Beware The Sheep

The Sheep: A Ghastly Game where Sheep are the Apex Predator

Your purpose: to guide the caravans through the forests and avoid being corrupted or killed by the sheep that lurk within. Prepare your caravans by day, for The Sheep will rise with the night.

If that sounds like a cool concept, you wouldn't be wrong. Welcome to The Sheep, a board game by Luke Schwanger, Jeremy Stark and Kyle Talbert with art by Ferdinand Dumago Ladera, Emi Miller, Aji Prasongko, Elisa Serio and produced by Zero Strategy Games.

The Sheep is a comedy-horror game where sheep have pushed humanity to brink of extinction. The Shepherds were founded to face this threat. In this cooperative adventure, you and your team are guiding caravans through the forest to reach the market on the other side. Your job is to protect them from the sheep that spawn every night and fight off the corruption possessing the land.

Components of The Sheep

Spoilers up front - I really had a lot of fun with this game. The sheep puns keep rolling in to pasture and I'm here for it. For example, each night you draw a sheep mutation card and one of them is Steel Wool so that sheep is immune to weapons made out of steel and causes you to move 1 space less. Another is Magma Ram and so on. So that element is really fun. Many of the weapons are sheep/farm themed like shears, electric fence whip, etc. So this design team did a great job of really working the theme into ever aspect of the game.

So how do you play? Each day starts with a new event...these are sometimes good, sometimes bad. Then the caravans each have a special ability - execute those at the start of each day. Then the caravans move 2 spaces (so slow!!!) or only 1 space if they start on a space with sheep. Once the caravans move, you can perform any number of the available actions as many times as you can. The only restriction is movement. You can move 3 spaces but you can't move a space, do an action, and move a space. You have to take your movement action at once.

Once the day phase is over, you move into the night time phase. First, take a nighttime event card. These usually are not going to help the shepherds or caravans. Then you move the corruption track based on the event card. You can prevent corruption by using the power of your lamps. Otherwise you take a corruption and perform its action (never good). Then the sheep spawn and move. Once they've moved, you have the a limited ability to move and attack. Technically there's no movement allowed except if you burn a lamp. Killing sheep at night is much harder than during the day, but provides essence which is in game currency. After you've had a chance to attack, the sheep attack. They do damage in the form of corruption. As shepherds gain corruption, they lose items but gain corruption powers. Caravans gain corruption too. If either the heroes or the caravans gain too much corruption, you lose. Otherwise, you win by successfully getting the caravans to the finish line.

Getting close to the finish line.

If you've played a cooperative game like Pandemic before, this has a similar mechanism. Every turn new sheep are spawned and they just keep coming and coming. Additionally, throughout the game, the sheep increase in difficulty, becoming harder and harder to kill. Therefore, early on, you feel like you're making great progress. After 4 or 5 turns, all of a sudden you feel like this might not be so easy. After 7 or 8 turns you feel like you are neck deep in sheep's wool and that you might never get out. Winning is only possible through the skin of your teeth! (Insert appropriate sheep pun here.)

Because it's cooperative, you can easily play solo. Just play 2 handed...or more! I played 2 handed and it worked great. I can highly recommend this game be played solo. It would also work with many players. Because there is a lot of simultaneous play, there's very little downtime.

Components are top notch. While I opted for standees, they look fantastic and are just right for the map size. The cards and their art look great. The backs of the cards are foiled and add a very rich feel. I have double layered player boards and the components fit in nicely. Finally, the little wooden sheeples (sheep + meeples) are cute and look great on the map. Not very menacing, but still, they're pretty fun. Seeing the tarot sized sheep mutation card helps to imagine what they must look like.

All in all, I had a great time with this. It works great solo. The components are beautiful and the puns just keep on coming. I've only played a couple times, but mixing up the caravans, shepherds and sheep mutations, there's pretty good replay-ability here. Take a bite out of the mutton here, I highly recommend it!