**WARNING**: A ridiculously long post ahead. I’m going heavy on the reminiscing in this post.
Anyone play one of these simulations?
Boy, did I. And how! Tabletop sports games were my gateway into the whole wide world of gaming, but before I get into the football games I’ve played, I'll answer this question first...
(or if there’s another tabletop sport you’d like to discuss, go for it)?
My opinion, of course, but when it comes to tabletop sports games one sport in particular lends itself to this style of play far more than any other---Baseball.
And my first tabletop sports game was the granddaddy of them all,
APBA Baseball. When I was around 11 years old I began seeing ads for this game in baseball/sporting magazines, and it looked good, interesting-as-heck, so a couple of years later I ordered the current set. The game lived up to the hype I’d heard top to bottom, start to finish, pillar to post. It’s fantastic. Thoroughly enjoyed the game, and played hundreds of games of APBA Baseball. Me and my friends and brothers played it until the box fell apart. It also plays extremely well as a solo game. You won’t lose any bit of gameplay playing it solo.
I got my first set in the summer of '81, and it had all the players' cards for all the teams of the 1980 baseball season. Gameplay involves rolling two dice, one red (the ten’s digit) and one white (the one’s digit) so a red 3 and white 5 is “35” not “8.” You then refer to the batter’s card and check the result on a chart. This result may also be influenced by the grade of the pitcher. That's it. One roll and you get the result of the batter's at-bat and you move on. It takes five seconds.
I replayed the entire 1980 Atlanta Braves season, kept stats for hitting, pitching, all of it. The game was realistic, statistically accurate, it utilized a nice, simple system, and what’s more one game could be played in 25-30 minutes with about 5 minutes of setup. The game is FUN, FUN, FUN, and it keeps being fun after 300+ games!
At that time, APBA was only available through mail order. Commonplace in a lot of stores was
Strat-O-Matic Baseball, which was the second TT baseball game I played. In this game, you roll three dice, which tell you to read the result of the play off the batter's card or the pitcher's card.
SOM was published after APBA (which I think was first published in the early 50s) and it improved on some things, could be played in the same amount of time, and is a very good game in its own right. It has its legions of devotees (like APBA) that hold conventions and tournaments around the country, and while certainly a game I’d recommend, I give the nod to APBA here based on the variety of outcomes a given play/game can produce.
In APBA, you can have rain outs, injuries, players ejected for disputing balls/strikes or disputing a call at one of the bases, pickoffs, the rare catcher’s balk. If it happens in a real game, it can happen here with the same frequency. At times, the charts you read to determine the result of a play read like a novel. It’s just an amazing game.
In both APBA and SOM cards have been produced for past years, and you can play teams from different eras against one another. You can play the 1927 Yankees (considered the best team ever with Ruth, Gehrig, and crew) against last year’s World Series winners, the S.F. Giants, in a kind of fantasy matchup.
If you’re any kind of baseball fan at all, do yourself a favor and look into this game.
I’d rate APBA Baseball a
9.5/10 and Strat-O-Matic BB a
9/10. Both are great, you can’t go wrong with either one, I just like APBA slightly more because of its variety of outcomes.
These two games are not only the best baseball games I have, but the best tabletop sports game across all sports that I own or have ever played. It’s well supported, new cards are produced each year, and with a little looking you can find players everywhere, get in tournaments if you choose, and both games and companies are still going strong after 60+ years on the market.
Should I try to get into this, or am I wasting my time? What game would you recommend?
Now onto football...Football is by far my favorite sport to watch on TV. I played baseball in Little League and High School, am a certified baseball nut, but I love watching football more than baseball.
My first taste of tabletop football game was, naturally, the
APBA Football game. I was hoping the same joy, enthusiasm I had for their BB game would be duplicated playing their FB game.
It wasn’t.
While the game is statistically accurate and the results of a game play-out realistically, the drawback of APBA football, as well as most other tabletop FB games I’ve played that strive for realism, is the length of one game. It takes 3.5 to 4 hours to play one FB game. That’s longer than a real football game.
The gameplay here is repetitive, confusing, tedious (you’re constantly board and chart flipping) and eventually it all becomes boring and a big PAIN. It’s NO FUN. This is the consistent complaint I have with all of the football board games I have. Somehow, they just aren’t FUN. This is the greatest sport on the planet. How can this be?
