More APBA Soccer

Patrick and I played two games of APBA Soccer this weekend. Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur tied 1-1 on Friday. On Saturday, his English national team defeated my Yanks 3-0. I feel as though I've played it enough to have some preliminary thoughts. I posted them at BoardGameGeek in the APBA Soccer forums (and I'll repeat them here).

1. The components are normal (post-1990) APBA standards. The cards are two-color and solid stock. The print is a little small for my middle-aged eyes, but certainly acceptable. Ditto with the charts (which are essentially an appendix in the rulebook). I scanned the charts, enlarged them and printed them out to make it easier on me.

2. The rulebook is quite bad. It's disorganized, ugly and sometimes incomplete. I'm not a sports-game novice. (I've been playing APBA games since 1981.) And I'm not afraid to work hard to understand a rulebook. (I was playing Avalon Hill wargames back in the 1970s.) But it's really bad.

3. As mentioned elsewhere in the forums, the goal scoring numbers (for me, so far) are low. I haven't made careful measurements or crunched the numbers. But here are some back-of-the-envelope calculations using 2009-2010 Chelsea:

The game lasts 180 time periods. Of these, I'd estimate that about 120 are actual rolls on a player's card (as opposed to a throw-in, loose ball check, etc.). Each player's card has 36 possible outcomes. The number of these outcomes that translate into shots depends upon the player's abilities, the location on the field and the formations used. For example, if both squads are playing a 4-4-2, the Drogba card would have 12 shot results in Area A (closest to the net). It falls to 10 in Area B (just outside the box) and then 8 in Area C (in the corners). Continuing, it would be 6 in D, 4 in E, and 2 in F. For Essien the chances (moving from A to F) would be 8-8-7-5-4-2). For Terry, the chances would be 3-3-3-3-3-2.

Estimating the "average" location of the ball and the "average" player (and noting that the charts are weighted so that forwards are more likely to have the ball when it's in Areas A, B and C; but there is an Area X from which no one can shoot), I'd estimate that there's an average of about 4 shot chances (out of 36) on any given player roll. That translates into about 13 (combined) shots per game. Let's make it 15 to reflect the chances coming from direct kicks following fouls and corners (that are taken from a table, not the player's card).

Each player has a rating indicating the probability that the shot is on goal, and this probability is affected by the area and the assist rating of the teammate who passed it. (What constites a "pass" is one of the holes in the rulebook.) For Drogba, for example, this is likely to be a little better than 50-50. For Essien and Terry, it would be closer to one-third. For a number of players, it would be closer to 10-15%. So, we're down to about 6 (combined) on goal shots per game (that actually test the keeper).

Now, moving on to the keeper card, most keepers will stop the vast majority of shots. Peter Cech, for example will stop about 70% of these tests. That takes us down to fewer than 2 (combined) goals per game.

Our highest scoring game so far has been 1-1. I admit that most of what I'm presenting are estimates (altough my sons gave similar guesses when I asked them). I also admit that we've mostly played the better teams. I'm not only open to the possibility that these numbers are wrong, but I hope that they're wrong.

4. I really like the clutch points mechanic. Each team has a number of "clutch points" (usually between 4 and 7) that can be cashed in at various points of the game. For example, 4 points can be used to change a red card into a yellow card. Five points can be used to make a shot (almost) automatically on goal.

5. There is a lot of dice rolling and a lot of charts in this game. Each time period requires at least one roll on a card and/or chart, and then perhaps a follow-up roll. A typical two-minute block goes as follows:

The keeper kicks it in (roll dice and consult chart) to Area C, where it's picked up by (roll dice and consult chart) Player-2, who is (consult scoresheet) Lampard. Lampard takes it and (roll dice, consult card for number, consult chart with number) heads it into Area B for a loose ball. The ball is taken by (double check teams' ratings, roll dice and consult chart) West Ham's (roll dice, consult chart) player-3 who is (consult scoresheet) Behrami. Behrami (roll dice, consult card for number, take number to chart) passes it into Area D, player-2 who is (consult scoresheet) Okirie.

And, unlike some APBA games where 80% of the tables' results can be easily memorized, the soccer tables have so many possibilities that I don't see how more than about 25% could be memorized.

6. I enjoy the game's feel. Many possessions end up as dead ends, but there is a nice tension as you roll on the cards and pass the ball, trying (if only with your dice rolling) to maitain possession and work the ball in closer to the net for an opportunity.

