Board Game Arena

Jokerball is a violent soccer game. It involves strategy and luck.

The hexagonal board is walled off on the two left sides and the two right sides, and open on the two remaining, opposite sides. The open sides are the goals.

Men start out lined up in front of their own goals, and the ball is in in the center.

The men gradually move out and kill each other off, thereby opening holes in their defenses and making it possible for the ball to exit the board through a goal.

The purple die determines the distance a man must travel, but the player chooses his direction. The green die determines the direction the ball must travel, but the player chooses its distance.

I designed all of my previous games to be interesting mechanisms. A small percentage of them luckily turned out to have quality gameplay. Jokerball was the first game I purpose built to be fun, and I think I succeeded. You tell me.

Jokerball has a substantial skill to luck ratio. There are tactics of blocking with the ball, aligning your men at close range to set up for retaliation, and many other tactics. Herd has tactics too, but if you get a few low rolls while your opponent is getting high rolls, you can't fight that. It's devastating. Jokerball isn't so vulnerable to roll disparity.

The tactical victories add up, turn by turn. I won the two games I completed on BGA with a final majority of men. 9-3 and 5-0. This was no accident.

One guy said there's "too much luck." Not a surprise. This is what I call the "racket strings" phenomenon. You hit a wild shot and reflexively make a big show of examining your racket strings. And then lob your racket into a nearby swimming pool, narrowly missing swimmers. There must be some explanation other than your lack of skill.

You make your own luck in Jokerball.

It is interesting for sure. But maybe add the rules somewhat more to the 'how to play' section? Where does the ball go for which green die value? 1 is lower left apparantly, going clockwise for the other values. I lost a man at a certain point. How? What is the rule for that?

Looking forward to learn the game better.

I filled out the rules summary and added a direction arrows diagram to the rule sheet.

https://www.marksteeregames.com/Jokerball_rules.pdf

I added some things to Jokerball...

1. Backgammon Doubling cube option.
2. Backgammon Crawford rule.
3. Multiple games per match option.

I'm hoping more people will try it and help make sure it's bug free.

Jokerball...
https://www.marksteeregames.com/Jokerball_rules.pdf

Hi everyone. Jokerball needs more approvals to go to beta. Can anyone help with that? Thanks in advance.