The first impression on opening this box is - wow - there is a lot going on here. Piles of pretend money, a playing board that looks like a paint supplier's colour chart, and several brightly coloured dice. The only date reference that I can find for this is 1987, and that seems a reasonable match for the picture of his fizzog front and centre on the box lid. The business credits are Birmingham Games Ltd and Gremlin Board Games Ltd. The former, according to company records, came into existence in 1986 and entered compulsory liquidation with no filing of accounts in 1988, so not the happiest of backstories there. I can't find anything at all about the latter.
As usual, there are copies of this game available in the usual places, for optimistic prices.
However, for anyone thinking of parting with some of their disposable income for one of these, let me tell you one thing. There is not a shred of skill or judgement required. Everything depends on the rolls of the dice and the random shuffling of the pile of incident cards. From a game mechanics point of view, it is snakes and ladders in disguise.
What makes it slightly different from some of the other games reviewed in this series is that you are not building a squad and/or managing a team. In this one, you are in it for yourself and the objective is to become Footballer of the Year. The results of the games that you "play" in serve only to raise your individual status. So in this respect, the game is like nothing else in what was quite a crowded market.
So, you start as a lowly Division 4 player (now there's a bit of nostalgia) and work your way up. A bunch of dice decide what the scores were (and whether your team progresses up the divisions) and how you played personally. Every so often a different group of dice decide the results of cup games. I've included images of the rule book at the end of this post for readers needing the detail.
This dice roll, for example, would be a bad news day for me ...
In the home fixture against these opponents (the green dice), my team lost 2-3. We only managed a 1-1 draw in the away game (yellow dice) and my personal performance (white die) was the lowest of the low.
I've read the rules leaflet several times and for the life of me I cannot see where the money comes in to deciding the outcome of the game. It has made me wonder whether the instruction book in my secondhand copy of this game is complete.
Anyway, here are some more images to give you a feel for the experience, and there are links to all of the posts in this particular nostalgic series further down the page.
Premier Table Soccer (TAF 424)
Images of instruction leaflet ...
Another top review, not convinced I’ll be rushing out to get a copy though! I suspect that our current crop of youngsters, in this digital age of so much choice would be amazed that this would have even been a fun thing to play. Maybe competition to produce a ‘best seller’ was too high and the fact that the manufacturers of this game only lasted a year possibly proves that. However over the years board games designers have come up with some real classics. A number of these have held the testament of time and are still very much enjoyed today by my digital teen grandchildren. Happy days!
ReplyDelete