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What are the best SPORTS board games?

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29 Aug 2008 18:12 - 29 Aug 2008 18:12 #10795 by Lagduf
Right now i've got Battleball, Blood Bowl, and I have a Subbuteo set (don't have a table big enough for this one).

I recently learned of this solitaire boxing game:

Friday Night Fights

It sounds like a lot of fun and for only $10 dollars you get the game and they email you the .pdf of the rules. The game is actually really just a rule set and some information sheets for keeping track of player stats, etc.

It's mostly a solitaire affair, but you can play it two-player too.

I think i'll be getting this sometime, because at $10 I can't pass it up. They also have some 28mm ("heroic" scale) miniatures to go along with the game. It's like $5 for two figures or 4 for $9. Obviously the minis serve no purpose, but they're fun and I like painting the bastards.
Last edit: 29 Aug 2008 18:12 by Lagduf.

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29 Aug 2008 23:51 #10806 by Dogmatix
I played a lot of stats-games back in highschool and college, so I have a bias towards them, but wouldn't dream of introducing the wife to them as she'd be bored to death by the 3rd inning.

Barnes' game sounds interesting, so I may have to hunt one of those down. For family fun gaming, I prefer racing games. Win, Place, Show is an old fave, as is Speed Circuit. I actually like Formula De [and its "Mini" comrade] as long as one plays with a 1-minute or less timer. It's a god damned racing game, so grip it-n-rip it. If you sit and start counting spaces, you've turned a race into a tedious exercise in risk management. If I wanted to game with actuaries, I'd bust out Age of Steam

Speaking of which, if anyone here has some FDe tracks they'd like to sell or trade--perhaps for Railroad Tycoon [international eng. edition unfortunately] or some AT Gamemaster classics like Broadsides, Samurai Swords, or Fortress America, do let me know...

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31 Aug 2008 02:44 - 31 Aug 2008 02:53 #10831 by KingPut
Here's the site for the link for the F:AT of Sports Games:

http://www.tabletop-sports.com/ If you look at that site you'll probably find out that there is almost as many sports games as Euros and Wargames. So this how I would pick a game.

First how many players will typically be playing this sports game. 2 or 4+. If your playing with 4 or more your best bet is a racing game. Racing games are great with big groups. Other people have mentioned a number of very good racing games. Most racing games have a lot of similarities so it's your choice whether you want to race horses, bikes or cars. Then you can decide if you want a card driven racing game or a dice driven game. Does you wife like cards or dice? Games like Win Place Show, Formula De use dice while Cleveland Detroit and Stockcar Championship use cards.

If you don't have a fun racing game in your collection I would get one. If you're mostly looking for a sports game to play with only 2 players (you and your wife) I won't recommend a racing game for that. Racing games, Slapshot and World Cup are great with a number of players but some how they fall a little short when only playing with 2 players.

For 2 players it probably comes down to Football or Baseball for most Americans. Baseball has the advantage of being very stat oriented and therefore this is one of the easiest conversions to a board game. That's why there is about 100 baseball board games. The problem with baseball board games is that there is very little decision making during a typical game. Besides setting your line up, decided when to pull a pitcher, when to steal or bunt most baseball games end up a series of about 80 dice rolls per game with only about 12 decisions to make. However, I would recommend AH's old baseball game over newer games because of the simplistic over Strat-o-matic or some newer baseball games.

Maybe it's because College Football starts this weekend and Pro football next week. But I'm recommending Football as the best two player sports board games. Most football board games let the offensive player secretly choose between a number of running and passing plays and the defense players chooses among a number of defense plays. If you've ever played Madden Football it works about the same but usually it comes down to dice roll vs. hand eye coordination.

For a football game I would probably recommend AH Paydirt (or Bowl Bound for College) to play with a wife or kid. I agree with Dogmatic about many of the sports games being very chart and stat oriented. The details add realism and complexity but also makes the games take a lot longer and tedious to play unless your hardcore sports game fan. Paydirt is simple enough for a 7 or 8 year old to play but the game still has enough realism and decision make in it and it's a lot of fun to play. About 40 people play it every year at the WBC tournament.

