Lords of Baseball Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• COMPONENTS
• SETUP
• BASEBALL TERMINOLOGY
• THE PHASES OF A SEASON
  • Spring Training
    • Bonus Card
    • NPT Phase
    • Spring Training Cards Phase
    • Spring Training Player Action Phase
    • Quality Phase
  • Regular Season
    • Regular Season Cards
    • Non-Player Teams (NPT)
    • The Schedule Cards
    • The Matchup
    • Series Variability
    • The Records Table
    • Resolution of a Matchup
    • The Next Schedule Card
    • End of the Regular Season
  • Postseason
    • The Pennant
    • Championship Series
  • Finances & VP
    • Income
    • Pay Salaries
    • Retirements
    • Scoring
      • NPT Alteration
    • Fan Adjustments
  • Hot Stove League
    • Hot Stove Event
    • Card Draw
    • Player Action Phase
      • Trade
      • Manager
      • Stadium Actions
      • Option (Executive Movement)
      • Media
    • Bonus Card Resolution
    • Moving the Year Marker
• ENDING THE GAME & VICTORY
  • Game Length and End
  • Final Year Stadium Scoring
  • Winning the Game
  • Ties
• REGULAR SEASON CARD CLARIFICATIONS
• STADIUMS
• LOANS
• CREDITS

COMPONENTS

(subject to minor changes before final production)

• Game board
• Rules
• Team mats
• Stadium mats
• 4 sets of player tokens (9 cubes and 3 discs each)
• 36 Star cubes
• 1 Year marker
• 1 Game Phase marker
• 50 Spring Training cards
• 99 Regular Season cards
• 12 Franchise cards
• 60 Hot Stove cards
• 8 Championship cards
• 17 Bonus cards
• 8 sets of Stadium tiles
• Media tokens
• 6 six-sided dice (3 black, 3 white)
• NPT Team Quality counters
• 14 Schedule cards
• Loan tokens
• 2 NPT Tracker boards
• 4 Player Aid cards
• Retirement tokens

SETUP

1. Place the board on the table.
2. Place the Year marker on turn 1 of the Year track.
3. Place the Game Phase marker on the Spring Training space.
4. Choose the league you want to play and pull only that league's Schedule cards. Shuffle them and place them facedown on the board's draw pile.
5. Place the NPT track (correct side up) for the chosen league next to the main board.
6. Shuffle the rest of the decks separately — Spring Training, Regular Season, Hot Stove, Franchise, Bonus, and Championship Series — and place each facedown by the board.
7. Each player chooses a team mat from the selected league, a stadium mat, and a matching-color set of player cubes and discs.
8. Each player takes a set of stadium tiles and sorts it into four separate stacks — Field, Press Box, Bleachers, and Concessions — each stack running level 2 on top down to level 8 on the bottom.
9. Place 3 Stars per player into the Star Player Pool.
10. Each player draws a Franchise card and sets their team mat markers accordingly: Stars, Regulars, Prospects, Front Office, Farm System, Manager, Team Quality, and starting cash. Every Star box on the mat holds its own cube — Stars are a limited, finite resource shared by all players.
11. Each player places a marker on "1" on the Fan track, "0" on the VP track, and "0" on the Win track.
12. Set the Media tokens faceup beside the board.
13. Split the NPT Quality tokens into a "year 1" stack and a "future years" stack. Place the year-1 NPT tokens facedown next to the NPT track, and the future tokens faceup beside that stack.
14. Shuffle the Retirement tokens and pile them facedown beside the board.
15. Place the Loan tokens next to the money supply.
16. Agree on how many seasons to play. For a first game, three seasons is the recommended length.

You are now ready to lead your team toward the Championship Series.

