Post by josta59 on Jan 8, 2024 15:12:19 GMT -5
Yesterday I woke up keen to create some kind of tabletop football system that could be played solo against an AI. I did some research and looked at the two football board games that I own.
After a while I realized that if I'm playing offense using the old All-American Football board game that dates back to 1958 (I have the 1965 edition), I can just shuffle the defense discs and it works pretty well. And if I'm playing defense, I can shuffle the offense discs. It was pretty fun. I won soundly. The real test of this system will be to see if I ever lose to this "AI." If it's too easy, then it's not worth the time and isn't actually a good AI. I'm not sure yet, but I'm hopeful. That's right, I'm hoping to lose. You can learn a lot from losing!
The "field" and markers provided in that game don't do a great job of keeping track of things because of the weird perspective, so I used the much better football field from my Avalon Hill Football Strategy game.
My nine-year-old son played against me for the third quarter, and that was even more fun! He picked it up quickly. He described it as being like paper/rock/scissors but with a lot of randomness thrown in. Upon reflection, I think that really is what American football is like for a head coach! My father-in-law was a head coach for years, so I'll have to ask him how accurate that feels.
After a while I realized that if I'm playing offense using the old All-American Football board game that dates back to 1958 (I have the 1965 edition), I can just shuffle the defense discs and it works pretty well. And if I'm playing defense, I can shuffle the offense discs. It was pretty fun. I won soundly. The real test of this system will be to see if I ever lose to this "AI." If it's too easy, then it's not worth the time and isn't actually a good AI. I'm not sure yet, but I'm hopeful. That's right, I'm hoping to lose. You can learn a lot from losing!
The "field" and markers provided in that game don't do a great job of keeping track of things because of the weird perspective, so I used the much better football field from my Avalon Hill Football Strategy game.
My nine-year-old son played against me for the third quarter, and that was even more fun! He picked it up quickly. He described it as being like paper/rock/scissors but with a lot of randomness thrown in. Upon reflection, I think that really is what American football is like for a head coach! My father-in-law was a head coach for years, so I'll have to ask him how accurate that feels.
