Ted Lasso is a feel good comedy TV show about an American soccer coach who comes to England to coach a team to victory. As this TV series has really hit off, it makes sense that there is a board game dedicated to it. Much like the show itself, Ted Lasso Party Game does not focus on soccer, and instead has to do with the relationships the coaches have with their players.
Ted Lasso Party Game is a cooperative, fast paced game about resolving emotions that the players and staff have. In the middle of the game field, there are a bunch of different arenas that you will be placing player cards onto. Each player card displays how many points everyone will get when the player is resolved, as well the action that you will gain as a reward for completing all of the tokens.
Next to the team player, there are different tokens that show the emotional state of them. These emotions are what you and your fellow players are trying to resolve. This is done by placing down two cards of the same color to resolve a face — and you need to resolve both faces on the token to complete them. You also cannot play any cards on a team player unless one of the two coaches are on that card.
If you are unable to get a coach over to a player and resolve one token, that player will get more tokens at the start of the next round. Each round also has an event card that can help you or hinder you, depending on your luck.
Now, when it comes to actually playing the Ted Lasso Party Game, the rounds themselves are very chaotic. You need to hand out however many emotion cards everyone will get that round, which depends on player count, event cards, and any resolved players from the last round. Then, you must set a two minute timer. Going around from the player that dealt the cards, players can play their cards on the emotion tokens, discard a card to move one of the coaches to a new card or place their card in self care.
Your aim will be to use up all your cards, helping to eliminate as many of the tokens that you can. You will find yourself quickly shouting between players, making very snap decisions, and just trying to keep track of what cards would resolve which token. At the end of the timer, any tokens resolved would be discarded. If you have five cards in Self Care, they can be used to resolve an additional token, or carry over until the next round. Any of the completed players will be resolved, points would be added to the score, which is on the edge of the game box, and the playing field would be reset for a new round.
This then continues for four days (or four rounds) in which time you and your team need to hit a points goal. Our group found this point’s goal to be very challenging, especially as the player cards we were drawing had only two to four points that could be scored. Some of them did have dice rolls, as Ted Lasso Party Game comes with a soccer ball style die, but this die only goes from zero to four, giving low numbers as well.
We found the general gameplay to feel quite fun and frantic, in a shouting and helping each other type of way. There is plenty to remember on each round, especially between the number of extra abilities that come with the characters or cards, making some wildcards out of specific colors.
The Ted Lasso Party Game is a very quick and frantic game, that works well for larger groups of people — even if they haven’t seen the TV show this game is based off of! Though it may be hard to get your actual winning goal, helping out your team and resolving cards does feel satisfying and fun each round.
You can find Ted Lasso Party Game on Amazon.
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