BASEBALL TERMINOLOGY

• Impact Players — the combined total of Stars and Regulars currently on a team: the players who make the difference over a full season.
• Matchup — a head-to-head series between two teams. Every team plays every other team once per Regular Season, so in an eight-team league each team has seven matchups.
• NPT (Non-Player Team) — every team plays out the regular season, whether or not an owner is present. Any team without a player owner is an NPT for that game; its Team Quality and win total come from its NPT token.
• Prospects — young minor-league players who are a team's future and can be developed into Regulars or Stars. Every five Prospects a team holds is worth 1 Victory Point, so cultivating Prospects to trade, train, or stockpile is worthwhile.
• Stadium Level — every stadium space, whether printed on the base mat or filled by an upgrade tile, carries a level from 1 to 8; higher levels are generally more powerful. Some cards care about a stadium's "single highest" level of a type, or its "combined levels" (the total of all tiles of that type).
• Year — one full game turn, covering every phase from Spring Training through the Hot Stove League. A complete game is an agreed number of Years, typically 3, 5, or 7.

THE PHASES OF A SEASON

A Year moves through its phases in the order below.

Spring Training

The first phase of a new Year, in which teams try to improve before the season starts.

Bonus Card

Before anything else happens in Spring Training, flip the top card of the Bonus deck faceup beside the board. This is the goal every team is chasing this season; the player who leads it is determined at the end of the Hot Stove League phase (see Bonus Card Resolution below).

NPT Phase

With fewer than 8 players, draw NPT Quality tokens for every team no one controls, working from the top of the column to the bottom; only assign tokens to unowned teams.

Each NPT Quality token carries two values: that team's Team Quality (TQ), and the number of regular-season games it will win this season.

In Year 1, use only the tokens marked with a START pennant. Any unused START tokens are shuffled face down into the rest of the NPT pool for later years.

Spring Training Cards Phase

Deal each player three Spring Training cards.

• A player whose Farm System sits at level 4 when this phase begins is dealt one extra card before deciding on Media support.
• A player whose Farm System sits at level 5 is dealt two extra cards before deciding on Media support.

Media support: before playing any cards, a player may spend Media tokens to draw additional Spring Training cards. Once that player has played a card, the option is gone. No one may hold more than 5 cards. (Taking the extra card is not automatically the best move.) If turn order for this decision matters to the group, the player with the most VP decides first, breaking ties with a die roll (high roll first).

Spring Training Player Action Phase

Players resolve their Spring Training cards one at a time; each card is used once, for exactly one of its five listed options.

Play proceeds from the lowest-scoring player to the highest. Ties (common on turn 1) are broken by each tied player rolling two dice, high roll going first. Groups that agree no trades are coming may let those players play out all their cards at once — there is no other interaction in this phase besides the shared Star Player Pool running dry.

Spring Training actions:

1. Upgrade — offers two choices. "No Upgrade Available" changes nothing. "Regular to Star" removes 1 Regular and adds 1 Star, drawn from the general supply (not the Star Player Pool); a Regular must be available to lose, or the option can't be taken.
2. Call-Up — offers three choices. "No Call-up Available" changes nothing. "-1 Prospect, +1 Regular" trades a Prospect for a Regular. "-1 Prospect, +1 Star" trades a Prospect for a Star drawn from the general supply. Either trade requires an available Prospect to spend.
3. Trade — a deal with a third-party "ghost" team, never with another player. The card lists one side against another; the active player picks which side to give up (gaining the other). Any Star gained this way must come out of the shared Star Player Pool — if the pool is empty, that half of the trade can't happen. A player can only give up what they actually have (e.g., no giving up a Prospect they don't have to receive a Regular).
4. Sign — pay the listed amount ($1–$4) to advance the Prospect marker the listed number of spaces, up to the mat's printed maximum of 25 Prospects; any excess from the card is lost.
5. Increase Fans — raise the Fan track by the amount shown (0–2), never past 20. Playing a "+0" is effectively discarding the card.

Quality Phase

At the end of Spring Training, each team recalculates its Team Quality (shown as a baseball icon on cards and mats) by summing:

• 1 Quality per Star player
• 1 Quality per 3 Regulars (rounded down)
• The Manager's level value
• Any Quality modifiers from the stadium

A team with, say, 11 Regulars (3 Quality — a 12th Regular would be needed for the 4th point), a level-4 Manager, and 3 Stars would total 10 TQ.

Team Quality is capped at 20; nothing can permanently push it higher, though some series-specific modifiers may temporarily exceed 20 for that series only.

