Eleven: Football Manager Board Game

Product Information

Eleven surprised me. The idea of a sport in board game form has never really appealed to me, especially something as prone to chaos, and not stat-driven as football (or soccer, if you’re across the Atlantic). Eleven has shown me that it is possible to make a good game based around a sport, as long as it doesn’t try to directly mimic the sport itself, which Eleven doesn’t. The matches, for example, only make up a small part of the game. The next three days comprise the nuts and bolts of preparing your team for this weekend’s matchup. This is done through a traditional action selection system, where each player gets one main action, and can potentially trigger actions on cards in their tableau if they have the resources for it. These main actions include buying a player, selling a player, hiring staff (such as a trainer, an agent, a scout, etc.), bringing on a sponsor, building out your stadium, or using a card ability. Card abilities can also act as bonus actions as well if paid for with the “operations” resource. The central market, where you can hire staff, buy players, and bring on sponsors

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays give each player a chance to take a single action. Hiring players, selling players, upgrading your stadium, and upgrading your office (for end-game points) are all options here. Over the course of the game’s 18 actions you’ll do each of these a couple times. One of the resources produced on Mondays can lead to bonus actions from your Board of Directors or other cards, but usually no more than 1-2 extra actions a week. Final Score: 3.5 stars – A solid football manager simulator that does a nice job of delivering on its theme. It’s best at one or two players, but too long at three and four. All of those actions matter because there’s so much to do when running a soccer club! Hiring players is vital to winning matches. Players come in standard transfer flair or youngsters. One of my favorite things about Eleven is hiring youngsters—all the youngster cards are faceless and nameless until they are trained (the flip side of each youngster card). Fair, but there’s no getting around it. The match portion of Eleven is the “worst” part of the game, because it is overcomplicated to the point of comedy. During my first teach of Eleven, I breezed through everything except the matches, then just told the other players that we’ll just do a demo of the way matches play out during the first round of the game because it is so hard to describe it to another player. I’ve done four plays (two solo, one three-player game and one four-player game) and, generally, games play out the same way no matter how many people sit at the table. In part, that is because it will be rare that someone snipes the best cards from the market—there’s plenty of everything to go around. And you need a mix of players for your team just like everyone else. For the Mondays and Matchday portions, the game is basically multiplayer solitaire.Eleven — the number of players you have on the pitch at any given time, with those players making all the difference between being the best team and the worst. But every team knows that to be the best in the league it takes a lot more than players; it also takes an incredible manager. Eleven is a 1-4 player economic strategy game. You will oversee a football team for one season. In that time you will be responsible for transfers, hiring staff, securing sponsorship, and basically making sure the club is managed to meet its expectations. There are also a number of starting scenarios. These are varying from overhauling an ageing squad to meeting tight deadlines in completing expansion work of the club’s stadium. No stone has been left unturned by designer Thomas Jansen. He has already flexed his football-themed board game muscles with 2017’s co-operative/solo game Club Stories. Based on that information, you decide which players you’ll have suit up and where to position them. You’ll also play one of your tactics cards to decide your team’s formation. You may have more than one of these, and some have additional powers you can execute after the opponent’s team is fully revealed. You’ll then flip the opponent card, revealing how they’ve allocated their players and what those players’ offensive powers are, and based on that, figure out the score of the match. Once that’s determined, you’ll either go up on the league table (that’s the British term for the league standings) with a win or draw, or you’ll stay where you are with a loss. In addition, you may suffer some additional consequences, such as injuries or suspensions for your players. You then reset and get ready for next week.

Once trained, it’s a wild mix of different things those rookies can turn out to be. Some of them are fantastic, some have special powers, and some of them aren’t very good! You never know what you’ll get with a rookie, exactly like in real life.

All the staff cards give you powers, and also aid in scoring at game end, thanks to the only gamified portion of Eleven that feels too much like a board game: a set collection element built into each of the game’s five color sets used on staff cards. Staff, your stadium, and players all add up to cost you maintenance fees at the end of each week, so making the right decisions to help with your team and add real value to how you play matches is crucial.