Nutmeg - retro football manger card game

The aesthetic of it is a-ma-zing. I absolutely love it - it's what Football Manager should look like, in my head.

The gameplay is not for me though, unfortunately. I just don't have any clue what's going on. I need a guide...
 
I am actually addicted to it at the moment. Once it clicks it really clicks. It feels like Kevin Toms Football Manager. Buying the right players for my squad, deciding which match to broadcast (play) myself. Do I try to get an upset win or rather a secure one. Managing finances and enhancing staff and club facilities. Managing unhappy players whose low morale blocks a card spot.

Promises I have to give to players. Training special skills.

Formation and Approach having an influence on match probabilities not only for the matches you don't play yourself but also which cards you get in your match.

And just the charm, that my squad is a Panini album, doing finances and ordering merchandise in a BBC Micro like computer.

Recognizable player names.

And the game is tough.

Took Tranmere with the task in 80/81 to just stay in the league. Right now I am 15th and one of my goalkeepers is unhappy and my midfield star injured. Thankfully Keer and Cooke my striker duo are lifting the weight
 
Jay-Jay 10 said:
Took Tranmere with the task in 80/81 to just stay in the league. Right now I am 15th and one of my goalkeepers is unhappy and my midfield star injured. Thankfully Keer and Cooke my striker duo are lifting the weight
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Yes, come on Tranmere! I'll take any good news about them right now (we are very close to relegation and it's going really, really badly; I'm worried they won't be in FC next year at this rate).

I just can't figure out the matches themselves. I'm selecting cards to play purely because the game highlights them and says I can play them - I don't really understand what I can possibly do from a strategy standpoint (I don't know when I'm better off upping the odds of a move working, or just giving up and letting the opponent score).

I wish there was a decent guide somewhere. I've tried ten or so matches on the demo and it's just not clicking for me.
 
Chris Davies said:
Yes, come on Tranmere! I'll take any good news about them right now (we are very close to relegation and it's going really, really badly; I'm worried they won't be in FC next year at this rate).

I just can't figure out the matches themselves. I'm selecting cards to play purely because the game highlights them and says I can play them - I don't really understand what I can possibly do from a strategy standpoint (I don't know when I'm better off upping the odds of a move working, or just giving up and letting the opponent score).

I wish there was a decent guide somewhere. I've tried ten or so matches on the demo and it's just not clicking for me.
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It isn't really well explained and took me a while. In the end I started looking at it as: Good outcome, medium outcome, bad outcome and my cards as buffers to the probabilities. If the Good outcome is only 20 percent should I really play my card to boost it or do I wait until later in the match when the players are tired. If good and medium outcome together are 70 percent probability I might also not play my card. I think they have done a guide on their YouTube channel but it definitely takes some time getting into the card part of it.
 
Decided to persist with this until the end of the demo period ... and damn, I think I'm addicted now. I still don't 100% understand it, but the game as a whole (as you get to grips with it) is a lot of fun.
 
Since we’re a select group of football legends here, I’ll add the recommended game to my Steam wishlist and wait for it to go on sale.
 
Well, seven months later, this is probably in my top 20 favourite ever games. I've not been so addicted to a game in a long time.

Not only is it a love-letter to English football (with all the players from every year since 1980, across the top four divisions) but the gameplay loop, when you understand it - and when it digs its claws into you - is the perfect design for what it's attempting to do.

I feel sorry for the developers, who've made something genuinely fantastic, in an era where there are so many games to play that it will never get the sales it deserves. (It's also a great example of why demos are so important, because not only would I have never given a card game a chance, I wouldn't have been able to keep going back to it until I finally understood the depth that there is.)

Without a shadow of a doubt I find it the hardest game to stop playing since Championship Manager - the "just one more game" pull is absolutely off the scale, because you can get a month's work done in 1-2 minutes.

Every time you reach the end of a month, you're desperate to see if you've managed to make enough money to afford the young, unknown striker your scout has found in 1988 called Mr. A. Shearer... or if you can finally afford a youth academy... or if you're going to be able to hold onto your league position as the teams around you start evolving like they did in real life.

I really can't recommend it enough.

I wish they'd port this to mobile, too (or at least the Switch).

 
Jay-Jay 10 said:
Happy you stuck with it, the moment you understand how matches work it deeply gets its hooks into you and is just super fun.
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How did you get on with Tranmere?

Five years in, we're finally starting to push at the top end of Division 3; I'm trying to save up for a youth academy, but I need a defender (the best guys I have are starting to retire) and my scouts have just dropped Romario on my desk... How am I supposed to ignore the opportunity to sign him?! (Even though I already have John Fashanu banging goals in every week.)

I forgot to mention - I really like that your team's real future signings come through in the scout recommendations too (so I bought David Kelly, one of my childhood heroes, who scored in the league cup final of 2000 and gave me hope for a second that Tranmere would win some serious silverware in my lifetime).
 
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