Card game or board game

There are definitely logistical and financial considerations if you've got more than one type of componant for your game. Card printers won't supply tokens, and most companies that have stock game items (chips, dice) don't do custom injection-molding plastic work. Each company you contract with is a potential headache, and the lead times and expenses must be carefully balanced in order to have actual shippable sets. Consider that boards and boxes are likely to be seperate companies, and the instruction booklet, depending on its format, might be different as well.

However, I'd recommend not designing your games with this as your primary concern, considering the many hurdles to achieving a market-ready product. You can always farm the game around to publishers who are better equiped than you to make the game a marketable reality.

Julius' Dirt Simple Soccer Card Game

Cards:
Pass - Play to move the ball up field.
Steal - Play to gain control of the ball.
Block - Play to prevent a goal kick.
Goal Kick - Play to score a goal when you are within range.

Note: The order is from "most common" to "least common" - I don't know what exact percentages or counts of each would be best.

Other objects needed: A coin or other object to represent the ball.

Setup:
Shuffle the deck and draw seven cards each. Deal seven more cards face down in a horizontal row between the players to represent the field. Flip a coin to see who has posession first. Place the ball on that player's side of the field to represent posession, next to the center of the field.

Object:
To score the most points. If score, you must move the ball to the end of the field, and kick a goal.

Play:
On your turn, you may play a card or draw a card. There is no maximum hand size.

Playing a 'pass' advances the ball up the field one space towards your opponent's goal.
Playing a 'steal' card changes posession of the ball to you. It maintains its position on the field.
You may only play a 'goal kick' card when you are at the end of the field (next to your opponent's goal).
If your opponent plays a 'goal kick' you can play a 'block' on your turn to prevent it.

* If a goal is prevented, the other player gains control of the ball, and it is kicked back up the field to the center.
* If a goal is not prevented, the player who kicked the goal scores one point. That player maintains posession (is this correct? I don't play soccer), and starts again at the middle of the field.

After a goal is scored, players discard their hand, and draw seven new cards.

Winning:
The first two score 3 goals wins.

Interesting question and one I'm facing with some of my designs as well.

Purely card-games are obviously cheaper to produce and tend to have correspondingly lower retail prices as well ($10-20 USD, typically). As a result, they can represent a lower barrier of entry to those looking to self-publish or build a new publishing business (Z-Man Games, for instance, appears to have built themselves up to their current position by focusing first on the card games market - Zev, if you're reading this, please chime in with some insights).

I'm curious, though. How does the size of the card game market compare to that of the board-game market? Does the same rule of 7 still apply (keep your manufacturing costs to 1/7th of retail price to remain profitable)? Is there significant crossover between the two markets? If I release a card-based version and board-based version of the same game, am I building complementary markets, cannibalizing my market, or serving to entirely separate markets? I'd be really interested in learning more about how the two compare.

In my particular case, I've designed a boardgame for a startup publisher and am working with them to establish seed capital and initial cashflow. One of the ideas under discussion has been to take the exact same deck of cards used in the boardgame variant and create a similarly-themed card game out of them. The perceived benefits would be that we could amortize the setup costs for the cards across two separate games, use the card game to finance publication of the more expensive board game, and generally build an audience for the larger title.

Crazy? Not crazy? What do you think?

Cheers,
Rob

For a soccer game I definitely see a board working better than a bunch of cards laid out to form a modular board.... You have no need for terrain randomization, which is usually the prime motivator for modular boards... it's very hard to keep cards together in a neat and coherent grid on the table anyway, especially if there's going to be a lot of picking up and moving around of bits on their surfaces.

Come to think of it, maybe a printed cloth/felt mat would be even nicer.

~Josh

I think board games are the ultimate,

but card games are cool too.

My most favorite creation is a board game period.

if you do make a soccer board game,
I think it would be cool to add like a chaos round where
you can flick the token/ball and see where it crashes, hopefully
in the goal.

yeah I agree, in many sports
the field, or the court is very important.

If you change that, you change the feel of the game.
example NBA basketball vs Street hoops

or even get murderball.

the board game can provide the over view of the field.