Club Manager Board Game – Crowdfunding Preview – Webstar Games

Webstar Games are a design company that are all about taking the beautiful game of football (soccer) and moving it from well kept grass to pressed and printed trees. They’re obsessed as a typical football fan, probably the type of people who when buying a game for their PS5 are happy as long as it has ‘FIFA’ in the title. There’s a well used primary coloured scarf near the front door, and an annual season ticket on the Christmas list for Santa. So far their catalogue and design portfolio has included any kind of game you want, as long as it is something to do with kicking a ball about a park. We’ve already been treated with “Counter Attack” and “Race for the Title”, and in a surprise to no one, this time we’re setting our sights on the game of club management, and I hope you’ve brought the oranges.

Football has never been a subject that finds itself particularly represented within the board game space which is something that has always surprised me. I don’t know if it is down to the immediacy of the action, the quick pace of battling between the teams and the fact that the advantage can change so quickly. So when you take some thing like that on, you need to have a solid representation to make it work with respect for the game. Club Manager for the most part treats the the game of football like a structure arena of combat. Before you wonder how that comparison could even work, let me explain where the comparison comes from.

Club Manager breaks itself down into three main stages, preparation, the main event and finally the clean up. Where each of the stages grows in terms of your competency in the job of manager and the facilities, skills and players available to you. It follows the familiar beats of a role playing game, sandwiched around a main event battle. The first stage of the game is about preparation for the match ahead, as well as building on your overall managerial resources for the rest of the season. It takes the form of a worker placement, where you place up to three workers to activate departments. Marketing gives you money, Scouting is about spying on your future opponent. Tactical work gives you action cards to play during the match, Physio allows you to deal with player injuries. Board Meeting gives you a challenge that can net you a decent bonus for the club. There’s Agents to get new players, Training for team, Youth scouting and finally Facilities Management, where you can improve how the different departments effect the overall game.

There’s a huge amount of choice, and it may seem a bit daunting, but the main aim is to grow and improve all the departments and players over a period of time. You’re meant to be playing from week to week and season to season, and slowly build your team to the point where they have the potential to win the majority of matches that they are playing in.

I’m most impressed by how the matches play out. Its fairly tricky to explain. You have a board with a three by five grid and a space at the bottom for your goalkeeper. You’ll place your remaining ten player cards on your grid in the fifteen spaces, and then through a series of ten rounds, you’ll be comparing the scores for various rows and columns with the winner drawing a Chance card. Chance cards are shots on goal, and you’ll score or have the attempt saved, or even suffer a counter attack. Once all ten rounds are played, the winning team will take the appropriate points and then you’ll move to post match actions, including rolling a dice to see if any injuries or suspensions need to be taken care of. You’ll count you taking and adjust team moral and prepare yourself for the following week, the next match and eventually the end of the season. Championship matches follow, players up their skills, others retire and move on.

Club Manager ties itself together fairly well, and gives the option to be playing the game on either as a solo concern or regular group of players, with the chance for players to be facing off against each other in real time matches. I have not spoken about design or presentation, but it follows with the same design style of the previous Webstar Games, with strong clear graphic design that shies away from illustrations you would expect in a Panini football album. It makes it very easy to tell the state of the board at a glance and almost pays a homage to the graphical simplicity you would expect from The Football Manager computer game classic. With so much going on, and with the sizes of the player boards, you might need to make sure you break out the big table as even with two players, there’s a lot of space required once all of the various cards are laid out. This however is a prototype copy, so there are the chance that the overall size may reduce.

Club Manager sits strongly in the football genre, offering fans a realistic slice of team management, that while seems to have a decent number of moving parts never seems to over complicate or overwhelm. I’m genuinely impressed with the resolution of the match mechanic, that at times will have you gasping and sighing like you’re watching a close match on the television. There’s the obvious lack of official licensed clubs, which is entirely expected.

Like other management simulations, as the capabilities of the team and your resources grow, you are always seeing some kind of gradual progress, even if it might not be in the desired direction. The biggest hurdle to the game, as with all campaign games, is whether you can find a number of committed likeminded friends to join you in the journey. That being said, Club Manager has a solo mode included that has been considered since the start of the development as opposed to being a tacked on addition to placate a stetch goal level. Its the kind of game you spend a couple of hours each week to play through, watching your team working towards the glory, and if you listen closely enough, you’ll potentially hear them chant your name, you glorious cardboard manager you.

Check out the campaign HERE