Front Office Football: The Card Game

In Front Office Football: The Card Game, two coaches assemble "playbooks" consisting of offensive and defensive plays, then play an abridged game of professional football while choosing plays, rolling the dice and determining the results.

This game focuses on the interaction between two coaches, unlike the computer version, which was originally created in 1998 and has evolved through several versions.

In the card game, each team has a set of player cards with specific strengths and weaknesses. Along with your play calls, this helps determine the results of plays, and, ultimately, the winner of the game. It's assumed coaches (you and your friends) have a basic understanding of the rules of football. This is a game for those who genuinely enjoy football strategy and don't mind a relaxing evening at the card table.

While most of the cards are in the basic sets, each team has twelve specific plays (nine on offense, three on defense) that emphasize its strengths and tendencies. This will give your games the flavor of coaching a specific team without upsetting competitive balance.

During the setup phase of the game, coaches choose a team and take a set of basic offensive and defensive play cards, along with a set of twelve team-specific play cards. Using these cards, you create offensive and defensive playbooks. These are the plays you will call during the game.

Once you've played a few games, you'll find a lot of the fun comes from constructing your playbooks before you sit down and play another coach. You'll find yourself looking through plays to determine how, specifically, you can attack weaknesses in your next opponent.

When the game begins, you draw hands from your playbooks, and call offensive and defensive plays from what's in your hand. Don't worry. If you don't have anything in your hand you want to play, you can call a time out, reshuffle your playbook, and draw a new hand. You have eight offensive plays and six defensive plays in your hand at any given time.

Each play begins when the offensive coach puts a card face-down in front of him. The card back indicates the personnel on offense. The defensive coach makes his play call. The cards are then revealed and the players roll dice and access the cards and the main game charts to determine the result of the play.

The game charts (one for runs, one for passes) are the heart of the game, containing the results of tens of millions of plays simulated through the computer game (sold separately by Solecismic Software).

I've decided to sell this through GameCrafter without any profit going to me (well, 14 cents go to me, because it has to be something with a .99 on it). I enjoyed creating this game, and I think it's well constructed. But it's simply too expensive to produce as it stands now.