Card Sets: The Player Cards and Brenda Dean

As you can see, the cards look pretty good. Brenda Dean/Pete Maravich has been added, and is surrounded by her teammates at last.

If you've never played the game, I'll point out what makes Dean so special.

The first fact is her field goal rating of 43. In a base-eight system (11-18, then 21-28, up to 81-88), her 11-43 rating makes her the one of the best field goal shooters on the team. There are only a few players that have a better rating than she does, and each of those players is handicapped in a particular way.

The second fact is that her line in "secondary" is blank. "Secondary" was created in the game to account for the fact that there are some basketball players who have great field goal accuracy (look at Immaculata Suarez's amazing 62 field goal rating), but don't take a lot of shots in real life.

In the game, there is an "ACTION" phase and (up to) two "ADVANCE" phases. The "ACTION" phase puts the ball in someone's hands. The "ADVANCE" phase moves the ball - up to twice, after which whoever is holding the ball must shoot it. Players can shoot any time they want, they just flip over the next number and see if it falls in the field goal range.

However, if the player decides to shoot directly off the ACTION phase - the player gets the ball and immediately decides to shoot - the "secondary" rating must be used and not the "field goal" rating. This provides a disincentive for most players to shoot immediately vs. handing off the ball to someone else. When getting the ball through an "ADVANCE", a player can shoot.

Result? Immaculata Suarez is dynamite only if someone sets up a shot for her. But Brenda Dean, since she has no "secondary" rating scores just as well off the "ACTION" phase as she does off the "ADVANCE" phase.

(Perversely, LaToya Lloyd scores much better when she creates her own shot than when someone else creates it for her. I wonder what's up with that?)

Now, note the 31 in parenthesis. This is Dean's 3-point rating. If she decides to shoot from behind the arc, her range is cut down to 11-31. Other players have better 3-point ratings than Dean does, but it's the (+) that's important.

Dean can shoot five 3-pointers a game (actually, she can shoot 13 if she wants to - the cardmaking machine doesn't account for Maravich-like superproduction). Other players have "iii" or "**" or nothing next to their number in parenthesis - they can only attempt one, two, three or four 3-point shots per game.

Dean's rebound rate of 25 is exceeded by only two other players. When determining who gets a rebound, the card might read "High at F1". Whichever player has the higher rebound rating at the Forward (#1) position gets the rebound. So Dean has a good chance of getting rebounds.

Stamina: This is the monster advantage. Dean's stamina is a ludicrous 53 (the next highest is Moss's 18). What keeps a player from just keeping his starters in the game perpetually? Stamina. Players that run out of stamina only shoot with the secondary rating and their defense rating goes to "+5" - they add five points to the shooting accuracy of their defenders.

Stamina gets used up with each field goal attempt, each rebound and each foul. Dean's superhuman 53 in stamina means that she could stay in for the entire game without rest under optimal conditions.

Also of note: Dean's foul drawing rating of 43. Once again, ridiculously high. There is a high chance than anyone defending Dean will be tempted into fouling her to stop her. And when starters are in foul trouble, the scrubs have to come off the bench - and scrubs generally have high defense ratings.

Dean's defense rating is +1: she's not a great defender. No one ever recruited/drafted Maravich for his defensive skills, and the same goes for Dean. "Zero" is average, and the range goes from -5 (an All-Star defender) to +5 (all offense). These imaginary UTEP miners aren't much of a defensive team - the starters have the highest stamina, and most of their ratings are positive numbers.

So what does that final card mean? The one with the nice UTEP Miners picture on it? More later.