Club Manager

Colin Webster is best known as the designer of Counter Attack (Webstar), which we rated as top of the league of football games when we reviewed it on Board's Eye View back in 2020. Whereas that game focused on individual soccer matches, Club Manager operates on a broader stage. As in Counter Attack, you're still putting together your team, and you'll be pitting it in matches against line-ups on cards representing your various opponents, but in this game you'll have to keep a lot more balls in the air.

The premise of this 1-4 player game is that you've just been appointed as manager of a Third Division club. You'll start off with a team but you'll want to develop the players and you may well want to buy in others. You'll need, however, to decide on your priorities, including training, marketing, managing facilities and scouting. This aspect of the game uses worker placement mechanics. Training will upgrade players' abilities. Marketing adds to the team's income; essential for paying wages and buying new players during the transfer window. If you allocate workers and money to constructing a new stadium or facilities, you'll gain valuable extras; for example, a youth academy gives all new youth players a +2 ability boost. Scouting gives you an advantage to be applied in your next match fixture.

When match day comes along, you need to allocate players to their team positions. They'll each have their preferred positions, but you may find you need to field a player out of position, albeit at a cost in ability points. Totals are compared - for example, your team's left against your opponent's right, midfield against midfield, your right against opponent's left, etc) - and for most of these the totals are supplemented by rolling a 12-sided die. For each comparison, the player with the highest total draws and flips a Chance card, and it's these that have the potential to result in goals. If you draw a 'Saved?' card, for example, you roll the d12 and it results in a goal if you roll higher than your opponent's goalkeeper's ability.

In addition to players' abilities, they'll each have various characteristics to bear in mind: players with Flair are more likely to create scoring opportunities and you'll need players with Strength to defend effectively against players with Flair in the opposing team. A prima donna can boost your marketing but they will reduce team morale if they get excluded from the squad. A player may be injury prone (unable to be fielded if they fail a post-match die roll) or they may be classed as a 'butcher' (suspended for the next match if they fail a post-match die roll).

There's a lot to do, but then that's why football managers get paid the big bucks. And we haven't even mentioned yet the targets set for you by the club's board, which you can expect will mainly relate to success on the pitch. And, just as you would expect, it's match success that counts. You'll be striving for promotion to the 2nd Division and from there to the 1st Division, and from there you'll want to compete in Euro Cup games.

This is a board game for followers of the Beautiful Game and certainly for any Fantasy Football fans. And there will be many who come to Club Manager following the recent legendary success of Wrexham AFC which has stimulated the interest of folk who were previously virtually unaware of club football outside the Premier League. Tho' there's a lot going on, it's all surprisingly manageable and without players having to get bogged down in excessive book-keeping. Colin Webster's love of the game comes through, so this is a game that's dripping with flavour, and one to enjoy whether you're playing against other flesh and blood managers or solitaire against the 'AI'. Our one gripe was that the money in the game is designated in pounds rather than thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions. Given the amount of money in the modern game, we expected to see a lot more noughts on the end of those figures.

Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype of Club Manager produced ahead of the game's launch on Kickstarter. The KS campaign is now live, so click here to learn more and to back the game.

#ClubManager #CounterAttatck #soccer #footballmanager #footballmanagement #Webstar #workerplacement #economicgame #FantasyFootball