Unlike the simplifications of the other movement based games of football and basketball, Football Champions actually used a 3×3 field that players could move around in. You could shoot the ball from the line right in front of the keeper. Field players had five stats: Pace, Tackle, Shot, Skill, and Header. Goalkeepers had Save, Penalty Save, and Skill. Icons were also introduced on players cards and added to the depth of the game by giving certain players bonuses if they stayed on a certain wing of the field, or allowed players to move without succeeding on their move roll. The game only used six sided dice and was based around a system of challenges. Without bringing in the action cards, challenges between on-field players were usually limited to Pace or Tackle. The defense would choose the type of challenge, and the players stats were compared in that type of challenge. For example, a Pace challenge between a defender with a Pace of 7 and a forward with a Pace of 6 was a net +1 advantage to the defense. Both players rolled their die, and whoever won the challenge (ties re-rolled) would gain or keep control of the ball. Once there was a shot on goal attempt, it was Save vs. Shot, with ties becoming a corner kick.

The action cards were the basis of time for the game. Much like NFL Showdown, when you ran out of cards, the defending team rolled to see if it was halftime or end of the game. However, the action cards and our American strategy cards were quite a bit different in a few regards. You could only have two of any given card in your deck, and the deck size was only 25 cards. Because you drew two cards after every challenge and started out with five cards, the length of a half was usually not more than twelve challenges, which goes by pretty fast. The lack of variation and constant card draw also means that your strategy is very easy to establish and keep going. The other major difference was that cards could be played for their arrows. To explain in plain terms, most cards had arrows that pointed in 9 directions, compass-esque. When you used a card for an arrow, you could use it for a pass or a shot, and you would get +2 for the challenge, or you could use it to move a player if your move roll failed. Not only was this (for the vast majority of the cards) a better idea than using them for their actual text, but it shifted a majority of the power in the game to the offense. I’m pretty sure that no one was playing for ties in a card game anyway. Because of this ability, cards that had arrows pointed forward, or diagonally forward in one of two directions, are very important to offense.

Before we get into the direction I ended up going in as far as a team, I should project my opinion out there as far as the rules go. Between the 2001-02 English rules and 2002-03 English rules, there is an enormous amount of change that I think generally is for the better. From my glances at the Italian rule books, I don’t see a lot of difference or changes in their next two years after 02-03. I prefer the 02-03 rules mainly because I think the team building rules are more fun, and also because fatigue counters create a different team strategy that I think complicates the game for the better. However, you should be very clear with whoever you’re playing with whether you are going by 01-02 or 02-03 rules, because they introduce icons in 02-03 that don’t exist in 01-02, and they also change what some of the icons do. If you do play with 01-02 rules, I suggest you not play with any players beyond those years, because the point values really change based on the icon changes.

Either way, let me point you to my enhanced spoiler. Once again I have to thank JL Robert for putting together the skeleton (01-02), while I filled in the next three years and added the English action cards (I’d add the other ones if I could understand them; for the most part though, the 01-02 action cards are the same thing). There are three omissions and I’m sure I didn’t get 100% of the cards right, but I’m pretty content with what I have. The 02-03 team building rules are as follows: 1300 points, only four players are allowed to be under 100 points, and only two players are allowed to be under 50 points. You get up to five substitutes and a 300 point budget to add them to your team, but they can’t ever leave you with more than 1300 points on the field at a time.

Without further ado:

25 Card Action Deck
Change Of Pace x2
Conditioning x2
Force The Play x2
Heads Up x2
High Cross x2
Manouevere x1 (want second one for Motion)
Marked Out x2
Motion x1
Physical Game x1 (want second one for a Tight Defending)
Play It Safe x2
Pressing Game x2
Tight Defending x2

