New Player Guide (your first hour)

[billharris44]

I want you guys to have the best experience possible, so here are a few things to keep in mind during your first hour of play.

First, pay attention to the tutorial. It only lasts about 10 minutes, but it explains everything you need to know in terms of the rules. The rules aren't complicated, but you do need to understand them.

Actually, what am I saying? Nobody pays attention to the tutorial. Okay, let's start from scratch here.

There are two major areas of gameplay in GS: strategic decisions related to football, and strategic decisions related to the tableau (the cards in front of you). The football decisions are the same that a football coach would make during a game: run/pass playcall, down and distance decisions, when to kick, time management, etc. That's basic football, so no discussion needed (I'll put up a separate guide for those of you who are unfamiliar with American football).

So let's talk about the tableau.

The basics:
--playing cards either increases your gain on offense, or reduces the opponent's gain on defense.
--valid "matches" are cards within 1 rank and opposite color (so red 2 and black 3 would be a valid match, for example).
--1 and 13 are NOT a valid match. This is important to the card gameplay and will be discussed shortly.
--on offense, if you run out of valid card matches, you can press the "Big Play" button. When you press the Big Play button, you will either get another card or trigger a text event, which could have a positive or negative outcome. In gameplay terms, this represents risk.
--on defense, you receive an allocation of Big Play presses per half. They're much less risky in outcome terms (a negative event when you press the Big Play button on defense is very rare), but the risk lies in their limited supply. So you need to decide when getting an extra card (which will possibly result in more matches to reduce the opponent's gain on the play) is important.

In version 1.1, the ability to gain Big Play presses on defense by downing punts inside the opponent's 15 has been added.

The card play may seem simplistic at first, and you can certainly play it that way, but because 1-13 is not a match, certain cards are better to have on the tableau than others (with three specific levels of quality). I'm not going to spell that out for you, because I want you to discover it for yourselves, but good card play is a continual process of replacing "bad" cards on the tableau with "good" cards as soon as possible. This affects what order you'll play your matches, if you have more than one showing, and what you want to match the wild card with (wild cards show up occasionally and can be matched with any card).

On Rookie difficulty, you will quickly be able to win. Rookie is really only for people who have no understanding of American football and my Mom (love you, Mom!). The AI is very, very simple on Rookie.

As soon as you move up to Veteran level, though, the AI is very strong. The decisions you have to make on every play are much more consequential, and the game becomes very challenging. So as soon as you feel comfortable on Rookie, move up to Veteran. Also, know that you can change the difficulty level during a season in the Options menu, so you can move back and forth at will.

That's enough for now. Remember, if you're having trouble with the difficulty, you can customize your settings in the Options menu!

Oh, one more note: if you use a pen tablet for your input device, GS should work fine with it (that's what I use), and you can select cards very, very quickly that way. Also, if you have Windows 8 and a touchscreen-enabled device, GS works fine with those, too. You'll just need to use a regular keyboard for editing teams, but other than that, you're good to go with touch. I test on Eli's ultrabook all the time.

[TARTrazine]

I think it would be really useful if you added a trailer video that showed how the game actually plays. The "history" video is amusing (although I would have liked to see cheerleaders forming a house of cards) but doesn't tell us anything about the game, and the old Greenlight video (telling us to vote at the end) barely hints at how the game works.

[billharris44]

Tartrazine, thanks for the idea!

[Corgidog]

Originally posted by billharris44:

Tartrazine, thanks for the idea!

Just got the game and based my purchase on a hugh love of American football and a love for solitaire. I fully understand American football, ie; play calling, clock management, run vs pass etc. but after watching the tutorial several times and reading and rereading the help menu this game makes absolutely no sense to me at all. I click on cards but not sure if I am selecting or deselecting them since the cards do not move on the screen. I click and reclick on cards and nothing happens. So I have to click on end play which always results in a touchdown for the other team when on defense and a negative play on offense.
Not much strategy at all from what I see. Run or Pass. No formations, no play action, no blitz or fake kicks. Nothing. The best strategy football game I have every played is Tom Landry's Strategy Football. Wish there was a way to DOS BOX that game into STAEM. TLSF was basic football in that you had formations and TRUE play calling and startegy and real clock management. You did not control the individual players only the formations and the plays called. You select the play and the computer did everything else. Great game.
I want to learn this game but the way you have it set up there is no startegy involved. First down and 40 in a game where you cannot gain enough yards passing or running to get a first down. Its more like a cheesey casino slot maching game. You click on stuff and nothing good ever happens. No clock management cause you cannot run out of bounds, spike the ball, run clock down to zero before the snap, run quick out passes or through the ball out of bounds.