7. The lack of individual defense ratings is a weird design decision. As mentioned elsewhere in the forums, every player listed as a forward gets a defensive rating of 1; every middie is a 2; every defender is a 3. Thus, there is no obvious disincentive to starting the best offensive player at each position. In fact, if the team is down, there isn't much disincentive to putting in forwards to play defender.

My hope is that one of the following is going on:

1) There is more going on in the players' cards than I immediately can see. Maybe offensive-minded players give the ball up more often. Maybe (when they have the ball) they're more likely to start a defense check (which often turns into a counterattack) where a defensive-minded player is more likely to create a loose ball (which can't immediatly become a counterattack).

(2) Maybe this was a temporary decision, and the whole defensive rating system will be overhauled in future card sets. APBA gave individual defensive ratings in hockey, baseball and football. Why not soccer?

Overall, I'm glad I got it. But I can't give it a 100% endorsement for soccer fans.

First try of APBA Soccer

As hoped, Dennis, Teresa and Mom bought me APBA Soccer for my birthday last week. Patrick and I were able to give it a quick try last weekend, with Patrick taking 2010 Barcelona and me taking 2010 Inter Milan. Barcelona won 1-0.

My first impressions are mixed. The good news is that it's a nice enough game. It definitely feels like you're watching a soccer game. Note, however, that I said "watching." It's probably the nature of the sport that, unlike American football, where the coach calls plays, once you set your starting 11 and pick a formation, your job is done until you feel the need to switch.

One exception, that I feel is the most creative part of the game, is the "clutch points" system. Each team starts with a certain number of clutch points. Better teams start with more, so, for example, Barcelona starts with 10. These points can be "cashed in" to alter the game. For example, a few minutes into our game, I cashed in 5 clutch points so that a red card on my center back would be "discussed by the referees" and turned into a yellow card. Patrick used 5 points for his goalie to make a great save.

Part of what makes APBA Baseball so enjoyable is its elegance. Roll on the card; look on a chart. Eighty percent of the time you'll know the result without even looking. But part of the problem with APBA Football, Hockey and Basketball was the amount of bookkeeping required. At some points the amount of calculating and re-calculating in those games makes it feel like you're doing your taxes. Every lineup change requires re-calculating various numbers. The bad news is that APBA Soccer does require a new set of calculations every time a lineup change occurs. The good news is that lineup changes are less frequent in soccer than in the other sports.

My biggest complaint about APBA Soccer is the awful rulebook. The rulebook is poor from a technical standpoint, an editing standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint. I plan to write a full review at BoardGameGeek, but the rulebook looks like it was typed -- literally, on a typewriter -- and then copied. Several parts are unclear or missing. So, while the author felt the need to explain the positions (something I'm guessing anyone who would buy the game would know), he or she didn't include such simple instructions as how to restart the game after an injury. Finally, while not everyone gets as worked up as I do about missing commas before independent clauses, there are parts of the rulebook with missing words and non-sentences.

APBA also made the decision to downsize their tables, presumably to save money. The irony is that, when I discovered APBA in the 1980s, I had a small budget and good eyes. I would have gladly made do with smaller boards in exchange for a lower price. Now I have more money but bad eyesight, and I really miss the big boards.

I'm looking forward to playing some more this weekend.

St. Louis Maroon Knights, FC

One of the amazing things about BoardGameGeek is the number of self-published board games available. It's not surprising (to me) that many serious boardgamers are wanna-be boardgame designers. It's the same as every teenager with a guitar wanting to be a rock star, every English major wanting to write the next great novel and every movie nut believing he's a director.

BoardGameGeek makes it fairly easy for amatuer designers to post their game materials and solicit feedback. I've tried out a few of them. For the most part, these games are fairly rough, but, I suppose you get what you pay for. (One exception that I discovered last year was the very-fun Delve: The Dice Game.)

A couple of weeks ago, Luke Morris (Geek handle Hamster of Fury) emailed those of us who requested it a preliminary version of his game Footy Manager. The game allows one or more players to manage the front office of a soccer (football) club. Unlike other soccer games, such as APBA Soccer or All Time Championship Soccer (another self-published game), the game doesn't focus on the play-by-play of the matches. Players spend about half their time managing the team's roster and about half playing the games. The player's team starts as the lowest-ranked team in the fourth division of a fictional soccer league. Working with a paltry amount of money (and a roster of fictional players), the player tries to win enough games to work his way into promotion. The games themselves are OK, but the real fun is the "role playing" aspect of following your fictional players through their season/careers. It reminds me of following my fictional bomber crew in the 1981 Avalon Hill game B-17: Queen of the Skies or my fictional squad in the 1983 Victory Games game Ambush.

