Battle Sheep

Designed by Francesco Rotta

Art by Andrea Femerstrand

Ages 7 and up

Plays 2 – 4 players

Four flocks of sheep are seeking to control the best parts of the pasture. A simple abstract area control game Battle Sheep plays quickly by moving around a pasture unique to each game.

After each player chooses their flock, they take turns laying pieces of pasture on the table making sure each piece is touching. Once the full pasture has been created, each player puts a tall stack of all 16 of sheep onto the perimeter of the board. From then on players move any number of sheep from a single stack in a straight line from its starting position; leaving at least one sheep behind. As the sheep are battling out in the pasture they can’t go past each other so players quickly become blocked by their opponents. Play continues until all players can no longer move any of their sheep either from being out of sheep to move or all their sheep are confined by opponents.

Once the epic sheep battle has ended the winner is the one who controls the most pasture hexes. In the case of a tie the player who has the largest contiguous area breaks the tie.

The game is for all intents and purposes a purely abstract game but the illustrations on the discs make the game really cute. Each of the sheep have a starkly different emotional state on the illustrated tokens that come with the game. The game is quick taking less than 30 minutes from opening the box until putting it away. Battle Sheep is a nice game to start an evening or to bring it to a close with its simplicity.