Football Strategy is also good if you want to play a game with less luck dice rolling and more skill. Thank you Dave for selling me a copy at WBC.

I very rarely play board game versions of these games any more the computer versions are available if you don't mind sitting next your wife or kid playing on a computer screen. The games are actually cheaper and all the stat keeping taken care of by the computer. The computer version of football or baseball will only take you 30 minutes or less to play vs. 60 minutes for the board game version. There may even be a free demo so you could try the games out with wife or kids before forking over money to game that collects dust.

For Paydirt: http://www.datadrivenfootball.com/index_files/Page605.htm

For Superstar Baseball: http://www.dombrov.com/

For any football loving Ameritrash fan, Battleball is a must in any collect. Maybe you buy a copy off of Dogmatic.
Last edit: 31 Aug 2008 02:53 by KingPut.

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02 Sep 2008 12:31 #10899 by Stonecutter
Has anyone tried Pizza Box Football? It looks fun, but I'd like an opinion from someone not named BGWS before I consider buying it.

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02 Sep 2008 12:53 #10902 by Schweig!
Stonecutter wrote:

Has anyone tried Pizza Box Football? It looks fun, but I'd like an opinion from someone not named BGWS before I consider buying it.

I can't recommend it. In the base game there are only three decisions per player to be made and they don't affect the outcome of the dice roll very much. Several expansion maybe added more flavor and options to the game, but I haven't played with these.

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02 Sep 2008 12:54 #10903 by Shellhead
I have fond childhood memories of playing Blue Line Hockey with my cousin Scott at family events. He was a serious hockey player all the way through his senior year in high school and said that Blue Line Hockey was a pretty decent simulation of hockey. I remember that it had a square grid map of a rink. There was dice-rolling for movement, penalties, and a mechanic where the goalie had to try to guess whether to block the left, right or center of the net.

At the other extreme of the hockey game spectrum (if there is such a thing) is Slapshot. It's a light cardgame, a little bit like War only with amusing artwork and a neat mechanic involving bruisers. Play with four players so you can have a tournament at the end.

And for a few weeks in 1980, my gaming group was obsessed with playing Ringside, a game originally published in Dragon #38. Ultimately, it was mostly a scissor-paper-rock kind of combat system, with some footwork added in.

In grade school, my best friend made up rules so that we could use his football sports cards to play out football games on his living room floor. Each inch of floor space translated into one yard on the field. We used six-sided dice and player stats to determine movement and other stuff, but I think that my friend was kind of making up the rules as he went.

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02 Sep 2008 13:10 #10905 by daveroswell
Schweig! wrote:

Stonecutter wrote:

Has anyone tried Pizza Box Football? It looks fun, but I'd like an opinion from someone not named BGWS before I consider buying it.

I can't recommend it. In the base game there are only three decisions per player to be made and they don't affect the outcome of the dice roll very much. Several expansion maybe added more flavor and options to the game, but I haven't played with these.


I fully agree. I love sports sims, but Pizza Box fell flat for me. Paydirt is much better, and has updateable sheets every year. I'd sell you my '06 sheets (in color) for a few bucks if you'd like to try them out. You just need a "football field" which you could make yerself.

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03 Sep 2008 09:24 #10933 by Bullwinkle
For football, I love Second Season, originally designed by Keith Avellone but now in the hands of Replay Sports Games. A good brief description of the game is here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1584889#1584889 . Even though it offers a couple fewer playcalling options, as a game, I think Second Season has a lot more depth than Paydirt (which I loved when I was a kid). It's especially good for giving a real sense of the flow of an actual game, and individual players (with the actual player names according to team and season) matter at every position, not just the skill positions. It's an excellent solo game (was actually originally designed to play solo) but it plays the same with two players.

Like Paydirt, there are team sheets for most years in the Super Bowl era, and the game comes with rules to make your own teams. On the downside, there is a lot of chart flipping (although the new game book by Replay has streamlined this process considerably).

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