Overdrive Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Overdrive, a fun and fast paced sport themed slugfest where coaches draft their teams and try to knock out opposing players to win the game and possibly the whole league.

I’ve always been drawn to sports games and to be honest, I really enjoy playing them whether I win or lose. I used to play 2nd Edition Blood Bowl and Strat-O-Matic Baseball back in the day and my friends and I loved creating our own teams and drafting players probably just as much as playing. Today, I try to find any excuse to get in as many games of Blitz Bowl, Break Away Football, Flamme Rouge, or Rallyman GT as I can. I love cooperative games but something about sports games where I crave competition and just simply have a great time with this genre.

This brings us to today’s review of Overdrive from Mantic Games. Set in the Dreadball universe, this arena sports game pits 2 players against each other’s in various game modes to see who can win. Overdrive is a 2-player game that takes about 45-60 minutes depending on the game mode.

Overdrive’s set-up is variable for each of the 6 game modes but I’m going to highlight the standard game mode in this overview. Set-up is straight forward with the score track starting on 0 and the rush track starting on 1. Each player is given 1 overdrive token and 4 action tokens. One team is determined to be the home team and that coach drafts their first player and then the away coach drafts theirs. The draft selection alternates until both teams have 3 players.

After set-up coaches will begin play by alternating placing action tokens and activating their players starting with the home coach. After the first rush, the coach with the lower score will place their action token first.

Players can only be activated