Top 10 Board Games for Blaseball Fans

boardgamequest.com:

Before I get started, you did read that right.

Blaseball. Not Baseball. Blaseball

When I find a new interest, most of the time I immerse myself into the community that is attached to said interest. After playing CCGs casually in high school, I found myself going to local card shops and even regional tournaments. When I found the Indianapolis Smash Bros community, I volunteered to help run events in conjunction with training to get better at the game (spoiler, my results never showed my improvement). And when I started researching board games and playing more of the highest-ranked games, I somehow ended up on a podcast discussing my newfound love of tabletop gaming.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I and thousands of others flocked to the browser-based video game Blaseball, if you can even call it a video game. For those that are unaware, Blaseball is an online baseball simulator where 24 fictional teams play one game an hour, resulting in a full season finishing in a single week. Players of Blaseball (like me, not players on teams like Blimp Hardison of the San Fransico Lovers. We players will be called fans from this moment on) can bet on games, earn money from the performance of players, and use their in-game money to help their favorite team through elections, gifts, and ballpark renovations. The discord server is used to create lore for team favorites, strategize for each Sunday’s election, or just talk with fellow fans. The hook is that there is a horror element like when players are tragically incinerated by umpires or dealing with the ever-fickle management team.

One day I got to thinking that Blaseball fans probably play tabletop games too! So why not offer some recommendations that are off the beaten path of games?