GK: De Sanctis IT 03, 155, 8-2-7 Shot Stopper
LDB: Bridge EN 02, 173, 9-8-3-5-7
CDB: Keown EN 01, 136, 6-9-3-6-8
RDB: Oddo IT 02, 146, 7-6-7-6-6, Pass, Right Wing +1
ROVER: Kouassi FR 01, 19, 3-4-5-3-5
LMID: Maini IT 03, 58, 5-7-6-5-6, Back
MID: Beckham EN 02, 319, 9-9-9-10-7, Pass
RMID: Ba IT 01, 104, 7-6-5-4-5, Right Wing +1
ROVER: Danic FR 01, 25 4-4-4-3-3
LFWD: Ferguson EN 01, 112, 6-6-7-6-10
RFWD: Langella IT 04, 53, 9-7-7-6-6, Left-Right
Subs
Zambrotta 03, D/MF, 144, 7-7-5-7-5, Left Wing +1
Cole 01, D, 144, 8-6-5-6-7, Left Wing +1

Or to put the players on a grid:
[Ferguson][None][Langella]
[Maini][Beckham, Danic][Ba]
[Bridge][Keown, Kouassi][Oddo]
[De Sanctis]

On defense, this team boasts two 9′s and an 8, with both high speed guys outside to prevent getting burned by Change Of Pace, which forces Tackle challenges on the wings to become Pace challenges. Kouassi is a scrub, but he’ll dive in whatever square the offense is attacking to give the additional bonus for having two players in a square. Traditionally that’s called a rover, but because of the players extreme lack of usefulness in any other role, I like to call him Chip Block, after the ventriloquist dummy in King of the Hill. Danic plays the same basic role in the midfield, but he also will occassionally go forward. Oddo is intentionally the weak link in the backline because I want him to win challenges and start the counterattack with his Pass Icon, which gives a +1 bonus to the next challenge when he passes it. Combine that with the arrows and you’ll basically see him sending it to Beckham with a +3, plus the bonus for two men in a square. As if Becks wasn’t already a rough guy to try and win a challenge from.

From a strategical perspective, I only have 7 cards that I would classify as solely defensive, I’d like a eighth but I don’t have another Physical Game, Tight Defending helps against people with dominant forwards that I don’t want taking shots, saying that they have to pass again before they can shoot. Should they not have one, I’ll use the two up arrows on the card. Force The Play stops the offense from playing cards for their arrows until you get the ball back, which is extremely helpful. Particularly since De Sanctis’ Shot Stopper icon grants him +2 to all saves on shots without arrows. Pressing Game forces your opponent to discard three cards if he gets down to seven, and killing your opponent’s hand is the best way to stop his offensive sets. It works especially well with Force The Play since your opponents offensive game will probably rely on arrows and he’ll be holding the cards. Finally, Physical Game is the most dominant action card in the game in my opinion: +1 to all your players Tackle, plus every time you win a challenge, your opponent has to discard a card. That is a complete lockdown card and almost makes it worth playing four Tempo cards just to avoid having stuck in play. I’m a bit limited by my collection, but I’ll consider bumping up to that.

Offensively, my strategy is pretty simple. I paid 319 points for David Beckham, and he’s going to get the ball. Once he has the ball, he’s got three options. One is to dribble up the middle if I get a six on the move roll, since it’s likely that me separating my two forwards will leave the opponent weak in the middle. He could try to feed Langella, who might be the best card in the game production wise and was probably a misprint. With an arrow and a Beckham pass, he’s got a 10 tackle, and if you can drop down a Change Of Pace, he gets to use his 12 speed. A 7 shot is nothing to sneeze at, but even if you don’t want to take it, you can hold and attempt to cross it to Ferguson or Beckham, especially if you have a Play It Safe around, which means there’s a 66% chance you don’t even have to deal with a challenge from you opponent. However, the sneakier play is to use High Cross to feed Ferguson. Cross says if you use it for it’s arrow, the challenge starts as a Header challenge, and Ferguson has a 10 header rating, the highest in the game. Combine the +2 from the arrow and the +1 from the pass, and Ferguson will be starting out at 13. Whats more, he gets to take the shot at 12 too, since High Cross also forces you to take your shot with your Header rating. Throw in a Heads Up for good measure, and you’re at 14. That’s a pretty solid chance of notching a goal, I’d say.