It's a 50/50 game. Real football is not a 50/50 guessing game. Players are in motion plus a wide variety of formations. This is extreme basics: Run or Pass and no control over who runs or where they run, quick pitch, draw, misdirection, playaction, draw, QB draw, TE dump. no strategey. Please help with this cause it does not look like a REAL strategey game. You click on cards more of a guess and not based on TRUE football strategey. Need some help here. Thanks
EDIT: Still trying to play but not really seeing any STRATEGY to this game. It's all about the luck of the cards and not anything to do with football strategey. You get good cards you have good plays and bad cards bad plays. On defense if you have no big plays left it is just about an automatic score every play. Frustrating. Like the idea of this game but football needs to have more of a roll in this game.

[billharris44]

Corgidog, I'm sorry that you're disappointed. I can promise you that it's not a 50/50 game, and there are quite a few people here who have sunk 100+ hours into the game and enjoyed it. Could I ask what level of difficulty you started on?

Also, very sorry for the delay in responding.

[Corgidog]

Originally posted by billharris44:

Corgidog, I'm sorry that you're disappointed. I can promise you that it's not a 50/50 game, and there are quite a few people here who have sunk 100+ hours into the game and enjoyed it. Could I ask what level of difficulty you started on?

Also, very sorry for the delay in responding.

I have spent more time with this game and find that it is growing on me. I will continue to play and experiment. It isnt perfect but then again nothing is perfect. I am happy with my purchase and will continue to play. I wish there was a way to dos box Tom Landry Strategy Football but this will do for now. Thanks for the response. I started on the beginer or tutorial level. I am still playing that level.

[gfc1963]

Tried this game again and stil nothing has changed!! My team was rated A in pass offense against a team rated C- in pass defence. So I should be good at passing right?? Wrong!! I got no cards at all to play pass and all my offence was running!! And when you press the big play button 90% of the time nothing happens to help you. I get a message saying that my reciver has found a seam and another card pops up but it is of no good to me at all. And as for guessing what play the pc is going to use - pure luck that you guess the right way.

[Corgidog]

Originally posted by gfc1963:

Tried this game again and stil nothing has changed!! My team was rated A in pass offense against a team rated C- in pass defence. So I should be good at passing right?? Wrong!! I got no cards at all to play pass and all my offence was running!! And when you press the big play button 90% of the time nothing happens to help you. I get a message saying that my reciver has found a seam and another card pops up but it is of no good to me at all. And as for guessing what play the pc is going to use - pure luck that you guess the right way.

I went through the same thing. This game can be very frustrating with cards that make no sense and leave you 100% no chance to win. Basically, you have a championship team but when you try to play the games you cannot win a single game. I have won season champioships but, and this is a big BUT,,, I did it through hitting the auto play button and never actually playing a game. I could only win through auto play and NEVER at actually playing out every single game. At the end of each season I would build my team and eventually won a championship after several seasons but it was all auto play. I think when this game was designed it misses on many real football type varibles.

[gfc1963]

Utter utter utter garbage!! I've tried to like this game as I like American Football but this game is just rubbish and ratings mean absolutely nothing!! Just pure luck you get any cards and what are you supposed to do if the cards are all the same colour? I hit the big play button and 90% of the time I get nothing adn then when I do get something, the card is of no help at all!!!! Glad I did not pay too much fo rhis rubbish.

[billharris44]

Originally posted by gfc1963:

Utter utter utter garbage!! I've tried to like this game as I like American Football but this game is just rubbish and ratings mean absolutely nothing!! Just pure luck you get any cards and what are you supposed to do if the cards are all the same colour? I hit the big play button and 90% of the time I get nothing adn then when I do get something, the card is of no help at all!!!! Glad I did not pay too much fo rhis rubbish.

I'm sorry that you're disappointed, but there are many people on this board who have put many hours into the game, and I can promise you that it does exactly what it says. As to the Big Play button specifically, your chances of getting a card drop the more times you press it on a single play, then reset at the end of the play. So if, for example, you had a 50% chance of getting a card on the first press, your odds could be only 30% on the second press, and maybe 20% on the third. That stops people from just spamming it to win.