Shear-Panic

Shear-Panic-Roger
Originally uploaded by coljen.

Shear Panic is the offering by the Lamont Brothers at this year's Essen. I had heard good vibes about the game and as it was limited to 500 copies I pre-ordered a copy. The pictures that appeared on the net of the playing pieces convinced me to order a copy before I had even read the rules. Anyway after Raudritter we wanted to give the sheep a run out. As you can see from the picture the actual playing pieces are superb, high quality resin figures, and the game is very good as well. After Steve had run quickly through the rules, trying to ignore all the puns from the rest of us, off we went. Basically you travel through 4 fields, team tig, Roger's field, Black Sheep tig and the Shear Panic field. Each player has a control mat with 12 actions on, as you use an action you cover it with a 'mutton button', each action has a cost which moves the timer marker on. Your actions get limited as you use them up. In the first field you are trying to get your 2 sheep to touch, in the 2nd field the closest to Roger scores most, in the black sheep field you are trying to touch the black sheep. The last field sees the dreaded Sheep shearer appear, you are trying to get as far away as possible from him as the front row is taken out of the game (ie gets sheared) and the furthest row scores most.
The game flows smoothly with lots of awful puns along the way (ie ewe can't do that, you baaaastard). That said there is quite a lot of strategy in there all contributing to nicely rounded package. I am really glad that I got a copy.

Final Scores
Garry 37, Steve 30, Richard 27, Colin 27
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