FFFL: Brutal Ball Manager – Beginners Guide

Beginners can start here.

Guide for New Players

Game Concept

This is a team management game where a number of teams play out a season and you get to make choices for the team between matches and between seasons. You don’t play the game exactly – you get to set up a roster and then watch your carefully crafted team play match after match. There is no interaction from yourself during the match and you can skip watching the match entirely by incresing time acceleration. The fantasy races inject variation to keep stat junkies very busy.

Starting a League

Most of the tool tips are self explanatory. When you get to the list of teams you can choose to let them all be controlled by AI (so you do nothing at all), choose one team (or more) to be human controlled so you have something to do between matches, or make them all human controlled and rely on the “let AI choose” button if you get overwhelmed with actions and decisions.

Game Rules

Every match is 8 vs 8 and the 8 players will play offense and defense.

There is one set of three downs. If you can gain 10 yards in three goes then you get another three downs and another 10 yards.

If you fail to move the ball forward for three yards then your team will punt the ball for exactly 20 yards and lose possession (the punt action is not shown).

  • Exception: if a team uses 3 downs and loses possession of the ball within 30 yards of the opponents touchdown then the opponents will start at that point (no punt).

There are 100 downs in each match (no timer).

Each crossing of the touch-down line = 1 point. A safety is worth 1 point as well. There are no field goals.

An injured player will have decreased statistics and will be sent off for the rest of the game. Ensure your bench is organised in case substitutions are used.

When on offense:

  • There are 3 runners. These are like quarterbacks and can pass or run with the ball. Runners will rotate and take turns starting with the ball
  • There are 2 gunners. These are like wide receivers.
  • Three blockers start on the line of scrimmage.

When on defense:

  • Three defense lineman start on the line of scrimmage.
  • Three line backers start behind the defense.
  • Two Covers act like corner backs. They are to defend against the pass.

The Pre-Season Draft

Like American football – each team takes turns to pick new rookies to boost your team numbers. Let the AI pick for you or click each column for tool tips and sorting to help you choose the player you need. Click the ROSTER button in the bottom left corner to help you decide what sort of rookie you need.

End of Season Free Agents

There is a random chance of free agents wanting to join your team. The pool of agents will preference teams with high appeal so if you’d like to attract good talent then ensure your appeal stays higher than other teams.

There is a random chance that 0-2 players will leave your team at the end of the season. The chance is based on how high your salary rank is.

Salary rank can be seen in the roster screen and is the summation of salaries for the top 8 starters for each match. The team with salary rank 1 (i.e. spends the most money during the year) has ~96% chance of losing one player and ~92% chance to lose two players. The team with the lowest salary rank (i.e. has the smallest expenditure) has ~4% chance to lose one player and a 1.6% chance to lose two players.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 6887 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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