A game of brute force: A look back at NBA Showdown
To the best of my knowledge, NBA Showdown was the most unpopular of all the Wizards of the Coast Showdown variants. It had no tournament support, no national championship, and no real player base; naturally, it was the first of the quartet to die as well. The games quickness was probably its strongest selling point, as you could play a game in ten minutes. While this probably contributed to its lack of support among hardcore players, it was by far the easiest to pick up out of the box and play. The gameplay was very simple, and there was a strong strategical base here to expand upon should another year of it have made it to launch. Each player sets up his 5 player cards, draws 7 strategy cards, adds a speed/power bonus it has over the opposing player card to a dice roll, and sees how many points, rebounds, and assists his player card records in a quarter. Points are obviously points, at the end of each quarter, the team with more rebounds wins a points bonus, and assists are accrued up to 9 to be used in increasing a scoring roll at the player’s discretion.
Asides from the ease of play, the dice played way too much of a role in this game to lure in the hardcore gamer crowd. Not only are there relatively few rolls, but there is a pile-on effect when one of your players rolled a 1-2 or a 19-20 in the form of a cold or hot marker, respectively. I haven’t kept detailed stats on the few games of this I’ve been able to play, but I’d suspect that the team that won the hot-cold marker battle won the game at least 90% of the time. The other factor that played into its rejection by gamers was the very bland and uninspiring strategy cards. Much like the first MLB Showdown set, there were very few difference making strategy cards, however, unlike MLB Showdown 2000, the few strategy cards that actually did something only stood to make the best statistical team have an even bigger advantage.
I ran a numerical analysis on the cards, taking the average points, assists, and rebounds per card based on what they would roll against the strongest defensive 450-600 point player. (Download Here) The best player by this measure is Chris Webber, and Shaquille O’Neal is so far and away the best center in the game that creating the best team without him is basically impossible. The strategy cards, which were mostly a dry bed, came up with three difference-makers:
1)Rimshaker, which plays only on a player with Power 15 or higher that has a hot marker, gives the player in question two points and an ADDITIONAL hot marker.
2)Brute Force, which plays only on a player with Power 15 or higher, lets you discard three cards to DOUBLE the amount of points that player scores on his roll.
3)This Is My House, which is a defensive card that allows you to erase ALL of a players points if your player has more speed and power than the opposing player.
Now, of all the players in the game, there are only 15 that have 15 or more power, and all of them play power forward or center. Guess which two of those average the most points and have the highest single-quarter point total for Brute Force purposes? Hey, it’s our old friends Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber! Guess two players that are naturally immune to This Is My House because of having unreachable speed/power combos at their positions? Well, if you’ve been reading so far, it should not surprise you that two of them are Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber.
There is some confusion (okay, a lot of confusion) in the rule book, but if the double team rules work in a way that allow them to count for This Is My House, they don’t have a very high effect simply because of the asinine ruling that you can only double with someone “next to them” on the play mat. Centers can only be double teamed by power forwards, meaning that to double Shaq on a Shaq/Webber team, they must cede +4 to Webber’s scoring roll every quarter. Now you could double Webber with the small forward as well as the center, but thankfully, the best team in the game numerically also involves a good small forward. On that note, I might as well show the team:
Position/Name/Points/Speed-Power/Average Points-Rebounds-Assists
Center: Shaquille O’Neal 1230 7/20 40.8
Power Forward: Chris Webber 1150 12/16 42.8
Small Forward: Grant Hill 990 13/11 38.4
Shooting Guard: Desmond Mason 70 6/5 13.6
Point Guard: Jason Terry 560 14/5 27.2
In O’Neal, Webber, and Hill, you have the three horsemen of Orlando Magic disappointment. They also happen to be the best three players in the game that you can have on the court at once (Antoine Walker is better than Hill is as a power forward where his average speed bonus helps him out, but not at small forward, and since he is not as good as Webber, no reason to use him at power forward. Jerry Stackhouse is tied with Hill but costs more points.). Like in most Showdown games, there is a trend toward punting because the best players are priced at a point that makes it more productive to use them and a punt rather than have two solid players. I tried many different ways to have the best team actually include five good players rather than four, but Mason is a very fair producer for his points because there really isn’t a usable NBA Showdown player between 100-250 points, and combine that with massive downgrades to lop points off the big three, and the incremental upgrades that you do get for moving Mason up don’t mean much. The other good side of using Mason is that his poor speed and power mean you’re almost definitely going to get a chance to use Switching Strategies in your deck, which is good because it’s the only cycle card that doesn’t reduce your hand size, and your hand size is important when you’re tossing three cards to Brute Force. Just so I can say I wrote something about Jason Terry; he can get House’d, and to a lesser extent so can Hill, but they are consistent scorers more than they are volume scorers. They both top out at 9 points. If you prefer the assists (which are important given that they can alter rolls), you can use Steve Nash, but since you’re probably going to play 4 Starting The Fast Break to turn one rebound into two assists, and since Hill is a decent assist source in his own right, you’ll have plenty.
