'd recommend it highly to anybody who's into the whole town builder vibe. Now it's been out for a good amount of time I'm a veteran of a couple of successful-ish towns, so I'm now looking to the Steam Achievements for ideas for challenges. The town of Turia was my attempt at "Mountain Men - Using a harsh climate and a small mountainous map, maintain a population of 50 people for 20 years".

It's really not an overly difficult challenge so long as you can get through the first winter without your people starving/freezing, and then get a blacksmith up and running before the reserves of tools run out some time in year two. Harsh weather means no crop farming (I think) but with forest gatherers, a hunting lodge and some fishermen it should be easy enough to keep a smallish town ticking over for 20 years. Further into the game there will be a couple of years where the original settlers get old and do annoying old people things (take up housing, eat food, and not breed) but it should mainly be a case of setting the town up and letting it run.

At the end of Year 7, Turia was set to go and running along on its own. Population was in the mid 60s, the town was self-sufficient on food, and there was some sheep farming going on to provide wool for nice toasty clothing (and some delicious mutton!). There was also a trading post sending out surplus firewood for strange exotic foods like apples and beans to keep the Turian diet varied. It was at this point I realized I now had 20 years (game time) of a fairly boring game. Few changes, no building, just waiting and hoping we don’t get hit by a tornado to dip the population below 50. I never play at more than x1 speed as I like to watch my little towns, so it wouldn’t be quick. That's when I had the idea of a dynasty to follow one family through the 20 years.

The plan was to pick the first baby born and stick with him/her through the ups and downs of Turia. People age at approximately 5 years for every game year, so the 20 years town time would be about 100 years people time so there would be a few generations to follow, we'd be onto great-grandchildren before the challenge ended.

Burrel was born in late winter at the start of Year 10, the only son of Yosseler the Gatherer and Eldridger the Woodcutter. If it's not obvious from the names, Yosseler was the mother. He was a normal Turia kid, played in the graveyard and learned his alphabet, numbers and how to use leeches in the local schoolhouse. Things can go badly wrong without education, so a schoolhouse is always one of the first buildings a town needs. It wasn’t until he was in his early 20s that it became apparent he wasn’t a good pick for a family dynasty. While his schoolmates were moving out, cohabiting and breeding by 14, Burrel was still at home with the parents. Burrel bounced from job to job, one season he was a Forester, next an Herbalist, next a Vendor at the market. To be fair I don’t know if this is the normal way jobs work in Banished, but I'm sticking with the idea than Burrel was a waster who couldnt hold down a job.

Eldridger died when Burrel was in his mid-20s, Burrel carried on living at home with his mom. By 28 it was obvious Burrel would never find love and would never provide the family tree my dynasty was going to follow. Sure, Javie the Woodcutter was 27 when he found true love and shacked up with a 12 year old girl, but he was lucky. Burrel's chance was gone; there were now a group of eligible teenage boys hanging around to snatch up the Turia prime schoolgirls when they reached marrying age (12 to 14, things were different back then I guess). The only single females in town for Burrel to chase were Thuraminder the Fisherwomen (a 77 year old widow) and his mom. And Thuraminder smelled of fish.

In different times Burrel would have turned to alcohol and joined an online OOTP league, but Turia didn’t have a brewery and even OOTP 1 was hundreds of years in the future. When the message popped up in the summer of Year 16 that "Burrel the Woodcutter has died in an accident with an axe" it was probably a blessed release for him. His stats say he was happy and healthy right up until the moment of his accident, juggling axes to impress passing schoolgirls probably, but deep down he must have welcomed death's calming embrace. He was 33 years old, I think.

And with that I got bored of Turia and the 20 years wait and moved onto the town of Bennebunk and the "Isolationist - Reach 300 citizens without building a trading post" challenge.

http://oi57.tinypic.com/8vpwxv.jpg
Downtown Turia. Burrel's former house is at the North East corner beside the graveyard.

Oh that looks super interesting!

In different times Burrel would have turned to alcohol and joined an online OOTP league, but Turia didn’t have a brewery and even OOTP 1 was hundreds of years in the future.
Also this shit made me laugh.

Wasn't sure where to put this, but found this guy to be interesting. I don't think I have ever seen a recruit score this much in the game ever.



RECRUIT DETAILS

#0 SG Ross Deaton
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6-3
Weight: 192
High School: Pilgrim High School
Hometown: Warwick, RI
GPA: 2.29
Test Score: 970
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
***** Player hasn't been evaluated *****


Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
47.4 1.8 4.0 3.0 2.5 1.20 0.8 0.6 3.0

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19.2 35.7 .536 3.6 5.8 .621 5.5 11.4 .482

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Current interest in Iowa: Low
Rankings: East Region #67 Overall, East Region #17 SG
High School Awards: All-State, Mr. Basketball (Rhode Island)
Top 5 Schools: Providence, Connecticut, Brown, Rhode Island, Boston University

Playing FM14, I take over at Dartford as they're being demoted from Conference Premier to Conference South, but before July 1. I spend June putting a staff together and trying to get good players on expiring contracts to re-sign, to no avail. Worse still, three first-teamers whose contracts run through the upcoming season have been transfer listed by request, including club icon Ryan Hayes (M/AM RLC), who has spent his entire 10-year career with Dartford, playing his way up from the 9th tier to the 5th tier.

I sign intended replacements for all three guys (a GK and a M/AM L are the others). As the season begins, Hayes is the only one whose skill is bested by his replacement's, so GK Locke and ML Swallow remain on the first team as the resident malcontents. They drag the team down to the point that I have a win-or-get-fired game at the first of October--we're sitting 16th with 11 points from 10 games in a very congested Conference South, while the Board has imposed playoff expectations.

Luckily for me, my strikers (all 3 on my 19-man roster) decide to go off in October, to the tune of 11 goals in 4 matches. We go 3-1-0 and I win Coach of the Month.

In the meantime, a league rival, Chelmsford, has fired its coach as it sinks in the league table and approaches us about Hayes. We strike a deal to get this unhappy guy out of the dead-weight category. (He had been skipping training, and never understood why I would d fine him a week's salary for every other miss and had limited him to 1 appearance on the season.) Fans are rightly ticked, as he was a club icon, but he wouldn't come around even as we shot up into the playoff places.

Immediately after the sale is finalized, Locke and Swallow tiptoe up to me, with their hats in their hands, and ask to be removed from the transfer list. (read: holy shit, he'll actually stand up to an icon and ship him out.) At the same time, Chelmsford releases a D/M/AML that they presumably signed Hayes to replace. This guy, Redwood, is more talented than Swallow and has League Two potential to boot.

...I'd have to say this long, annoying process of tolerating these three disgruntled veterans has taken a turn in my favor in the last few days. :)

Oh, and by the way... we host Chelmsford next week. :D

Hubris! We beat #1 Whitehawk on the road, then come back for a midweek match against budding rival and league doormat Chelmsford...

Redwood starts at DL in our 4-1-2-1-2, with Locke in goal and Swallow on the bench. Hayes is on the bench for Chelmsford. Things are proceeding fine for 25 minutes, until our standout enganche AMC is hurt. We have to switch to a 4-4-2 and insert Swallow at ML. Minutes later, new Chelmsford AMR Mekki beats Swallow and shakes Redwood on the right wing, receives the ball, and beats Locke to put us down 0-1 30 minutes in. Sigh.

Minutes later, I think I'm seeing a replay of Mekki beating Swallow, Redwood, and Locke, except this time Mekki scores on the volley. 0-2 and I'm incensed.

For the first time in several weeks, our strikers go quiet in the scorebook, although a few chances are left on the goalie's hands or the crossbar. At 75 minutes, I remove Redwood to scold him. Then comes the cruelest part--Hayes has come on as a substitute AML for Chelmsford. In the last 15 minutes, he gets 2 good shots at Locke; the second one, Locke parries to another Chelmsford forward who strikes home the last nail in an 0-3 embarrassment.

...Looking forward to rectifying this injustice in our rematch.

http://i.imgur.com/aQIAmcy.jpg

I am damn proud of this one.

Albania starts off with one province and Venice, Ottomans and others are hostile to them.

What game is that?

Europa Universalis 4

Just picked up the Strato-Matic windows game at the companies cyber Monday sale. It has been years since I played the board game, but I was quickly reminded of why I used to love this game so much.

Seeing the cards on the computer screen as the dice tumble brought back all those good memories.

Started a Yankees season replay with the 2014 cards to enjoy Jeters last season and opened up against the Astros.

Won the opener, then in game 2 of the series George F'n Springer, whose card is harmless against righties, unless you roll in column 2, singlehandedly crushes me. I roll a 2 with the white die his first three at bats and all three leave the yard as he finishes 4 for 4 with 6 RBI on the day in an 8-2 loss.

I roll out Hiroki Kuroda in the finale and he pitches (rolls) masterfully going 8 innings, giving up 2 hits and fanning 10 (including Springer twice) as we get the 1-0 victory on a Mark Teixeira HR. The Yanks only manage 2 hits as well, but one was enough.

Actually thinking about getting the board game again now, can't believe I have gone so long without playing, still as fun as ever.

78 games into my Yankee Franchise with MLB The Show 17

39-39 and in 5th place in a very loaded AL east, but only 7 games out of 1st.

Team rankings
Hitting:
Average .254 (17th)
Runs 327 (14th)
2B 112 (28th)
3B 11 (23rd)
HR 105 (4th) 1.3 per game
SB 23 (24th)
BB 186 (30th)
K 486 (2nd)

Pitching:
ERA 3.85 (14)
Shutouts 5 (16th)
Hits allowed 588 (1st)
Runs allowed 318 (13th)
HR allowed 86 (16th) 1.1 per game
BB allowed 282 (24th) this is killing me
K 663 (7th)

Lineup
1B - Bird .307-16-39
2B - Castro .267-9-28
3B - Headley .213-8-26
SS - Gregorious .269-3-26
C - Romine .214-3-13 (Sanchez is on the DL .323-14-37 before he got hurt)
RF - Judge .226-13-33
CF - Ellsbury .286-13-32
LF - Gardner .247-6-26
DH - Holliday .257-11-35

Pitching
Tanaka 6-7, 4.40
Pineda 5-5, 3.42
Sabathia 3-8, 6.01
Kaprielian 1-0, 4.58 (Severino on the DL 6-3, 2.92)
Otani 2-1, 3.79 (Mitchell also on the DL)

114 games into my Yankees franchise with MLB 17 the show

Had lost 4 of 5 and in danger of being swept by Toronto after losing the first two of the series 10-9 and 6-3, blowing early leads in both. We welcome Gary Sanchez back to the starting lineup for the finale and he doesn't disappoint, slugging a 2 run HR in his first at bat and adding a double later. We jump out 6-0, the Jays cut it to 6-5 with Otani on the hill for us, but we manage to stop them there and get some insurance as our bats come alive.

