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SHEEPLAND

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Authors:
Simone Luciani &
Daniele Tascini

Publisher:
CRANIO CREATIONS
2012

No. of Players:
2 - 4

EVALUATION

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Gamebox author Ralf Togler writes about the game:

The world of sheep must have been like paradise, until somebody invented fences for the Shepherds. Something like this could be the introduction of the new game Sheepland from CRANIO CREATIONS. Our task in this game is a quite simple one: we are the bothersome Shepherds, and we try to corral a big flock of sheep on the best land we can find. For this each player gets a Shepherd and some money at the beginning of the game (In a two-player game you will get a second Shepherd for a better balance of the game). The board shows us an island with six different terrain types. One sheep is put in each of the 18 regions of the board and a special black sheep in the middle of the board to a town called Sheepsburg. Then each player places his Shepherd on one of the spaces on the border of the landscape regions. That's all before we can begin to corral the sheep and put up fences on the borders of the landscapes with the help of our Shepherd pawns. Well, it is almost all. The only thing left to do is the drawing of a share of one of the different landscape tiles of the game. Shepherds and shares? Well, someone must have introduced capitalism to the lovely island, too, and so in the end it is not enough to be a successful Shepherd, but the clever ones who back the right horse will win the game.

[IMAGE]But first things first: in each turn of the game we can do three actions. The first one is to move a sheep from either of the two regions adjacent to our Shepherd to the other one. This is very important and the only way to herd the flock of sheep together. By moving our Shepherd (2nd action) we automatically place a piece of fence on the space our Shepherd moved from. So, with progressing time, the landscape becomes more and more fragmented. Moving the Shepherd to an adjacent space is for free, but what to do if there is no free space left? As the Shepherd cannot move over fences, he must be placed elsewhere, and that costs one coin.

Money is good for another thing. So, with the third possible action you can buy from the terrain tiles (shares). Each region on the board has a specific terrain. The choice of this terrain tiles is the most important one in the whole game. For each terrain there are five terrain tiles. At the beginning of the game they are sorted in ascending order. While the first of the terrain tiles are still available for free, you have to pay up to four coins for the last one. These terrain tiles are comparable with shares, so by taking one of them you do not own a specific region on the board, but you are investing in that type of terrain.

This leads us to the end of the game and the final scoring. When all fences are in play the game ends. Then we count the number of each type of our terrain tiles and multiply it with the number of all sheep that stand on the respective terrain type. This is our income and together with the money we have saved during the game, it is our total wealth. As you will guess, the wealthiest player wins the game. So, in reality it is not really important if you are a very successful Shepherd with a big flock of sheep. If you are a clever investor and have invested on a terrain with a big flock you can let the other players do the dirty jobs and you still will rule the world, well, at least the Sheepland...

However, I have not yet explained the function of the black sheep. This special animal moves on his own leisure. The direction of its movement is determined by a die at the beginning of each turn. In spite of his own will, you should try to catch it, because in the final scoring this sheep counts as two normal sheep.

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Sheepland is a funny family game and can be used as a filler, too. It is a very fast game, concerning both the explaining of the rules and the game itself. Still, due to the shares it is more complex than it seems to be. In the end much depends on the cleverness of the other players if you will be successful or not. During the game it is sometimes hard to keep track of the chances of the other players to win the game, but nevertheless the game is not pure luck but controllable. Even my six year old son loved to move the lovely wooden sheep and the Shepherd on the colourful map, and in the end it was not very important for him if he had won. For me CRANIO CREATIONS will always be connected with the crazy dice game Dungeon Fighter, but I now have learned that they can do other nice games, too. I wonder what will be next...


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Copyright © 2012 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany