Full Count Goes To The Majors: The Bigs Is Live

Cup of Coffee was always the minor leagues. That was the whole idea: a Triple-A club, one pitching number, a season of churn while the phone rings and your best arm gets called up to somewhere two thousand miles away that you never get to see.

The Bigs is that somewhere. The Show. And it is live now, free for everyone who already owns Full Count.

One new idea

The Bigs runs on the exact same engine as Cup of Coffee. Same 3d6, same four stats, same table lookups. You do not relearn anything. It adds one idea, and builds everything else on top of it: in the majors, a team does not pitch with one arm.

Your single PIT rating becomes a five-man rotation. Each starter has his own number, descending from your ace down to your number five. The starter who takes the ball today sets the column you read for the whole game. So your ace start and your number five start are, mechanically, two different teams - and across a season your strength rises and falls with whoever is on the mound.

In a single game it costs you nothing. You just read a different PIT depending on who is pitching. Across a season it becomes a real discipline. You only reach your ace every fifth day. You cannot ace your way through a 162-game grind or a seven-game series, and the club you built around one great arm finds that out in October, when your three, four and five have to win their share.

The rest of the furniture

A bullpen and a closer to read when the starter gets pulled. Stealing and the sacrifice for the small-ball game. Major-league narrative tables that replace the minor-league ones, where fatigue lives now (an overworked staff turns up as a tired arm next time out, off a roll you are already making) and where the call-ups and the trade deadline fire. Rating guides so you can build a big-league club off real numbers or straight off a tier. And the league, all the way from the pennant race to the Series.

Two leagues in the box

It does not ship you a rulebook and wish you luck. It ships two leagues ready to play.

The Majors: twenty-four clubs across the Founders and Frontier Leagues, three divisions of four apiece, every club rated and run through thousands of simulated games so the contenders, the middlers and the cellar all land where they should. And the Metro League: a tighter ten-club city league, two divisions of five, no weak sisters, the kind of pennant race decided on the last weekend.

Every club has a character. The ace-led front-runners. The mashers who win 8-6 with a thin staff. The run-prevention clubs that take the close ones with their glove and their bullpen. The one-horse teams riding a single arm.

Free for owners

If you own Full Count, The Bigs is already in the pack - go and grab the update. If you do not, it is PWYW on its own here, and it needs the base game to run.

The minors made your name. The majors are where the season gets decided.

Welcome to the Show.