New York 9-17-1 (2B-5, HR-3, BB-1, K-9)
Toronto 5-7-0 (2B-1, HR-1, BB-2, K-10)

Record 55-59, 5th place but only 7.5 back still

Team rankings
Avg: .250 (19th)
Runs: 466 (15th)
2B: 190 (15th)
3B: 14 (27th)
HR: 147 (3rd) - 1.28 per game
BB: 289 (30th)
K: 757 (3rd)
Slug pct: .417 (7th)
OBP: .303 (27th)

ERA: 3.78 (12th)
Shutouts: 10 (9th)
Hits: 863 (1st) Barely
Runs: 454 (12th)
HR allowed: 126 (18th) - 1.11 per game
BB: 425 (24th)
K: 975 (5th)

Individual Stats
1B/DH - Bird .277-22-52, 51 runs
1B/DH/Of - Carter .254-18-37, .341 OBP
2B - Castro .274-13-42, 43 runs, 28 2B
3B - Headley .240-10-30, 38 runs, 27 2B
SS - Gregorious .261-4-34, 39 runs, .331 OBP
RF - Judge .225-18-45, 107 strikeouts
CF - Ellsbury .264-15-48, 55 runs, 18 SB
LF - Gardner .233-7-34, 49 runs, 11 SB (going to try and move him)
OF/DH - Holliday .249-15-44
C - Sanchez .328-15-40, 34 runs, .392 OBP in 53 games (compare this to RL last year in 53 games .299-20-42, 34 runs, .376 OBP) - Pretty close!

Got OOTP18 for super cheap, upgraded my longtime league (300+ seasons) and have been resimming. With the exception of a huge juiced ball period in the 1990s (we're currently in 2143 for context) I try to keep stats in this league relatively consistent. So that means ERAs somewhere below 4.5 and batting average for the league somewhere around .260-.280

Anyway, Henry Bishop left the San Francisco Peanuts for the Jackson Cottons and had a monster season where he hit 72 home runs. In over 300 seasons, only 38 times has someone hit 60 or more home runs ever. Only 8 guys in history have hit 70 or more in a season (Buck Parker is the only guy to do it twice.

TL;DR: It was a hell of a season. He led the league in HRs again this year, but he came back down to Earth a bit.

http://i.imgur.com/cqXFYIU.png

Joey Power seems appropriately named.

Actually played FM16 with a real team for once rather than one of my made up leagues. Decided to try to get Kickers Offenbach back to the Bundesliga who haven't been there since the 70s and tumbled down below the 3rd division in Germany. In my game, they were in the 3rd Bundesliga, so I took them over and after finishing 15th, won the 3.Bundesliga, then came 2nd in the 2.Bundesliga to make it back to the top division.

This past season won our last two games to finish 6th and qualify for the Europa League. So that's been cool.

http://i.imgur.com/LgWC3Sj.png

It happens to me every so often... I get just interested enough in some real sports that it pushes me to re-open an old sim of that sport. Thus, a quiet and quick little TCY dynasty (no phone calls, that's the house rule, it works really well for me), absolutely unworthy of documenting beyond this tidbit.

My Rice team just reached that inevitable tipping point of "about to get good." We pretty quickly got out of the WAC basement, but languished in the usual ways as a so-so team around .500 each season. But we got ourselves a top-tier QB, launched a more pass-friendly offense, and then in his senior season we just won the WAC and vaulted forward in credibility.

So, we'll backslide as our QB drops off this next season, but it's clear this program has arrived. We will probably spend a few years as a top-tier WAC team, and then in theory turn it up the next notch to becoming a national power. And somewhere along that string, I will simply lose interest, as per usual.

Still a fun game. I guess I'd be happy if TCY2 were to pop up, to include some of the gameplanning and other features that he has built out in the pro game.

Somehow, 16-seed Bryant knocks off top-seed (and previously undefeated) defending national champions VMI in an ugly game.

I have no idea what really happened. Usually, when a 16-seed beats a #1 it's a year where an abnormal number of losing teams make the tournament, leaving a 16-seed to be unusually underseeded. In this case, we're talking about a team that had to win a play-in game to get here, and it wasn't even an otherworldly performance by anybody.

I'm happy about it, I can't quite figure out why VMI got so good.


Bryant 62, VMI 60

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryant (15-19, 8-12):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Gregory Warthen C 33 6-7 0-0 3 8 2 3 12
Darnell Senger PF 33 1-5 0-0 3 6 2 2 2
Daniel Bryant SF 27 4-11 2-3 3 5 0 2 13
Jose Flenniken SG 29 2-4 1-2 1 3 0 2 6
Eric Forsyth PG 34 1-7 10-10 1 1 8 1 13
Thomas Maravilla SG 19 4-6 0-2 1 1 1 1 11
Randy Long SF 9 1-2 0-0 2 3 0 0 3
Lucas Walder PG 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0
Michael Harris PF 11 1-3 0-0 2 3 1 0 2
Timothy Stansbury PF 4 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 1 0

Turnovers: 16 (G.Warthen 2, D.Senger 2, D.Bryant 4,
J.Flenniken 1, E.Forsyth 4, R.Long 2, M.Harris 1)
Blocked Shots: 4 (G.Warthen 3, J.Flenniken 1)
Steals: 3 (G.Warthen 2, D.Bryant 1)
3P FGs: 9-16 (D.Bryant 3-5, J.Flenniken 1-3, E.Forsyth
1-4, T.Maravilla 3-3, R.Long 1-1)

VMI (32-1, 11-0):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Darrin Barnhart C 33 3-7 4-6 2 4 2 0 10
Charles Poirier PF 32 5-10 0-0 3 4 0 2 10
Darrick Cummings SF 22 4-10 0-0 2 5 1 3 11
Jose Marx SG 28 3-7 2-2 5 7 7 3 8
Jocquise Morganti PG 33 3-10 0-0 1 1 3 2 7
Mark Semmes SG 20 2-3 0-1 0 2 3 2 6
Simon Spoor PF 15 0-0 0-0 3 4 1 3 0
Oscar Bradshaw PG 7 1-3 0-0 1 1 1 0 2
William Jarrett SF 6 1-2 2-3 1 1 0 2 4
Arthur Scarboro SF 4 1-1 0-0 0 0 1 0 2

Turnovers: 10 (C.Poirier 3, D.Cummings 1, J.Marx 2,
J.Morganti 3, M.Semmes 1)
Blocked Shots: 7 (D.Barnhart 4, C.Poirier 2, J.Marx 1)
Steals: 11 (D.Barnhart 1, C.Poirier 3, D.Cummings 1,
J.Marx 3, J.Morganti 1, M.Semmes 1, A.Scarboro 1)
3P FGs: 6-22 (D.Cummings 3-8, J.Marx 0-4, J.Morganti
1-5, M.Semmes 2-3, O.Bradshaw 0-2)

Player of Game: C Gregory Warthen (BRY)

#1 overall seed Miss State beats #2 seed Louisville for the title in the 2nd year of the campaign ...
98-32.

I wanna correct my small misrememberance there: 91-37 was the actual final.

The other four title games in that same career?
margins were 7, 1, 8, and 9.

NIT finals have been far wider margins, which I think (anecdotally) is pretty common with the game
12, 32, 26, 12, and 28

Whoa that is a crazy score!

After 20 years of playing FPS FBPro98, this game still surprises the hell out of me at times. Playing a solitaire league where the NFL and AFL merges in 1968 instead of 1970 (I did a dispersal draft so players may not be playing on the actual teams they did in real life). The 1968 New York Jets are playing the 1968 Miami Dolphins in Miami. Jets are down 26-20 late in the 4th. The Jets start on their own 22 yard line.

After being sacked by DE3 Ike Lassiter for a 7 yard loss on 1st down, QB Joe Namath goes 8/10 for 79 yards on the final drive to miraculously get the Jets down to Miami's 1 yard line with 30 second left in the game. Now the weather has been rainy and horrible all game, so the two teams combined have fumbled the ball 8 times prior to the final drive.

QB Namath takes the snap and hands the ball off to HB1 Sammy Price. G1 Blaine Nye seals DT2 Rex Mirich while TE2 Carmine Wray pancakes stud DE1 Doug Atkins to create a huge hole on the left side of the line. Walk in touchdown, right? Right as HB Price waltzes into the end zone for the game tying and potentially game winning touchdown after the XP, LB2 Jim Flanigan fills the hole and lays a big lick on HB Price, jarring the ball loose into the end zone! There is a scrum in the endzone with DT1 Jimmy Jordan falling on the ball for a touchback.

Game over! Miami wins 26-20, Crushing for the Jets.

In my 20 years of playing this game, I do not think I have ever seen an ending like that. Amazing ending and this game is still the best graphical PC football simulator on the market.

After 20 years of playing FPS FBPro98, this game still surprises the hell out of me at times. Playing a solitaire league where the NFL and AFL merges in 1968 instead of 1970 (I did a dispersal draft so players may not be playing on the actual teams they did in real life). The 1968 New York Jets are playing the 1968 Miami Dolphins in Miami. Jets are down 26-20 late in the 4th. The Jets start on their own 22 yard line.

After being sacked by DE3 Ike Lassiter for a 7 yard loss on 1st down, QB Joe Namath goes 8/10 for 79 yards on the final drive to miraculously get the Jets down to Miami's 1 yard line with 30 second left in the game. Now the weather has been rainy and horrible all game, so the two teams combined have fumbled the ball 8 times prior to the final drive.

QB Namath takes the snap and hands the ball off to HB1 Sammy Price. G1 Blaine Nye seals DT2 Rex Mirich while TE2 Carmine Wray pancakes stud DE1 Doug Atkins to create a huge hole on the left side of the line. Walk in touchdown, right? Right as HB Price waltzes into the end zone for the game tying and potentially game winning touchdown after the XP, LB2 Jim Flanigan fills the hole and lays a big lick on HB Price, jarring the ball loose into the end zone! There is a scrum in the endzone with DT1 Jimmy Jordan falling on the ball for a touchback.

Game over! Miami wins 26-20, Crushing for the Jets.

In my 20 years of playing this game, I do not think I have ever seen an ending like that. Amazing ending and this game is still the best graphical PC football simulator on the market.

Love that you're still getting use out of this game after those years. Absolutely one of my favorites.

https://i.imgur.com/UvbC5TOh.png
What an insane first day in the NCAA tournament. I am mystified.

Love that you're still getting use out of this game after those years. Absolutely one of my favorites.
Thanks, man. I play this game daily. And until there is a graphical simulator that does what FBPro98 does, I will not stop playing it. And that's an indictment on what's out there now.

https://i.imgur.com/UvbC5TOh.png
What an insane first day in the NCAA tournament. I am mystified.

Serious bracket busters.

