CraigSca
02-24-2007, 10:31 PM
Background
Before the IBM PC became a part of most everyone's household I was a big replayer of sports on the tabletop. Occasionally I like to break out some of the old games ro relive the days before random number generators and people jumping ugly over things like "waivers AI" or "too many pancakes!" What quickly drives me away from those days of yesteryear, however, is the fact that some of these table top sports games just take so dang long to play. To play a typical football game it takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. Baseball requires about 30 minutes if you get a good rhythm going. I've always been a big fan of table top sports games that will give you a statistically accurate result and some flavor for the game, but in a nice compact timeframe.
After reading some pretty good reviews on some of the Delphi forums I frequent, I decided to purchase a pretty nifty little tabletop soccer game called "The Beautiful Game". Its intent is to give you the flavor of soccer, but in a format that allows you to complete a game in about 10 minutes. Basically, it cuts out a lot of the "aimless" back and forth of the sport and only gives you the scoring highlights. The nice thing about it is, even though it's pretty darn accurate, there is an inherent chance factor in the game that will allow for short-term upsets, but long-term accuracy. That being said, I broke out the game for my first "serious" replay - a 2005-2006 EPL round-robin tournament.
Format
The top 4 teams in the division (Chelsea, Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal) will get a bye. The bottom 16 teams will get to a final-four configuration, and that's when the bye teams will get introduced into play. We'll play and home and home series (forgive the American-isms) between each team. If the teams split, then we'll use goal differential to determine the winner. If differential is the same, then I haven't a clue and I'll probably ask you all for help :D.
If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. It's available from Owzat Games out of the UK, and costs about $40, including postage. Oh, and I forgot to mention the best thing - the formulas to create a team are quite simple and included with the game. It comes with last year's EPL, but there are already free leagues available like last years, Welsh, Scottish, Spanish, Portugese, etc. Also, they'll be coming out with a World Cup expansion pack as well.
Before the IBM PC became a part of most everyone's household I was a big replayer of sports on the tabletop. Occasionally I like to break out some of the old games ro relive the days before random number generators and people jumping ugly over things like "waivers AI" or "too many pancakes!" What quickly drives me away from those days of yesteryear, however, is the fact that some of these table top sports games just take so dang long to play. To play a typical football game it takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. Baseball requires about 30 minutes if you get a good rhythm going. I've always been a big fan of table top sports games that will give you a statistically accurate result and some flavor for the game, but in a nice compact timeframe.
After reading some pretty good reviews on some of the Delphi forums I frequent, I decided to purchase a pretty nifty little tabletop soccer game called "The Beautiful Game". Its intent is to give you the flavor of soccer, but in a format that allows you to complete a game in about 10 minutes. Basically, it cuts out a lot of the "aimless" back and forth of the sport and only gives you the scoring highlights. The nice thing about it is, even though it's pretty darn accurate, there is an inherent chance factor in the game that will allow for short-term upsets, but long-term accuracy. That being said, I broke out the game for my first "serious" replay - a 2005-2006 EPL round-robin tournament.
Format
The top 4 teams in the division (Chelsea, Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal) will get a bye. The bottom 16 teams will get to a final-four configuration, and that's when the bye teams will get introduced into play. We'll play and home and home series (forgive the American-isms) between each team. If the teams split, then we'll use goal differential to determine the winner. If differential is the same, then I haven't a clue and I'll probably ask you all for help :D.
If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask. It's available from Owzat Games out of the UK, and costs about $40, including postage. Oh, and I forgot to mention the best thing - the formulas to create a team are quite simple and included with the game. It comes with last year's EPL, but there are already free leagues available like last years, Welsh, Scottish, Spanish, Portugese, etc. Also, they'll be coming out with a World Cup expansion pack as well.