Hits & Outs

• Designer: Ron Halliday
• Publisher: itten
• Players: 2
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Hits & Outs (ヒット＆アウト) is inspired by the strategic battle of wits between the pitcher and the batter. Reproducing baseball’s thrilling moments without having to keep track of player statistics or the results of every pitch. As the name suggests, there are no balls or strikes in this game, only hits and outs!

In each inning, players take turns at the plate and on the mound.  When pitching, keep the batter from reaching base and scoring runs by fooling them three times. Each incorrect guess is an out. The player with the most runs at the end of the game wins!  There are four markers (3 outs and a baseball = hit).  They are secretly placed at the four bases and covered up.

When batting, you get hits and can move your runners by correctly guessing the base where the pitcher has hidden the baseball. If the ball was hidden at second base and you find it, you hit a double and can place your runner on second base.  If you find the ball at home plate, you hit a home run! Your other runners move forward differently based on the number of outs in the inning. If no outs, the runners move forward as many bases as the hitter.  If there is at least one out, the runners only move forward if they are pushed by a runner behind them.

The game is played over three complete innings, and the player with the most runs wins the game. If there is a tie, play extra innings with the new modern baseball rules – that is – that the batter starts each inning with a runner on second base.  Play full innings until one player has more runs than the other

My thoughts on the game

So, this is a fairly simple guessing game – though I suppose in some settings it could be a “read my mind” game.  The pitcher hides the hit marker on one of the bases, and the batter tries to guess where it is.  The strategy here is in reading the opponent and trying to figure out what they are thinking.   

If I already have a runner on base, surely the pitcher wouldn’t put the ball on 3rd base where I’d then force the run home, right?  And definitely not place it at home plate, because then i’d hit a 2 run home run…

That’s pretty much the whole game.  There is a variant where you get a “call your shot” token to use once an inning – and if you’re right, you hit a homer regardless of where you found the hidden ball token.  OK, now that’s it.

The baseball fan in me bristles a little bit at the ghost running rules.  With no outs, everyone moves the same number of bases as the hitter.  With outs, runners only move when pushed forward.  But, this is in direct contrast with real baseball – as everyone knows, when there are two outs, the runners are always moving because there’s no downside to being tagged up.  I suppose that this may have made the rules less elegant to have three different running rules based on the number of outs, but in our games, we’ve reverted to the ghost running rules of our childhood games in the street where the fire hydrant was first base, the sewer cover was second, and the beat up green Chevelle was always third base.

Hits & Outs is a simple game of guessing where the ball is hidden, and in the spirit of the game, I’ll let you guess what my rating is.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! (Dale Y)
• I like it. (Dale Y)
• Neutral. (Dale Y) Lorna
• Not for me… (Dale Y)