This is an absurd upset, but I suspect that it's also that Clemson was an unusually weak #1 seed:


High Point 82, Clemson 79

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
High Point (13-22, 3-9):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Winston Escobar C 29 3-5 0-0 1 3 1 0 7
Kurt Robinson PF 29 4-7 4-7 3 5 0 1 12
Tony Klann SF 34 7-14 0-0 3 7 8 1 20
Alberto Headen SG 29 2-6 2-4 0 2 0 3 7
John Briseno PG 31 8-10 2-2 2 2 8 2 21
Robert James SF 23 2-4 0-0 1 3 3 1 4
Rory Dickson SG 11 2-2 0-0 1 1 1 1 4
Terry Saylors C 12 2-4 0-0 0 4 0 1 5
Andy Willcutt SG 2 1-2 0-0 0 0 0 0 2

Turnovers: 12 (K.Robinson 2, T.Klann 5, A.Headen 2,
J.Briseno 3)
Blocked Shots: 3 (K.Robinson 1, J.Briseno 1, R.James 1)
Steals: 5 (W.Escobar 1, T.Klann 2, J.Briseno 1, R.James
1)
3P FGs: 12-21 (W.Escobar 1-1, T.Klann 6-8, A.Headen
1-4, J.Briseno 3-5, R.James 0-1, T.Saylors 1-1,
A.Willcutt 0-1)

Clemson (24-10, 10-5):
Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Michael Pagani C 35 5-7 0-0 2 5 1 1 10
Wil Canon PF 24 0-3 2-2 1 4 2 5 2
Booker Steele SF 32 3-6 0-2 1 4 1 3 7
Kordell Feldman SG 25 7-14 2-2 1 2 2 2 18
Robert Labarbera PG 19 7-8 0-0 1 2 4 5 18
Andy Rivet SG 24 1-5 2-2 1 2 6 1 5
Marc Miller PG 12 5-7 0-0 1 1 0 0 10
William Sadler PF 16 3-3 1-1 1 3 0 1 7
Joseph Holcomb SF 8 1-3 0-0 0 0 0 0 2
Leroy Ruiz C 5 0-0 0-0 0 1 1 0 0

Turnovers: 10 (M.Pagani 1, W.Canon 1, K.Feldman 3,
A.Rivet 1, M.Miller 2, W.Sadler 1, J.Holcomb 1)
Blocked Shots: 5 (M.Pagani 4, K.Feldman 1)
Steals: 10 (M.Pagani 1, W.Canon 1, B.Steele 3,
K.Feldman 2, R.Labarbera 2, M.Miller 1)
3P FGs: 8-24 (W.Canon 0-1, B.Steele 1-4, K.Feldman 2-7,
R.Labarbera 4-5, A.Rivet 1-5, M.Miller 0-1, J.Holcomb
0-1)

Player of Game: PG John Briseno (HP)

Another day, another crazy ending (and one I have never seen before in 20 years of playing this game) in my FBPro98 solitaire 1968 dynasty. The teams are the New Orleans Saints on the road against the New York Giants. With :06 left in the 4th quarter, New Orleans K Pete Gogolak nails a 35 yard FG to put the Saints ahead 20-18. A quick squib kick and the game is over, right?

For some weird, strange, ungodly and unfathomable reason, New Orleans chooses to kick it deep to Giants KR Aaron Brouhard and........................................................................93 freaking yards later, Brouhard scores the game winning touchdown to end the game 24-20.

Walk off kickoff return FTW. Crazy.

Walk off kick return we don't see those often.

Yet another crazy FBPro98 crazy ending I have yet to see in 20 years. Playing a USFL league in 1984. The New Orleans Breakers score a late TD to go-ahead 26-24 (missed 2pt conversion). The New Jersey Generals have the ball on their 23 yard line with :27 left in the game. Here are how the plays broke down:

1st and 10 from the NJ 23 yard line (:27 left) - New Jersey QB Vince Evans takes the snap and rolls right. Has all day to throw. He fires a bullet pass to New Jersey WR1 John Hill that New Orleans S2 Gary Barbaro knocks away from the receiver at the last second.

2nd and 10 from the NJ 23 yard line(:14 left) - New Jersey QB Vince Evans takes the snap and rolls left, right into the arms of New Orleans LB1 John Barefield for an 8-yard sack. New Jersey calls their final timeout.

3rd and 18 from the NJ 15 yard line (:10 left) - New Jersey QB Vince Evans takes the snap and rolls right. New Orleans S2 Gary Barbaro is bearing down on Evans, but QB Vince Evans evades the pressure. New Jersey HB3 back Bryan Trout has leaked into the left flat all alone. QB Evans, from the right hash, rifles the ball to the left sideline (heck of a throw), to HB3 Trout to about the New Jersey 23 yard line. New Orleans CB1 Rickey Ray takes a horrible angle for the tackle and we are off to the races down the left sideline.

To the 45.

To the 40.

To the 35.

To the 30.

25.

20.

15.

10.

To the 5!

To the 3 yard line......................................................where CB1 Rickey Ray dives and makes a shoestring tackle, just short of the goal line. Game. Over. A 85 yard race to the goal line for the win thwarted by a last second shoestring tackle? :eek:

Crazy ending.

Wow.

Yeah, that's one for the highlight reel of all time greats (if you're a Breakers fan), no question.

I've had Stellaris since it came out, and I've kept up with all the many paid DLC packs, but it's never really caught me. I'd start games, last somewhere between 10 and 60 years, and then get distracted and wander off to something new. I'd never seen a "mid-game crisis" never mind an "end-game crisis". With the latest patch I thought I'd start again and after one abortive start (my empire was trapped between two seriously over-powered Marauder Empires) I finally got into the game.

I started off by picking a cute portrait for my species, a little furry rodent-y guy with floppy ears from the Mammalian group. I then went for a race set-up that fitted in with a rodent motif: positive traits were adaptive and rapid-breeding, negatives were weak, short life-span, and slow learners. I chose Egalitarian (mice don’t have kings) and Fanatically Pacifist (a bad mistake it turned out), and my Space-Mouse empire was ready to scurry and squeak all over the galaxy.

The galaxy was the largest available, 1600 systems in a 4-armed spiral. My rodent empire, The Eeeep Mandate popped up in the south of the galaxy about midway between the center and the edge, but with adaptive and rapid-breeding traits they were soon colonizing/infesting almost every planet they found in the search for minerals. Before long they bumped into neighbors, Honorbound Warriors (who hated the Eeeep for being pacifist cowards), Authoritarian Fungoid people (who hated the Eeeep for being an Egalitarian rabble), and the Ancient Caretakers Fallen Empire (who were too powerful to care much about the new space-faring species).

Roll forward 200+ years and The Eeeep Mandate had spread all over the south of the galaxy, everywhere south of the starting spot to the galaxy's edge was part of the empire from the border with the Honorbound Warriors in the east to an Authoritarian Kingdom in the West, the Eeeep had 30+ colonies and 14 habitats spread over 200 systems. The Authoritarian Fungoid people were still there, but they liked the Eeeep now as they had been kicked around by everybody until the Eeeep guaranteed their independence to save them and keep them as an indebted buffer-zone. The powerful Ancient Caretakers were still in their original spot, but now completely surrounded by Eeeep territory, and they still didn't care. Thanks to an alliance with a Curator Enclave bringing research bonuses, the Eeeep had technology and military that were far stronger than all but the Fallen Empires.

While the north and center of the galaxy had been in constant turmoil, Eeeep and the neighbors had enjoyed constant boring peace. Our neighbors hated us but weren't powerful enough to do anything about it with the Eeeep couldn’t take advantage of their might as being Fanatical Pacifists they couldn’t be involved in anything but defensive wars. So, years of dull standoff. Even when the Honorbound Warrior Kingdom fell apart in civil wars ending up as 4 different factions, the Eeeep couldn't get themselves involved in the fun.

While the rest of the galaxy burned in a "War in Heaven" between Fallen Empires and their allies, the Eeeep Mandate sat on the sidelines in peace.

And then a bad thing happened, the Synthetic Dawn End Crisis. I didn’t read about the End Crises to avoid spoilers (warning - don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you're avoiding End Crisis spoilers) so I wasn’t sure what to expect from a robotic rebellion but to be on the safe side the Eeeep dismantled all their robotic populations (no great hardship, less than 1% of the empire) and waited. Unfortunately, one of the Contingency (the synthetics rebellion) bases popped up in the middle of Eeeep territory and churned out multiple powerful fleets. the Eeeep might have been able to fight that off but the Ancient Caretakers (who were also synthetic AIs) joined the Synthetic Dawn uprising and churned out multiple powerful fleets too. While the Eeeep Mandate fleets had a total power of about 140k split into 5 fleets, the Synthetic side had a single fleet of 140k plus 9 other fleets ranging from 60k to 90k. It was quick and one-sided (not helped by me messing up the Eeeep counter-attack and losing fleets), and within months the Synthetics were rolling around the defenseless Eeeep colonies like a huge empire-wide pest exterminator. The Eeeep surrendered, a popup "game over" message and a great space-faring empire came to an end. Reading up on Synthetic Dawn afterwards, the Ancient Caretakers normally fight against the uprising, so them joining the rebellion was bad luck.

So back to the beginning. Now I'm an Authoritarian Militarist Kitteh-cat Kingdom ready to kick ass and not make the mistakes the cowardly mice made.

https://i.imgur.com/UvbC5TOh.png
What an insane first day in the NCAA tournament. I am mystified.

Effin' Duke always gets the easy path...

I've been playing a sim only career of Football, Tactics, and Glory while following larry's excellent dynasty thread. I won the premier league in 2032/2033. Also won the national cup, and made the semis of the Americas cup in my first attempt there. It was fun getting here but I feel like we're quickly going to win every year. I've got 80,000 fans (but a 20,000 seat stadium, about to upgrade to 30,000). For having players load up the stat lines across three competitions I got 764 glory after my most recent season, and only lost two league matches.

Once I started making a big enough profit in the premier league it has become a little too easy, management wise. I feel like its too easy to buy a new 23'ish year old star (with key rating already 90+) while selling the 28 year old he's going to replace and only spending ~$2 million overall. If I want to quick sim another career I'll probably need some house rules.

https://i.imgur.com/dVe2mnc.png

Here's the team going into the start of the next season after the 1st place finish.



So far I've only simmed games in this career. Once this gets boring I'll definitely restart and play out all my matches and see how that goes, but I've really enjoyed this one run doing only management tasks. Lately when I've wanted something with more depth I've gone to other games and just used this for quick sim style play.


This post ended up too long to dump in larry's dynasty on the game, decided to use this one again.


https://i.imgur.com/kr5yac1.png


I'm not sure if the sim engine is a little too forgiving or the star ratings are useless.

Great post! A few comments/questions...

1) I think star ratings matter, but that chart is misleading by suggesting 5* is similar to top of the premier league. Right now in my dynasty, the top teams only have 4 *,so a 3.5* winning doesn't seem too crazy.

2) I don't think the sim engine is any different than the normal engine. It's just that you're using an AI, which will maximize the use of your players. It knows how to use your players best and how to defend against what the opponent is going to do. I often leave gaps or make mistakes that an AI would never do.

3) Why do you have two Sweepers? They don't function properly that way. I mean, obviously it's worked out for you, but you'd probably do even better with a CD or DF in that spot.

4) Can I borrow your right winger with lvl 3 Slide Tackle and 86 control?

My first season with Tipperary in Ireland went this way and I stopped playing when I won the Premier League and their version of the Champions League in the same season. I've been playing a season in France where I don't allow myself any transfers in. Only my initial players and then Youth Pulls and I have to sell players when they reach 32 years old. I think I spent Season's 3-14 back in the Amateur league once my older players aged out or were sold. It's been a struggle but I'm on the verge of getting to the Premier League in season 23. Eventually I'll have good enough pulls and enough money that it'll be a self perpetuating machine but it's been harder thats for sure.

