SportsClix

So Sportsclix arrived at comic book stores today, and I went ahead and bought myself a starter set or two to try the game out. Here's my initial thoughts.

This is going to be quite collectable. The sports collectable industry likes this sort of thing, and the size of the clix makes them easy to store and display. I suspect they will be pretty popular with sports collectors for that reason. With 6 levels of rarity, they will also be a nice challenge for completists. I am already seeing many of the figures up on eBay, with some enterprising folks putting up team sets of the least rare levels.

The sculpts are pretty nice. Some of the paint jobs could use work, but overall they look a good deal better than a lot of MLB collectables. The unique sculpts of some players in their "trademark" poses is a nice touch.

This is not an easy game to solitaire, so until I get a partner to play with, my opinion of the gaming side should be taken with a grain of salt.

There are four levels of game play. At the most basic (pre-season), you can set out the field, pick your teams, and play. You don't even have to have a correct team, as long as you've got one pitcher, since fielding isn't an issue in the Pre-Season rules. At this level, just about any age could play the game and enjoy it, and they game will go quickly if both players want it to move along. Your players also can improve their stats when they get hits or pitch a good inning.

The second level of play (regular season), adds fielding to the mix. It matters where you place your fielders on the playmat, and where you decide the outfield fences are.

Once you've mastered the Regular Season, you move on to the third level of play (playoffs). The main difference at this level are that players can have cold streaks as well as hot streaks, so the dial can be clicked either way. Pitchers lose stats after pitching their maximum number of innings, and other more advanced plays are possible (including bunting, double-plays, base-stealing, and intentional walks).

The final level of play (championships) incorporates all the rules so far and adds in team creation rules, including counting player point values.

There's a lot of potential for house rules, and this game appears to have enough flexibility to embrace any number of situations. The playmat is small enough to fit on a coffee table, unlike the Heroclix maps. While it's not absolutely perfect, it's definitely one of the best baseball simulations I've seen, and the collectability might just put it over the edge into something big. We'll have to see, but if I had to guess, I'd say this will definitely be the next big thing in sports collecting and might have legs enough to last a few seasons more than the last big thing.

Now I've got to concentrate on getting those remaining 9 Mariners clix (Jamie Moyer came in one of the Starter Sets).