Regular Season

The Regular Season is seven 22-game series. Each series pits two teams (as set by a Schedule card) against each other to determine how many of the 22 games each wins. This is resolved by playing any series cards that affect TQ, then each involved player rolling the appropriate number of six-sided dice (base one die, modified by cards or stadium upgrades) and adding the roll to TQ, then reading the gap between the two final TQ totals off the TQ Difference table (lower right of the player mat) to see how the 22 wins split. The team with the higher final TQ gets the larger win total. Wins are tracked with each team's marker on the track running around the board's outer edge.

Regular Season Cards

Each player is dealt seven Regular Season cards, one to be played per matchup. A player may spend one Media token to draw one extra card; if a turn order is wanted for this decision, use the same order rule as Spring Training's Media support. Cards are kept hidden from other players until played.

Non-Player Teams (NPT)

NPTs fill out an eight-team league without a human owner. Their Team Quality is read straight from their NPT Quality token on the NPT tracker.

The Schedule Cards

Each of the seven Schedule cards (per league) lists four matchups among the league's eight teams. Only matchups involving at least one player-controlled team need to be played; all-NPT matchups are skipped.

To begin, flip the top Schedule card faceup onto the discard pile so everyone can see it, and resolve its matchups top to bottom. Every matchup on the current card must be finished before moving to the next card.

The Matchup

Whichever matchup comes up, the involved player(s) resolve it:

• Versus an NPT: only the involved player plays a card, faceup — there's no need for secrecy.
• Versus another player: both players choose a card and place it facedown, then reveal simultaneously. Cards resolve from highest number to lowest. Either the card's primary effect or its lighter secondary option (never both) may be used.

Once the group is comfortable with the game, multiple series may be resolved at the same time if desired.

Series Variability

To model baseball's inherent unpredictability, both teams in a matchup add a die roll to their post-card TQ. If the opponent is an NPT, the active player rolls for it too — the game's two die colors let one player roll white for their own team and the other color for an NPT simultaneously.

Extra die rolls: some cards, stadium bonuses, or other effects grant extra rolls for a series, capped at 3 dice total for any one roll. These are not summed — instead, take whichever single result you prefer as your modifier. Rolling a 3 and a 6 across two dice, for instance, gives a choice of +3 or +6, not +9.

The Records Table

Once both teams have their final randomized TQ, take the difference between the higher and the lower (0 if tied) and look it up on the Records table. The pair of numbers there, separated by a hyphen, gives the higher-TQ team's win total (left) and the lower-TQ team's win total (right); add both to the season win track. For example, a final TQ of 13 versus 10 is a difference of 3, which — reading the table's row for a difference of 3 — awards 13 wins to the higher team and 9 to the lower.

Resolution of a Matchup

Once a matchup is resolved, move to the next matchup on the current Schedule card and repeat.

The Next Schedule Card

Once every matchup involving a player on the current card is done, flip the next Schedule card onto the "current schedule" pile and continue.

End of the Regular Season

Once the final Schedule card is complete, the Regular Season is over — move straight to the Postseason.

Postseason

The Pennant

A player's team wins the pennant if both are true:

1. It has at least as many wins as every NPT.
2. It has more wins than every other player.

A tie against an NPT is won automatically by the player. A tie among players is broken by each tied player adding a die roll to their TQ, highest total taking the pennant (reroll ties); no card is played for this.

Championship Series

The pennant winner draws a Championship Series card and faces that card's opponent, using an extra Regular Season card first if they have one saved.

Compare TQ values, then roll one die per game using this chart:

• Player TQ higher than the opponent's — wins the game on a roll of 3–6
• Player TQ equal to the opponent's — wins the game on a roll of 4–6
• Player TQ lower than the opponent's — wins the game on a roll of 5–6

First to 4 game wins takes the Championship Series; keep the card until the game ends, since it may matter for tiebreakers.

Any player who drew 8 Regular Season cards but didn't reach the postseason discards the rest of their hand.

Finances & VP

In this phase every player works out income, expenses, retirements, Fan changes, and Victory Points, always in the order below.

