This game doesn’t have: Robin Hood, swordfighting, romance, or a 2-player option. I’m predicting this game will become an instant favorite for many. This game has: non-stop fun, high-quality artwork, enough strategy to sink your teeth into, table talk, bluffing, bribes, and definite replayability. If you can play Clue, you can play Sheriff of Nottingham. Although kids may not be evenly matched against adults, I feel that kids age 10+ could easily learn this game. Sheriff of Nottingham supports 3-5 players, although I suppose it’s possible to dummy up a market stall and market bag for a sixth player. I’m hoping Arcane Wonders opts for Velcro in the future, if possible. We all agreed it would be better to just fold the flap over without snapping it shut. It’s a very firm snap, which makes them difficult to open. The other thing to be aware of is the snap closure on the market bags. Do a test run to make sure all the players are on the same page. They are not difficult, but they’re unusual. First, there are a couple of finicky rules that need to be understood. I only have a few words of advice when taking this game home. This also happens to be the phase where you can screw your neighbor a little bit, because you can take cards from the discard piles and bury cards that might be appealing to others. There’s definitely some random elements when you refill your hand from the draw pile, but I feel that there’s also a healthy dose of hand-management and player interaction to be found during the discard-and-draw phase. However, honest merchants can only deliver one type of good at a time, so declaring large quantities is highly suspicious. Because you can deliver anywhere between 1 and 5 cards per turn, and everyone gets the same number of turns, I think delivering a large quantity of cards is a good back-up tactic. So I quickly decided to deliver as many goods as possible, and jam in as much contraband as I could. I didn’t really have a solid game plan in the beginning, and I soon noticed that I wouldn’t make it into the running for the “King” and “Queen” goods bonus at the end of the game. Somehow it’s enormously fulfilling to watch the Sheriff get duped, even though that means your neighboring merchant is getting ahead. There’s the thrill and suspense of trying not to get caught, the hilarious table talk as the Sheriff threatens to inspect the players’ market bags, and the surprise when you find out which of your fellow merchants were lying or telling the truth. The first thing I noticed when we played Sheriff of Nottingham was that everyone was laughing, every round! We loved every minute of it. Between legal goods and contraband, there are definitely some different layers of strategy going on here. At the end of the game, there’s a victory point bonus for the players who delivered the highest and the second-highest quantity of each legal good. The Sheriff must also be careful not to over-inspect, because he must pay a penalty if he inspects a bag and finds it was declared truthfully. “Why, yes, those are 5 bushels of apples, Sheriff.” Contraband goods (such as mead or crossbows) are worth more if you can deliver them, but they carry a heavier penalty if discovered. Bluffing is absolutely required to sneak in any other cards you wish to deliver. The trouble is that everyone claims to be carrying a bag of legal goods! Being a Merchant: bringing legal (“ahem”) goods to market…Īs a merchant, you can only declare one type of legal good each round – apples, bread, cheese, or chickens. As Sheriff, it’s your duty to admit only reputable merchants, while catching all the smugglers and preventing them from carrying contraband into the marketplace. In this upcoming game from Arcane Wonders, players take turns acting as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin Hood doesn’t even leave the comfort of his forest these days, so what are you stuck with? Day in and day out of monitoring the city gates, checking merchants’ bags for contraband, enforcing market regulations, and of course, threatening the populace and collecting fines & bribes (what you do best!) You know, being the Sheriff of Nottingham is really one of those thankless jobs.
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