Then, roll a die and consult the chart in the bottom left of the match board to see the post-game effect. Generally, if you win, better things happen than if you lose, and higher numbers are always better than lower numbers. Again, if you have a red disc, you can discard it to re-roll your die The player with the highest point total wins. Ties broken in favor of the team higher in the league table. The next three days comprise the nuts and bolts of preparing your team for this weekend’s matchup. This is done through a traditional action selection system, where each player gets one main action, and can potentially trigger actions on cards in their tableau if they have the resources for it. These main actions include buying a player, selling a player, hiring staff (such as a trainer, an agent, a scout, etc.), bringing on a sponsor, building out your stadium, or using a card ability. Card abilities can also act as bonus actions as well if paid for with the “operations” resource. The central market, where you can hire staff, buy players, and bring on sponsors

Football Manager Board Game - Portal Games Eleven: Football Manager Board Game - Portal Games

Eleven is an absolute keeper for me, warts and all. (And I’m hoping for a rules patch down the road that will melt those warts away.) If you’re interested in soccer/football, you owe it to yourself to try the game. Contract a Sponsor – you can add sponsors for your shirt logo or onto the adboards in your stadium (assuming you have empty adboards). You can also have one-time media ads. Each of these varieties provides different amounts of money/increase to your money stat/or other special abilities. This is listed on each card. As with the other markets, you are only able to access the rightmost three cards in the display. In this game, you take control of a soccer club over a six week season; each week being played over the course of one of the six rounds in the game. To start out the week, you’ll spend three days (turns) taking actions to improve your club – hiring players, improving facilities, employing staff members or seeking out advertising sponsors. Finally, there’s match day. This is where your club is pitted against an NPC (non-player club) for the week’s match. Your opponent is represented by a card only giving you partial information on the side you can view throughout the week. The card will show you your opponent’s formation (These are a series of numbers that explain how the defenders, midfielders, and forwards are accounted for. ex. 4-3-3; 4-3-2-1, etc.), as well as offer up a scouting report giving you additional limited information (e.g., this team has a formidable left wing forward; this team is weak on the right side, etc.). Build Stadium Infrastructure – you can build adboards (to allow for more advertising), stands (to allow more fans) or other improvements which allow for one-time stat advances. You can also build office expansions for endgame points.Final Score: 3.5 stars – A solid football manager simulator that does a nice job of delivering on its theme. It’s best at one or two players, but too long at three and four. I would likely not, but one of my friends who played in the three-player game said he would, and he knows nothing about football. Which is another point worth mentioning: You do not need to know anything about football to enjoy this game. This was surprising to me, because the theme comes through so strongly. When we played the terms or concepts that are now ingrained within me, such as tables and scoring, tactical orientations, and buying and selling players, did not trip up my non-football-watching friends. Who knows, maybe getting your non-football-watching gamer friends to play this could even spark an interest in the sport.

Football Manager Board Game - The Opinionated Gamers Eleven: Football Manager Board Game - The Opinionated Gamers

Eleven is a 1-4 player economic strategy game. You will oversee a football team for one season. In that time you will be responsible for transfers, hiring staff, securing sponsorship, and basically making sure the club is managed to meet its expectations. There are also a number of starting scenarios. These are varying from overhauling an ageing squad to meeting tight deadlines in completing expansion work of the club’s stadium. No stone has been left unturned by designer Thomas Jansen. He has already flexed his football-themed board game muscles with 2017’s co-operative/solo game Club Stories. Eleven can be played multiplayer or solo. The solo mode includes six different scenarios that challenge players with different starting situations and goals for the season. In the beginning, the task is simple: You have to climb the steps of the football leagues and achieve the appropriate experience. You may have to manage the club in a crisis, and at other times you will have to rejuvenate a football team of players that are not so young anymore. You may also have to fight against time to try to complete the stadium before the deadline! Is the game perfect? No. Actually very far from it. There are a number of rules and component issues that have become apparent. I’m on the fence about trying to devise my own home brew rules for the match resolution phase; though for now, I’m happy to accept that it’s not a realistic soccer simulation, and I’m just working with the rules as the designer has written for now…

Monday is unique to the rest of the week, as it primarily focuses on front-office activities. Resources are replenished based on each club’s income, and then each manager draws an event card for their respective clubs that will prompt a board of directors vote. This involves a die roll, and depending on the makeup of your board and how they are inclined to vote, it may lead to good results or a big inconvenience that your club has to contend with for this week. Monday – Setup day: Players first get production, taking wooden markers matching the stat markers at the bottom of their director board. As you play the game, you will need to be very careful with the iconography. A full colored circle with the resource icon within it means an increase to your statistic while the resource icon alone means the actual resource (wooden disc). The day is finished by having a board meeting. Each player is given an event card at random. There are three options on the card (denoted by yellow, blue or red areas on the card). The player rolls a d6 and then looks at the charts on the side of his director cards. The votes are tallied, and whichever color has the most votes is what happens. If you don’t like the result, you can spend one of your red discs to re-roll the die. This can be done as long as you have red tokens to spend. Apply the results of your event card as directed.

Superclub - The football manager board game

The gameplay of Eleven takes place over 6 Weeks, and each day marks a different phase of the game. On Monday, you acquire Resources for your Club and draw a Board Meeting card, facing the tasks assigned to it. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are filled with many responsibilities: transfers of players, hiring staff, expansion of the stadium, etc. Friday is the decisive day – the day of the Match. This is when you’ll manage your Tactics cards and Player abilities to win the game. The phases of Monday and Friday are resolved simultaneously, but Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday you will play in turns with other players. At the end of January, Portal Games announced their publishing plan for 2021. The football fanatic in me was drawn to one game in particular: Eleven: Football Manager Board Game. Eleven surprised me. The idea of a sport in board game form has never really appealed to me, especially something as prone to chaos, and not stat-driven as football (or soccer, if you’re across the Atlantic). Eleven has shown me that it is possible to make a good game based around a sport, as long as it doesn’t try to directly mimic the sport itself, which Eleven doesn’t. The matches, for example, only make up a small part of the game.Once six weeks have transpired, you’ll add up points for various staff members (a little set-collection element wedged in there, just for fun), your club’s final position on the league table, and any points gained from stadium improvements, and the highest score wins the game. In a solo game, Eleven provides a nice batch of narrative scenarios where your club’s goals for victory may differ, and your success is rated against a scoring spectrum, but the gist is roughly the same. Your central player board, which shows your weekly income & costs, staff, and board of directors Game Experience: