Big Time Soccer

[DrKarotte]

I am happy to announce "Big Time Soccer" (BTS) on BGA, another game by Andrew S. Fischer (known as asfhgwt on BGA), the inventor of Ice Cold Ice Hockey (ICIH).



BTS plays a little bit like a simplified variant of ICIH. Again you have cards which you use to move the ball (passing or dribbling), to take shots and to play defensive. The cards mechanics are almost the same (zone restriction, building an offensive sequence). While in ICIH the field consisted of just 3 zones, in BTS we have a soccer field with 18 spaces to move the ball, and the direction in which the ball can be passed or dribbled becomes important. While in ICIH all the checks were done by drawing cards, in BTS we have a 20-sided die used together with charts.

Visit the alpha games site to get access: https://boardgamearena.com/reviewer

You can play a league game or a cup game with shootout (no overtime), and you can play 1 half or a full game.

Let's kick off now to have at least some more virtual soccer...

[DrKarotte]

Just want to inform you that the game rules have been changed slightly during the development for BGA. As you perhaps know the original rules, and as you can still find the original rules online (on BGG), here are the changes:

Change 1: Clear the ball. cf. p. 4, bottom in both documents. There is now a difference when discarding or not. If you don't discard there is a very small chance to re-gain possession in the target zone (roll 1 or 2). In stoppage time you must discard as usual.

Change 2: Goal kicks, cf. p. 6/7 in the original/BGA rules. The method of "aimed goalkicks" has been changed. You can now aim a goal kick to any midfield zone, with a low chance to get control (roll 1-4). The other options are not touched; you can safely place the ball in a D2 zone or just kick it away and let the die decide where the ball lands and who gains contol.

Change 3: Non-defendable actions (this is probably the biggest change, cf. p. 8/9 in the original/BGA rules): Some cards don't show an I? or C?. These cannot be defended at all (in the original version you could play the starred defense cards on them).

[DrKarotte]

One important note on the rules, as there seems to be some misunderstanding: The "BGA rules" are to be considered as "BTS revised edition by the author", so there is no reason to not approve the game just because it does not follow the original rules. All the changes directly came from Andrew, not even being suggested by me or someone else. So that's fully official stuff.

[CraftyBird]

I've been looking forward to this. Haven't played before but still excited. Can you add "CraftyBastrd" and "Savage Lizard" to the testers?

[DrKarotte]

Invitations sent

[Hotshot Ninja]

Could you please add John747 also as a tester? Many thanks

[paulmeetsworld]

Huge fan of Ice Cold Ice Hockey, so this is big for me!!

One thought. I don't know if this is possible, but...for both this and ICIH, it would be super super helpful if, in turn-based games, instead of waiting for the opponent to play a defensive card, it could first check to see if they even have one. Turn-based is gonna take forever in this game because so many offensive cards can be defended; it would speed things up tremendously if the game would only ask you to play a defensive card if you actually have one.

[TESTDEL]

That would give a ton of useful info. For ex. If you know that someone doesn't have any defensive card, it takes away one of the risk of using hold the ball.

Or you may not want to block, even when possible, especially when you have C/I star card, but the opponent would know that you have a defensive card. And similar such things.