1) I think star ratings matter, but that chart is misleading by suggesting 5* is similar to top of the premier league. Right now in my dynasty, the top teams only have 4 *,so a 3.5* winning doesn't seem too crazy.

That actually looks right to me too. New York, Dallas and Kansas City are 4*, everyone else in the Premier League are 3 or 3 1/2. In the Continental Cup I beat a couple 4 1/2 * teams to advance out of the groups.

3) Why do you have two Sweepers? They don't function properly that way. I mean, obviously it's worked out for you, but you'd probably do even better with a CD or DF in that spot.

So, I'm actually an idiot. I bought Maynard as a SW but I already had a great one, so I spent a season forcing Maynard into the CD role and have specialized as a utility player who can also play CD... but until I read your comment, I didn't realize that on the lineup screen I can actually click on him and change his position to CD. Have I been playing Maynard out of position for the last 3 years technically then? I suppose so. My LM on the bench, Lyon, I've been grooming to replace RM Honeycutt, so he's also specialized to be able to play on the right side, but I've never changed his position when I put him there either.


4) Can I borrow your right winger with lvl 3 Slide Tackle and 86 control?

I was thinking about selling him since he's 33, but he's actually only valued at $2.5 mil. Maybe he'll be the first starter (aside from a stray backup GK) that I just keep til he retires. 360 matches, 93 assists, 201 tackles. Career highs with 19 assists/37 tackles in my most recent season.

Only my initial players and then Youth Pulls and I have to sell players when they reach 32 years old.

I like this idea a lot.

It's season 24 and I just made the Premier league for the first time and while I'm toward the bottom of the table I'm hanging just above the drop zone at the Winter Break. It's been hard to dump my highest rated players but it certainly gets me to play young guys more to get them experience and I couldn't have done it without maxing my bench coach as the first thing i did.

The most amazing inning of baseball.


From my Dodgers Dynasty. I didn't watch the game, but this box score and log. OMG. I was going to post the log, but I think I'll give you the play by play as it happened.



July 8, 1989 Kansas City. Royals v. White Sox



The game is tied at 2 as the Royals come up to bat. Kevin Teate takes the mound. He worked the last out of the 7th from Sox starter Fernando Valenzuela.




Leading off for the Royals is George Brett. Brett fouls off the first pitch, then takes the second one into the right field gap for a double.
Lou Whitaker is up next and the Sox walk him.
Luis Medina comes up and swings at the first pitch, flying out to right. One away.
Jesse Barfield steps up and swings at the first pitch. It's a line drive to right, that clears the fence. 347ft. 3-run HR. 3 runs in.
Pitching Change - Carlos Diaz comes on.
Terry Pendleton is next up. He takes ball 1. Next pitch Pendleton chops a pitch over the first baseman and down the line for a double.
Oddibe McDowell comes up next. He's a first pitch swinger and hits a grounder to Paul Molitor who can't get a handle on it and McDowell is on.
Catcher Matt Stark is next. Ball 1. Next pitch is hit deep over the CF head. Pendleton scores and McDowell races around before the throw. 5 runs in. 1 out.
Kirk Gibson is next. He works out of a 1-2 count and draws the walk. First and second.
Craig Grebeck is next up. He gets a 2-0 pitch in the right place and drives a ball deep, 400ft into seats for a 3-run HR. 8 runs in, 1 out.
Pitching Change - Bobby Castillo is on to pitch
Having batted around, Brett is back up to the plate. He smacks the first pitch past the 2nd basemen for a single.
Whitaker is next. Brett steals 2nd. With the count at 1-2, Whitaker gets a single into the left field gap. Brett holds at third.
Luis Medina is next. He got out last time up. He falls behind 1-2, but Castillo can't find the strike zone and he works out a walk. Bases are loaded.
Pitching Change - Jim Gott is on to pitch
Barfield homered his last time up, and he's up with them loaded. Ball 1. Barfield fouls off 2 straight back and it goes 1-2. Gott misses with the next 2 and it's 3-2. Barfield gets a hold of this one. Deep to the power alley in left. This one travels 409 ft for a Grand Slam! He has 2 HR's and 7 RBI's in the inning. 12 runs are in and 1 out.
Pendleton is up next. He works the count for another walk. Still just 1 out.
Pitching Change - C Todd Zeile is on to pitch.
McDowell hits a 1-1 ball over the third baseman for a single. Pendleton takes 2nd.
Matt Stark is up next. He drives a pitch into the right field gap that goes to the wall. Stark ends up on 2nd and Pendleton is in. 13 runs have scored.
Kirk Gibson is up again. He hammers a Zeile pitch into the right field alley and that goes to the wall. Both McDowell and Stark are in to score. 15 runs are in, 1 out.
Craig Grebeck is next. He homered last time up. Gibson has the audacity to steal 3rd with 15 runs in this inning. Grebeck fouls off a couple pitches before Zeile strikes him out for out number 2.
George Brett comes up for the 3rd time in the inning. He's down 1-2 in the count, then smacks a line drive to left and Gibson scores. Brett ends up on 2nd.
Lou Whitaker comes up again. He fouls off a 2-2 pitch. Next pitch he hits a towering drive into right field. This one is GONE! 2-run HR. 419 ft. 18 runs are in.
Up next is Luis Medina. Zeile goes up 0-2 quickly. And Medina hits a pop fly to right to end the inning.
So the Royals set the modern record for runs in an inning with 18 runs in. The record 17 was set in 1953 by the Boston Red Sox.



Some highlights in summary:


- The Royals sent 21 batters to the plate.
- They pounded out 13 hits in total, 10 extra base hit, 4 of them home runs.

- Jesse Barfield homered twice for 7 RBI's in 1 inning.
- Luis Medina accounted for 2 of the team's 3 outs, and walked in his other plate appearance.
- The White Sox used 4 relievers and a catcher to pitch in the inning.

- The Royals left 0 men on base.

- The White Sox went down on 9 pitches in the top of the 9th to end the game.


Final Score White Sox 2, Royals 20.


This is the single craziest inning in any inning in any game, ever.

It's season 24 and I just made the Premier league for the first time and while I'm toward the bottom of the table I'm hanging just above the drop zone at the Winter Break. It's been hard to dump my highest rated players but it certainly gets me to play young guys more to get them experience and I couldn't have done it without maxing my bench coach as the first thing i did.

Still how cool to finally get there after 24 years!

Probably not going to start a dynasty on this unless I can figure out what I want to do, but I've been complaining about the Blue Jays decline in real life and it made me want to fire up my fictional MLB league I've been running since 1900 (with the current MLB setup, I've since added 6 teams).

I'm going to take over a team that had a decline but has a history of success and see if I can't undertake a rebuilding project finding guys rather than doing the thing I normally do and hit free agency and build from there.

I've taken over the Nats, who had a 10-year playoff streak and have made the post-season in 13 of the last 16 seasons, but last year had a pretty massive dropoff after their core aged and now I'm trying to build what is not a very good farm system (26th out of 36 when I took over) and also find some talent after offloading whatever value is left.

I'm not a great rebuilder and it's hard for me to stick with them, but I'm going to see if I can manage this one.

So, my 18-19-20 year old self was into BASIC programming, using (among other things) my home Atari 800XL system where you could take out the game cartridge and insert a BASIC cartridge. I developed a series of games and so forth, no shock, and tried to dabble into "sims" to some degree.

I created a swords/fencing game - nothing really complicated, but the main engine was putting two swordfighters against one another, low-end graphics, on a two-dimensional forum, and let them hack at each other. It was basically derived from D&D style combat calculations, with some added variables for aggression, healing speed, and so forth. It turned out to be a reliable engine for a larger sim.

The first variation was to create an all-history swordsmen sim, where a giant tournament would feature everyone from Achilles (massive defensive ratings, natch) to Sir Gawaine to Raiko to Gilgamesh to Fafhrd and anyone else I could summon from mythology or literature. That was pretty fun, but it was a static game -- I'd just start it up, it would sim out the whole tournament style, and the only dynamic thing about it was a guy's injuries from one round would carry over, to varying degrees, to the next matchup. So, I enjoyed that for a while.

Later, I re-opened that game, and used the swordfight subroutine to create my first career style sim. It was a more structured "professional" style league, with a season, win/loss records, standings, and a championship tournament. In that game, I added some math for a "career arc" for each player, so his skills would develop (if he remained active) up to a certain age, and then start to decline. So, a given guy could compete at the top level for maybe 8 years, IIRC.

I still remember, some 30 years later, a South American competitor Juarez (each trime the game created a new player, I got a prompt to submit a regionally-appropriate name... I think this guy was from Argentina, drawn from a weighted list of national origins).

Juarez was good, but not great. If the contest was 16 competitors at any time, he was annually maybe the 3rd or 4th best among them. For some reason, he didn't suffer the same decline as most players in their early-mid 30s, and he stuck around later than nearly anyone else. At age 37 (I'm 100% sure that was the age, thirty real life years later) Juarez had his best season, entered the championship tournament as the #2 seed (good for him) and won the whole thing for maybe his first time. Than he retired on the spot.

Jeez, I created the damned sim myself, and knew every single detail of how it calculated each step along the way, and I was still all in for the narrative behind that. It was awesome.

Over the last month or so I've really caught the Rimworld bug while waiting for the latest Stellaris patch to arrive. Previously my settlements had fizzled out, ended in mass death, or been deleted when I thought of a new approach and wanted to restart but I've finally got myself a "successful", long-term settlement.

Planeton (Planet-on? Plane-ton? Dont know how it's pronounced, it's game-generated) is coming up to its 8th winter, it's heavily defended and it has more than a years’ worth of refrigerated meals stockpiled. All looks good and steady for the moment. Settler turnover has been pretty high, the three original settlers are now all dead (one sliced, one shot, one eaten by a bear) and the town is down to a population of 9 from a high of 15, but things seem as secure as they can be in Rimworld.

This is the story of Planeton told through the interlinked lives and deaths of 4 important inhabitants:

1. Pickles - Pickles was one of the original three who founded the settlement, and really the guy who made it successful. In the early years he was the only pawn capable of construction and the only one who could fire a gun. He built the settlement and defended it while the others cooked, farmed and cleaned. Unfortunately, he was ugly and had an annoying voice, so nobody ever liked him. He was beaten up a few times by camp-mates he'd annoyed too much, but he would always bounce back and carry on building and defending with no hard-feelings. His loaner status changed when his sister was rescued and joined the community, finally a trustee and a sidekick. Two days later Pickles mined through a wall he shouldn’t have and got sliced up by a mech-Scyther. I almost rage-quit when my favorite settler got diced, the risk of playing Ironman Mode.

His sister collected up the parts and got him back to the infirmary, but it was too late and he died of massive blood loss. Pickles was buried with full honors in Planeton's cemetery.

2. Noriko - Noriko was Pickles sister. A big girl, her pawn was double-wide, she'd been a town sheriff and, once she got over the loss of her brother, she wasn’t a shrinking violet. Toting a minigun and wearing marine armor, she was the Planeton's defender for years and the first name on any rescue/salvage team sent out into the wastelands. On one of those rescue missions she was part of a team sent out to rescue an injured refugee. It turned out the refugee wasn’t badly injured, but was being held captive by a single mechanoid. "Ha, this is going to be easy" thought Noriko, just as the mech jumped up and blew her head clean off with a single shot.

