Phantoms of the Ice
Also known as Slapshot. This hockey game is (I think) out of print but is a fun game if you ever see it.
Card based, each manager draws cards from three different piles -- goalies, defensemen, and forwards -- until they have a complete team of 6 players. Each player is rated 0 - 11, with 11 being the best players. On each subsequent turn you have three options: a) discard a player to the bottom of his pile and draw a new player from that same pile; b) draw a random card from an opponent's hand then give that manager a player from your team of the same type; or c) challenge an opponent to a game.
The games are basically modified versions of war. Each manager puts one of their players face down in front of them and the highest number value scores a goal. Each game lasting only long enough to run through your hands once (6 cards). There are some other rules, but...
The season ends when one team wins 9 games. The basic rules then call for a 7 game playoff between the top two teams to determine the champion. With no opportunity to improve your team between games.
So, I played again last weekend and had two thoughts.
1) I continued to test my main strategy in this game: bruisers rule. There are a handful of defensive players that are marked as bruisers. They play like normal players except that whomever they are matched up against during a game must be discarded and replaced afterwards. My feeling has always been that this is crucial, especially during a long play off series. If you can pick-off a team's best players in the first couple games, they have no way to recover from that during the playoffs.
At one point during this game I had two bruisers at the same time. While that did help me tear apart the roster of the best team during the first half of the regular season, one of my bruisers was also a "0" player so he was also a liability. I lost him later in the season and ended up with a better rated defensemen and eventually won the championship.
2) We tried something new at the end of the regular season. the problem with the 7 game championship concept is that it makes the end of the game unfun for the rest of the people who played.
So we tried a playoff involving all four of us (something that is actually suggested in our copy of the rules as an alternative). We also shortened the series to best of 3.
This worked well.
Card based, each manager draws cards from three different piles -- goalies, defensemen, and forwards -- until they have a complete team of 6 players. Each player is rated 0 - 11, with 11 being the best players. On each subsequent turn you have three options: a) discard a player to the bottom of his pile and draw a new player from that same pile; b) draw a random card from an opponent's hand then give that manager a player from your team of the same type; or c) challenge an opponent to a game.
The games are basically modified versions of war. Each manager puts one of their players face down in front of them and the highest number value scores a goal. Each game lasting only long enough to run through your hands once (6 cards). There are some other rules, but...
The season ends when one team wins 9 games. The basic rules then call for a 7 game playoff between the top two teams to determine the champion. With no opportunity to improve your team between games.
So, I played again last weekend and had two thoughts.
1) I continued to test my main strategy in this game: bruisers rule. There are a handful of defensive players that are marked as bruisers. They play like normal players except that whomever they are matched up against during a game must be discarded and replaced afterwards. My feeling has always been that this is crucial, especially during a long play off series. If you can pick-off a team's best players in the first couple games, they have no way to recover from that during the playoffs.
At one point during this game I had two bruisers at the same time. While that did help me tear apart the roster of the best team during the first half of the regular season, one of my bruisers was also a "0" player so he was also a liability. I lost him later in the season and ended up with a better rated defensemen and eventually won the championship.
2) We tried something new at the end of the regular season. the problem with the 7 game championship concept is that it makes the end of the game unfun for the rest of the people who played.
So we tried a playoff involving all four of us (something that is actually suggested in our copy of the rules as an alternative). We also shortened the series to best of 3.
This worked well.
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