For the first game of the first Board Game Geek convention, I played a game with very cute sheep called Shear Panic. Dan would love this game because the pieces were all minature models of sheep around 1 1/2 inches in height. The four player game
contains two sheep for each player with a black sheep in the center. The game consists of four scoring “fields” that you move along via a timer token. The four ways of scoring are as follows: try to get your sheep next to each other, try to get
your sheep in the rows that are closest to BBB, trying to get your sheep next to the black sheep, and trying to get your sheep in the rows farthest away from the shearer. On your turn, you have one action to choose from a limited number of actions.
And you can only use each action once. Each action also has an associated timer cost which moves the timer token along the scoring track. This forces you to trade off moves that help you score points versus trying to keep your options open in the
future.
The game had 8 pages of rules, but there was quite a number of questions that we had after trying to read them. Another problem was the lenght. The box says 45 minutes. However, the game took 2 hours to play after the 45 minutes that we spent trying
to figure out the rules. This game can be a real brain burner as players try to consider every option open to them. When we moved into the final scoring area and moved to the first scoring opportunity, the player to my right could not cause a scoring.
He could only try to position himself. Unfortunately for him, he really set me up for a killing. I was able to cause both sheep of two players to be taken out of the game (his and Jon’s). When this happened, he got up and left the game! Sigh. We
called it after that rather than trying to figure out what happens in this scenario.
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Tim and Mary showed up around this time. Tim had bought Ra (the Uberplay version) from a vendor and opened it up. I decided to join them. As we were removing the pieces from the bags I noticed that there were two 15s and no 13. So Tim goes back to
the vendor to switch out the pieces. So, we decide to count every piece to determine if there was any other missing pieces. And it was a good thing that we decided to do that because we were missing a Pharoh tile. So Tim goes back again.
And now the game finally starts. During the first round, I scored badly. I had no civilization tile or any Pharoh tiles for -7 points! Fortunately, I did better after that. I was at least able to avoid having the least Pharohs. I was able to get one
of each monument tile and all 5 tiles of a monument for 30 points! This was a first for me. Unfortunately for me, I was tied for the least money which gave me -5 points and 3rd place. We later learned that if Mary had not traded a money tile for a
money tile, then she would have had the least and I would have been in 1st. And Tim also could have been in first as well if a previous auction had happened differently. Revisionist history is so fun.
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Another new Essen game for me that I wanted to try out before buying. It was so new in fact, that it did not come with a copy of the translated rules. Fortunately, we found someone who could explain the game to us. And the game is remarkably similiar
to the boardgame! This game uses the San Juan method of keeping track of points. When you build a colored tile next to your leader by placing a card down on the table, you may take another of the same colored card from your hand to turn over and keep
as a point. There are still internal and external battles but the most you can score is one point of the corresponding color. The white wild card “cube” is in this game with the same mechanism. There are even monuments in the game (but only 3 choices:
red/blue, green/blue and black/blue). Monuments can be built if four of the same cards are next to each other.
I definately recommend buying and playing this game!