Review by Spieletest

This review is written in German and can be found on the Spieletest.at website.

We hunt with sheepdogs across an open pasture, collect fat sheep cards, and use rocket, slide, block, and bomb sheep to disrupt the other players' flocks. After three rounds, the player whose flock has the most points wins (despite wolves and chain explosions).

Move, trigger, secure points
At the start, we lay out a pasture as a grid of cards. With two to four players, a seven-by-seven field is created, and with five or six, a nine-by-nine field. In turn, we move our dog orthogonally to an adjacent card and carry out its effect: Green sheep cards wander face-down into our flock and count points at the end of the round. Action cards change the field or our position. With the rocket sheep, for example, we jump two spaces, the slide sheep forces us to keep sliding, the block sheep locks a green card, the wolf displaces an opposing dog by one space, and the bomb sheep explodes all adjacent cards, thus tearing entire areas out of the game. Important: do not run into a dead end.

Blocked or blown-up figures are immediately eliminated from the current round, but their previously collected points are retained. A round continues until only one person can draw. This person then receives two bonus turns. After that, the score is calculated: each collected sheep plus one, each wolf minus one.

Players and variation
After three rounds, the player with the highest total score wins. For two players, there is the "Double-Trouble" variant with two dogs each. Here, each player controls two sheepdogs, which makes traffic on the pasture noticeably denser.

Conclusion

Rocket sheep, bomb sheep, the evil wolf – if these aren't the ingredients for great fun. Sheep Showdown takes itself very little seriously with its graphics and cards, but offers quite tactical challenges. Constantly placing your own sheepdog and blocking the opponents' while maximizing points cannot be done "on the side".

The rulebook is well explained and the card texts are completely language-neutral, so after a few turns you have the hang of the flow and the games become pleasantly fast.

Only with a larger number of players does the downtime increase noticeably. Never tragic, it doesn't get boring, but too much to still remain truly "fluffy". Three to four players are optimal in our experience.

Pros

• funny idea and graphics
• tactically appealing
• fast round times invite you to play again

Cons

• waiting times increase greatly with multiple players

Editorial rating:

8/10