Counter Attack: the football board game

We've played this game maybe ten times now and we're impressed by the variety of action. Goals are greeted with cheers by the scorer and a head in hands for the defender! And you can score goals in lots of different ways - headers, dribbles, piledrivers, tap-ins, from corner kicks, free kicks, penalties...The drafting of player cards is in itself exciting and we've grown fond of particular players. It's a battle to get our favourites when they come out in the draft!Moving and positioning players feels just right. It gives a slight advantage for the attacking team but not so much the defender feels helpless.We've gone on to buy some new player cards and extra teams, and now we're eyeing up the neoprene pitch.We totally recommend this game. Get a copy now!!

This is such a great game! We discovered it on holiday and played it for hours. My 11 year old son loves football and he’s fallen in love with it! You take turns moving players, passing the ball and so on, and try to tackle your opponent. The dice roll is exciting, especially when you’re shooting at goal.The game lasts for 90 minutes but we changed it to 60 minutes so we could play a tournament in time. The box comes with two teams and lots of player cards (my son has noticed you can buy more on the game’s website).It’s made of good quality materials, seems durable. I think it’ll get a lot of plays in our household…! Highly recommended.

I get the sense that fundamentally the underlying game is fairly well designed but the instructions are among some of the most unclear and shoddily written I have encountered in a long time and multiple parts inside the game box only serve to add more confusion than necessary. The instructions randomly split up various parts of the game rather than keeping them in concise places, meaning that you are frequently scanning the entire book to understand basic concepts. One example of many - multiple pages tell you to "refer to the deflection page" which makes me imagine that I can quickly remember everything about deflection on one page. This page then includes instructions on how a shot is deflected but *not* how a pass is deflected, which is included around four pages prior. While the actual rules behind these do make consistent sense, there isn't a way to build a proper mental image when I can't find an authoritative source on the mechanic. Several questions are just not answered - can you pass shorter than the stick length? Can a player keep moving after being injured? I *think* I know the logical answer to these questions but they are *not* explained properly, and I have to spend more time checking the manual as I play. Some components are proverbial landmines that do nothing but add friction as well. The shot ruler has the header "standard pass" next to the line for the first pass, meaning I had assumed the pass and shot length was half of what it really was for the *entire game*. The ball sits on top of the dribbling player so for every tackle in the game we have to take the ball off the player in order to remember what player number it is. All of these things are just shoddy - clearly built for a game that on an underlying level is well-designed but does everything in its power to be far more difficult to comprehend than it needs to be. Very disappointing for a game that claims to be simple.

Purchased this for my son in law. He was thrilled and has enjoyed playing

Being interested in football, I had seen adverts for this pop up from time to time in various social media sites. I decided to investigate further in Youtube to see if it was of interest to me and could be played solo, and found that it seemed to meet my needs. So I decided to take the plunge and order a copy over Xmas 2024.You get everything in the box needed to play a match: A pitch, payer-cards, dice, player counters, rule book, help-cards and even a couple of sand-timers. All is decent quality.You can set out your players in any formation you like, usually taking their attributes into account. Then you perform actions like movement, shooting, passing, tackling, heading, etc. The game plays well and feels as much like real football as a board game can.It is supposed to be a two-player game, but I play it solo. That causes no issue because there are no hidden elements (like cards one player keeps secret from another). The only issue is that you know the strategies for both sides, but that can exists in any board game played solo.The game has been around for some time, so there is a community of Facebook and Discord where you can go to arrange leagues and matches online. Also, there are links to rule updates not reflected in the box rule-book.You can also buy additional counters (there are team counters for most teams you can think of) and player cards on the game official website if you want some variety. The site also provides a useful tool that allows you to generate your own custom cards, which is really useful if you don't feel you need the official game cards.For anyone wanting to play a football-themed board game, give this a look. I recommend looking on YouTube first to see if you would like this game before buying. But I am pleased with the purchase and am thinking of buying further counters for it.