Hey, everyone. We just launched a fantastic new game on Kickstarter called Bottom of the 9th. It's a light card and dice game about baseball and bluffing. I had a chance to play with Darrell Louder, one of the designers, and I had a blast. I'm not even a huge baseball guy!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dicehateme/bottom-of-the-9th-a-dice-and-card-game-of-classic
Backed! Love the visual presentation of this one...!
Indeed. Like the rest of the DHMG stuff, it just feels comfortable, like an oft-used simile.
This stinks. Trying to do the second tier, and it keeps timing out, and the number keeps going down.
I was all meh, who wants a baseball game?
Then I read about it, looked at the PnP files, read about the solo variant and the Sentinels of the Ballpark and I'm hooked.
Spending money I don't even have for a game that this morning I didn't even want.
This is all the work of that hideous villain Mergatron!
Yeah KS is having real issues today
Kickstarter doesn't want to take my money either.
I LOVE the design of the player cards. Baseball cards! Great idea! And the Arkham Elders? Good lord did I have such a chuckle.
I'm with Skippy on this one. I'm not a huge baseball fan (don't get me started on the Phillies right now), but this one might have to be a back for me. Price is reasonable, the presentation and looks are fantastic, and I might have to swing at it.
Print and Play option is also very nice and transparent. I'll be taking advantage of it for sure.
...and I might have to swing at it.
I've played it, and let me tell you: it's a three-pointer right into the end zone!
(I know nothing about sports.)
I don't know foote, The Arkham Elders might be old enough to actually get an offer from the Phillies. (oh snap)
i really like the sentinels of the 9th strech goal..... wonder if I can talk my wife into letting me pledge. FYI though I didnt see anything about shipping on here.
I'm going to look at it, but if have no interest whatsoever in baseball and bluffing isn't my favourite.
This is how much I love you guys.
If you click to pledge on either level it will automatically add it. The US shipping is $5 at least.
This is only funny because of how painfully true it is
This bluffing seems like it would be silent bluffing, not lying to people.
I hate games where I actively have to lie to people, I'm terrible at it, and I try not to lie so it really isn't a skill I wish to develop.
This game the bluffing is largely trying to guess where the other player will be throwing the pitch.
Still not going through, but I have to stop trying and go. Will have to settle for the first tier. Oh, well.
@Silverleaf
If I had to guess, I would suspect that Viva Java would be your favorite Dice Hate Me game. Have you played it?
I haven't. I don't think I've played any of them, actually. Is there a decaf version? 
VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game has a decaf version. No joke.
I love that that's a thing.
Yep, officially got an email that the second tier is gone and it didn’t go through. Any chance for upping the number?
VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game: The Decaf Version: Lite!
Ow.
Phillies are my team.
Ow.
We can share a good cry next time I see you Arenson9 
@Pydro
I think that there probably is. I'll talk with Darrell, but I think we might be able to add some more in a week or two after PAX. Hopefully the Kickstarter nonsense will have calmed down by then.
Thanks!
is there anyway they can actually post how much they need for the stretch goals on the kickstarter?
Those will be revealed over the course of the campaign! Stay tuned for more info!
This game looks pretty fun. I've never bought a game from DHMG, but I guess that's about to change!
Also, about the bluffing comment, I get the feeling that the game is more about double-guessing your opponent rather than plain bluffing. Right? I haven't read the rules yet, but I remember Darell talked about it during an episode of "The State of Games" (can't remember wich episode though...).
The Stare Down is the "bluffing" point it seems, but that is a double blind guess.
Both select location, and batter gets bonuses the more correct their guess is.
Yes, exactly as phantaskippy stated.
Each turn starts with the Stare Down. The pitcher secretly chooses the pitch Direction & Location (High/Low and Inside/Away). The batter has the same pair of tokens and is trying to guess what the pitcher will choose. This guess will be made off of the pitcher's ACE ability, the Pitcher's Fatigue track, and their good ol' gut.
Both players then, simultaniously, reveal their tokens. For each guess the batter gets correct, they get a corresponding ability (bigger/better ability if they get both right). For each guess that was wrong, the pitcher gains a corresponding ability- similar to the batter.
Then the pitcher rolls the pitch dice (Pitch & Control) and then mitigates them based on the abilities they have and wish to use.
The batter then rolls their Swing die, and mitigates as well based on the abilities they have and wish to use.
The result of the pitch/swing is then determined.
It sounds like a lot but the above takes about 10-20 seconds.
Hope that helps!
Sadly Kickstarter still doesn't work for me. This stinks.