Ba and Maini are solid players as well but they’re mainly there to win the ball and pass it to Beckham, not do anything spectacular. The substitutes are both for Oddo. Cole comes in to lend his 9 Pace on defense when we’ve got the lead, and Zambrotta is for when the team needs to put more players forward. Love Cole’s role, I might still try and find someone better than Zambrotta, perhaps a forward. I’d love to get a Beckham replacement in case he gets worn down by fatigue cards but the point limit screws me there.

The skeleton of this team largely survives in 01-02 rules, since almost all of the strategy cards are still acceptable in that format. The 1100 points pares it down to even more of a stars and scrubs format though. This is my crack at that roster:

F Niall Quinn 143
F Oliver Bierhoff 48
M David Linares 23
M David Beckham 286
M Olivier Sorlin 66

D Mark Fish 182
D Fabio Macellari 94
D Jimmy Algerino 73
D Blaise Kouassi 19
D Mohamed Bradja 19
GK Gregory Wimbee 144

It’s basically a toned down version of the 02-03 one. Everyone is a little less effective, and Quinn really becomes the go-to forward. It goes into a 5-3-2 just to stay under, points-wise.

I haven’t created a Fatigue deck to play test against yet, but this is my reasoning behind picking this deck first: the cards have 100% success rate. Fatigue only works 50% of the time. I did consider putting some fatigue cards in here, but I think it’s really a strategy that you need about half the deck devoted to. You need to get two fatigue cards on the big guns so that they don’t just recover at halftime. The other problem with it in my eyes is that the game just moves so fast that there isn’t really time for the fatigue bonus to be as cost-effective as the arrows you’ll be using here. That said, I’m interested to see how a fatigue deck would play against this team, as I think it’s the best of the other strategies. Some other strategies that are possible: a strict by the numbers team (that team probably doesn’t use Beckham, who is far from fairly priced), a team built around an awesome goalkeeper, a focus on getting your opponent’s players a red card or injury, and a team built around Test Of Skill that utilized players with poor Pace and Tackle but excellent Skill and Shot like my boy Matt Le Tissier.

Unlike NBA, this game has quite a few different and possible strategies. It’s a very simple game at it’s core, but it’s very deep the further into it you look. I like the quickness, I like the fact that your strategy can be ripped out quickly or considered slowly. It’s a very charming game. Getting a 01-02 English starter is pretty simple and can be done in a few different locations. Just remember that you are going to have to pay a pretty steep fee to get things shipped from overseas, especially if you’re buying a box or two. In my buying experience, the easiest things to find are the 01-02 English and Itallian and the most difficult things to find are the 02-03 cards, particularly the Italian ones which I’ve still never seen an actual booster pack of.

To the best of my knowledge, NBA Showdown was the most unpopular of all the Wizards of the Coast Showdown variants. It had no tournament support, no national championship, and no real player base; naturally, it was the first of the quartet to die as well. The games quickness was probably its strongest selling point, as you could play a game in ten minutes. While this probably contributed to its lack of support among hardcore players, it was by far the easiest to pick up out of the box and play. The gameplay was very simple, and there was a strong strategical base here to expand upon should another year of it have made it to launch. Each player sets up his 5 player cards, draws 7 strategy cards, adds a speed/power bonus it has over the opposing player card to a dice roll, and sees how many points, rebounds, and assists his player card records in a quarter. Points are obviously points, at the end of each quarter, the team with more rebounds wins a points bonus, and assists are accrued up to 9 to be used in increasing a scoring roll at the player’s discretion.

Asides from the ease of play, the dice played way too much of a role in this game to lure in the hardcore gamer crowd. Not only are there relatively few rolls, but there is a pile-on effect when one of your players rolled a 1-2 or a 19-20 in the form of a cold or hot marker, respectively. I haven’t kept detailed stats on the few games of this I’ve been able to play, but I’d suspect that the team that won the hot-cold marker battle won the game at least 90% of the time. The other factor that played into its rejection by gamers was the very bland and uninspiring strategy cards. Much like the first MLB Showdown set, there were very few difference making strategy cards, however, unlike MLB Showdown 2000, the few strategy cards that actually did something only stood to make the best statistical team have an even bigger advantage.

