In February I optimistically said we were going to try to play and review one of the many Carcassonne expansion packs every month. I was, of course, hopelessly optimistic. Whilst I managed to secure a pack in March, finding time to sit down and play it was the usual kerfuffle… but we managed it last week, and now you’re reading the results.
Sheep and Shepherds adds a new game mechanic, in the form of a lovely lucky dip bag, and a new meeple, which is the Shepherd (although one of the team took to calling him Gandalf, and I will concede there is more than a passing likeness).
Not surprisingly Shepherds work in the fields and they herd sheep. The premise is simple, place your Shepherd and as you grow your field you can increase the size of your flock by drawing sheep counters from the lucky dip bag. Beware though, there are wolves in the bag, and if they get amongst the flock the sheep are lost. In addition to the sheep, there are also some Vineyard tiles which can increase scoring for Bishops and Monks, and geese that help the Shepherds up their points.
The team were a little despondent upon the first reading of the rules because this expansion requires players to use fields. For some reason fields have never really gone down particularly well, so we don’t play them very often. Personally, I find them harder to keep track of through the game and the thing I like most about Carcassonne is its simplicity, so it’s a little jarring experience wise.
However, once we got into the game things actually felt reasonably straight forward, and most of all fun. Lucky dip bags are a great risk and reward mechanic and the wolves definitely showed up for some players more than others. I would say the sheep were so entertaining we had to concentrate a bit more than usual to remember that the vineyards were also in play. The geese are a really nice tactical twist for players wanting to squeeze out as many points as possible from the new meeples.
Overall, it was a hit with the team and thoroughly enjoyed. But one of the things I want to do with this series is workout a bit of a top ten of expansions (there are more than that though), so eventually the question had to be asked… what was better – dragons or sheep?
The verdict was not unanimous. For one player the lucky dip mechanic took the win, they’re a big fan of that sort of game play (absolutely loving the Quacks of Quedlingberg for that reason). For two of us though, the Dragon wins – for me it’s because the Dragon is a little more predictable and I can make dragon growls as it stomps around the board. So, for now, at least, Dragons top the chart with the Sheep in a close second.
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