The mech was dispatched, the injured refugee treated and welcomed, and Noriko's headless body was loaded onto the pack animal and brought back to be buried with full honors beside her brother in Planeton's cemetery.

3. Svorda - The injured refugee was called Svorda. A Renaissance man, Svorda was an intellectual heavyweight, but a skilled tailor, craftsman and smelter too. He split his time between the research lab and the craft rooms, he made toasty clothing to keep the settlers warm and built the flat screen TV to keep them entertained. Great guy. Unfortunately, not long after this his spine was shattered defending the camp from heavily armed mechanoid grub-things, and he was confined to a hospital bed for about a year, then another year in a cryptosleep chamber before the town got him back on his feet with a home-made bionic spine.

He was back on the front-line defending the town from the great Man-eating Rabbit pack attack of 5507, it was quickly dispatched but unfortunately an idiotic new settler was careless with his frag grenades and blew Svorda apart.

The parts of Svorda were scraped up, put in a bucket, and buried with full honors in Planeton's rapidly expanding cemetery.

4. Bernie - Bernie was the careless settler who blew up Svorda by throwing a grenade into the town's defenses. He also killed three other Planeton folk who were bravely defending the town from killer rabbits.

To pay for his crimes, Bernie was ordered to go outside the towns walls and sit on an exploding frag grenade. There was no full honors burial for him, what was left was scooped up and stuck in the incinerator.

F you, Bernie.

After plugging away on tour for the past couple of years, Kendrick Morgan finally won a golf tournament.

TGCTours.com (https://tgctours.com/Tournament/Leaderboard/4143)

Over the last month or so I've really caught the Rimworld bug while waiting for the latest Stellaris patch to arrive. Previously my settlements had fizzled out, ended in mass death, or been deleted when I thought of a new approach and wanted to restart but I've finally got myself a "successful", long-term settlement.

Planeton (Planet-on? Plane-ton? Dont know how it's pronounced, it's game-generated) is coming up to its 8th winter, it's heavily defended and it has more than a years’ worth of refrigerated meals stockpiled. All looks good and steady for the moment. Settler turnover has been pretty high, the three original settlers are now all dead (one sliced, one shot, one eaten by a bear) and the town is down to a population of 9 from a high of 15, but things seem as secure as they can be in Rimworld.

This is the story of Planeton told through the interlinked lives and deaths of 4 important inhabitants:

1. Pickles - Pickles was one of the original three who founded the settlement, and really the guy who made it successful. In the early years he was the only pawn capable of construction and the only one who could fire a gun. He built the settlement and defended it while the others cooked, farmed and cleaned. Unfortunately, he was ugly and had an annoying voice, so nobody ever liked him. He was beaten up a few times by camp-mates he'd annoyed too much, but he would always bounce back and carry on building and defending with no hard-feelings. His loaner status changed when his sister was rescued and joined the community, finally a trustee and a sidekick. Two days later Pickles mined through a wall he shouldn’t have and got sliced up by a mech-Scyther. I almost rage-quit when my favorite settler got diced, the risk of playing Ironman Mode.

His sister collected up the parts and got him back to the infirmary, but it was too late and he died of massive blood loss. Pickles was buried with full honors in Planeton's cemetery.

2. Noriko - Noriko was Pickles sister. A big girl, her pawn was double-wide, she'd been a town sheriff and, once she got over the loss of her brother, she wasn’t a shrinking violet. Toting a minigun and wearing marine armor, she was the Planeton's defender for years and the first name on any rescue/salvage team sent out into the wastelands. On one of those rescue missions she was part of a team sent out to rescue an injured refugee. It turned out the refugee wasn’t badly injured, but was being held captive by a single mechanoid. "Ha, this is going to be easy" thought Noriko, just as the mech jumped up and blew her head clean off with a single shot.

The mech was dispatched, the injured refugee treated and welcomed, and Noriko's headless body was loaded onto the pack animal and brought back to be buried with full honors beside her brother in Planeton's cemetery.

3. Svorda - The injured refugee was called Svorda. A Renaissance man, Svorda was an intellectual heavyweight, but a skilled tailor, craftsman and smelter too. He split his time between the research lab and the craft rooms, he made toasty clothing to keep the settlers warm and built the flat screen TV to keep them entertained. Great guy. Unfortunately, not long after this his spine was shattered defending the camp from heavily armed mechanoid grub-things, and he was confined to a hospital bed for about a year, then another year in a cryptosleep chamber before the town got him back on his feet with a home-made bionic spine.

He was back on the front-line defending the town from the great Man-eating Rabbit pack attack of 5507, it was quickly dispatched but unfortunately an idiotic new settler was careless with his frag grenades and blew Svorda apart.

The parts of Svorda were scraped up, put in a bucket, and buried with full honors in Planeton's rapidly expanding cemetery.

4. Bernie - Bernie was the careless settler who blew up Svorda by throwing a grenade into the town's defenses. He also killed three other Planeton folk who were bravely defending the town from killer rabbits.

To pay for his crimes, Bernie was ordered to go outside the towns walls and sit on an exploding frag grenade. There was no full honors burial for him, what was left was scooped up and stuck in the incinerator.

F you, Bernie.


Thank you for that chuckle today.

Haven't played a text sim in months because my personal laptop wasn't here and I couldn't install them on my work machine. Anyway, diving back into OOTP19 and FBCB again, without any idea what I want to do, but it'd be fun to get back into an immersive universe again.

I've got an old save of a file I've been using for close to a decade, I come back to it a lot because the established history is familiar and the player names are ones I recognize which is more fun than starting from scratch or playing with IRL players.

Or I'll play college, because at least I don't have to feel guilty about not paying fictional players.

So, my 18-19-20 year old self was into BASIC programming, using (among other things) my home Atari 800XL system where you could take out the game cartridge and insert a BASIC cartridge. I developed a series of games and so forth, no shock, and tried to dabble into "sims" to some degree.

I created a swords/fencing game - nothing really complicated, but the main engine was putting two swordfighters against one another, low-end graphics, on a two-dimensional forum, and let them hack at each other. It was basically derived from D&D style combat calculations, with some added variables for aggression, healing speed, and so forth. It turned out to be a reliable engine for a larger sim.

The first variation was to create an all-history swordsmen sim, where a giant tournament would feature everyone from Achilles (massive defensive ratings, natch) to Sir Gawaine to Raiko to Gilgamesh to Fafhrd and anyone else I could summon from mythology or literature. That was pretty fun, but it was a static game -- I'd just start it up, it would sim out the whole tournament style, and the only dynamic thing about it was a guy's injuries from one round would carry over, to varying degrees, to the next matchup. So, I enjoyed that for a while.

Later, I re-opened that game, and used the swordfight subroutine to create my first career style sim. It was a more structured "professional" style league, with a season, win/loss records, standings, and a championship tournament. In that game, I added some math for a "career arc" for each player, so his skills would develop (if he remained active) up to a certain age, and then start to decline. So, a given guy could compete at the top level for maybe 8 years, IIRC.

I still remember, some 30 years later, a South American competitor Juarez (each trime the game created a new player, I got a prompt to submit a regionally-appropriate name... I think this guy was from Argentina, drawn from a weighted list of national origins).

Juarez was good, but not great. If the contest was 16 competitors at any time, he was annually maybe the 3rd or 4th best among them. For some reason, he didn't suffer the same decline as most players in their early-mid 30s, and he stuck around later than nearly anyone else. At age 37 (I'm 100% sure that was the age, thirty real life years later) Juarez had his best season, entered the championship tournament as the #2 seed (good for him) and won the whole thing for maybe his first time. Than he retired on the spot.

Jeez, I created the damned sim myself, and knew every single detail of how it calculated each step along the way, and I was still all in for the narrative behind that. It was awesome.Late to the party, but that's pretty awesome, QS.

Got OOTP20, because I wanted to go ahead and see what I could do with Kyler Murray as a baseball player eventually. Maybe a weekend project. Also, rebooted my womens college basketball files for FBCB, and gonna mess around with that again, I haven't had a dynasty as fun since the days I did that one, so maybe that'll be fun to simulate for a while.

LOL. I started doing my women's college basketball sim and have been importing players to the NBA (instead of the WNBA) with a D-League.

So far, the Spurs have won every championship:


San Antonio Spurs Team Performance

Season Team W L Div Seed Result
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1939 San Antonio 75 7 1 1 League Champion
1938 San Antonio 66 16 1 1 League Champion
1937 San Antonio 67 15 1 1 League Champion
1936 San Antonio 71 11 1 1 League Champion
1935 San Antonio 75 7 1 1 League Champion
1934 San Antonio 75 7 1 1 League Champion
1933 San Antonio 75 7 1 1 League Champion
1932 San Antonio 78 4 1 1 League Champion
1931 San Antonio 75 7 1 1 League Champion
1930 San Antonio 78 4 1 1 League Champion

I give to you, the Restored Roman Empire's subjugation of the Lohlendran Watchers. (Stellaris)

The Empire made first contact with this once mighty empire not long after their first forays into space. The Lohlendran were deep spiritualists, diametrically opposed to the staunch Roman faith in science and technology. That said, so long as Rome did not colonize worlds the Watchers declared Holy Worlds, they were left alone.

Centuries passed, and Rome grew strong. Their borders reached the Lohlendrans, and eventually, Rome no longer cared for the warnings of these decrepit fools. They colonized these so-called 'Holy Worlds', and the response was quick, but Rome was ready. Massive fleets clashed, and Rome was victorious.

The fleets moved into Lohlendran space, demolishing the ancient automated defenses left there. Their fleets blanketed every planet, commencing bombardment on an epic scale. For years, Roman ships bombarded these religious lunatics from space, turning their proud worlds into dusty ruins. Those soldiers who survived were met with genetically engineered monsters, slaughtering ever Lohlendran soldier encountered. This once mighty empire was compelled to surrender to Rome.

But Rome was not finished with these people. Too many humans died to simply leave this arrogant wretches alive. A policy of depopulation began, as the survivors were forcibly evicted from their homes, out of Roman space, where they would survive as they could as refugees. A full 2/3rds of the Lohlendran survivors were removed from their native worlds.

The remainder were taken to Roman labs, to be genetically modified. They would be made more suitable for low level labor, to serve in the mines and farms to fuel the Roman war machine. They were conditioned to serve, to see themselves as a proud cog in the service of humanity. They were also modified to survive in the cooler, more temperate climates that humanity preferred, away from the dry, hot savannah worlds they originated. Just one Lolendran planet was left under their control, a tiny colony on the edge of Roman space, which had little tactical value. Rome was content to leave them be, the message clearly sent.

Time passed. The Lolendran refugees, a once mighty empire that spanned the galaxy, with untold technological mastery, surfaced again....as nothing more than a small criminal cartel far away from their homelands. That, and the one colony that was allowed to survive, was all that remained of these people....not counting those who were genetically altered, of course. The Lohlendran planets were terraformed away from the unpleasant Savannah, and made into worlds more suitable for human life. Little remains to show that an ancient power ever stood on these worlds.