I had the 1984 season (49ers over the Dolphins in the SB), but after about three or four games I boxed it up, put it away, and haven’t played it again in 30 years. I understand APBA has since made an introductory version of their FB game, cutting down on the complexity (and I hope length) of their original version. I haven’t played it, but it might be worth looking into if, in fact, it’s play time has been reduced.
You may be thinking....wait a sec. Don’t you play RPGs? You don’t like game length?? My answer is that’s apples and oranges. These are two different gaming systems, different methods that produce a different experience. I have no problem with a 4-5 hour RPG. Sports games are not as versatile, as open, as an RPG. No table sport game can be over two hours in length, IMO, and hope to keep a large audience.
Next, I went on to
Strat-O-Matic Football, hoping once again, the producers of a great baseball game could produce a great football game. Their game is decent, perhaps passable, but barely so. I questioned some of their player rankings and, what seems to me, a paltry set of outcomes. What SOM gets right is the number of cards per team--16. Key player positions have their own card, like Roger Staubach and Tony Dorsett, while O and D linemen are all on one card, kickers and all special teams (punt, kickoff returners, etc.) on one card, and a team defense on one card. With APBA every football player has a card---linemen, punters, secondary guys, and all are ranked in Passing, Kicking, and Rushing. Why? This just isn’t necessary.
In the SOM game you roll three dice, which direct you to the result of the play on either the individual player's card, or the defending team's defense card. It produces realistic results, and the basic game can be played right at one hour--excellent. Their advanced version, which is included in the rules, will take about two hours.
I picked up
Avalon Hill’s Statis-Pro Football game free of charge at a garage sale about ten years ago. An unused, unopened box. I got it home and found the 1980 season cards inside. Great! The Falcons won the NFC West in 1980 with a 12-4 record. I was ecstatic.
Then I realized they had player cards for every single player that played even one snap during the season, and a deck of Fast Action Cards (FAC) that drive the action. No dice are rolled in this game. You shuffle the cards and flip over a FAC and depending on the call refer to the instructions on the FAC for the result of the play.
These 1,200+ player cards and FAC cards come on massive perforated sheets! You have to tear them apart yourself, separate them individually, and put them in team envelops or bind them in rubber bands that you supply. ... Yeah, nine hours later when that chore is done you’re ready to play some Statis-Pro Football.
This game has the appearance of being dead-on accurate. There’s blocking values for O-lineman, tackling values for D-linemen and linebackers, defender ratings for cornerbacks. The offensive players are also given their unique values.
Looking these cards over during the nine-hour break-apart party, I had high hopes for the game. Then, I noticed something...a lot of the player cards were strikingly similar, maybe one or two values separating them, if that.
For example, the 1980 New York Giants had the worst or next-to-worst defense in the league that year (and a 4-12 record to go with it). Surely, their D-line and O-lines can’t be that good. Yet, there’s not a lot separating their D-Line from the top offense in the league, the O-line of the Chargers.
I decided to play a game between these two teams as a test, the best offense in the Chargers (11-5 actual record) against the worst defense in the Giants.
The game also comes with solo rules, which gives the game the ability to run the defenses of both teams, and you, the player, run the offenses of both teams. So, with fair play in mind, I played this test game according to the solo rules, which appeared to me to level the playing field even further than the individual player-card ratings did.
Result: At some point in the 4th quarter I stopped playing. The score was 14-6 in favor of the Giants, the GIANTS?? And I was well over four hours of play time.
Here’s the kicker: These two teams did play a real game in 1980. The Chargers won 44-7 with the Chargers’ QB, Dan Fouts, passing for over 400 yards. In my game, he didn’t even complete 50% of his passes, and didn’t even sniff 400 yards.
Convinced the ratings were way-off, scores weren’t accurate, and each team was equal, give or take a rating point here or there, and that the solo rules made them more equal, I put the game away and haven’t played it since.
Like MFB, I played
Pizza Box Football as well, and agree with his assessment. My version didn’t come with teams or team ratings, just rules for you and a friend to play head-to-head.
Football Recommendation: I guess I’d go with
Strat-O-Matic Football, but with a rating of only
6.5/10. It’s the only one of the bunch I found compelling enough to play more than a dozen times. None of these TT FB games, however, have the legs or appeal of the baseball games.
Also note: In SOM football, in the basic game, there are no penalties. So, if that’s something you want, that realism isn’t going to be there. So, there’s that.
I know in the intervening 30 years since I last bought a tabletop football game, dozens of companies must have produced a simulated, true-to-life TT FB games, and at least one of them must be exciting, playable, and not take all-day to play. Right?