I started a game a couple of weeks ago, but Luke made some (much-needed) changes to the injury charts (and a few other tweaks). So I started anew this afternoon. Here is a short summary of the first few weeks for the St. Louis Maroon Knights FC. (Note that Luke uses British pounds as the game's currency, but I'm using $s instead.)

The marketing deparment was able to land a $2 million sponsorship deal with Barclay's, which gave me enough seed capital to expand our stadium's capacity to 18,000. It's a long way from a Premier League stadium, as only 5,000 of the capacity is seated -- the rest is standing room.

I also hired some staff. Having learned my lesson the first time through, I hired a full medical staff to help with injuries and a youth team coach to help feed new players into the roster for next season. (This is a lot cheaper than trying to buy players off of the transfer list.) I also hired assistant managers and coaches to help with training. This left me with only $1.6 million in the bank.

Speaking of the transfer list, most of the players were far too expensive. Henrik Jacobson, a 32-year-old keeper was available for $5 million from second-divsion club Turin, and first-division club Lyon wanted $3 million for Swiss wingback Thomas Hurlimann. Then I saw that 27-year-old Korean striker Park Lee was available from third-division club Bremen for $1.5 million. Lee was much better than my top strikers, so I drained the bank account to sign him -- putting my 30-year-old striker Jimmy Swales on the transfer list cheap. (I was able to move him to fellow fourth-division club Paris for $75,000.) That left $175,000 in the bank as I headed to Kiev for the first match.

Kiev is ranked 4th (of 8) in the fourth division, so the manager decided to play a 4-5-1 formation and hope for a tie. Attacking middie Johnny Shanks put the Knights up 1-0 in the 68th minute, and Park Lee made it 2-0 in the 81st minute. Kiev scored one in injury time to make it 2-1, but it was too little too late.

The first home match will be next week against Bucharest. In the meantime, I'll need to check the injury report to see who's unavailable. Hopefully a big crowd will show up, because we need the money.

Excited about APBA Soccer

As regular readers know, I've been trying to locate an enjoyable soccer game for over a year. The boys and I had a good time last summer with The World Cup Card Game, but it's not really a simulation as much as a card game.

I played around last winter with several versions of my own soccer game. While the game was able to reproduce reasonable stats, it just wasn't fun.

Finally, last month I took All-Time Championship Soccer with me to Jamaica. The gameplay wasn't that enjoyable, and (at least for the few games I played) the results didn't strike me as all that realistic.

I'm hopeful, now that APBA may come to the rescue with its new soccer game. I've been an APBA fan since I bought their baseball game in 1981. The session report that I've read makes it sound fairly interesting. It might have a few things in common (understandably) with APBA Hockey. I bought APBA Hockey in 1994, and thought it was a slight improvement over Strat-O-Matic Hockey. My biggest complaint with both hockey games is their weak handling of line changes. Luckily, that's not an issue with soccer, so I'm hoepful that the game will be enjoyable.

I've officially told Dennis that I'd like APBA Hockey from the family for my birthday next month. In the meantime, I located the cards for the Irish National Team online. Looking at them with anticipation reminds me of the days I spent reading the brochure for APBA Baseball again and again in 1981 while waiting for it to arrive.

Gaming in Jamaica

Jamaica was beautiful, as usual. I spent most of my time enjoying the scenery and working on a paper for an economics conference. But I did get a little gaming in.

The first game is a self-published effort called All Time Championship Soccer. It's a download-for-free and print-it-yourself package. The game comes with a roster for 32 nations representing the nation's best World Cup showing. I played three games and shelved it, as the goal scoring seemed excessive. So, my search for a good soccer game continues. I still need to try The World Cup Game, and I now see that APBA has a soccer game available.

Gillian and I split two games of EcoFluxx. I still like the game, but I think Gillian still doesn't quite see the point (which is a common reaction to the Fluxx games).

The best gaming of the week was three games of Early American Chrononauts. I had a feeling that Gillian's dad, Ollie, would enjoy it, since he likes history and science fiction and has a good sense of humor. Gillian beat me in the first game while Ollie watched. In the second game, I managed to draw consecutive "Get there first" cards, and I stole two artifacts from Ollie to win the game. Ollie won the third game by snagging his three required artifacts. It was the first time I had played the game with three players, and it reminded me how much fun the game is.

Finally, I played dozens of games of cribbage on my iPhone in the airport. I think the AI is fairly weak, since I won about 80% of the games.