But Rome was not done. Oh no, no no. But it was not Rome that chose what would happen next.

The remains of the Lohlendran Watchers, clutching to their last hope on a small planet, declared war, a last ditch effort to free their homeworld. It was doomed from the start, but the price would be high. People must know when they are conquered. Rome came, landing millions of troops, conquering the last true Lohlendran world, forcing total capitulation. This time, there would be no mercy.

Purges began anew. Every Lohlendran would be purged from this final planet, save a tiny few. Every structure was reduced to rubble, and the planet itself was met by Roman terraforming engines, turning the planet from a warm Savannah plain to a frozen Arctic world. Those few Lohlendrans who remained were forced to huddle in squalor, on a frozen world that was their last refuge.

Rome was not done.

The fleets came once more, but this time, this planet would become the testing ground for their new ultimate weapon. The Lohlendrans, freezing and starving on their desolate frozen waste, looked to the sky to see a massive ship. A bright flash in the skies above, and a massive energy weapon came crashing down, utterly destroying the planet, leaving nothing but a small field of asteroids and debris where a planet once stood.

And thus the war was over. Roma Victor.

To summarize:

1) We defeated and conquered all but one Fallen Empire world.
2) We displaced about 200 of the 300 members of their race.
3) They popped up not long after as a Criminal Syndicate halfway across the galaxy.
4) We genetically modified those we kept to be laborers, and terraformed their worlds.
5) They declared war again, we crushed them.
6) We purged all but 1 of their people from that world after we won.
7) We terraformed it to Arctic, because that was as far away from Savannah I could think of, just to be an ass.
8) We released them as a vassal, freed them, and declared war.
9) And then sent the planet cracker in, and destroyed the planet.

Right, don't mess with Coffee Warlord...CHECK! :)

War in heaven (two fallen empires fighting one another and dragging basically the whole galaxy into it) is happening now. Rome declared neutrality, and is watching the universe burn.

Neither side has declared war on me. They know better.

I'm currently in 2053 in my 49'ers franchise.

My legendary 13-year-vet LT Zach 'Pomato' Pomato just capped of a great career with a playoff reception for 8 yards! Haven't seen one of those before!

https://i.imgur.com/lTtc98s.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/ElAJmZj.jpg

I am currently playing a Sierra FBPro98 12 team USFL league. We are in the 2001 season and the (2-0) Tampa Bay Bandits are playing the (0-2) Michigan Panthers in Detroit, MI. With 5:47 left in the 3rd quarter, Tampa Bay K Sebastian Janikowski kicks a chip shot 18 yard FG to put the Bandits ahead 34-6. What happens next is something I have never seen in 20+ years of playing this game.

1. Michigan executes a 6:19, 11 play 74 yard drive capped off with a 6yd TD scamper for HB Shaun Alexander. XP is good and the score is now 34-13 with 14:05 left in the 4th quarter.

2. Tampa Bay has a 3 and out and punts the ball away with 13:14 left on the clock in the 4th quarter.

3. Michigan goes 63 yards in just 4 plays ending with a 39 yard TD pass from QB Aaron Brooks to WR Dante Hall. XP is good and the score is now 34-20 Tampa Bay ahead.

4 Tampa Bay has another 3 and out and punts the ball away for 54 yards. Ball is fielded at the Tampa Bay 13 yard line by WR Craig Yeast who promptly takes the return 87 yards to the house. XP is good and with 8:36 left in the 4th quarter, Tampa Bay is now clinging to a 34-27 lead.

5. Tampa Bay has yet another 3 and out (Michigan defense is really stiffening) and punts the ball away to Michigan. 7:00 left on the clock.

6. With 5:49 left on the clock, Michigan has the ball 3rd and 3 on their own 33 yard line. QB Aaron Brooks takes the snap and surveys the field. Rookie WR Steve Smith gets behind Rookie CB Andre Dyson in the slot and goes up the right hash. QB Aaron Brooks throws a strike and S Dre Bly takes an awful angle to man and were off to the races! 66 yards later, WR Steve Smith is tackled at the Tampa Bay 1 yard line by S Dre Bly. 1st and Goal at the 1. HB Shaun Alexander immediately pokes it in and the score is now 34-33!

7. The Michigan coach decides to play for the lead instead of the tie! QB Aaron Brooks hands of to HB Shaun Alexander who has a big hole on the left side. Tampa Bay LB Eric Barton explodes through the hole and upends HB Shaun Alexander for no game. 2pt conversion no good! Score is still Tampa Bay 34 Michigan 33.

8. After the ensuing kickoff, the good news is Tampa Bay is able to take 2:52 seconds off the clock. The bad news is they only gained 19 yards on 6 plays and have to punt to Michigan. Can the Tampa Bandits hold them?

9. There is 1:48 left in the 4th quarter. Michigan has the ball on their own 24 yard line. 1st down pass was knocked away down field by S Dre Bly. Pass was intended for WR Dane Looker. On 2nd and 10, QB Aaron Brooks rolls out left and right before being hit by the blitzing S Dre Bly, Brooks throws a strike on a comebacker to HB Shaun Alexander for 16 yards, 1st down!

10. There is 1:27 left in the 4th quarter, 1st and 10, ball is on the Michigan 39 yard line. QB Aaron Brooks throws a 10 yard pass to WR Dane Looker. Clock stops for a measurement...ball is just short of the marker. With 1:09 left on the clock from their own 49 yard line on 2 and less than 1, QB Aaron Brooks throws in the flat to WR Larry Foster for 4 yards, inbounds. 1st down! Michigan calls a timeout.

11. There is :55 left in the 4th quarter, 1st and 10. WR Dante Hall runs a crossing route against zone defense. QB Aaron Brooks has good protection and fires a bullet to Hall who runs for 14 yards and a 1st down to the Tampa Bay 33 yard line! Michigan calls time out. Michigan is driving! Can they score 30 unanswered points for the win?!?

12. There is :43 left in the 4th quarter, 1st and 10. QB Aaron Brooks fakes a handoff and rolls left. Tampa Bay DE Leonard Little comes through the line unblocked and sacks QB Aaron Brooks for a 4 yard loss. Clock is ticking! QB Aaron Brooks spikes the ball to preserve the timeout.

13. There is :36 left in the 4th quarter, 3rd and 14. QB Aaron Brooks hands the ball off to HB Shaun Alexander who spins his way to the 34 yard line in the middle of the field. Michigan calls their final timeout. The field goal team runs on the field for the 51 yard FG attempt.

14. C Cory Withrow is the snapper. QB Joe Germaine is the holder and K Rian Lindell lines up for the game winning kick. Ball is snapped, hold is down and ball is kicked. The kick is up...........and falls JUST under the crossbar....NO GOOD! Tampa Bay wins 34-33!

Amazing final 20 minutes of game time. Never seen anything like this. Going for the 2pt conversion cost them the game!

This game still continues to surprise me all of these years later.

Over the last month or so I've really caught the Rimworld bug while waiting for the latest Stellaris patch to arrive. Previously my settlements had fizzled out, ended in mass death, or been deleted when I thought of a new approach and wanted to restart but I've finally got myself a "successful", long-term settlement.

A year and a half later, and my long-term settlement of Planeton has finally bitten the dust. Decembary of year 23 and a massive man-eating bug infestation right in the middle of the living area coupled with a siege firing incendiary mortar rounds finally did it in. Could just about handle the infestation, but the firestorm finished my settlers off, all 22 of them dead.

My settlement is now just a smoldering shell with the three remaining bugs randomly wandering around breaking things.

Wish I hadnt played ironman mode now.

My rex coaches just outgained their counterparts by 492 yards. 99 to 591.

Haven't seen such a margin without controlling the gameplan myself.

https://i.imgur.com/L1cg09z.jpg

Playing my FBPro98 USFL League, we are now in the 2002 season with the (4-6) Los Angeles Express playing on the road against the (4-6) Birmingham Stallions. The last 4 minutes of this game is unlike anything I have seen. Here is the sequence:


1. With 3:57 left in the game Birmingham K Phil Dawson kicked a 29yd field goal to give Birmingham the lead 14-13

2. In the ensuing kickoff, Los Angeles WR Dennis Northcutt returns the kickoff return 56 yards to the Birmingham 29 yard line.

3. After a 3 and out, with 2:30 left on the clock, Los Angeles K Neil Rackers kicked a 41yd field goal to put Los Angeles ahead 16-14.

4. With 1:38 left in the game, Birmingham QB Peyton Manning finds WR Marty Booker in the flat who is then immediately stripped of the ball by Los Angeles CB Ike Reese; Los Angeles LB Julian Peterson picks up the ball and returns it to the Birmingham 25 yard line!

5. On the very next play, Los Angeles HB Bryan Westbrook takes a sweep off tackle and runs down the sideline for a 25yd TD! For some weird, idiotic reason, Los Angeles lines up for a 2pt conversion. Los Angeles fails to convert the 2pt conversion and the score is now 22-14.

6. After a squib kick, Birmingham executes a clutch 10 play 63 yard drive down to the Los Angeles 5 yard line with :03 left in the game.

7. With the clock at zero, Birmingham QB Peyton Manning throws a dart in the back of the endzone to WR Tim Dwight for the TD!

8. Birmingham lines up for the 2pt conversion. Ball is snapped to QB Peyton Manning who runs a delayed keep to convert the score! Onto overtime we go in the most clutch fashion I think I have seen in 22 years playing this game!

In overtime, Birmingham won the toss and never looked back as WR James Williams return the kickoff 47 yards to the Los Angeles 37 yard line and the Birmingham offense moves the ball down to the 1 yard line for the game winning 18yd field goal.

Just an amazing sequence of events extremely late in the game. And in retrospect, a terrible decision by Los Angeles to go for the 2pt conversion. There was no need to do it.

Dug out an old OOTP save. It is a fictional league, expansion team in its second season.

Opening Day at our stadium, I quick sim through the top half of each inning, and watch each of our at bats in the bottom halves.

Bottom of the 10th, score is still 0-0. Tension building with each at bat...

With two outs and Nick Kaplan about to take his at bat, in the right corner of my screen I see a Steam Achievement pop up ('walk off homerun') right before the pitch is thrown.

Thanks, Steam!

I am coaching Providence in a DDSCB dynasty. In our second season, I have somehow taken a team of good-but-not-great players to a 25-2 record (we just fell at St. John's). Our only loss is to #1 Duke.

I don't know how the hell we're doing this...our leading scorer posts 12.8 ppg, and we have two players averaging double figures, and yet we're sixth in the nation in offense (though 261st in field goal percentage). We're probably set up for an early exit in the NCAA Tournament, but we did make the Sweet Sixteen last year.

I'm finding this team to be utterly fascinating, and rather like ones I've coached in real life. So, that's pretty awesome.

dola--

We suffered another pair of losses since that first post, getting crushed by defending champion Xavier (we are 2-3 against them now since I started) at their place, 88-63. I don't allow players to declare early, so I have to put up with a pair of guys they got as freshmen that are absolutely unbelievable (as evidenced by them going to Kansas and Kentucky to win the national championship last year). We lost to them again in the Big East championship, 86-82.

