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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 all
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Some Thoughts On Home Advantage

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I’ve just completed another season of my Solo League. Two 8 team divisions, with promotion, relegation, play-offs, a cup competition, as well as a non league element for good measure. 144 games all played throughout the actual football season. All played without any form of advantage, except in some cup games which I’ll touch on later. I’ ve posted in the past about a system, that I worked on with Phil Marsden the owner of the Alive and Flicking Facebook group for assessing, and applying an advantage to each game without changing any in - match rules. A system he seemed to be satisfied with at the time, as it went some way to suiting his immediate needs. He’s now looking to expand on the system in other ways, and I wish him, and anyone else that is looking to add such things into their solo games luck in formulating a system th at suits them . I however have no intention personally to add such things into my League, or any other league competitions I run, and
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Small Players and Big Balls

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The title itself is enough to put you off your dinner, I apologise for that but it had to be said. When I opened my first box set on Christmas morning 1969 I was confronted with that statement in all it’s glory . The poor guys in their pristine(??) red and blue kits with big brown balls that came up to their chest. The game was advertised as the replica of Association Football, and included the immortal phrase of “Reproducing all the thrills of real football by FINGER TIP CONTROL”, printed on the box. So when was the last time any of us saw the “Real” game played with balls this size which if to scale would have been around 1.5m in diameter, I suppose it would make goalkeeping easier, and the amount of 0-0 scorelines would become the rule rather than any kind of exception. But as we know it wasn’t the scale of things that fascinated us back then, it was the fact that we were in control, we scored the goals, we saved the shot s, and we won the trophies, no one cared the ball
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My House, My Rules

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Just over 12 Months ago, I posted about some new rules I was implementing with regards to my solo play. These were mainly centered around the way I would administer blocking flicks. Well 12 months on nothing has really changed in that respect, but I did try one or two things which like all things worked on paper but quickly became dismissed as I felt that there was no actual benefit in game play. Nevertheless things have changed over that 12 month period in other ways This month I thought I’d briefly go through my rule-book explaining my thoughts on why I choose the methods I do, in an attempt to show why I do what I do, and why I feel it works for me. It’s all well and good people like myself sharing or suggesting ideas, but sometimes they are easily dismissed because the recipient just doesn’t understand why it’s been suggested in the first place. So the following is a brief insight into my rules, an attempt by me to show my working out rather than the results, t
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