Pennant Wars: The Best Fantasy Baseball Simulation
By Clave Jones
I’ve been playing Pennant Wars for a couple season now. Pennant Wars is a fantastic fantasy baseball simulation for players who are interested in dynasty leagues. If you’ve ever dreamed of being a General Manager of a baseball team, then you might want to give it a shot.
Even though Pennant Wars is still very new, the developer knocked the launch out of the park and into the swimming pool into Chase Field. The design, stability, layout, and overall attention to detail is top notch. I can’t emphasize this enough.
Seriously, I can’t emphasize enough just how well designed this game is.
It’s completely free to try it for a season and I named my team the Crackerjacks, of course. The game is entirely web-based, so you don’t need to download anything to play. I check my team all the time on my iPad, so mobile works well. Nolan – the developer – is also excellent at interacting with the community regarding new features. He shared that his top development priority is to further build out the mobile experience.
What’s in store for a brand new owner?
I took over for an existing team, and it was pretty easy to get in there quickly and start making some roster moves. With my Detroit Tigers level budget of $150 million imaginary faux-dollars I signed a couple of older free agents to one year deals as a stop-gap, then turned my attention to aquiring a few 21-24 year olds to build for the future.
Players are computer generated and each have 9 attributes scored on the standard 20-80 scouting scale. You want a speedy center fielder? Then he better score high on the SPD scale. You want a masher? Then he’ll need 60+ on the SLG scale. A pitcher who doesn’t walk many? Then target the CMD score.
A newly implemented feature is the ability to assign development points to these simulated minor leaguers. Development points must be used judiciously however. You can choose to give the player a some training in an area where he is weak, or you can choose to have the player develop faster, so that he might reach his potential sooner.
You get the idea.
I have to tell you, it’s a heck of a lot of fun scouting through the players to find a particular “build” of a player and to ultimately offer him a contract. Once you have your roster built, you set your lineups and let the computer simulate the games.
Nolan emailed me that when it comes to understanding how the simulations work, that “just relying on general sabermetric theory (based on real life baseball) will get you 99% of the way there”, but more on Nolan in a minute. A game is simulated every couple hours, so a full fantasy season rolls through pretty quickly and makes the game feel action-packed.
I like to see the badge reminder pop up that tells me another game has been “played”, and I’ll click through to read the highlights. This is an area of the game where you can be as casual or hard-core as you want. Pennant Wars does all the work, but you can decide how much of a micro-manager you want to be.
Pennant Wars is simple, without being simplistic. It’s easy to learn, yet hard to master.
What are the features?
There are a ton of other great things about Pennant Wars don’t I don’t have time to go in depth on, but are worth listing:
- Trade and make waiver claims
- Jockey players between the majors, Triple A, and the Low Minors
- Create your own team depth chart
- Edit pitching roles
- Offer arbitration to players
- Set dimensions of your home stadium
- Adjust your hitting and pitching approach
Any Negatives?
There are a couple of things in the game which in my opinion can be improved, but I’ll also tell you why I think that is actually the games biggest positive.
One negative is that these are computer generated players and unlike traditional 5×5 fantasy baseball, you aren’t drafting Yasiel Puig or Mike Trout to your team. My third basemen is a computer generated 30-year-old named Arthur David, not Adrian Beltre. This extra level of abstraction makes it more difficult to “root” for your players at first, and you’ll need to give yourself a little time to warm up to them. But once you do, you’ll find like I did that it’s hard to let imaginary Arthur David walk away from your team. You’ll open contract negotiations with him, just to lock him into a long term contract.
The other negative was that I had a hard time knowing if some of the changes I was making to my lineup were doing any good. Sure, the computer was simulating the games, but I wanted to know if my efforts as an arm chair general manager were tilting the odds in my team’s favor. This was an issue I reached out to the game’s developer about, and that brings me to the reason that I think some of the game’s weaknesses are a strength.
Nolan is working his butt off to make Pennant Wars be the best baseball sim out there and it shows. Not only is he very responsive to player suggestions – like mine – but he actively solicits the Pennant Wars community for feedback and supplies a development roadmap. And these aren’t empty promises, Pennant Wars is getting better and better, seemingly adding new features every week. In fact, a new help feature was added just two days ago.
Who else plays?
One final positive about Pennant Wars before this review gets much too long. The forums and community are active, positive, and fun. People like playing this game and that enthusiasm and positivity comes across from the other players. I’m not suggesting you’ll meet your best friend out of a pool of Pennant Wars players, but I am saying that you’ll have a fun and positive experience, which is sadly often lacking on the internet.
Nolan at Pennant Wars didn’t pay me a nickel to review this game. I reviewed it for two reasons, 1) I genuinely enjoy playing the game and 2) I felt like our Crackerjack readers would enjoy Pennant Wars as well. But full disclosure, although I don’t receive any payment for this review, I will get my personal gameplay extended if you sign up. This works for me because I love it, and I think it will work for you, as you are introduced to a new fantasy baseball sim that you’ll love. Win/win.
Click here for your free trial season of Pennant Wars. The new “Mays” league is filling up today, so get your name on the waiting list before it’s too late.