However, we are a #1 seed, at 30-4, put in the Midwest. Then I see who the #2 is:

Xavier.

Dammit. (This is a coding issue for Gary, and something we've discussed. I get it. Just frustrated I had to go through them again.)

We beat Binghamton badly, then get by Tennessee in OT. We outlast Georgia Tech in the Sweet Sixteen, 72-65, while Xavier blows out everyone.

And then begin to blow us out in the first half, as we are beset by foul trouble. My starting point guard and my small forward (and breakout leading scorer, he had multiple 25+ games for since the last writing) are both on the bench for half of the first half. Down eight in the final minute, my sophomore stud, Tim Owens, goes on a tear, and gets us to within two.

From there, the game was close throughout. Somehow, with about four minutes left, we scratched out a five-point lead. That became eight, and then it hung out there. I decided to start double-teaming their star SF, LeBron Blackwell. That works: He goes 6-15, but missed his last four shots.

We ice it from the line; only a desperation three made it seem closer than it was, 77-71.

With that, we punched our ticket to the Final Four, where we'll face Western champ Gonzaga (Florida and Maryland are in the other matchup). We are the only top seed there. as the others are 3, 4 and 2, respecitively.

For this weird team, it's been a magical run. We are considered 89% favorites to beat Gonzaga, which is surprising. Hopefully we take it down.

We were not clear favorites to beat Gonzaga, after further inspection. In fact, it was the absolute reverse; we were 10% favorites to win that game.

It was an absolute epic. Back and forth, nobody really getting any sort of distance on one another...until the final two minutes, when Gonzaga took a five-point lead going into the final minute.

We hit a bucket, then got a stop. We came down, and freshman forward Damien Anderson, our leading scorer and someone whose relationship with me died during the week (he had been having continual issues with fellow freshman, C Jamal Rose, and I called him on it) hit a three, tying the game at 78.

Thirteen seconds left, and I braced for a potential game-ending shot.

And it came.

But not from the Zags.

My best player, Tim Owens, stole a pass. He threw it up to Lucas Robinson, our power forward, maligned all game in foul trouble, who threw it down with :04 left. Timeout, Zags.

It happened so fast, it was tough to comprehend.

I put in a full-court defense, and hoped for the best. They got a look from half court, but it fell off. We somehow pulled off the 80-78 win over Gonzaga, and arrived in our first title game.

The magic was spent that night, though. Maryland, led by a freshman guard Shannon Collier, held us at arm's length for the entire second half. Owens got into foul trouble early. He was joined by Anderson. Down 11 at the break was a blessing, but it soon went to 20. We managed to get it to 5, but every time we threatened to cut it to one possession, they would edge it back out.

We ultimately lost, 90-71. You feel great and terrible for the kids, to get to that stage, and then to just not finish the job. But that's okay...we return our starting five for next year, a few key reserves...all is not lost.

And then...Damien Anderson, who broke out in the second half of the season and became THE guy, told me he was transferring. He wound up at Purdue. The real sting came when hated Xavier guard Mark Walters, who inexplicably decided to transfer out from a national champion and perennial contender, went to Maryland.

The rich got richer.

And, with now five scholarships, one center and three senior point guards, on the roster we have a lot of work to do.

Now that i've started, the 1985 SOM replay I'm running doesn't take up very much time. So i decided to dump all the players from 1969 into free agents, created a 12 team league and drafted a team to compete against 11 computer selected teams.

Draft was serpentine (I picked 2nd because I wanted Aaron and I knew McCovey would be 1st):

1:2 - Aaron
2:11 - Santo
3: 2 - Gibson
4:11 - Andrews
5: 2 - McDowell
6:11 - Aparicio
7:2 - Hundley
8:11 - Torre
9:2 - Brock
10:11 - Parker

Won't bother going past that, because honestly the last few picks listed might be slightly out of order...

Record by month:

April 17-7 - 3 game lead
May 16-15 - 1 game lead

I'll add additional information at the end of each month...

Record by month:

April 17-7 - 3 game lead
May 16-15 - 1 game lead

I'll add additional information at the end of each month...

June 15-12 - actually lost my lead in the standings 2x during the month.
July 23-6 - things came together for me and I've now opened a 8.5 game lead

Here are my team stats:


Primary Player Statistics For 1000 Tallahassee Federals Totals After 111 Games


NAME BAVG GM AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO HB SH DP SB CS E
H.Aaron .321 105 405 83 130 17 3 35 92 37 37 1 0 17 4 4 3
A.Shamsky .299 68 234 31 70 9 3 6 31 30 31 1 0 7 0 0 4
L.Aparicio .298 102 399 63 119 20 7 4 31 42 29 3 7 8 17 4 11
M.Mota .293 80 249 30 73 2 4 2 19 16 24 4 2 7 2 0 3
D.Menke .288 55 139 19 40 8 1 3 16 14 21 0 0 2 0 1 3
M.Andrews .286 101 346 60 99 14 1 15 44 55 45 3 6 7 0 0 16
D.Schofield .286 9 14 1 4 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 0
R.Santo .284 108 401 58 114 9 7 21 74 65 55 3 0 8 0 0 19
J.Torre .270 66 222 27 60 11 3 6 29 20 29 3 0 8 0 0 3
D.Johnson .263 35 57 7 15 5 1 2 7 10 11 0 0 2 0 0 2
L.Brock .263 91 312 50 82 15 2 7 42 23 60 0 4 4 20 6 14
W.Parker .256 82 199 28 51 6 4 9 37 27 15 0 0 6 1 3 2
R.Hundley .252 102 377 41 95 18 1 12 48 30 58 0 2 9 1 1 2
T.Gonzalez .240 61 171 19 41 7 0 3 18 14 18 4 0 5 1 0 2
L.Maye .200 54 50 4 10 0 0 1 7 3 2 0 0 3 1 0 0
W.Smith .200 6 5 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
M.Ryan .000 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
ALL PITCHERS .101 111 237 10 24 6 1 0 7 5 92 0 22 6 0 0 5
----------------- ---- --- --- --- --- -- -- -- --- --- --- -- -- -- --- -- --
TEAM TOTALS .269 3818 1028 38 505 532 43 47 89
111 531 147 126 392 22 100 19


NAME ERA W L PCT G GS CG SH SV IP H R ER HR BB SO
R.Perranoski 0.36 1 0 1.000 29 0 0 0 18 25.0 19 3 1 1 6 17
S.McDowell 1.84 17 5 .773 28 28 8 3 0 210.1 137 54 43 11 64 225
D.Drago 2.35 4 3 .571 31 4 1 1 3 69.0 48 24 18 14 21 27
C.Hartenstein 2.40 3 4 .429 38 0 0 0 1 63.2 50 22 17 3 21 29
D.Leonhard 2.83 1 2 .333 29 1 0 0 1 41.1 31 14 13 4 17 18
J.Gelnar 3.03 7 0 1.000 42 0 0 0 6 38.2 31 14 13 6 6 29
G.Gentry 3.15 12 7 .632 27 27 1 1 0 163.0 122 66 57 15 63 100
H.Aguirre 3.38 1 1 .500 26 0 0 0 0 26.2 21 10 10 2 10 12
B.Gibson 3.58 14 11 .560 28 28 4 2 0 191.0 189 82 76 17 55 149
P.Doyle 3.86 0 0 ---- 3 0 0 0 0 2.1 2 1 1 1 1 0
M.Kilkenny 4.58 0 1 .000 28 0 0 0 0 39.1 40 20 20 4 21 22
R.Reed 4.66 11 6 .647 23 23 0 0 0 127.1 129 69 66 26 32 86
D.Giusti 4.91 0 0 ---- 4 0 0 0 0 3.2 4 2 2 0 0 3
ALL NON-PITCHERS ---- 0 0 ---- 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Team 7 -1
----------------- ---- -- -- ----- --- -- -- -- -- ----- --- --- --- -- --- ---
TEAM TOTALS 3.02 40 111 14 29 823 336 317
71 .640 111 14 1001.1 381 104 717

From a horseracing game I thoroughly mastered years ago. Started a stable with $10,000 and tough house rules on game date Jan 1, 2020.

2 : STAR A HEAD RECORD RACES 1ST 2ND 3RD EARNINGS ODDS = 6-1

Chestnut, 3, Gelding, 122 LifeTime 7 2 2 1 $142,260

Owner: QuikSand Ranch IX Life-Turf 0 0 0 0 $0

Jockey: Kite R 12-3-2-1 Life-Wet 0 0 0 0 $0

Trainer: Brooks C 22-6-2-4 This Year 4 0 1 1 $92,960

10Apr021BR New b3 D ft 9f 46.0 1:13.1 1:56.0 3 6- 6-8 6-1¾ 1-¼ 2-¼ 81 122 4.40 Kite
13Mar021OV Over m3 D gd 9f 46.0 1:12.0 1:55.1 1 6- 6-14 6-14½ 6-11½ 4-5¼ 75 122 4.80 Kite
27Feb021OV Wil b3 D ft 9f 45.1 1:11.0 1:53.0 2 5-¼ 5-12¼ 5-13 5-16½ 3-11¼ 76 122 4.30 Kite
09Jan021OV Hand m3 D ft 8f 45.0 1:11.1 1:40.1 1 6- 6-12¾ 5-10¼ 5-5½ 6-2¾ 88 122 3.20 Kite
13Dec020WP Amer m2 D ft 8f 45.1 1:12.0 1:42.0 3 5-ns 5-16¾ 5-13¼ 5-7½ 2-1 82 125 3.40 Kite


My 3yo gelding (whom I claimed for $30K back in October) battled but got edged out in an April prep race for the Blue Rock Derby on the first Saturday in May. I decide to give him a shot in the big race, why not?

Race #8 Blue Rock Derby Purse $750,000 (Finished)
10 Furlongs on Dirt Total 7 Horses
for 3-year-olds base weight: 125
Track: Fast Rain: None Wind: 0 MPH Purse: $750,000
Apprentice jockeys allowed 2 extra pounds
Females allowed 3 lbs.
HORSE JOCKEY WT. ODDS NUM ST. 1/4 1/2 1 Str Fin
Be My Exotic Haver 119 4.20 7 7 5 2 3 2½ 3 1¼ 3 nk 1 2½
Star A Head Kite 122 5.20 2 3 7 7 7 7 2 nk
Flying Class Renal 117 5.80 6 2 2 ¼ 2 3 2 1¾ 2 ½ 3 nk
H H Francis Hoy R 122 6.00 1 5 4 ½ 5 5 5 3¼ 5 2½ 4 ¾
Davis Test Charl 117 4.20 4 6 6 3 6 4 6 1¼ 6 ¾ 5 ½
On The Crest Parce 114 4.30 3 4 3 1½ 4 1¼ 4 3¾ 4 3½ 6 ¾
Head Of State Merri 122 5.60 5 1 1 nk 1 ¾ 1 1½ 1 ¾ 7

Time of Race: 0.44.5 1.38.4 2.08.6

Win Place Show
1st Be My Exotic 10.40 5.40 3.80
2nd Star A Head 5.40 4.00
3rd Flying Class 3.80
Exacta (7-2) 61.20 Trifecta (7-2-6) 347.20

I realize that in this thread you're expecting a win, but I'm over the moon to get my ham-and-egger up into the "late push" and have him nose out a rival for a solid 2nd place in the Derby. Yahoo!