Okay, can someone explain to someone who has never seen a baseball match what "inside" and "away" mean? I assume from context that the terms are functionally equivalent to "left" and "right", but they can't actually mean that otherwise you'd just say "left/right", right?
Is there some special significance to the ninth inning?
Also what do those batting average numbers mean?
It may be obvious by now that I know literally nothing about baseball other than the fact that there's throwing/hitting/catching of a ball, and running, and striped shirts. And hot dogs and beer.
Inside means closer to the batter, outside means away. What direction this is changes depending on what side of the plate the vatter is standing on.
The ninth inning is the last inning. Each team gets a last chance to bat.
The average is the actual average of hitting the ball and getting on base vs getting out. Instead of a percentage, a decimal is used, and you read it as if it wasn’t a decimal. .300 is a 300 batting average, which is good.
Thanks! I'm not sure I'm much wiser, but I have no previous baseball knowledge "context" to hang the information on.
I'm basing this entirely on rounders, since I assume the two sports have to be similar as they involve throwing, hitting, and running around a shape to score points.
Pitching: Does the ball have to be potentially "hittable" when it's pitched without the batter needing to take a step to reach it? Like it has to enter an imaginary area based on where the batter/bat is? So "inside" is the batter side of that area and "away" is the non-batter side. Not left or right because the batter could be on the left or the right (presumably because they 're left or right-handed).
Innings: I assume that only one team bats in each of the previous eight innings, in turn, so an equal number of bats/pitches. Why is there a ninth, in that case?
Each inning has a top half, in which the home team pitches and the visiting team bats, and the bottom half, in which the visiting team pitches and the home team bats. A half inning is over when the fielding side records 3 outs
The ball has to be hittable without moving. It has to go over the plate the batter is next to. If it is inside, it is between the batter and the plate. If it is outside, it is past the plate on the side without the batter. It also cant be too high or too low.
Each inning has two parts: top and bottom. During each top of the inning, the away team bats, during the. bottom, the home team. It goes:
Top of first
Bottom of first
Top of second
etc.
So the ninth's only significant because it's the last? No format changes otherwise?
If the ball can't be hit with a swing
that pitch is a quite legal thing
but it's not counted a strike
the batter gets to hike
up the bases if four balls do ring.
Translation: If the batter doesn't swing at the ball, and the umpire judges that it wasn't hittable, it doesn't count as a 'strike' against the batter, and if the batter gets 4 'balls', they get to walk to first base.
Correct.
And I thought cricket was confusing! ;)
An inning can go on indefinitely, you could score any number of runs. So the bottom of the ninth is the last chance the losing team has to make up the runs to win the game.
If the winning team bats in the bottom half of the inning and they lead when the bottom of the ninth comes up they skip it, since the pitching team can't do anything to change the result of the game.
The bottom of the ninth usually has the entire crowd standing (since the home team always bats in the bottom and they are trying to come back and win) and is a very exciting time.
Inside-Outside is used instead of left-right because batters can be left or right handed, and it is more important to note if the ball is heading toward the player or away.
Pitching inside has value, as it is hard to hit a ball hard when it is closer to your hand, but you have the chance of actually hitting the batter, which gives the batter a free base.
… because they're on their way to their cars to beat the traffic out of the parking lot before the game is actually over.
Okay, it's getting clearer.
Nine innings sounds like a really long game!
Hence the hotdogs and the beer.
Yeah, but you can grab those whilst doing something entertaining instead… 
At least it doesn't last FIVE SODDING DAYS.
I was a football (soccer) fan as a kid. 90 minutes is a sensible number, with a nice break in the middle.
I tried watching American football once. It took about six years to play five minutes of game.
I find American football a lot like cricket - often when very little appears to be happening, one team has is doing something very well but you need to know the sport to see and understand it. They've wonderfully tactical at the top level, whilst relying on contests between individuals underneath
I believe if you cut out the time at the line of scrimmage, and go with just snap of the ball to whistle and cut all the time inbetween, the actual action of an American Football game is around 11 minutes, and takes about 3 hours and 11 minutes to play.
As for Baseball the average MLB game is 3 hours, and a decent bit of that is TV time. A non-televised game takes a lot less time, in college I would work the games and it was usually 90 minutes.
Americans like talking about Sports even more than we like watching or playing them, so we need big breaks in the action.
That's why they play 162 games, to make up the time.
