urVoice AAC – Text to speech with type and talk!
Medical and Utilities
App
urVoice is an easy-to-use, highly customizable, affordable text-to-speech solution. You type it -...
Ear Trainer Guru
Music and Games
App
Take your love of music to the next level with Ear Trainer Guru! Whether you play an instrument or...
Drone 2 Air Assault
Games and Stickers
App
Drone 2 Air Assault puts you in command of specialized aerial warfare gunships with 120...
Talented Pet Hollywood Story
Games and Education
App
Take your seat, pull down the screen, turn the lights off, the movie is about to start! Love movie...
Earn to Die HD Lite
Games
App
Drive your way through a zombie apocalypse! Give Earn to Die a test drive today, and see why the...
Little Panda Fireman
Education and Games
App
Experience the pride of becoming a firefighter in a child-friendly roleplaying game. Learn...
Zlatan Legends
Games
App
Zlatan Legends (the offical game of Zlatan Ibrahimović) is an exciting arcade sports game that...
Angry Birds Friends
Games
App
Compete with friends and players around the globe in 2 new Angry Birds tournaments every week! All...
Deer Hunter Classic
Games and Sports
App
Return to the wilderness in the most visually stunning hunting simulator on mobile! Travel from...
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Baseball Highlights: 2045 in Tabletop Games
Jul 6, 2019
Baseball Highlights: 2045 is a dueling card game with an interesting twist. It uses elements of card drafting, hand management, take that, and deck building to weave a satisfying experience that can be enjoyed by baseball fans and non-fans. I will not go into explaining the entire rulebook here, but I do want to touch on some items that turn this into something more than your run-of-the-mill deck builder.
DISCLAIMER: This game has quite a few mini expansions. While we do have all the expansions in our collection, we will only be reviewing the base game (though I am sure there are some promo cards in my “base game”). Should we decide to review the expansions in the future, we will add it here or link to the full review. -T
Each player begins the game with a deck of starter players belonging to a generic team (Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, etc). Each card has a combination of immediate actions, threatened base hits, pawn movement speed, and costs printed on them. By playing a card from your hand on your turn you will threaten a hit, cancel your opponent’s hit(s), and/or attempt to score your runners home. Here’s the twist. The Visitor player will play the first card and potentially threaten a hit. Play then stops and it is the Home player’s turn to try to affect the threatened hit(s) using a card from their hand. If they can cancel the hit, then the Visitor player’s plans are dashed and play returns to them to try to cancel the Home player’s now-threatened hits. This back and forth using different portions of each card is a little awkward to get used to, but after you get the hang of it, becomes a very cool little variation on the simplistic card value comparisons found in WAR.
After you play through your hand of cards and determine the mini-game winner, a phase of the game to draft “free agents” allows players to use icons on the cards to purchase stronger cards from the offer row. If the alternating play of the main game had your head spinning then deciding which of your teammates to replace with free agents will definitely cause some anxiety. But this is how your team improves. Do you get rid of the player that threatens Home Runs but provides you with zero purchasing power or do you oust him to the minors to call up Kris Correa? These are important decisions, coach!
Components. This game is basically a card duel game with player mats and tracking tokens that are completely unnecessary (but very nice). The cards are great quality! The individual player mats are a great place to organize your game cards and components. The pawns are just red, white, and blue wooden pawns. Nothing special there, but the colors are important and symbolize how fast the baserunners are. The components are great, and the insert is functional, so that’s a huge bonus for me.
Is the game good? Quite. I love the back and forth. I LOVE the baseball theme. I love the deck building aspect. I love being able to use this game as a tournament game, though I haven’t yet played it that way. Maybe soon! In any case, this is an excellent game and definitely worth taking a look at and trying for yourself. We at Purple Phoenix Games give this one an over the fence bomb of 9 / 12 (with special guest scorer Tony – I think Josh will like it, but I’m unsure if Bryan will).