Yeah QS, that's a nice run for sure. What a tight field though. Everyone, outside the winner, within a length of the next horse.

I've got one to add today.

Had to fire up a game of FBCB (which I haven't in years) because of the CBJL season starting and I was itching to get some practice in on team building. In my third season of player acquisitions and 4th in the game, I'd taken on NDSU Bison. Full conference movement on, makes things challenging and we go from a 20 win first year, where we almost make the dance, to 3 years later where we start non-conf play at 4-8 (hey, we played 3 eventual top 50 teams). I was still feeling good about conf play. The team had weaknesses for sure, but it was a 'better' team.

The AD goal has been to make the NCAA and raise our rep, and we nearly did it 2 years ago. Last season was a first round disaster. Conference play starts awful. We drop the first 2 games before we get a W, then rattle off 8 straight losses. All those losses against no team higher than a 158 RPI (the only team we actually DID beat in that stretch) and as low as 337 (lost twice to them).

With a 1-10 conference record at the end of January, we're in danger of missing the cut for even the conference tournament as we ride hard into last. Only the top 8 teams get to play. We come back to win 3 in a row, one against a team with an actual winning record (in the Summit that's not easy). Then we drop another. We're still out of it, but with 3 to play to need to win every game from here on out.

IPFW 80-53
Drake 86-39
Montana 100-94

And we manage to stun everyone and qualify for the Summit League Tourney as a 7 seed.

Round 1 against the 2 IPFW goes our way 79-67.
Round 2 against the 3 UMKC goes our way 80-75.

We're in the finals against the 8 seed Drake. That's right. The 7 and the 8 play for the title. It's a much harder game this time but NDSU pulls off the comeback with a 90-84 win to take home the Summit League Championship and head to the Dance for the first time.

Talk about an unlikely comeback. We go from dropping 11 out of 12 to winning the last 9 out of 10. Our season record stood at 14-19 and the NCAA gave us a play in game for the 16 seed to play Kentucky. I don't even care if we lose. We hit that benchmark.

PS to add:

We bounced Nicholls State 83-78 in a game where the score was closer than the game. That makes us the legit 16 seed on our way to be demoed by the Wildcats, who are the #1 team in the nation with a 31-2 record.

PPS...

KY blitzed us 102-49, proving just how good we are. We shot .295 from the field, were out rebounded 30-47, while KY had 10 steals and 6 blocks along with our 18 turnovers. We had 1 steal. Still.....we got there in an awful year that required a massive turnaround.

Playing (poorly) MLB The Show 20 last night. Just a late April game with my really shitty Orioles. Mostly simming, occasionally playing out a game.

Bottom of the 2nd I get my first rain delay. Not knowing how the game mechanics deal with that, I opt to remove my starter and replace him with my long reliever. 5+ solid innings before he gives way to my overachieving rookie reliever, the 1-0 lead still holding up. And the closer comes in with one out in the 9th to deal with the top of the Toronto order. A pop up and a called strike three later and I have myself a 4-pitcher combined no-hitter :)

Best I can recall that's a first-ever for me in a baseball game where you actually push the buttons & twiddle the sticks.

My 3yo gelding (whom I claimed for $30K back in October) battled but got edged out in an April prep race for the Blue Rock Derby on the first Saturday in May. I decide to give him a shot in the big race, why not?

...

I realize that in this thread you're expecting a win, but I'm over the moon to get my ham-and-egger up into the "late push" and have him nose out a rival for a solid 2nd place in the Derby. Yahoo!

Well, just got back into this game... ran my guy for a solid but beaten 3rd in the Preakness, but he was all kinds of game and won by open lengths in the Belmont!


Race #8 Ashbourne Stakes Purse $750,000 (Finished)
12 Furlongs on Dirt Total 6 Horses
for 3-year-olds base weight: 125

Track: Fast Rain: None Wind: 0 MPH Purse: $750,000

Apprentice jockeys allowed 2 extra pounds
Females allowed 3 lbs.

HORSE JOCKEY WT. ODDS NUM ST. 1/4 1/2 1 1/4 Str Fin
Star A Head Kite 122 4.20 5 4 6 6 3 6½ 2 1¾ 1 7¾
Lucy Kosmos Brook 122 4.50 6 5 4 1¼ 4 2¼ 4 ½ 4 1¾ 2 2
Lively Messenge Cuenc 122 3.40 3 3 3 4¾ 1 ¼ 1 2½ 1 ¾ 3 ½
Flying Class Charl 117 4.20 4 2 2 nk 2 6½ 2 3½ 3 6¼ 4 4
Reef Maid Dolbo 119 4.60 1 1 1 nk 3 6¼ 5 4 5 2½ 5 ¼
Duke of Count Forbe 122 3.90 2 6 5 1¼ 5 1¼ 6 6 6

Time of Race: 0.44.6 2.07.7 2.37.7

Win Place Show
1st Star A Head 10.40 5.20 3.40
2nd Lucy Kosmos 4.80 3.00
3rd Lively Messenge 3.60

Exacta (5-6) 24.80 Trifecta (5-6-3) 184.80


I'm flush with cash now, and presumably will immediately stop caring about this career, but that was one seriously cool quick ride.

https://i.imgur.com/9unWzrCl.jpg

I thought this game-generated caption from NCAA 2014 was pretty appropriate.

https://i.imgur.com/9unWzrCl.jpg

I thought this game-generated caption from NCAA 2014 was pretty appropriate.I think this deserves a bump, or whatever we shall call this reply.

I've been back playing Rimworld recently, the first time since I killed off my long-term settlement I mentioned further back in this thread a few years ago. I've got all the DLC now; not sure how much most of them add to the game, but you've got to go for completeness, and it's good to support a small developer, innit? I've been on my current settlement (Paleal, game generated name) for about 10 days (4 years game time), with a population of 10 (9 adults and 1 kid), and everything seemed quite secure and walled off. All the basic needs were met, and they could even make their own clothing and guns, so they'd started to be cozily dressed and well tooled-up. Rifles, shotguns, and the occasional SMG – not a crew to be messed with.

Last night I had two thoughts: 1. Is Rimworld a game that would be good for a dynasty thread on FOFC? and 2. Have I got the settings set too easy? After four years, we'd had no confirmed deaths (although there had been a few close calls) and had only lost one pawn. One of the original three was kidnapped and carried off early days when some refugees we'd kindly given shelter to got stabby and mean, but she might still be alive somewhere. So not confirmed.

My two answers were 1. maybe and 2. hell yeah, crank up the difficulty settings! (To be honest, I only turned the difficulty up one setting to "Strive to Survive", no reason to go crazy.)

So I started playing last night vaguely thinking, "I should dynasty thread this game" when the first quest came through. An 8-year-old boy, Conrad, had got himself covered in insect pheromone; he would join my group, but the insects would follow a few days later. My settlement's ideology was pretty much "be excellent to everyone," so there was no way we were telling an 8-year-old boy in need of assistance to piss off. Come on in, little Conrad; we'll keep you safe from the nasty bugs.

We set up waiting for the bug infestation; fighting bugs with early-game weapons is no joke, so it wasn't going to be easy. Set up some traps in the only area they could spring up in (infestations only happen in underground rooms; we only had one) and sent the two kids off to hide in a room on the far side of the base.

Long story short, it was a disaster. The infestation popped up in a storeroom, not where I thought it would. Insects, big buggers, not little bugs, running up and down the corridors. They're fast and armored; gangs of them rushing down corridors made it a blood bath. After a few hours (game time), seven adults were dead, two incapacitated, the only two still standing were 8-year-old Conrad and 11-year-old Honey hiding in a room while insects roamed the settlement. My cunning plan to burn the insects by arming one of the adults with an incendiary grenade launcher set half the base on fire too, so that didn't help.

Conrad and Honey were brave little kids like you see in the movies and snuck through the base to the hospital room. From there, they could wait for the bugs to go to sleep, sneak out, and drag the two injured adults back to the hospital room. They weren't far away, and there were a couple of discarded shotguns nearby too. Maybe there was a chance.

The first try was Conrad; he took a wrong turn and bumped into a megaspider, it bit his head clean off. That doesn't happen to brave little kids in movies.

Next up was Honey; she's an 11-year-old Highmate, genetically altered and bred to be a concubine; she's kind, delicate, and charming but incapable of violence. Not really much use for this situation. She did manage to drag both the adults back to the hospital room though. The bugs were sleeping, had died (a lot of them were badly injured too) or had wandered off to smash up the other side of the settlement, so the coast was clear.

Honey patched up the two remaining adults with her rudimentary medical skills, Ironhead (camp leader, and all-round masculine gigachad) and Takashi (one of the cooks, a bit useless but can whip up rice and potatoes). Unfortunately, the kitchens and the food supplies have all burned so there's nothing left for Takashi to do. But as long as Ironhead was alive, there was still a chance.

The next disaster was Ironhead got an infection in his leg, and there was no medical supplies to treat him (Honey smashed up everything in a tantrum) and Honey didn't have the medical skills to amputate. So Ironhead was dead too. We were down to two.

The next disaster was Honey and Takashi were starving, and there was no food. While I was trying to work out what to do (can they get to the fields and eat raw potatoes?), Honey made a snap decision on her own, and she and Takashi ate the headless corpse of Conrad. They didnt even cook him. Things had taken a dark turn, but at least they were not hungry anymore.

A couple of days later, Takashi was patched up and out of bed, got himself a discarded pump-action shotgun, and limped off for a showdown with the last remaining insect. Unfortunately, there were actually two remaining insects, so he's dead too. I think they ate him.

So that's where my settlement is now, only a pacifist child left and two well-fed insects roaming. Either she'll hide in a room until she starves (which will take a good while because she's eating Ironhead's corpse now) or the insects will get her. I'm really not sure I want to load the game and play to the end to see what happens.

I always play "commitment mode," so there's no reverting to an old save. This is the end for Paleal.

(p.s. I asked ChatGPT to grammar check this, loves a semicolon does ChatGPT)

Never heard of the game, but that little blurb was unintentionally hilarious and I'm so in for a dynasty... :)

Never heard of the game

Srsly?

If a dynasty does emerge here, definitely check out some of the YouTube LP videos, just to get a better sense of the visuals, what's happening, etc.

Great game

Yeah, it's a great game but you have to get used to it. It's deep, lots of options, but a bit ugly visually.

As an update to my playthrough, I loaded up last night and Honey had her 13th birthday (I said she was 11, she was actually 12). 13 in Rimworld is the first day of adulthood, so overnight she became an adult, this is my first try with the DLC that added children so it came as a surprise to me.

The overnight growth spurt means she cant wear her child-sized clothing anymore so my one remaining pawn is now an almost naked 13-year old pacifist. She has a hat.

Never heard of the game, but that little blurb was unintentionally hilarious and I'm so in for a dynasty... :)

+++

I guess instead of continuing to post little updates in here, I'll move over to a dynasty and carry on the story. Things are still going, if not going well.

I have been away from the forum for awhile, enjoyed reading these!