I ran a numerical analysis on the cards, taking the average points, assists, and rebounds per card based on what they would roll against the strongest defensive 450-600 point player. (Download Here) The best player by this measure is Chris Webber, and Shaquille O’Neal is so far and away the best center in the game that creating the best team without him is basically impossible. The strategy cards, which were mostly a dry bed, came up with three difference-makers:

1)Rimshaker, which plays only on a player with Power 15 or higher that has a hot marker, gives the player in question two points and an ADDITIONAL hot marker.
2)Brute Force, which plays only on a player with Power 15 or higher, lets you discard three cards to DOUBLE the amount of points that player scores on his roll.
3)This Is My House, which is a defensive card that allows you to erase ALL of a players points if your player has more speed and power than the opposing player.

Now, of all the players in the game, there are only 15 that have 15 or more power, and all of them play power forward or center. Guess which two of those average the most points and have the highest single-quarter point total for Brute Force purposes? Hey, it’s our old friends Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber! Guess two players that are naturally immune to This Is My House because of having unreachable speed/power combos at their positions? Well, if you’ve been reading so far, it should not surprise you that two of them are Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber.

There is some confusion (okay, a lot of confusion) in the rule book, but if the double team rules work in a way that allow them to count for This Is My House, they don’t have a very high effect simply because of the asinine ruling that you can only double with someone “next to them” on the play mat. Centers can only be double teamed by power forwards, meaning that to double Shaq on a Shaq/Webber team, they must cede +4 to Webber’s scoring roll every quarter. Now you could double Webber with the small forward as well as the center, but thankfully, the best team in the game numerically also involves a good small forward. On that note, I might as well show the team:

Position/Name/Points/Speed-Power/Average Points-Rebounds-Assists
Center: Shaquille O’Neal 1230 7/20 40.8
Power Forward: Chris Webber 1150 12/16 42.8
Small Forward: Grant Hill 990 13/11 38.4
Shooting Guard: Desmond Mason 70 6/5 13.6
Point Guard: Jason Terry 560 14/5 27.2

In O’Neal, Webber, and Hill, you have the three horsemen of Orlando Magic disappointment. They also happen to be the best three players in the game that you can have on the court at once (Antoine Walker is better than Hill is as a power forward where his average speed bonus helps him out, but not at small forward, and since he is not as good as Webber, no reason to use him at power forward. Jerry Stackhouse is tied with Hill but costs more points.). Like in most Showdown games, there is a trend toward punting because the best players are priced at a point that makes it more productive to use them and a punt rather than have two solid players. I tried many different ways to have the best team actually include five good players rather than four, but Mason is a very fair producer for his points because there really isn’t a usable NBA Showdown player between 100-250 points, and combine that with massive downgrades to lop points off the big three, and the incremental upgrades that you do get for moving Mason up don’t mean much. The other good side of using Mason is that his poor speed and power mean you’re almost definitely going to get a chance to use Switching Strategies in your deck, which is good because it’s the only cycle card that doesn’t reduce your hand size, and your hand size is important when you’re tossing three cards to Brute Force. Just so I can say I wrote something about Jason Terry; he can get House’d, and to a lesser extent so can Hill, but they are consistent scorers more than they are volume scorers. They both top out at 9 points. If you prefer the assists (which are important given that they can alter rolls), you can use Steve Nash, but since you’re probably going to play 4 Starting The Fast Break to turn one rebound into two assists, and since Hill is a decent assist source in his own right, you’ll have plenty.