The flipside of that is the time leading up to the snap is about working out the opposition - I was the team photographer for my local team in London (amateur) and the things that the youth team players on the sideline watching the game could pick out was incredible. They were half my age and I felt like a toddler trying to keep up with the things they were observing. Actually listening to those lads did a lot to help me appreciate the importance of formation in football (soccer)
It's all the stopping and starting I couldn't stand. Just as things were starting to get vaguely interesting after a couple of seconds of play, we had to listen to people talking about it for 5 minutes whike everyone moved around.
It just seems so weird to a soccer fan to have the game essentially "reset" so often.
Yeah, I get that - I don't know if I would have kept watching the game if it hadn't been for Bloodbowl! Well, and the Cheerleaders who were very impressive to a twelve year old boy...
I was also lucky in that a friend's dad was a fan and we had a little ball we threw around outside as kids
Time for the obligatory Simpsons' video highlighting the difference in countries perceptions of certain sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjp1Zrvn8VQ
I'm a soccer and football fan, and the difference between the posturing and bluffing strategy of Football and the flowing emergent strategy of Soccer is really interesting.
I didn't like Baseball until I got really into the history of the Samurai of Japan, and studied sword forms for a while. Baseball is really a constant set of duels, and the story of each at bat is really fascinating.
I love the study of ones opponent, and the attempt to quantify every part of the game, it is really fascinating stuff for me.
It is also a lot of fun drinking a beer and taunting the other team's left fielder while it's warm and the sun is setting behind the gorgeous skyline PNC park gives a great view of.
That's another thing that's weird to me coming from a soccer background - drinking beer at a game.
Have you tried Cricket? That has a similar duel aspect to baseball (between bowler and batsman), but field placement forms a part of it too with some positions left empty to tempt particular shot attempts, with other positions occupied to capitalise on a misjudgement. That said, I don't know how much of that can be observed in the more digestible forms of the game (the 50 and 20 over versions) as they have fielding restrictions for a certain number of overs
You can go crazily stats nerd with batsmen vs certain types of delivery too!
EDIT: There is a book called "Inverting the Pyramid" that was a fascinating read, giving the history of the tactical eveolution of soccer from 2-3-5 to 5-3-2 (and beyond)
Just wanted to second that Inventing the Pyramid is a fantastic read
My father grew up in India and played Cricket, he played beer league softball in America and used to crush anything that was too low.
My only first hand Cricket came in Chicago, the park near us had wickets and I would go watch some of the teams. Have the rules down pretty well, and the Bowling is far more interesting than pitching in Baseball.
But dang, a 3 hour Baseball game pushes my ability to spectate.
I played in an intermural whiffle ball league (college), a couple years ago, and all the Indian guys held the bat like they were playing cricket. Whiffle ball is baseball where the ball is designed to fly really slowly, and makes a whistling sound as it flies. It is a sport for kids usually, which is why we could play it without signing anything and we played it indoors
I played little league. I was so good my batting average was 0.000 with about 25 walks and 4 hit by pitch the last year I played :D
Sounds like the pitchers you were against were good too
ITS FUNDED!!!!!!!!!!!! Stretch goals time
I got a chance to play the game with Darrell & co. at PAX East, and it's a ton of fun. Especially since I took down two of Paul's brothers in a row with my ace pitchers =) the last game went to bases loaded, 2 outs, full count!
I need to get better at the pitchers. I got beat by a damn Australian twice in a row as the pitcher and he had Silverleaf-like knowledge of baseball (read: didn't know a thing about it before playing the game)
I find the fatigue track a really smart way to manage pitchers being able to go to their best pitch very often. I've really been enjoying the PnP, can't wait to see more characters for it
I am unnecessarily pleased to be a reference point on the scale of ignorance.
You make any scale better
I am now backing on Kickstarter
Peter's total knowledge of baseball was "it's a worse cricket."
He wasn't even correct! ;)
Dem's fightin' words!
On a serious note, are any of the DHMG prodcuts being developed by you guys for IoS/Android/Steam?
Nothing to say publicly at this time =)
looks like they just got up to the sentinels of the ninth. hopefully once they announce this strech goal I can see if I can get the money together. Sentinels in baseball. yay.
The game is well worth the 20 bucks even without Sentinels. Its too solid a game.
I haven't played it yet, but I have to pre-emptively agree with this. It does look like a fun, solid game that I'm excited about playing. It also already includes at least one expansion for Kickstarter backers. I'm really hoping they make the Sentinels stretch goal, but I do think it'll be a good game regardless.
I have my print and play pretty much ready to go, so I'm hoping to try it out soon.
That was a great update. Go Clara!
Guise took over @dicehateme for about an hour or so. Posted a pic of Clara and some scarfs he might buy.
Don't forget about all the puns!
There were plenty. Guise should take over Twitter accounts more often.