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Time Vault Soccer

Writer's picture: Lee WinderLee Winder

How many great sports based boardgames can you think of? How many sports based card games come to mind, good or bad?


Not many I bet, and if I said you were not allowed to mention Blood Bowl, I can imagine a lot of people draw a a blank!


Time Vault Soccer is a pure 1v1 card game where two Bosses build up their team and then take turns building up parallel pillars of defence and attack, with a view to - given it's a football game - score the most goals before the end of the game.


The game system is surprisingly simple - you build up a greater attack score than your opponents defence and you score - but it's also surprisingly tactical, with clear decisions to make each turn and a level of insider knowledge as you see the players your opponent has played, giving you an idea of how they could attack or counter your move.


Honestly, I could see this system in play in a number of different genres and it would work - and work well.


And for the football fans, the option to bring together players and teams from across decades, putting your favourite players up front regardless of the era they played adds a lot of additional fun to the experience.


That 70's Feeling

I was sent the Debut 60’s vs 70’s Starter Squads and really wanted to do something different with this one - so given the decades it was set in I strongly lent into the 70's vibe, both from a style and content perspective.


Pulling on images and photos from the 70's, that low contrast, slightly hue'd look with the grain you no longer see in photos taken today, the images give the feeling of not only playing as a team from the 60's and 70's, but actually being played in a time long past.



And that look of playing the game on your mum's (far too) orange table cloth, probably next to some rather striking green glass ornaments was how I set up the shoot.


The final touches were getting props to really make the images look of the era. Football magazines from the 70's are surprisingly easy to come by, though as I wanted the hero shot to link directly to the magazine I was using, it did take a little while to find the right one.


Shot of a player card on an issue of GOAL magazine

Though these magazines certainly don't cost 10p any more!


Building The Scene

I had a number of different ideas to build up the feeling of a 70's environment, however as I worked through a number of options it started to feel as though the game had the risk of being crowded out.


After all, the cards are the stars of the photos, and people aren't here for the football magazines, 70's records and bright orange mystery drinks.


So in the end, I settled on just using the magazines as the scene setters and putting them off to the side so it looked as though the magazines were there to be read - or had been read - around the game.



And as a Burnley native, I couldn't help but slip that one in there!



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