Any Day is Draft Day for Football Mogul 2006

Fantasy Mode is Wild Card for Football Tycoon 2006

If you like the thrill of calling plays and outguessing your opponents, Football Mogul 2006 won’t meet all of your needs. I’ve played John Madden Football since its debut on the Apple II and for better or worse, Football Mogul 2006 is no Madden. It doesn’t try to be. It’s an entirely different experience. This general manager simulation is more like fantasy football on steroids. The bad news is that you don’t see any on-field action. The worse news is that you can’t call individual plays. But the good news is that you can draft (you can even use Commissioner Mode to use the program as your fantasy league draft, but you would need to upgrade to 2007 to do so) a team completely; you can set the rosters so that the people you want to see get playing time (My frustration with fantasy football is drafting someone that ends up on the outs with his head coach and gets less playing time than he had the previous year.) get playing time; and you can initiate or respond to trades from rival general managers.

PLAYOFF PAYOFF Every statistical sports buff should recognize the familiar tournament brackets for a playoff set-up.

In fact, Football Mogul 2006 can be played in multiple modes. First, even though the data files for the game are based on performances prior to the 2005 season, I used the fantasy draft mode to prepare for my online draft in fantasy football. (Note: I try to draft as though I were in a Dynasty or Keeper League, even though I’m not.) To be competitive in this game, though, I had to be willing to pick up a few old-timers that I knew wouldn’t be around long, just to be competitive in the simulated 2005 and 2007 seasons. This fantasy draft mode allowed me to play multiple seasons of my would-be Dynasty teams and I felt like I was on an open playing field with the artificial general managers.

TIP: If you are using the fantasy draft mode, note that the artificial GMs draft heavily on the defensive side of the ball. This makes sense in that the proverbial draft day wisdom is that improving the defense a little will make you competitive faster than improving the offense a little. On the other hand, you can probably pick up your top choices in offensive categories on the first three or four rounds without risking the defensive pool getting too watered down.

Second, Football Mogul 2006 can be played in the existing franchise mode. This means that you take the franchise you’re handed and try to improve it with drafts and trades. This mode is much more realistic and, as a result, more challenging (should you, like me, choose underdogs), but it has the disadvantage of being quite frustrating when you’re trying to get incremental improvement through multiple seasons and end up hitting a string of injuries. It does have the advantage of raising the ante on trades, though. Each trade potentially becomes, as in real-life, a potentially painful playoff.

Note: You can also have the program shuffle the players so that you get a slightly different franchise than the historical one or randomly assign the players. This adds lots more replay value to the game.

Third, you can minimize your competitive expectations and try to run the franchise as a pure business. Is it possible to keep very few expensive stars and remain competitive enough to keep attendance and salaries such that you increase profit? Frankly, this will be the least satisfying way to play the game and the hardest way to feel really good about your accomplishments. I’ve rarely had success with it, but I did have to try it because it seems like so many sports franchises try this approach and, after all, it’s a game!

Football Means Fundamentals (Game Play)

Since Football Mogul 2006 doesn’t have you call plays, you probably wonder what the game play is like. Frankly, it can be as fast or as slow as you’d like, depending on your playing style.

First, you choose the team you are going to control; determine which one of four progressively more advanced difficulty modes (Fan, Coach, Manager, Mogul) you desire; and opt from the shuffle players, randomize players, or fantasy draft mode. At this time, you can also equalize cities to remove the economics of big market/small market, if desired).

Your second task is setting prices and budgets. You will need to use the pull-down menu button to access ticket prices, concession prices, and expenses. As you will soon see, these choices are rather insignificant compared to the salary decisions you will make in the future. Right now, though, it’s probably better to leave the default numbers in place until you know what you have with the rest of the product.

Third, you can initiate any trades that you’d like or bid on a free agent at this point. If you have a reasonably competitive team from real-life, I don’t advise fiddling with your roster too much until you know what you have. The free agent list usually starts with a pretty bleak selection at the opening of the inaugural season. If you are particularly weak, you might try putting a few expendable players on the trading block (a clever feature that lets you solicit deals from all possibly interested teams at the same time). You are probably better off playing a few weeks with the existing personnel and then, evaluating your needs from a more informed perspective. Don’t expect to get too much help from the other GMs, though. They usually drive tough trades.

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BAIT AND SWITCH You won’t find many bargains coming from your respective rivals, especially at Mogul level.

Finally, you establish the depth chart for offense, defense, and special teams. This will not only determine your starters, but it will determine substitution priority and injury contingency. Unfortunately, you cannot determine the formation priority for your team and this means that you have to assume that the formations will be used in the order printed below. You also need to be sure that you have enough depth to cover the personnel for each formation as listed in the chart.
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NUMBERS GAME Be certain you have the best possible personnel for these minimum requirements with regard to each formation

I personally like to shake up the depth chart whenever I see numbers that fall below my expectations (remembering, of course, that in this game, as in real-life, one game doth not a season make) and in order to start building data on my rookies and draft choices. This is particularly vital when playing multiple seasons.
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DEPTH CHANGES Changes in your roster priority, even due to injury, can ripple through your team’s performance like depth charges near a WWII submarine.

