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The Christmas Day Massacre

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Some historical facts fade into obscurity, without being or even waiting to be discovered, others are well documented and can be scrutinised to ascertain their validity. What I’m about to portray is an obscure piece of history but based on eye witness accounts, and my own recollections of an event, as having lived through that traumatic time, and lived to tell the tale. The event Christmas day 1969. I have in a previous article recounted some of the events which shaped that day, of which I feel I will quickly recap to set the tone of how the day began, before delving more deeply to what happened later that day. Christmas ‘69 The day began, like Christmas day should, I as a 9-year-old boy, awoke early, having little sleep, due to the excitement that children around that age frequently experience at that time of year. I was now the proud owner of a Subbuteo Set, not quite the edition I hoped for, but still overjoyed none the less. My parents weren’t...
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Back To The Future

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How many solo players reset the play during games, better known to many I would imagine as a back. I’ve heard many misconceptions and misinterpretations from players, ranging from backs are only used in Competition and Tournaments, to that they never appeared in the Subbuteo rules until the 80’s. Surprisingly You may already know or you may be surprised to learn that the “back” has been part of the game since the 40’s, it was used as a way to stop deliberate fouls by the defence when using whatever blocking rule was in use at any particular time. Whether it was intentionally included to curb deliberate fouls I have no idea. But if not it certainly goes some way to addressing that possibility. During the late 40’s and early 50’s when only two blocks were allowed, any defensive misdemeanor had the ball replaced to the attackers advantage. Later as we enter into the 60’s when blocking flicks were allowed in blocks of 3, saw the inclusion of reset...
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So, You’ve Decided to Play Solo

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Solo Subbuteo is a very broad church, it is full of different methods, ideas, and is solely dependent upon an individual’s perceptions, aims, and goals. You can’t teach the solo game as such, or give out a definitive set of rules, you can only offer advice from one’s own experience and ideals. I’ve even offered my own rules since I began this blog, to give an idea of my own thought process. They are in no way an authoritative set, and can be found on the downloads page of this blog. They are simply the set I use, and show how I go about my business, if you have a need, please feel free to use them in any way you see fit. That’s one of the endearing things about the solo game, it can be whatever you want it to be, and as simple or as complex as you want to make it. We can only share with each other those ideas we have found to work, but it’s up to you whether you feel those ideas are relevant to you as an individual, or the narrative you set yourse...
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The Dark Art Of Polishing

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Firstly apologies for such a long time between posts, I’ve had a few personal things to attend to over the last few months which have prevented me from being as active and engaging with the game as I had planned for. That’s behind me now and I’ve started up my solo league again, after almost a season away. So without further ado lets get into this. The Italian’s? It’s well documented in certain quarters that the polishing of bases was down to the Italians in the late 70’s early 80’s, but I’m about to blow that myth out of the water, and say polishing of bases was down to one teenage lad from the West Midlands in the early 70’s. Dave Harris, a couple of years older than myself was a lad who tried everything to gain an advantage on the table. His playing abilities were average at best, but that didn’t stop him trying to discover ways to make Subbuteo heavyweight figures glide along the pitch and in his words, “Wipe that smug look off th...
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Breaking The Mould

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  I’m probably a kind of traditionalist when it comes to Subbuteo, especially when it comes to equipment and rules. We probably all have our favourite player types, and would rather play to rules from a certain era of their evolution. For me that was and still is the late 60’s until the early 80’s. There were 3 main player types each requiring their own particular technique to play to the generally accepted rules of that time. Box set rules at the beginning of that era differed to the competitive scene, but by the end of it they more or less mirrored each other. Solo Players Use What They Know When it comes to solo none of us are tied to any kind of convention, we probably all have our favourite equipment , and have adapted familiar rules to suit our needs. I’ll go as far here as to say that we are all probably traditionalists in our own right. Subbuteo in all it’s forms has what can be described as a core set of rules that are the backbone of ...
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