Income

Each team's income is:

• Base income: $80
• Fan income: 3 × the number under the team's Fan track marker
• Stadium income: the sum of every income value shown on the team's stadium (the base stadium alone is worth $10)

Pay Salaries

After collecting income, every player pays their team's salaries:

• Star players: the dollar figure shown in the highest-numbered occupied Star box on the mat (e.g., a team with 3 Stars pays whatever the 3rd box lists — $33 in the example on the mat)
• Every Regular: $2
• Every Prospect: $1
• Front Office, Farm System, and Manager: the cost shown on the mat for their current levels

Retirements

Draw a number of Retirement tokens equal to the player count plus 1, and lay them faceup for everyone to see.

Turn order for picking a token is:

1. Fewest wins in the season just completed picks first.
2. Ties broken by fewest total Victory Points.
3. Remaining ties broken by a die roll, high roll choosing first.

Whoever picked first must also resolve the last 2 tokens once everyone else has chosen (i.e., the team with the most wins handles the leftovers). If several players tie for the most wins, any leftover token is simply discarded unresolved.

Each drawn token forces a loss:

• A retired Star is removed from the game, not returned to the Star Player Pool.
• Lost Regulars or Prospects move that mat's tracker down one box.
• Front Office or Farm System drop one level.
• The Manager token is removed entirely and must be rehired during the Hot Stove League.

Return all resolved Retirement tokens to the pool and reshuffle.

Scoring

Scoring accumulates Year over Year on the board's VP track; every time VP are earned, move that team's VP marker forward by the amount. VP come from:

• Crossing win-track thresholds (each threshold pays out once, the first time it's passed that season):

  Wins	VP
  39 or fewer	none — and the team cannot win the game
  40	−2 VP and −3 Fans
  60	−1 VP
  66	0 VP
  77	1 VP
  84	2 VP
  90	3 VP
  95	4 VP
  99	5 VP
  102	5 VP and +$10
  105	6 VP and +$10

  Only the highest threshold reached counts — e.g., reaching 82 wins still pays only the 1 VP for crossing 77, since 84 hasn't been reached.

• Buying VP with cash (including Media tokens), spent immediately and in full. Loans may never be taken out to buy VP. Whoever currently holds the most VP buys first, ties broken by a die roll (high roll first, repeated down the line for further ties). The price rises in later years:

  • Years 1–3: $30 per VP
  • Years 4–7: $50 per VP

• Prospects on hand: 1 VP for every 5 Prospects in a team's Farm System (rounded down) — these Prospects are neither spent nor lost, just counted.

• Winning the Championship Series: 1 VP.

• Certain stadium tiles, which may pay VP every Year or only once, at game end.

NPT Alteration

If every player in the game has already out-won an NPT team's win total, remove that NPT's token from the game entirely. Return all remaining (still-active) NPT Quality tokens to the stack and reshuffle, so the NPT pool keeps getting tougher as the players improve.

Fan Adjustments

After scoring, adjust each team's Fan track marker, in this order:

1. A marker in the "Growth" zone moves up one space.
2. A marker in the "Steady" zone doesn't move.
3. A marker in the "Reduction" zone moves down two spaces.
4. Any team that reached the Championship Series moves up one space.
5. The team(s) with the fewest VP gain 1 Fan; the team(s) with the most VP lose 1 Fan.

Hot Stove League

The last phase of a Year, when players trade, upgrade stadiums, and possibly bring on scouts, executives, or a new Manager. The name is baseball slang for the off-season — the "hot stove" being the traditional gathering point for fans debating players and trades through the winter, not an actual league.

Hot Stove Event

Deal the top two cards of the Hot Stove deck to the player with the fewest VP (if tied, deal only 1 card). That player picks one of the two to resolve for everyone (discarding the other), then it takes effect — some players may be affected, others not — before card dealing continues.

Card Draw

Deal each player three Hot Stove cards.

• A player whose Front Office is at level 4 when this phase begins is dealt one extra card before deciding on Media support.
• A player whose Front Office is at level 5 is dealt two extra cards before deciding on Media support.

Media support: as in Spring Training, players may spend Media tokens for extra cards before playing any card, up to a 5-card hand limit; the same turn-order rule (from Spring Training's Media Support, above) applies if the group wants one.