Haven’t finalized a strategy deck yet but I’ll briefly summarize other good/interesting cards:
-Aggressive Play balances a 20% chance of the opponent shooting 2 free throws with a 80% chance that you’ll get +3 on your scoring roll. This is definitely a good card to have around in the mirror matchups.
-Alleyoop, which lets any player with 15 speed or power get an additional 2 points and 1 assist. This would be much more playable if not for the discard.
-Anticipate The Pass, which lets you subtract 2 assists from your opponent if he has 6 or more. The threat of this card is more important than the effect. While the 9 assist cap basically means you want to play quickly anyway, this can force your opponent into some assists that he doesn’t want to use. There are no cards that
-Double-Foul: Your opponent chooses a player who gets to take a foul shot. If he misses, he gets a cold marker. I haven’t run all the numbers on this, but this looks like the best way to get a cold marker on an opposing player, which is important because the only actual card drawer in the game relies on this.
-Drive The Lane: Another cold marker card, it gives two free throws to the opponent and leaves you a 20% chance of hitting a cold marker on the opposing player, granted that the player you play it on has more speed than his counterpart.
-He’s Heating Up: 25% chance you get a hot marker on this player. Notice a theme yet? Outside of the three cards I mentioned up there, a lot of these cards are lottery tickets. The hot marker is worth chasing for Rimshaker/Brute Force though, and here is your best chance to get it.
-Killer Crossover: 10% chance that this player gets a hot marker AND the opposing player gets a cold marker. Very unlikely that you pull it off. Still, devastating swing if you pull it off.
-Tomahawk Dunk: Discard a card, score 2 points. Then, a 5% chance of giving EACH of your players a hot marker. Here is the ultimate lottery ticket. Pull this card off and you’re pretty much golden. Even if you don’t, you at least get the 2 points.
-Turnover: If the opposing player has any cold markers, draw 2 cards. When you think about this logically, your opponent has 20 rolls to roll a 1-2, so you’re at 10% odds for 20 times. You’re probably going to average 1-2 a game. Then you throw in the other cold marker cards, and while it’s not incredibly consistent card draw, worst case scenario is you feed it to Brute Force or Tomahawk.
I also tried a few other types of decks to see if playing to an extreme in rebounds or assists worked. The problem with both of them is that even if you build a team to chase them, you’re really not adding very many additional rebounds or assists. The best rebounding team puts Jamal Mashburn at shooting guard and Clarence Weatherspoon at small forward, and for that downgrade, you give your opponent a reason to double team Webber. The benefit is about 6.6 extra rebounds a game, or a little over 1.5 extra rebounds in a quarter. To make up the point deficit you give up by using these two, you basically need a 12 or 15 point rebound win in two quarters. Even if you play both cards that add a rebound (Boxing Out and Clearing The Glass), you normally won’t make up enough points to make the difference. It’s probably the smarter of the two extreme teams. With the assist team, when you dump 1000 points on Jason Kidd, you take them away from the really good players who can actually score. Even if you don’t take the stance that you need Antoine Walker at power forward to get more assists, its really a choice between Hill or Kidd. You’re giving up 7 PAR a game to gain 5 extra assists and lose someone to put those assists on. You have Latrell Sprewell or Penny Hardaway, both of which are slight downgrades from Terry, at SG/SF, and the other place is a scrub. It’s just not a good buy, both strategically and as far as cost-effectiveness.
One other thing that I think would’ve made this game a lot more fun: If they had allowed the bonus cards to stay in effect the entire game, it would have entirely changed the complexion of the game. There are a ton of one-shot add +2/+2 to a player cards speed/power, or +6/+6 only on defense. When you say these cards are one shot only plays, they’re not really a big deal, especially since you can only play one strat on a player per round. However, say they last the entire game, and all of the sudden you get a ton of different players who can play Rimshaker/Brute Force and more than enough defensive bonuses to make anyone a This Is My House target. This makes someone like Antwan Jamison or Tracy McGrady playable because suddenly they can become Brute Force targets with just a slight bump in power, and it makes starting someone like Penny Hardaway or Jermaine O’Neal a lot easier because even if they can’t score, you can drop a +6/+6 defense card on them and suddenly you can House the opponent at will. Another possible change that would’ve impacted the game would’ve been assists being able to be used on strategy card rolls: Tomahawk Dunk suddenly becomes a must-play, and you could easily start to imagine Kidd replacing Grant Hill just to power those strat card rolls.
Instead, we wound up with a game of brute force. Let the big men do their work, don’t worry about your punt, and watch your head at the rim. It was a very promising game, but with the current set, the game only went as far as it’s best two players. I’d like to have seen what would happen if they brought it back for another year. But with what we have to work with, it’s just another flawed card game that was relegated to the dust bin of history. If you want to check it out, the starter sets are on EBay all the time for cheap. Getting the boosters is harder, and boxes can go for $25 or more if you can find a place that sells them. It was a relatively rare game, both in terms of design speed and print run.
