Table top Superbowl

The massive American football tournament, half-time concert and advertising extravaganza looms tomorrow. To mark the occasion, Fencible Carl has created a miniature version. His notes follow in italics.

So Ksenia and I generally watch exactly 1 game of football every year, and I'm sure you can guess which one. So for about a decade and a half I've explained the rules to her or shown her some YouTube videos doing the same, then she's had 51 weeks to forget them.

 

This year she challenged me to create a game for her to learn from, in the hope that it would result in better retention.

 

This isn't as beautiful as [the Fencibles’] work, and I'm certainly guilty of using the wrong sets of figures, but I thought you might enjoy what we managed with some figurines, colored pencils, dice and some collaborative effort. I had her draw the field with me to learn it well.

 

 

We used multiple D6s to resolve competition. The D4 and D10 kept track of downs and progress.  The brown pencil is the line of scrimmage and the blue one is first down.

 

We added a coach to the game.

 

And their "biggest fan" showed up.

 

But I'm not sure this guy was the best choice for the running back.

My wife found this excellent and I have to agree. I'm not much of a football fan, never having played it. I played soccer in 5th through 8th grade, as a thuggish defender of minimal skill. I only pay much attention to American football when the New Orleans Saints are in contention. That is to say, not often.

Years back an old friend of mine came to a game day at Simulations Publications Incorporated, where I had a part-time gig as a game tester. He wasn't into war games and usually lost when he did play. SPI (the original publisher of Strategy and Tactics magazine) had a test version of a football game available. We tried it. Kurt had actually played football. He ran roughshod over me in short order, gaining 50 yards and a touchdown on his first play.