Hello! Quite recently, I wrote that I was looking into Rabona, the football management game. Having bought the starter pack, I was extremely excited to dive into the game, which is basically still in its infancy - so far, I haven't been disappointed. In this shorter post, you'll learn about my first matches and impressions, what I'd like to see added to the game, as well as what my goals are in the game for the foreseeable future.

First Season

My first impression is - Rabona is awesome! Football managers online are great and Rabona's mechanics are really interesting and the game has potential to be way bigger than it is right now - maybe not huge right away, but I wouldn't be surprised to see DAU numbers skyrocket and 2-3x in a short period of time, especially when the new interface is fully rolled out.

I started off early enough in the season to have some time to train my players and have a look around before I had to play the first matches. I ran some training sessions (they have a cooldown of just under a day), closely followed market trends on players within my financial reach and upgraded many facilities for my club - from stadium and catering to training center and a hotel.

The season started off quite rocky, as it took me some time to win any games against real players - I did get some walkovers and beat a bot club; these are used to fill empty spots in the lowest division leagues. I realized that just the starting players and a few lucky scouting sessions won't do even in League 3 (the lowest currently). Instead, I set out into the Sign tab and began expanding my team. I tried not to overdo it when it comes to spending RBN, but also didn't mind booking losses in the first season or two in order to give myself a chance of getting out of League 3. Here's the team it left me with:

As you can see, there are some pretty large salary bumps here and there, but they only lead to small financial losses, especially considering the advertising contract earnings that come in at the end of the season. These players have managed to climb me out of a really low position and currently my results have improved significantly.

Of course, the season is pretty much over at this point, as the point difference between my team and the leader is far too large, but I am looking forward to the next season and attempting to promote! This team is already able to challenge everyone in the league, so with some extra training sessions as well as one or two more signings (looking at a goalkeeper and an extra attacker or midfielder), it should be doable.

To touch on my strategy just a little bit, I am playing a 4-2-3-1 formation most of the time - it is the strongest counter to 4-3-3, which is the default formation that is played by most players in the lowest league. I have considered switching to 4-4-2 against some of the players who play 4-2-3-1(as it counters that one), but my players are not so well-trained at that formation. I also try to vary the training a little bit - lately I was considering shot trainings, as my players have that stat at a very low level.

What I'd like to see

So I said what I've done so far, but what - at first glance - would I want to see improved about Rabona? Well, I would love to start with some QoL updates! First of all, when my first season was starting, I was forced to play on auto-play, because I couldn't set a lineup before it started - the only time I could change my lineup was between 4:23AM and 10:23AM, which wasn't possible for me. Having an option to just set a general line-up that is used as default unless you change individual ones would be something I'd greatly appreciate!

Another thing that I would love to have is stats of my players - even something simple like goals in the season - that I can access easily and maybe even sort by them. It isn't crazy important, but as a bit of a stats geek, I'd find that insanely fun just to look at.

Now, on the actual gameplay side, I'd love to see additional ways of impacting the game. Keep in mind that this is all just wishful thinking for now - Rabona is not created by a real big dev team or anything, so I don't expect improvements and expansions to be made fast. All of them are also coming from a football geek, so it is going to be some complex stuff.

First of all, more formations. Not a huge amount, but 2-3 additional ones could make it tons of fun to switch around and try to play around with what formation you're trying to counter - making it a more intricate game of Rock Paper Scissors so to say. That would surely make training a little more of a headache and would possibly require a small revamp of how formations are trained (tactical training with certain focus that improves some of them depending on the training chosen?), but it sounds like fun to me!

The way you are setting the lineup could also be revamped so that we could set up positions, such as Left Midfield, etc. It would also make it more clear which position numbers are which on the field, which can be confusing at first! That way defensive and offensive midfielders could have their OS calculated differently - or simply different skills would be more useful in each part of the pitch.

These are just a few, but honestly the revamp of the interface, once rolled out, will already make the game even more amazing to play!

Goals

The goals are to score more goals.. hehe.. No? Bad one? Alright.

I am honestly not looking too far forward when it comes to Rabona. I am playing it completely for fun - not tryharding and not thinking about money either. That said, I do have some goals and I'll just put them in the form of bullet points, as it was supposed to be a short post and well.. here we are.

• Advance to League 2. The absolute main goal for the upcoming season - if I fail to do so, it will start to be worrying, as I will be losing more and more RBN - I am also upgrading facilities with the thought of promoting soon, so I better not mess this up.
• Upgrade facilities. I am constantly attempting to upgrade these in order to ensure I am ready for the higher leagues when the time comes. Already working towards Stadium level 7 and getting the Hotel and Parking Lot as high as possible, I will focus on Training Center and Building Yard a bit later, but soon enough!
• Sign a sustainably good team. Of course, losses are expected in League 3 if I want to advance - it is required to have at least some higher OS players and those do not come cheap. That said, I don't want to sign a full 65+ OS team and then suffer RBN losses in millions - rather take it slow and steady.

Closing Words

Here it is, another Rabona post! Really fun game and I'll definitely be writing more about it as I start seeing some success.. As I certainly hope I will soon!

Since it's a gaming-related post, here is a bunch of referral links of mine - if you're not playing any of the games I've written about, give them a try! I wouldn't write about bad games.. well, not without saying they're bad anyway. So, here they are:

RABONA - Join the football management game through my referral link to receive a small RBN bonus!

RISING STAR - Here's the referral link to Rising Star. Start your way to mega stardom now!

SPLINTERLANDS - Splinterlands is the poster child of the HIVE blockchain. Join now through my referral link to get a few cards from me!