Why Play Solo

There’s probably as many reasons as there are solo players, and they probably all do it for the same reasons, enjoyment. Players use it as a training exercise, play in national,and international Solo Leagues like the ISSL (look them up on Facebook), or play there own Fantasy leagues where the likes of Melchester Rovers can take on the mighty Liverpool (should I mention my team Aston Villa’s result recently against the Reds), and win, with Roy of the Rovers scoring the winner in injury time. The only restraint in playing solo is your imagination. Collecting teams new or old, Heavyweights, Lightweights, Flats, even the modern flat base offerings (which to be honest I’ve never purchased or used). Making your own stadium for the wee fellows to play in, formulating rules to suit your own style of play, the possibilities are endless. So don’t ask yourself why, but how far do I want to take this.

 

You also need a set of rules, to be at least consistent in games, rules which can be tweaked from time to time because something just isn’t working how you envisaged. I don’t advise changing them halfway through a game or a round of fixtures just to be fair, but after the league has played lets say 5 games for example, you decide your passive offside rule is causing you headaches you can change it for all the teams in the 6th round of games and still be consistent and fair to all the little guys.

Whatever rules you use is up to you, you have no one to please but yourself, you can give the home team a penalty at the start to simulate home advantage, and if the away team score (providing the score isn’t (0-0) that advantage could be nullified. You could also or even only allow an away team player to only play the ball twice instead of 3 times in succession. Anything goes in Solo Land.

When I started playing solo, I used the 1967 Subbuteo rules (because that's the set I had to hand and were familiar to me from my youth), as my basis. As I played I started tweaking the rules to make my games a little more enjoyable for me and me alone. The point I’m trying to make here there is no wrong way to play there is only your way.

But playing solo throws up a few complications, goalkeeping for one, and there are a few different methods I’ve seen employed since I started playing solo. Blocking can and sometimes is a sticking point in games, some players block some don’t. I’ll go into details of these things in later blogs, with some suggestions and ideas from myself and other players I’ve spoken to.

 

 

My Solo Arena, with the Astro pitch and metal goals.

 

Equipment

If I still have your interest, and / or you’ve been recently bitten by the bug, think carefully about the equipment you buy. This is solely my opinion (before you race for the comments box to shoot me down in a ball of flame). The modern Subbuteo box set offerings are not as good as you imagine. The pitches are like ploughed fields and players that look like they’ve come from an audition of World War Z. The goals are of poor quality, same with the balls. There are much better equipment offerings from other table soccer suppliers which not only look better, but play so much better as well. So I’m not saying don’t buy them if you’re returning to the game, I’m saying the quality is not the best from Subbuteo at the time of writing this post, but I'm led to believe that it's getting better, how much better I cannot offer comment.

I went down the route of buying second hand and ended up with a late 60's Display Edition, complete with an early baize pitch and for the first 3 months it served me well, only trouble was I had to purchase some balls, because the original Subbuteo 25mm balls are better suited to Crown Green bowling than table soccer. I now have a selection of 22mm and 18mm balls from Topspin, Pegasus, and the like. These little beauties are round and true and work for me in my solo games.

Check out the likes of Astrobase, Subbuteo World, Santiago, Flick for Kicks, to name but a few there is some decent stuff out there it depends on your budget. Since buying the second hand Display Edition, I added some Santiago Teams, A pair of metal goals, (actually they were a present for my last birthday), and a Pegasus Astropitch (which I’ve glued to a piece of MDF), I still play with the baize pitch from time to time I just lay it on top of the Astro.

All my teams are heavyweight replicas from Santiago just like the 70’s teams I played with in my youth, and the only downside for me is the base weight, (they don’t perform as expected, if you ever purchase any you’ll understand what I mean), but as the teams don’t come glued this can be addressed with a little extra weight inside the base before fixing permanently. If you don’t fancy tweaking the bases there are other manufacturers Like Zeugo, or Topspin, which produce some credible heavyweights. All in all whether you want rounded bases, flat bases there are some wonderful offerings out there to suit most budgets. I will be starting a links page in the future but give me a little time to contact them all and have a chat.

 

To Conclude

My point in this post is to make you aware that you are not alone, and I’ve set up a download page with enough rules there to get you started, plus my Solo Table Soccer Handbook (a shameless plug there) to show you how I play and why I play the way I do, take a look its free (and apparently virus free), Its up to you whether or not you incorporate any of my rules but you’re welcome to use, change, ignore, however you want, It’s your solo world not mine.

My intention is to update this blog as often as I can with different aspects of solo play, I would love to hear your comments on your particular solo play, or any aspect of solo play that you would like me to discuss, I don’t profess to be an expert, just passionate about sharing whatever knowledge I may have. We may play solo but that doesn’t mean we cannot share our experiences.

 

Keep on Flicking

 

Ian