Haven’t finalized a strategy deck yet but I’ll briefly summarize other good/interesting cards:
-Aggressive Play balances a 20% chance of the opponent shooting 2 free throws with a 80% chance that you’ll get +3 on your scoring roll. This is definitely a good card to have around in the mirror matchups.
-Alleyoop, which lets any player with 15 speed or power get an additional 2 points and 1 assist. This would be much more playable if not for the discard.
-Anticipate The Pass, which lets you subtract 2 assists from your opponent if he has 6 or more. The threat of this card is more important than the effect. While the 9 assist cap basically means you want to play quickly anyway, this can force your opponent into some assists that he doesn’t want to use. There are no cards that
-Double-Foul: Your opponent chooses a player who gets to take a foul shot. If he misses, he gets a cold marker. I haven’t run all the numbers on this, but this looks like the best way to get a cold marker on an opposing player, which is important because the only actual card drawer in the game relies on this.
-Drive The Lane: Another cold marker card, it gives two free throws to the opponent and leaves you a 20% chance of hitting a cold marker on the opposing player, granted that the player you play it on has more speed than his counterpart.
-He’s Heating Up: 25% chance you get a hot marker on this player. Notice a theme yet? Outside of the three cards I mentioned up there, a lot of these cards are lottery tickets. The hot marker is worth chasing for Rimshaker/Brute Force though, and here is your best chance to get it.
-Killer Crossover: 10% chance that this player gets a hot marker AND the opposing player gets a cold marker. Very unlikely that you pull it off. Still, devastating swing if you pull it off.
-Tomahawk Dunk: Discard a card, score 2 points. Then, a 5% chance of giving EACH of your players a hot marker. Here is the ultimate lottery ticket. Pull this card off and you’re pretty much golden. Even if you don’t, you at least get the 2 points.
-Turnover: If the opposing player has any cold markers, draw 2 cards. When you think about this logically, your opponent has 20 rolls to roll a 1-2, so you’re at 10% odds for 20 times. You’re probably going to average 1-2 a game. Then you throw in the other cold marker cards, and while it’s not incredibly consistent card draw, worst case scenario is you feed it to Brute Force or Tomahawk.

I also tried a few other types of decks to see if playing to an extreme in rebounds or assists worked. The problem with both of them is that even if you build a team to chase them, you’re really not adding very many additional rebounds or assists. The best rebounding team puts Jamal Mashburn at shooting guard and Clarence Weatherspoon at small forward, and for that downgrade, you give your opponent a reason to double team Webber. The benefit is about 6.6 extra rebounds a game, or a little over 1.5 extra rebounds in a quarter. To make up the point deficit you give up by using these two, you basically need a 12 or 15 point rebound win in two quarters. Even if you play both cards that add a rebound (Boxing Out and Clearing The Glass), you normally won’t make up enough points to make the difference. It’s probably the smarter of the two extreme teams. With the assist team, when you dump 1000 points on Jason Kidd, you take them away from the really good players who can actually score. Even if you don’t take the stance that you need Antoine Walker at power forward to get more assists, its really a choice between Hill or Kidd. You’re giving up 7 PAR a game to gain 5 extra assists and lose someone to put those assists on. You have Latrell Sprewell or Penny Hardaway, both of which are slight downgrades from Terry, at SG/SF, and the other place is a scrub. It’s just not a good buy, both strategically and as far as cost-effectiveness.

One other thing that I think would’ve made this game a lot more fun: If they had allowed the bonus cards to stay in effect the entire game, it would have entirely changed the complexion of the game. There are a ton of one-shot add +2/+2 to a player cards speed/power, or +6/+6 only on defense. When you say these cards are one shot only plays, they’re not really a big deal, especially since you can only play one strat on a player per round. However, say they last the entire game, and all of the sudden you get a ton of different players who can play Rimshaker/Brute Force and more than enough defensive bonuses to make anyone a This Is My House target. This makes someone like Antwan Jamison or Tracy McGrady playable because suddenly they can become Brute Force targets with just a slight bump in power, and it makes starting someone like Penny Hardaway or Jermaine O’Neal a lot easier because even if they can’t score, you can drop a +6/+6 defense card on them and suddenly you can House the opponent at will. Another possible change that would’ve impacted the game would’ve been assists being able to be used on strategy card rolls: Tomahawk Dunk suddenly becomes a must-play, and you could easily start to imagine Kidd replacing Grant Hill just to power those strat card rolls.

Instead, we wound up with a game of brute force. Let the big men do their work, don’t worry about your punt, and watch your head at the rim. It was a very promising game, but with the current set, the game only went as far as it’s best two players. I’d like to have seen what would happen if they brought it back for another year. But with what we have to work with, it’s just another flawed card game that was relegated to the dust bin of history. If you want to check it out, the starter sets are on EBay all the time for cheap. Getting the boosters is harder, and boxes can go for $25 or more if you can find a place that sells them. It was a relatively rare game, both in terms of design speed and print run.