OUR REVIEW

pasture management of a Different kind

Voll Schaf

Spread out stacked sheep

Sheep and animals that can and must be stacked are features that appear regularly in board games in recent years. Many of those games have also won awards in various different countries. So, why not combine those features and use them to create a game, especially when one can introduce an idea that has been played for several hundred years on boards, in the sand or on leather sheets.

Each player is given four of the 16 pasture boards. Each of those boards is made up from four hexagons. Each player also receives 16 green round playing pieces depicting sheep, very cute and clever-looking sheep, in one of four different colors. Now players alternate to place a pasture board, whereby each newly placed board must touch another board already laid out with at least one edge.

When all boards have been placed, each player puts his stack of sheep into one of the hexes on the resulting board, The starting player and then all other players in turn split their stack und move part of it in a straight line until reaching the edge of the board or a sheep of his own or of an opponent.

When splitting a stack you must leave a minimum of one sheep behind and you must move at least one sheep. You may only move in a straight line and on each pasture, that is, hex, there can be only one stack of sheep. Stacks of sheep cannot be combined and you cannot jump over your own or opposing sheep. Those are the basic rules of movement.

Should it happen that a stack of sheep is completely surrounded by other sheep this stack can no longer move. Should you be unable to move any sheep at all, you are out of the game. When nobody can move a sheep anymore you win if you have conquered the majority of pastures. In case of a tie you win with the biggest connected pasture.

So far, so good, easy and clearly structured rules. Somehow, in a weird way, I had during all my games of Voll Schaf, the feeling that I was playing something rather old. The basic principle of the game and its movement mechanism is in fact to be found in games from the dawn of board game design.

Not a lot has been heard or seen so far of the designer of the game, Francesco Rotta from Italy, so one could call the game a premiere design. With publisher HUCH! & friends and Hutter as a distributor for the German edition the designer managed to find a publisher who commands the necessary expertise, an important factor for success and selling numbers.

The game itself runs very smoothly, but - as can happen with any pondering game - it can deteriorate into a brain puzzle, especially with four players. Should you be free of excessively pondering players, Voll Schaf can be a fast game that sometimes only takes ten minutes and therefore instantly invites to play another game.

A small point of criticism is that in a game of three players two can form an alliance and eliminate the third one very early in the game. Rather frustrating for the third man out. It also has happened in a few of the four-player games that players gang up on the most advanced player and then decide the victory among themselves afterwards.

When placing the pieces you should take care not to choose an exposed position for a starting point, because I really believe that the choice of starting position already decides winning or losing the game. When the pasture boards are placed, gaps are allowed which raise the challenge of the game. Regardless of placement, there are always exactly as many pastures as there are playing pieces, so that it is theoretically possible that each player could place all pieces. Has never happened to me.

With two players the game is very tactical and definitely the most interesting challenge, with four players it turns out chaotically and cannot really be planned. But you must always take care not to be locked in.

The rules are, as I did already mention, simple and easy, the small sheet in the box is sufficiently and leaves no question unanswered. But that a seven-year old can judge the options of moves was an impression that I did not get. Quite a few eight-year old ones had their problems with that.

The components are sturdy and the sheep stickers for the playing pieces are cutely drawn. I believe it’s very nice that one has painstakingly created 16 different sheep images for the illustrations and that the box inlay has been designed to fit the components exactly and they therefore do not roll about in the box haphazardly.

All in all I did like the game very well and is a deserving award winner.

Kurt Schellenbauer

Players: 2-4

Age: 7+

Time: 15+

Designer: Francesco Rotta

Artist: Andrea Femerstrand, Sabine Kondirolli

Price: ca. 23 Euro

Publisher: Hutter Trade 2014

Web: www.hutter-trade.com

Genre: Place, move

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en fr nl und viele mehr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Fun tactic game

Cute illustrations

Sturdy components

Age notation questionable

Short rules

Short playing time

Compares to:

Splits, Go

Other editions:

Splits, Battle Sheep

My rating: 5

Kurt Schellenbauer:

A quickly learned game of tactical movement that can be played by all the family

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0