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Wojtek Wojcik
Poland
Cracow/Sosnowiec
Malopolska/Slaskie
I used to live in NL - that is why my avatar has the PL flag
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I assume that you have read the summary and saw the images of the game before reading this review. I have played this game couple of years ago together with some friends. It was very fun and when lately I saw a copy of the new small box edition I have decided to buy it for my self. Since then I played it few times mostly with two or three players and once with four.
Contents of the box:
- 1 Instruction
- 2 special 12-sided dices with pictures of the animals on the sides (On the red one you will find a side with fox, horse, pig, 2 (or three) sides with sheep and the rest with rabbits. The green one has a wolf, cow, pig and the same
amount of sheep and rabbit sides as red one)
- 1 Exchange rate table
(1 sheep = 6 rabbits, 1 pig = 2 sheeps, 1 cow = 3 pigs, 1 horse = 2 cows, 1 small dog = 1 sheep, 1 big dog = 1 cow)
- 60 rabbit tokens
- 24 sheep tokens
- 20 pig tokens
- 12 cow tokens
- 6 horse tokens
- 4 small dog tokens
- 2 big dog tokens (the number of tokens of each kind also acts as the upper limit on the number of such animals which can be owned by all players.)
Mechanics (short rules summary): The games proceeds as follows on his turn player must first decide whether he wants to exchange some of his animals for another one according to the table of exchange. He can do it using "bank" (pile of tokens not owned by any of the players) or with other wiling player. Important is that you can acquire in this way only one animal (so you can buy only 1 sheep even if you have 12 rabbits and would like to get two sheeps) or in case of selling animals (exchanging more expensive into cheaper ones) only one kind of animal hence you can get 2 cows for a horse but not 1 cow, 2 pigs, 1 sheep and 6 rabbits although the value is the same. You can also buy using mixed kind of animals for example to get a big dog you can exchange 2 pigs, a sheep and six rabbits. After exchanging you role two dices. Then you count the number of pairs of animals that were rolled you own plus those on the dices and this is how many new animals you get from the bank (if available). The best way is to explain this on the examples. Assume that you have two rabbits and a sheep and you rolled a rabbit and a sheep on your dice. You first count the number of the rabbits 2 (owned) + 1 (on the dice) = 3 hence you have one full pair and you get one rabbit. As for the sheep 1 (owned) + 1 (on the dice)= 2 hence one pair = 1 new sheep. There are two special animals on the dices a fox and a wolf. If you rolled a fox you loose all your rabbits (not if have a small dog in that case you just loose this dog which runs away after the fox) and if you are unlucky enough to roll a wolf you loos ALL your animals save for a horse and small dogs (if you have a big dog instead you just return its token to the bank). And the game proceeds in clockwise order till one of the players manages to have at least one of each kind of farm animals (rabbits, sheeps, pigs, cows, horses) then for the last time he rolls the dices ad if his still contains all the animals he is declared a winner.
Finally after explaining how game you play the game I want say few words how it works in practice. The most important factor in the game is luck and you have to bear this in mind reading this review. If you hate games where everything depends on fate ... super farmer is not for you. But if you like competing in quite friendlily atmosphere with things depending on fate small but still you want to use a bit of risk management game could be fun for you. Having said that I want to say that for such a simple game there are some strategies you may want to try to increase the your odds of wining. The first decision you will need to make soon after start of the game is wether you want to go for fast growing population of cheap rabbits or maybe invest your live stock to acquire much more expensive animals but which are not creating offspring so often. Of course people like to see their herds grow and try to stick with rabbits but that is quite risky since rabbits are also eaten by fox not only wolf and other animals are not harmed by fox. The second option is buying insurance (dogs) ... risk and maybe fast growth or safe but slow improvement? The choice is yours. And finally some very nice aspects which you discover after few games. The fact that the numbers of each animals are finite (and in fact in 6-player game you would say small) makes the game very interesting you can block winning player buy acquiring all animals of certain type (or collecting all dogs) and then only trade with other players. This forces the winning person to wait till you will get a wolf and in the mean time ... he has to watch out for it himself. And so on ...
What makes this game fun then? The fact that it plays fast, the fact that people are starting to wish each other rolling a wolf  . The game is just very very nice. Just looking at this hoping rabbits which are producing tones of offspring makes you smile and want to get this nice sheep also. Not mentioning the ultimate farmer dream and immortal horse  . The game is great for a family with nice theme and lot of laughs (it can teach a children a little bit of math 6 rabbits is a sheep and 2 sheeps is a pig so haw many rabbits do you need for a pig?). Also it is nice lesson dealing with a defeat (nothing hurts so much as having your 28 rabbits eaten by a fox when you just considered bluing a small dog and decided to take a risk).
Overall score:
Elements 8/10 nice, happy graphics and good quality of elements but the tokens could have been bigger (although big box version might have that)
Fun 6/10 (9/10 for the kids) if you like the luck factor in the game add two to my opinion.
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than qall
United States
Vancouver
Washington
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Thank you for the review.
I have played the game and found it to be fun, however I cannot get this: what is really the purpose of the board that each player gets? i am hoping you can tell me your thoughts.
Each board has "slots" for animals (1 horse, 2 cows, 3 pigs, etc). Since it has only 5 slots for rabbits, one has to keep 6th and following rabbits off the board or stacked on top of other ones - does this mean that the purpose for the board is just to ease learning of the game?
Maybe someone could offer their thoughts on it.
As a side note - our own house rule was that you always have to fill the board first with animal buttons and if you get more of them, you keep them outside of the board. Then, when the fox/wolf strikes, they eat only all those animals that are on the board.
This helped the game be a bit more fast paced - at least for our group, since everyone seemed to roll a wolf or a fox every ~5 dice rolls and we all kept losing animals for the first half an hour.
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Longest game ever though it seems....well it is going in lots of loops watching the family playing there first game lol....im trying to remind them of the rules...now they studying the dice
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I used to live in NL - that is why my avatar has the PL flag
