Tooor!

After playing the game yesterday, I wrote a review in Finnish of Maaali! aka Tooor!, also known as the new edition of Finale.

Tooor! is a fairly simple football game. Each coach fields a team of 11 players. Each player has a value from one to five, depicting the skill and the strength of the player. Actually, there's four values for each player, one on each side of the rectangular player tile. Whenever player is used, the tile is rotated 90 degrees, so the values of the players fluctuate during the game. Someone might lose their touch, someone will warm up later in the game.

The game is played in six rounds. On each round, the coaches choose tactic cards. Higher tactic card gets to attack first. The tactic card shows a set of players by their position (forward, middle, defense). Coaches choose the players they'll use, total their values and roll dice (0-3) to give some randomness.

If the attacker has a higher total, the attack is succesful. One of the attacking players faces the goalie; success means a goal. If the attack fails, the defender gets to attack. After the possible return attack the round is over.

Players have some event symbols in the corners of their tiles. Those are checked when the tiles are rotated and might cause a player to get a red or yellow card or an injury. That adds to the decisionmaking - there's definitely some. Sometimes you must, for example, use your weaker players to make them better. Using a really good player helps score goals, but that player might become very weak afterwards - is it worth it?

Tooor! is a fairly simple game, but it offers some good decisionmaking. The die has a good role in the game: it creates uncertainty, as you can't be sure if your attack will succeed, but the luck isn't too strong. All in all, it's a pretty nifty little game. I just didn't like it. I found the game boring and not much fun. I'd definitely recommend it to a football-loving children, they might like it, but it's unlikely I'll play the game again.