Auzzie Football League Board Game (AFL)

My kid is getting into AFL (Australian Football League) and I thought a board game could help show strategies used on field with regard to player positioning etc.

We are going to try and make this to scale with rules that is probably nowhere near the real ones. But the idea here is to have fun. By all means, use this instructable and create your own rules better suited to your AFL knowledge :)

I'll caveat this instructable supply list with the fact that I have access to a 3D printer and will use it. BUT it is not required.

For the field:

Cardboard, pens and paint if you want.

For the players:

cardboard (I'm using a printer for this)

a finger tip sized ball (oval shaped would be best as it adds a bit of random movement.)

I found the helpful diagram to give me an idea of the scale of a full size field.

We will use those numbers and combine it with some maths to scale it down to the size we want for a table.

First we will make a very unscientific assumption. The average height of an AFL player is 1.85m (or 185cm).

The height we want for our player is 3.5cm. So our scale will be 3.5cm : 180cm

For practical purposes, we will be using the smaller field.

Length maths:

if 3.5cm is 185cm, then how long is 13500cm?

Length = 3.5(13500)/185 ~ 255cm ~ 250cm

Similarly, if 3.5cm is 185cm, then how wide is 110000cm?

Width = 3.5(11000)/185 ~ 208cm ~ 200cm

That is a 2.5m x 2m board .We may just half that to fit on standard tables and keep the game going.

So our field size will be 1.25m x 1m
So keep the following equation in consideration for any other field markings etc:
x = 3.5(y)/185

Ok, here is the truth. The reason I wanted my players to be 3.5cm in the previous step is because I'm using a 3D model that is pretty much that hight. I also believe that it is good height for table top players to be.

The link to the player STL files if you are going to print your own:

Player STL file

The only change I've made to printing these, was to copy and paste them a couple of times so I can reduce the amount of prints.

But as stated in the supplied, you can make your own players. Simply cut a cardboard of around 3.5cm x 1cm and glue it on another piece of card board so it stands upright. This way you don't have to have human players either. You can customise that cardboard with all sorts of colours and mutations.

To make the game flow, you will need around 9 players on each team. So a total of 18 players.
I understand a real game would have around 18 players on each team. So 36 players on field. But for the sake of ease, let's dumb it down to 9 players so we can get big "kicks" in.

You'll by this time get the gist. We take the original size, scale it down and half.

I used the same formulas as earlier and it provided the following measurements that we'll play with:

Goal post: 11cm

Behind Post: 6cm

Distance between posts: 6cm

I've added the goal post SLT that you can play with as well.

The ruck decider's job in the game will become more evident through the rules. However, for it, you can really use any cone shaped object of around 2cm high.

The footyball should be an oval shaped ball. This will help with the randomness of the ball movement and add to the strategies in play on the field.

I've included the STL files for the ruck decider and the footyball I created via Tinkercad.

There are two rule sets. A simple and a more advanced one.

After giving both a go, definitely recommend running with the advanced rules. The game becomes more fast paste and keeping track of everything that goes on can get interesting.

Attached is a word document with both sets of rules.

Use it and change it to best fit your table and players.

The last part is to have fun.

It was storming outside so I couldn't get out to buy and build the field. It is a work in progress. :)