Basketboss - Board Game Review

Daniel Nixon
3 hours ago
3 min read

Type of Game: Auction, Team Building

Number of Players: 2-5

Age: 11+

Artists: Hylton Warburton

Publisher: Allplay

Allplay was present at PAX Unplugged 2025 in Philadelphia, PA and was gracious enough to provide Comic Book Yeti with Basketboss to review.

Sports, as a theme in modern board games, doesn't quite have the hall of fame status of other themes. Basketball specifically may have never even reached the pro level. Basketboss may be the best attempt, but does it bring home the trophy or fall short of its Cinderella story? We at Comic Book Yeti are here for another board game review. Trust the Process!

CONCEPT

Across six seasons, players take the reins of a professional basketball team. Each season, new superstars are waiting to be auctioned off to the highest bidding team. Veteran players age and team advisors provide special abilities to your organization, giving you a unique advantage. At the end of each season trophies are awarded to the highest performing teams and after six complete seasons trophies are totaled along with your teams final strength. The highest total determines the champion.

HOW IT WORKS

A game of Basketboss spans across six seasons with each season having five phases.

Offer Contracts: Basketball legend player cards fill the market, until an income or number limit is reached based on player count. The manager with the lowest value on their advisor card is first to bid on the first player. Increase the bid or pass until one manager is left and they pay. Player cards are added to the winning managers player board replacing a starting player or previously won player card.
Award Trophies: Team strength is calculated using the stars located on the top visible row and adding one star for each unique position. The team with the highest score gets the highest trophy and the next highest score gets the next lower value trophy, doing the same until all trophies are awarded.
Hire Advisors: Advisors are returned and the players pick new advisors starting with the player lowest on the score track.
Earn Income: Money is earned for each dollar symbol on each player card or starting player
Age Players: Slide player cards up one level. Retire any players that have no stars on their row. Flip the season card facedown and take note of the next season card.

COMPONENTS

Player cards have unique artwork on them depicting real-world basketball legends with slightly altered names, giving a fun round of guess who. Player boards are double layered and allow for sliding the cards up after each season. One small complaint is that when a player card is added it covers up the position of that column. Someone not too familiar with the five positions will have to constantly flip up acquired players.

Trophies are cardboard punch-outs of a decent thickness. Allplay additionally provided a set of shiny metal trophies to upgrade the ones provided in the base game. Metal upgrades are always a good thing, but I don't feel they are needed or necessary. The cardboard trophies seem durable enough to hold up to wear and tear. Hopefully the player cards made of just normal card material can as well. Being unusually sized, you won't find sleeves for protection.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I appreciate games that do a good job of bringing new gamers into the hobby solely on their gameplay. I also appreciate a good theme that can help bring in new gamers. I have a lot of sports fan friends in my life that aren't gamers, but have expressed interest in this one based solely on the theme. "You can draft Allen Iverson!", I tell them.

Auction games are one of my favorites I'm finding. Especially with a higher player count. I wasn't able to play with a count of five yet, but I won't shy away from it either. As the action is happening mostly at the same time, there wouldn't be a lot of down time waiting for others to make decisions. But even the two player experience was enjoyable. The MVP Advisor card being extremely valuable.

The season cards provide great variability and replayability as you use four of nine cards every game. Endorsement Deals allows players who don't produce income to provide. Off Season Workouts let you age a player so they go from that two star year to their five star league MVP season. Fun little bonuses.

I can see fans of the game and huge fans of basketball making their own player cards. This version came out in 2022 and may not have today's biggest stars. Customize that Jokic, Wemby or Ant-man player card. Come up with your own funny alternate names!

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