The choice of kits for Counter Attack has been the subject of much debate between my friends and I, and latterly among Counter Attack supporters. We ran a Facebook and Twitter poll on the subject several months ago where one big idea emerged: the standard kits should not be plain old blue vs red. Subbuteo sets tend to go with blue and red and, it has to be said, for good reason – these kits are universal and, well, so basic that they almost implore customers to buy additional teams!
But we didn’t want to take that route. In a big part thanks to those polls, we went with two classic kits. One looks a bit like a Dutch team and another a bit like an Italian team, but the actual club names escape me. Now, it turns out there is a level of hatred out there for the Italian team among Italian fans. I guess that should have been obvious to me! Perhaps this is another reason Subbuteo always goes blue and red…
The picture below shows how we’ve done it with the prototype – plain wooden counters with stenciled player numbers. It works well but they’re not going to be a patch on what we’re gonna end up with…
Back to the final kits! Beyond the two teams in the base set, which other teams are available? We’ve made an additional seven kits for players to pick from. All are recognisable, several are easily imagined as a number of clubs. We hope there is something in there for everyone, but we are well aware there are desires for other kits – Celtic, Hibs, Hearts have been requested (which perhaps tells you something about our followers!), while PSG, Internazionale, Real Madrid and Boca Juniors have had a few shouts. I see the merits behind all of them – iconic kits in every sense – except for Real Madrid. I’ve never seen the attraction in an all-white kit! How would we dress that up so it was something more than plain old white?
The video below showcases the final designs, including the designs of the additional goalkeeper jerseys. BTW, the goalkeeper jerseys were definitely the most fun to make. Maybe this tells me that the next set of kits that get made should include some make-believe outfits just so the kits can be gorgeous!
If you backed Counter Attack on Kickstarter then you’ll already recognise the options shown in the video. Customers who ordered the Ultimate Pack get two additional sets of team counters with their order…which ones have been most popular?
1. Blue and red stripes by a mile
2. The yellow and blacks
3. The reds
4. The rest of them
Which kits would you like us to make in the future? Tell us in the comments below!
Not sure where you are coming from with the Italian team kit!
It’s clearly a St Mirren kit!
Went with the Blue and Red and Yellow and Black teams for the ultimate pack!
Ha! The SPFL has a few sneaky entries in that lot 😉
Iconic kits that would also sell well would be both Milan sides, with white numbers so you don’t have to break the stripes, Celtic, a red/white striped version to cover a number of sides, Argentina, orange with black numbers to represent Holland, and a yellow counter with green numbers and possibly light blue trim/outline for Brazil. As for a plain white counter, that would come in handy for a number of away kits, as well as representing sides like Real, Spurs and Leeds.
All good ideas 🙂 I particularly like horizontal striped kits, so there will be some of them in the future. The national kits…I wonder, would you be happy to use a ‘Brazil’ kit but use players from all over the world?
Good point about a Brazil kit. I suppose it would be an incentive to by all the player cards just so you could field a full eleven of Brazilians:)