Solo Subbuteo 101

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...

  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 ...

  Is it really necessary to introduce substitutes into solo play, i s the introduction of another small plastic figure going to change the game, and how many of us have extra outfield players in our teams to do such a thing in the first place. Lets face it the when our little folk get injured it’s usually fairly terminal and needs hospitalisation to graft it’s broken limbs back onto the player or the base and this has the possibility of mak ing them look like a casualty from the Battle of the Somme. If this happens in a match we may be able to patch it up quickly with Blu Tack but it’s hardly a long term solution. For me t hese days it’s rare for such things to happen, but if a player end s up on the floor the clock is stopped and the player is located before it’s trodden to death, or my dog decides to eat the poor guy. Many a time a player is found hiding under a piece of furniture obviously aware of the threat of being eaten alive, they all seem to ...

Tactics is the term used to describe the strategies and manoeuvres one uses to outwit an opponent to gain an advantage, we see this all the time in various things especially in sport. Obviously the tactics employed are constrained somewhat by the rules of the game. Picking up the ball and running like Usain Bolt might be a great tactic in rugby, but a referee may not quite agree with that sentiment if it occurred with in the context of a football match. As this blog is about solo play how do tactics play their part when in effect trying to outwit an opponent is basically saying you’re trying to outwit yourself, I’m sure you’ll agree that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. As an afterthought if it was possible to split your brain in half, one half for each team would that make you a halfwit, or playing under floodlights make you a dimwit. Seriously though, most solo players I know including mysel f include rules in solo play that try to redress the ba...