A few quick notes on this toy-like game that Sean had us try. This is one of those cutesy games that I’d never have picked out to play on my own in a million years. After all, the theme is about herding sheep of all things and the game comes with a set of them, made not of cheap plastic, but finely crafted ceramic, complete with fluffy fleece and a solid, heavy feel to them. The rest of the components are more conventional: a board laid out with all of the orders available for each player, another board that serves both to record each player’s score and to track the herd’s progress through the different paddocks, player-specific markers, dice etc. But it’s still hard to look past the cute bits and take this game seriously.
Yet Shear Panic does turn out to be a surprisingly tactical game. The basic idea is that there’s this flock of sheep freshly off the truck and headed for the shears. Each player controls two of the sheep in the flock and gains points according to a different formula depending on which paddock the sheep are currently in. Since sheep are pretty dumb, the objectives don’t really make much sense. In the first area, the same-colored sheep want to stay next to each other. In the second area, they all want to be in front, close to Roger the Ram (yes, he even has a name!) In the third area, they all want to be close to the black sheep. The last area is where the shearing takes place and here they all want to be at the back to get away from the nasty scissors.
During his turn, each player picks an action from his board to manipulate the flock. This ranges from simply moving one of his sheep one space in any direction to moving an entire row of sheep. The action to rotate the whole flock is especially powerful as front and back are defined simply according to which direction the sheep are facing. Each action on the board can only be used once and each also has a number on it to denote how many spaces to move along the track that leads the sheep from one paddock to another. Some spaces on the track requires the active player to roll a die and perform a “lamb slam” on a sheep of the color that turns up. This means moving the sheep one space in any direction, shoving all the other sheep in its way in the same direction. One of the die faces allows a free rotation action.
This source of randomness adds a welcome bit of chaos to the game or else players might be tempted to plan their moves too far in advance and drag out the game too long. As it is, you need to be clever about when to use your actions, especially the powerful jumping and rotation actions, and to think about the full effect of moves that will change the shape of the entire flock. In our three player game, between the actions of other players and the randomness of the die, it was all we could do to jostle to put our sheep in a good position to score points without becoming too vulnerable to the actions of the next player. Predicting the future shape of the flock is next to impossible so you just have to make the best short-term moves you can.
The wonder of it all is that the game works beautifully, silly theme and all. The ceramic sheep, ostentatiously decorated or not, have a wonderful tactile feel and come in very handy when you need to move the flock around. One nice touch is how the first line of sheep in the final paddock is lost to the shears, prompting all players to be desperate not to let their sheep fall to that fate. One thought that occurs to me is that playing this with two players would turn this into a very tactical, deliberative game, almost like Hive. On the other hand, playing this with four players would be so chaotic that it would almost be like a party game and you’d need to watch out for poor players who might inadvertently set up a winning situation for the next player.
All in all, while Shear Panic isn’t exactly what you’d call a hardcore game, it is quite a bit more substantial than it first seems and the appeal of its cute bits is undeniable. It isn’t the type of game that I’d choose to buy myself but I can see how easy it would be to draw non-gamers in with its cutesy theme and still deliver an uncompromising gaming experience.
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