Football Champions Cup Slot
Football Champions Cup is a 5-reel, fixed 20-pay line online slot from NetEnt. This slot was released in May 2016 to coincide with the 2016 UEFA European Championships – the first for some time in which all football fans in the UK (except Scotland) had an interest, as England, Wales and even Northern Ireland (and Ireland) managed to qualify.
This game has many unique features – for a start even before your very first spin you can select which nation (out of the twenty four qualifiers, which does not include Scotland) you wish to represent as you play.
All the symbols are football related – even perhaps the playing card values ten through to ace (footballers are noted for playing in card schools on their way to matches). The other symbols are football boots, shirts and gloves, and the referee's whistle.
You can choose your coin size from 0.01 to 0.50, and your bet level from one to ten. The number of winning pay lines is fixed at twenty. Your final wager is your coin size multiplied by your bet level multiplied by twenty. When you're ready to kick off (unless you support Scotland) then hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
The lowest payout in this game is for three tens or jacks. This will win you five times your bet-per-line. The jackpot in normal play is obtained by scoring five player shield symbols. This will win you one thousand coins.
You can earn yourself a bonus game by landing three or more bonus symbols anywhere on the reels. This is a penalty shoot-out (so England fans may wish to avoid this one) that initially consists of five rounds, each of two parts. In part one you pick one of four positions via which you can hope to fool the goalie and score. In part two you step into the goalie's boots and try and save a shot that's directed at you. You need to succeed on both counts to win.
The scatter symbol is a golden trophy. If you land three scatter symbols in the main game on the central three reels you activate free spins. The free spins tournament is a knockout game. The maximum number of free spins rounds is four – you progress through the round of sixteen to the quarter-final and then the semi and finally to the final itself. The further you progress, the more cash you pick up.
Between two and five 'overlay wilds' can appear in the main game, but they cannot land on top of exisiting wild symbols, or a scatter or bonus symbol.
The wild symbol (a golden football) substitutes for all other symbols aside from the scatter and bonus symbols. There are two other kinds of wilds – a red and blue scoring wild. They appear during free spins only and trigger goals for both you and your 'opponent's' teams, depending on where they land. Blue wilds only appear on reels one and two, and red wilds only appear on reels four and five.
Like with virtually everything NetEnt does, they've scored a real winner here. Although not as graphically intense as their other games, this is still a lot of fun. This slot is ideal in giving you something to do when you're waiting for the match to kick off, or throughout the entire tournament if you're a Scotland fan!