Category Archives: The Beautiful Game

In Progress, Revised Revision

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I’m having so much fun playing Net Results Soccer that I’ve decided to make it my primary soccer sim, and Soccer Blast my secondary.  The top three soccer replays listed are played with Net Results, the last one played with Soccer Blast.  Final Score and The Beautiful Game are being semi-permanently shelved.

The tables now reflect the priority that I place in playing these replays.  Baseball, soccer, and auto racing are my top played games.  I haven’t touched football in almost 3 years, and have yet to start basketball or hockey.

Baseball season sims (1917, 1921, 1971) are all Ball Park Baseball, short projects are played with History Maker Baseball (D’Acquisto ’74) and Inside Pitch (Gooden ’85).

Racing sims are all Red White & Blue Racing.

Football (Broncos ’67) is split between Inside Blitz and Second Season.  The Harbaugh ’90 project is played with Second Season.

Basketball (Warriors ’67) will be played with Inside the Paint.

Hockey will be played with Inside the Crease (Leafs ’67) and Hockey Blast (2014 quarter finals).

Stay tuned!

4+ Hours

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That’s how long it took to cut and sort the Net Results Soccer Champions League card set, and I’m probably only going to use half of the teams.

I’m beginning to think that this and Soccer Blast may be my two primary soccer games that I play.

No knock on either The Beautiful Game or Final Score, I just feel individual player cards are better than a full team card, which both TBG and FS use.

And I felt game play in NR and SB was more engaging, to be honest.

I may need to play a few more matches in each game to determine which replay I really want to do.

Stay tuned!

In Progress, Revised

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I’ve cut back on projects by picking the full season replays that I plan to actually play in the next 3 months or so.  This eliminated a few long dormant items on my list, allowing me to focus on what I’m already playing, and also allows me to narrow the choices on what else to play.

I’ve also separated the ‘short’ projects (less than a season, individual pitcher seasons, playoff runs) into their own list.

And of course there’s stuff like the heavyweight boxing tournament in Title Bout II and the Facebook Friends Wrestling Federation in Face to the Mat which are more like casual pick-up games that don’t require a schedule.

I hope to finally tally a game in both hockey and basketball fairly soon.

Stay tuned!

In Progress

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I have decided that these will be the projects that I will focus on for the time being.

Stay tuned!

The Beautiful Game

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Since I focus so much on baseball and racing games, other sports sims that I’ve picked up over the years have gone ignored.

Today I decided to try a soccer sim, The Beautiful Game by Lambourne Games.

It truly is a beautiful game.

You read of a couple of ratings to form a ‘match deck’ of playing cards, then go through them using a pair of d, with certain rolls of one die representing a scoring chance, and then you go to another pile of cards to determine what’s happening on the pitch, which is resolved with another roll of 2d6.

A basic (layer 1) game with those rules resulted in a 1-1 draw between Tottenham Hotspur vs. Arsenal (2012-13).  The game took maybe 5 minutes or so.

I then tried a layer 2 game, which includes a ‘timing’ deck that specifies when a goal occurs, and a d10+d6 method to determine the goal scorer.

The second match unfolded as follows:

6′ TOT – Poldolski – own goal
15′ TOT – Bale
19′ ARS – Gervinho
HT: TOT 2-1 ARS
53′ TOT – Dembele
66′ ARS – Poldolski
90+4′ ARS – Rosicky
90+9′ TOT – Bale
FT: TOT 4-3 ARS

This took less than 10 minutes to roll.

There’s a site with lots of free seasons, so I downloaded a couple of American soccer leagues from 1967, along with the 1975 NASL season with the New York Cosmos and a rookie named Pele.

We’ll see if I ever get around to starting a soccer replay.

Stay tuned!