FUBA Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review FUBA, a soccer themed board game published by U&P Games. FUBA is a fun and fast paced tactical football simulator that pits 2 teams against each other in hopes of scoring the most goals before the match ends.

Most Americans (as well as Canadians and Australians) call the sport soccer while the rest of the world calls it football. I’m not going to debate who’s right and wrong (I think we all know the answer) but the sport has many loyal fans in the U.S. and that fan base continues to grow. Whatever the reason, the sport is here to stay in the U.S. Fans such as my kids would rather play it than American football, they definitely prefer to watch European football on Saturday mornings than to join me in arm-chair quarterbacking the gridiron version on Sundays.

This brings us to today’s review of FUBA from U&P Games. FUBA is labeled a football game (i.e., it’s about soccer) and so I will reference the sport as football for the rest of this review. FUBA is a 2-player tactical football game that takes about 90-120 minutes depending on player experience, in which both players constantly moving their teams in hopes of scoring the most goals before the match ends.

There’s a lot to cover with FUBA so I’m going to give a high-level overview of the basic rules but the actual rulebook is here if readers want to do a deep dive: FUBA

Each turn includes 3 stages:

If a goal attempt is successful the controlling team scores a point and the rest of the turn is skipped. The scoring team now becomes the defending team and both team set-up like the start of the game and play begins with Stage 1 with the new controlling team.

If the goal attempt results in a rebound or corner kick then those rules are followed. If the result is a