How to Play The Football Game & Review

The Football game is a dice-rolling, football management sim.

Title: The Football Game

Year Published: 2017

Designer: Simon Pearson, Mark Pearson, Jo Pearson

Publisher: The London Board Games Co

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~90 mins

Set-up Time: ~5 mins

Ages: 8+

Theme: Football

Mechanisms: Dice Rolling, Hand Management

How to win: Score the most points by performing well in the league and exceeding your fans’ expectations.

Game Description

Each player takes charge of a football club and manages it through an entire football season. The winner is the Club who most exceeds the expectations of their fans.

This is a much about the football narrative as it is about winning. It captures the rivalries, the excitement, the back-page headlines, the stars, the emotion, humour and the occasional insanity and scandal of football both on and off the pitch.

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

The Football Game Round-Up

It’s not flicking, it’s not a tactical movement game, it’s actual club management, finally! 🙂

This game really focuses on what’s important. It’s not just about goals or even winning, 100,000s of footie fans, like me, expect mediocrity from their team. Here, it’s about exceeding the expectation of your fans… Perfect.

The whole game is based on Football from the players’ names to the Manager’s abilities it’s very real if you know the game.

The designers also understand it’s not just about what’s on the pitch. The media, fans and even commercial sales affect the action on the pitch and the Managers budget…

But don’t worry, this isn’t a mathematical Euro. It’s a very simple game with cards and dice like any other, but the theme is there.

Rating

Finally, a decent game about Football that feels like the real thing.

I give it 7/10

First Impressions October 2016

I played it at Essen 2016.

It’s very good and very thematic. I messed up where I was near the top of the league so I pushed, sold too many players to buy a good one, got a couple of injuries and didn’t have enough players out on my board 🙂 Then I sunk down the league quickly.

I think the whole game comes together great and will appeal to Football fans a lot, and the general simplicity will appeal to non-football fans.

Backed this on Kickstarter as soon as I got back to the hotel and I look forward to getting it next year.

The Football Game Kickstarter Unboxing

Jesta ThaRogue