Although Football Mogul 2006 allows you to play through multiple games at a time (or even entire seasons at a time), I prefer to go week-by-week. I like to check the results and adjust the depth charts where called for. I read through both the scoring summaries and the cumulative statistics on the roster menu. Of course, if you play the game in this way, it’s probably useful to print the screen of your team roster and print it out for future reference. Here, we wish that Football Mogul 2006 emulated its sister game for baseball and allowed you to export a comma-separated file (.csv) to load into your favorite spreadsheet for sorting and printing. You can “edit” the columns that show from this screen, but the lack of a simple export feature is disappointing. If you need to make a trade, you can access your entire roster from the negotiation screen, but it is easier to look at a hard copy when you are trying to put together the right kind of package.

TIP: I use my PRINT SCREEN key to capture the screen with this information, paste it into my paint program, crop it down to the essentials, and then, print it off for future reference.

But, Football Mogul 2006 really becomes fun when you move to the second season. Then, you decide on extending contracts, drafting college talent, signing free agents, and revising your roster for the next season.

Playbook (Strategy Notes)

1) You will need to sort your roster by two numbers above all others: Overall (Performance Rating reflecting current performance) and Peak (Performance Estimate reflecting future potential).
2) You will also need to deliver playing time for your draftees if you expect them to improve. Peak Ratings are not real ratings until they have NFL playing time under their respective belts. And, since you do not make substitutions and call individual plays, the only way to guarantee playing time is to start them. So, whenever you have a weak opponent scheduled, it is always good to work in a prospect (rarely more than one prospect) in order to start building a track record. You can also sort them to the top of the bench list for “possible” playing time.
3) When playing multiple seasons, always make sure that you “scout” your roster and renegotiate any contracts with one year remaining. In this way, you’ll save money over going through the “Renew Contracts” phase.

GRIESE COME, GRIESE GO Your franchise's profitability relies on more than the coming and going of superstar talent, but talent is important.

4) When choosing a quarterback, pay extra special attention to the Accuracy rating. If this rating isn’t high, you will suffer through some miserable games with high, high numbers of interceptions.
5) Always analyze trade offers from every angle and never accept a trade offer as is. Work the trade by finding out what the rival GM needs and then, make several stabs at the trade by beginning with offers you don’t expect them to take—players you don’t really want to keep long-term. When in doubt, add cash. But never be afraid of being insulted by the other GMs. Making offers do not appear to hurt you.

Scouting Report (Weaknesses)

While I appreciate what Football Mogul 2006 is trying to accomplish, I feel like it falls short. I don’t feel like it has provided the tools for you to select a franchise and change the face of that franchise over the course of multiple seasons. Even if you cannot call individual plays, I would like to be able to determine the primary offensive and defensive formations to be used. Right now, you are stuck with defaults.

Further, even if you cannot call individual plays, I think you should be able to determine an ideal percentage of playing time for certain bench players. The program could always ignore those ideals when scores are tight, but it would sure help player development and add a satisfying new wrinkle to the game.

In the same way, even if you aren’t calling plays, you should be able to establish an offensive playbook. If you’re drafting and trading for a particular offensive philosophy, you ought to be able to implement it somehow. Right now, that doesn’t quite happen.

Further, except for the inability to export .csv files as expressed earlier, the only technical glitch I saw related to the print out (either on-screen or to the printer) of the Play-by-Play feature. Every game starts off with the Arizona Cardinals kicking off, no matter who is playing. After the kick-off, the commentary/summary prints the proper opponents, so it’s “no harm, no foul” on this extremely minor glitch. You won’t even see it unless you read the Play-by-Play carefully.

Finally, even though you can use Notepad’s built-in print function to get the full summary of the game, I don’t see why it can’t print out box scores at the end of the summary or individually as its own mechanism. It just seems like a game that features drafts, multiple seasons, and infinite replayability should have box scores available to the gamer.

Box Score (Conclusion)

Football Mogul 2006 is very entertaining for people who like to noodle around with sports statistics, financial performance, and sports performance. Anyone who understands that, as with fantasy football, you are playing with figures as opposed to watching a game, should know whether this game is for them or not. I’ve personally played with this game for months, off and on. Now, with football season looming, it is even more fascinating. But what is most fascinating is that I can do the same season over and over again with different franchises, different players, and different financial philosophies.

There is no graphic payback. There is no play-calling. There is no auditory fanfare. Yet, Football Mogul 2006 has a robust statistical model, a fascinating versatility, and basic game engine that can be refined over the years. Right now, it is fairly entertaining. But seeing how Clay Dreslough and company have improved Baseball Mogul over the years, I expect it to become even more fascinating and satisfying as the years go by.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 6 (on scale of 10)

Statistical Model 7 (nice for what it does)
Game Play 5 (not enough to do for most gamers)
Artificial Opponents 6 (nasty negotiators)
Replayability 8 (so many ways to try it)
Graphics 3 (almost a text-based game)
Price/Performance 7 (nice value for stat-based gamers)

Reviewer’s Bias 7 (hoping for slightly more)