Flashback Friday - Magical Athlete
Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
Magical Athlete is a simple roll & move that appears to offer little in the way of "cerebral content" to the discriminating gamer.
Nate Owens tells us:
It absolutely is stupid and silly. It breaks long-accepted rules. First of all, the blatant unbalance of the characters is ridiculous. Secondly, the die roll is almost totally unmitigated. There aren’t a bunch of ways to affect your fate, and once you know the value of different characters, the draft isn’t hard to predict.
Despite this, some people love the game, including Nate (you can read his Magical Athlete Review here)
Are you a lover or a hater?
This game is great and should be handed out at schools. Every kid should know the joy of romping along with Wrestler and the sorrow of trying to figure how Philosopher interacts with Cupid and Witch.
Quite frankly the published game looks like a homebrew pnp anyway so might as well make your own!
mezike wrote: It's guaranteed hilarity 50% of the races and guaranteed tiresome dice rolling in the other 50%, but I've always found the fun you get from the good matchups far outweigh the ones that don't work.
Quite frankly the published game looks like a homebrew pnp anyway so might as well make your own!
This is right in IDing its flaws but somehow the game is also one of the best games ever made for a non-hobby audience despite a race or two being a dice fest in most games. I said last week that I have bought this game for several mainstream gamers for an extravagent price to myself after they played it and absolutely adored it. Meet people where they are imho gamingwise.
mezike wrote: It's guaranteed hilarity 50% of the races and guaranteed tiresome dice rolling in the other 50%, but I've always found the fun you get from the good matchups far outweigh the ones that don't work.
Quite frankly the published game looks like a homebrew pnp anyway so might as well make your own!
I think this is spot on. I sold my copy years ago once the hilarity got a bit repetitive. Good game, got a bunch of plays out of it. Might pick it up again for the kiddo if it comes back, or if there's a P&P that's easy enough for an idiot.
mc wrote: So.....
Does anyone have any homebrew files they'd be willing to share?
Check out the images section on BGG, there is a pretty good one posted on there.
I think it's worth spending a little to use Artscow or similar to print the cards nicely and then you only need some generic coins from any other game (or pencil and pad to track money/points) and a pawn for each player, print the track on letter paper and you're good to go.
I don't think it's worth making standees, and you could always put the playing cards into some of those little plastic grip stands as an alternative if you really want to see the characters marching round the track.
I bought white plastic stands for all of the characters. It set me back $4, and it was one of my best "game pimps."
The illustrations are pure joy. They're very good.
The board is a pure visual disaster. It's not the construction, that's fine. The draft side is tolerable - just painfully bland. No, it's the race track. It's RIDICULOUS. A horrible dirt track graphic rendered in what looks to be free software. Seriously, why the illustrator couldn't have been paid to make an illustration of the track is just beyond me.
In other words, it’s a masterpiece.
Such a shame it’s OOP...the closest thing to it
Is actually the Iello Tales & Games Tortoise
And the Hare.
I will never forgive Z-Man for changing the name
Though- it was originally Magical Athelete.
A friend had broken/lost a couple of the original stands, which also have the unpleasant tendency to become loose. Once I discovered these were a perfect fit, I just gave him a full replacement set and replaced all my own in the process, being a much better use for these than sitting unused in a box
Many years ago on a business trip to Tokyo I stopped into Yellow Submarine, a game store in Akihabara. I always enjoy looking for obscure titles you can't get in the US. There were very few Japanese games that made it to the US back then.
And I saw MA and for some reason decided to pick it up, without any knowledge of what it was about. No English rules in the box, but somehow I managed to get a translation.
When I got back the family had a terrific time playing it. Zev (then-owner of Z-Man games) was in our gaming circle, and one day I told him he had to try this game, and it needed to be published in English, and I gave him my copy.
The rest, as they say, is history.
YOU CAN ALL BEGIN TO THANK ME NOW.
Geoff
Thank you Geoff, seriously. That game's brought us so much joy over the years. When I talk about games eliciting emotional response and how important that is, MA is way up there as one of the best.