Pyramid Review
Fightball
Published by James Ernest Games
Designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker
Illustrated by Eduardo Müller
Two full-color 56-card decks; $14.95
As happens so often after an apocalypse, desperate people come up with half-baked ideas for competitive sports to pass the time, usually cobbled together from what little information remains about the way things were done by the Ancients, or the Old Ones, or whatever they call the people who created and then destroyed society. In James Ernest's Fightball, old photos and incomplete records have inspired the people to create a variation of basketball that has teams of five using a variety of sporting equipment to try to score goals with any of several balls, all in play at once.
The object of the game is to score the most points. Two players, called Coaches, play four quarters. Each quarter is divided into the fast round, during which they play cards and try to score goals; and the scoring round, in which points for that period are totaled. Whoever's combined total is highest after the fourth round wins.
The mechanics will be familiar to anyone who has played James Ernest's Brawl game, but they are two distinct games. The action happens on a court built out of 24 cards (each team deck comes with 12 court cards), a circle two cards deep on every side -- think of a 5 × 5 rectangle with the center card removed. Coaches sit on either of the lengthwise sides. The three court cards . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: November 1, 2002
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