Superclub – Das Fußballmanager-Brettspiel

Product Information

Despite these criticisms, Eleven is a great game, and certainly the best football (soccer) game I’ve played. The theme is so well applied to the game, and the engine-building is very clear and simple in practice. There’s plenty of depth and nuance as to how you apply the various effects, but the iconography throughout is excellent, so accomplishing what you want to is down to whether your tactics work, not because you didn’t understand what a certain card or effect did. The way that injuries and card suspensions work fits perfectly, and the game is a fantastic choice for someone who craves that Football Manager experience on a table, instead of a screen. 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… As addictive as Football Manager “Football Manager introduced an addictiveness rating to their game that was both accurate and funny “Remember to eat” etc. This board game needs the same addictiveness rating. It’s that good.” — Mark

Superclub game rules Superclub game rules

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.

The rules feel fairly complete, but there are some things which are not clearly spelled out. As I mentioned earlier, there have been plenty of questions asked on BGG (over 120 at the time of this review), and many of them have been answered by the designer. At some point, it would be nice to have a collated FAQ or maybe an updated ruleset put out. The biggest rule that I kept screwing up early on is that you are not allowed to change the side of shirt showing other than purchasing a new player or when an action specifically allows it. I kept trying to put my IRL soccer knowledge into the game, when I should have just been following the rules as written – and in defense of the rules, it tells you explicitly in at least two places that you shouldn’t flip over shirts…

Eleven Football Manager Board Game - DEMO - Steam Community Eleven Football Manager Board Game - DEMO - Steam Community

If you feel your blood boiling at the very idea of such ludological injustice, Eleven isn’t for you. Personally, I’m a big fan of these two mechanisms in particular. Sport is affected by all kinds of things outside of people’s control, and it feels great on a thematic level to have the same chaos sewn into the game’s finery. There’s no denying, it can feel desperately unfair at times, but “that’s football.” Final thoughtsThe 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. Additionally, a few production decisions hurt the game, in my opinion. Moving opponents’ club shields on the league table was annoying and fiddly. The cards representing the opponents you play against didn’t match the color of the shields, so it was unnecessarily confusing when you were trying to find the correct shield to move up the table. Marcel, i don’t know if weird is the right word… but it’s just the way the game works. The AI teams are tiered into different levels of difficulty, and this gives all the human players a level field each week as they will always be playing teams of equal difficulty; this could not be said if the humans had to play each other. I’m part of a huge group of people who enjoy sport manager games on the computer. I’ve bought countless versions of Football Manager, and I shudder to think how many hours of my life were spent searching for wunderkinder from unknown leagues around the world. Eleven takes a similar approach to the Football Manager games, but with the key difference that there’s no choice to let the computer do all the boring stuff for you, like hire staff, find sponsors, and upgrade the stadium. Despite the very thin implementation of the matches, handling your squad is actually pretty cool. There are nameless youth stars you can recruit, waiting for the surprise of the player they can become with your investment. There are veteran players, who add to the team’s strength while they’re not quite ready to be put out to pasture. You have a full set of jersey numbers to assign to your players, but each player comes with their own chosen number too (the divas), so there’s often no point in hiring two number 10s for example, as only one can play. Combine all of this with the various tactic and formation cards on offer, and matchday feels more like an event, not an anti-climax at the end of the week. The Hand of God

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

A few critiques are worth mentioning. Tactics cards are crucial to winning matches. Each player starts with only one and there are not enough ways to acquire more. Some staff cards offer the ability to get more tactics cards, but if those cards don’t come out, it can be quite difficult to play an appropriate formation against another team, and you may not have the advantage of being able to play a second tactics card for its unique power. The full player layout, a nice presence, but quite the table hog 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. 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. This menu is keyboard accessible. To open a menu item's submenu, press the space bar. To close a submenu press the escape key.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.

Football Manager Board Game - Zatu Games Superclub - The Football Manager Board Game - Zatu Games

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: I don’t know whether the box art of Eleven is a knowing nod to Gareth Southgate’s waistcoat and long sleeve shirt look, but it immediately gives me nostalgia of that warm summer night watching events unfold at the Spartak Stadium in Moscow where England won their first penalty shoot-out for what feels like an eternity. Before I start explaining the game, I think it is important to start out by saying that while the game is very thematic, no previous knowledge of soccer/football is required to play or enjoy the game. The game is very much an economic game by mechanism; and knowledge of actual football tactics and strategy will likely not help you win more matches in the game. In fact, as I’ll outline later, knowledge of how football matches are played may actually be a detriment!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 Despite its length (still about 60-75 minutes for me), this is possibly my most played game since coming home from SPIEL 2022. The competitive game is fun, but it also has a really good solo version where you are faced with challenges on a scenario card. As such, I’ve played this at regular game nights, at weekend cons, and on lonely rainy nights at home by myself; and I’ve truly enjoyed it in all settings. But every team knows that to be the best in the league it takes a lot more – it takes an incredible manager. Eleven is an economic strategy game set in a world of sport.”