Player Action Phase

Players play Hot Stove League cards one at a time, each used once for one of its five options, going from the lowest VP total to the highest. Ties break first on fewest wins last season, then on a single die roll (high to low). A player may use different cards to repeat the same action multiple times. Once everyone knows the game, this phase can be played mostly simultaneously — the only real interaction is over the shared Star Player Pool, so a player who won't be trading into that pool can finish on their own without waiting on turn order.

The actions:

Trade

Works exactly as the Spring Training Trade action described earlier.

Manager

Hire a new Manager by rolling 2d6 against this table, rerolling as many times as the card allows and keeping whichever result you prefer (you may see every roll before choosing):

• 2–3: Level 1 Manager
• 4–5: Level 2 Manager
• 6–8: Level 3 Manager
• 9–10: Level 4 Manager
• 11–12: Level 5 Manager

Move the Manager token to the level box matching the chosen roll. This option is available even with a Manager already in place, but the new hire must use one of the freshly rolled results.

Stadium Actions

The card lists a number of Stadium actions; the active player may take that many or fewer. Each individual action is either:

• Innovation — remove the top tile from any one stadium stack (Press Box, Field, Concessions, or Bleachers), taking it out of the game and exposing the next level for purchase.
• Build — buy the top tile of any stack at its listed price and place it on a legal space on the stadium mat.

Multiple actions from one card may mix Innovation and Build in any order and across different stacks. Placing a tile on the mat counts as a "build" and makes that stadium component an "upgrade" for card purposes — a stadium only counts as having, say, a Press Box upgrade once an actual Press Box tile sits on the mat, not merely because the base mat prints one. See Stadium Tile Placement Rules below for legal placement.

Option (Executive Movement)

Raise or lower the level of the Front Office or Farm System track. Raising a level costs the price shown for moving from the current level to the next.

Media

Take the number of Media tokens shown on the card from the supply and place them in the Media box on the team mat.

Bonus Card Resolution

At the end of each Year, resolve the Bonus card that was revealed at the start of Spring Training: whoever has the highest value of the stat named on the card wins the bonus VP (ties all win it), then discard the card.

The VP awarded is not fixed — it depends on the winner's VP standing at the moment of resolution:

• A team tied for (or alone in) the VP lead scores only 1 VP for winning the bonus.
• A team tied for (or alone in) last place scores 3 VP.
• Every other team scores 2 VP.

If every player is tied on VP, treat them all as being in the lead (not last). If the field splits into exactly two VP totals (say two players at 8 and three at 5), there's no middle group. Because of this, two players who tie for the same bonus can still score a different number of VP, since their overall VP standing differs.

Moving the Year Marker

If more Years remain, advance the Year marker to the next space and begin the next Year. If this was the final Year, move on to Ending the Game & Victory.

ENDING THE GAME & VICTORY

Game Length and End

As agreed during Setup, a game runs 3, 5, or 7 Years (short/medium/long). After the Hot Stove League phase of the final Year, there is one last stadium-scoring step before a winner is named.

Final Year Stadium Scoring

Each player checks their stadium and adds any VP their current tiles award.

Winning the Game

The player with the most total Victory Points wins — their tenure has outshone every other owner's, earning a place among the true Lords of Baseball.

Ties

Break a tie for the win, in order:

1. Most Championships won
2. Most Fans
3. Most cash on hand
4. Highest current Team Quality

If the tie still stands after all four checks, every tied team shares the win as a legendary rivalry.

REGULAR SEASON CARD CLARIFICATIONS

Most Regular Season cards are self-explanatory from their text and art. A few extra points:

• Temporary TQ: any TQ change described as temporary applies for that one series only. Recompute TQ after the series to confirm it's gone — permanent TQ is always the sum of a team's underlying sources, never a stat on its own.
• Forced costs: if a card requires a payment or a loss, pay or lose as much of it as possible; if a player can't afford a required payment, they must take a Loan to cover it.
• Upgrade requirement: a card requiring an "upgrade" of some type needs an actual tile of that type on the stadium mat, beyond what's printed on the base mat.
• Maximum/minimum levels: if a track is already at its cap (or floor), an action that would push it further is illegal — use the card's secondary option instead.
• TQ maximum: base TQ can never be raised past 20, though certain cards may push it above 20 temporarily; the printed mat value remains the team's true base cap.
• ST Card: an instruction to draw a Spring Training card, check its Trade option, and either execute that trade under the normal Spring Training rules or discard the card without using it.
• Series roll based on player type: if a card keys a series roll to a count of Stars or Regulars and a team has none of that type, use the card's secondary option instead.
• Innovation: pick any one stadium tile stack and remove its top tile from the game, exposing the next tile in that stack for purchase.

STADIUMS

Every player's stadium mat starts with printed base components — a Field, a Press Box, Bleachers, and Concessions — plus five empty spaces. A "space" is any one of the nine positions on the stadium grid, with the Field always occupying the center.

Every base (printed) component is treated as level 1. Every upgrade tile carries a level from 2 to 8, marked L2–L8 in its corner, which some cards reference directly.

A space showing a level value counts as that component for card purposes even without a tile physically on it — so a printed base Concessions space still produces Concessions income for cards that key off "all tiles of that type."

During the Hot Stove League, players spend Stadium actions from their cards to Innovate or Build (see Hot Stove League → Stadium Actions above). A space may be "overbuilt" according to the icons printed on the base stadium mat rather than whatever tile currently occupies it — so a Concessions/Bleachers space (bottom row) already holding a Concessions tile may still be replaced with either a Bleachers or a Concessions tile.

Each player's personal stack of stadium tiles starts sorted faceup in ascending order per type, lowest level on top and highest on the bottom. Tiles leave a stack in three ways: being purchased onto the mat, being freely removed by certain cards, or being Innovated away during the Hot Stove League.

• Field tiles help a team win games. Only one Field tile may ever be in play, and it always occupies the mat's center space.
• Press Box tiles grant Media benefits. Up to three may be in play at once, along the mat's top row.
• Bleachers tiles boost income and Fans, and go on any blue space.
• Concessions tiles boost income, and go on any red space.

Tiles taken out via Innovation or overbuilding leave the game entirely.

Stadium tile placement rules:

• Each space holds one tile at a time — a tile can be swapped out but never stacked.
• Only one Field may exist, and only in the center space; nothing else may ever go there.
• A tile can only be placed on a space whose icon matches that tile's type.
• Some spaces list more than one icon and accept a tile matching any one of them.

Most base-level tiles pay off during a specific phase — for example, the basic level-1 Concessions tile pays an extra $5 during Finances & VP.

LOANS

Loans exist only to be spent immediately — there is no separate loan-taking phase. A player may take a Loan whenever they need money for an action, but never if it would leave them with $20 or more in hand once that action is paid for.

A single Loan grants $20 and a Loan token, and costs the borrower 2 VP immediately.

Repayment: at any time, a player may repay a Loan by returning $25 to the bank; doing so returns the Loan token to stock and gains the player 1 VP.

CREDITS

Design: Bob & Max Jamelli

Development: Jeff & Carla Horger

Editing: Jennifer Jamelli

Playtesting: Cliff Ackman, Allen Beach, Bill Beckman and the Greenville Mafia, Julie Booth, William Booth, Josh Bound, Raymond Brooks, Bill Carrigan, Roland Carlson, Neal Cebulskie, Joe Chaffin, Terry Coleman, Darin & Daron of the Board Games are for Losers podcast, Dave Denton, Chris Gnech, Keith Ferguson, Jeff Finkeldey, Sean Gardner, Tim Hare, Jennifer Jamelli, Russell Johnston, Larry Loiacono, Danique Martin, William McDavid, Chiron Mergott, Theron Mergott, Fred Minard, Jesse Miller, Matt Miller, Vicki Miller, Bill Muldowney, Jeremy Osteen, Paul Owen, Chris Palermo, Matt Price, Tim Regis, Joe Roush, Ron Pignoli, Roseann Pignoli, Dan Rigotti, Kurt Runco, Victor Schwartzmiller, Rob Seabrook, Michael Seguin, Ray Smith, Peter Stein, Brian Stone, John Weber, John Wetherall, Art Whitaker, Eric Wycliffe, and many others through UNPUB.