GATHERING OF ONE, DAY TWO
I decided, after a wargame, to toss in a euro. I went with Wooly Bully, which should be on a geeklist, along with Ticket to Ride, of games with the same names as well-known songs, but there apparently is no such Geeklist, which astounds me. (EDIT: I'm wrong.)
Anyway. Why Wooly Bully? Because everyone likes sheep; sheep go "baa." That, and tile-laying map-building games are my personal gaming heroin. (Lucky, I guess, for me, there are Geeklists for those.) I'd never gotten a chance to play, so I tried it out myself.
There's also a solo version--"Lone Wolf"--but that didn't look too inspring, so I've let it pass for now. I just laid out a four-player game, and tried to forget everything from turn to turn. I've gotten pretty good at this.
Here's my theory:
Wooly Bully:Carcassonne::Clash for a Continent:Battle Cry
It's not exact, but bear with me. Battle Cry and Carcassonne are icons of gaming--too light for many, sure, but by jiminy they've sold plenty of games, been played many times, and spawned a whole host of variants, expansions, and bootlegs.
One of the published variants of the BC/C&C system is Clash for a Continent from Worthington Games. When I reviewed it a while back, I basically said that it shares a great many mechanics with BC--it's clearly based on that game--but has enough tweaks and differences to give me (if not everyone...) a new and excellent gaming experience.
I think the same is true of Wolly Bully. I'm convinced it began with a Frenchman playing Carcassonne and saying "I love the system, but make some changes and we'll really have something here." The game was then broken down to its component mechanics, changes made, and then reassembled. Anyone who plays WB will be reminded of Carcassonne, and WB--like Clash--virtually defies being reviewed independently of its richer and more popular cousin.
So, I'm basically going to run down the changes, at least some of them that especially struck me, with some commentary.
First, in WB you have a hand to play tiles from. I'm a big fan, especially since, in the course of the game, you can expand your hand size. The drawback would be increased analysis time, but generally one's options are sufficiently limited, even with seven or eight tiles in your hand, to make a decision reasonably quickly.
Second, there are no meeples. Instead, everyone's trying to pen in sheep of their color/pattern. (Aside: I love how the sheep not only have colored wool, but patterned. Not just whimsical, but practical for the colorblind.) Sheep can be contained by village walls, field fences, and woods. The tricky bit--and the third difference...
...is that you only know your own color at the start of the game. See, you only get points for fields you've entirely enclosed--kind of like cities in Carc--so you're trying to grow your own, and either quickly seal off those of others or make them get excessively large. It's a balancing act, in other words. You can, during the game, reveal yourself--giving you extra tiles and an extra turn--but that puts a target on you for the rest of the game.
The tiles are also double-sided. It's cool; more stuff to think about. In Carc, you can internalize--or have a handy cheat-sheet--showing the tile distribution. I think in WB this would be impractical. This could be good or bad; I suppose it slightly increases the inability to count out your odds of getting a tile you need, which inhibits planning somewhat.
The wolves and hunters are neat. Wolves inhabit the woods, and eat sheep in adjoining fields. They're chased off, and prevented from coming in, by hunters. On the back of wolf and hunter tiles are "big" tiles, so there's a tradeoff involved.
One of the chaotic parts of the game is that, from time to time, you're allowed to interrupt other players' turns. You can declare your color at any time, which gives you basically a whole turn, and you can also play wolf and hunter tiles whenever. I'm curious how often this happens in actual games. Not that it'd never be a bad idea, but most people are socialized to not interrupt turns, particularly if they're in "Carcassonne Mode." It's a neat idea, though.
If you think you've improved your situation as much as you can, you can pass out of the game--and get bonus points. First out gets six points; second three; third one. Kind of a gambling aspect, which I thought was interesting.
Those are the highlights. I thought it was pretty neat, in my practice solo go-through. I had black "out" himself early, trying to enclose a big field, but he was wolved and never drew a hunter. Blue also found himself with a big field on his hands, and almost completed it...but not quite. Blue finished last. Red and Orange built up two medium-sized fields opportunistically, and Red won by a point even though Red went out third. Final scores: Red 14, Orange 13, Black 12, Blue 10. Blue got the six points for going out, and Black--after everyone else passed--managed to create a fairly sizeable field out of almost thin air. It'd have been kind of inspiring in real life. 'Course, if Black had realized this--that is, if I had realized this--that Miracle Field could have been cobbled together midway through the game, Black could have gone out with the six-point bonus, and won.
That's the final layout.
I love the art. Lots of neat sheep here; I know some sheep fans who would love this thing, gamers or not. Very "bande dessinée" look to it, rather than the somewhat more "serious" Carcassonne art.
In the final analysis, I like it. I'd love to play a two-player game, where two colors aren't represented--I think the bluffing might work well under those circumstances. I rank it a seven, provisionally. There's a fair amount to think about. Probably more going on than in Carcassonne, but it's harder to keep track of the tiles. I'm still a Carc fan--neither it, nor this, are the best games in the whole world, but they're nontrivial, fast-moving games. Not a filler, but an appetizer, if that makes any sense. I think I'd probably get out Wooly Bully more often than Carcassonne, if only for the bluffing element and the fun sheep.
