Board Game: Sheepdogs of Pendleton Hill

Bark! Bark!

The Game: Sheepdogs of Pendleton Hill
The Publisher: Stratamax Games
Time: 30-40 minutes, depending
Players: Kai, Cael, Al, Michelle, me

Michelle explaining shepherding.

Game Play: The board is arranged into pastures with paths between them, each of which is worth some points (1 for the bottom-level pastures, then 3, 5, and then one lofty 7-point pasture). Players place a few shepherds in various pastures (but can't place two of their own shepherds in the same pasture), and then play cards to make moves, including adding sheep to a pen, moving a flock pasture to pasture, placing more shepherds, and moving the wolf.

Kai made the best wolf-noise, so he went first.

What's interesting is that you can move other people's sheep along with your flock, and in fact it's better to have mixed flocks because that means you can move them more easily (some cards only allow you to make moves for other people, which includes moving mixed flocks). You can also place other people's shepherds. Sheep automatically score when they reach a shepherd, so if you want to prevent someone's sheep from reaching the high-scoring pastures you can plop a shepherd of their color down. You can also move the wolf to intercept, as he scares off a sheep.

This is during setup, so there are no sheep yet.

Opinions: I like this game and I wanted to play it again, but Michelle had a migraine and Kai was feeling unfocused, so we just played once. I feel like it could be a fun little strategy game without a million little pieces or phases or whatever, but I want to play it again to try and think about the strategy a bit. That's a good recommendation, of course.

Keep? Yep.