[Board/Tactical Game]: Wooly Bully, reviewed by ShannonA (4/3)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10756.phtml

Shannon Appelcline's Summary:

An enjoyable tile-laying game, though not as deep as Carcassonne, the definitive <i>best of class</i>.

Go to the full review for more information.

Post originally by Brian Ridge at 2004-10-15 02:23:36
Converted from Phorums BB System

Shannon,

This is something I wrote a few months ago in response to Tom Vasel's review that he posted on a local Korea Board Game site:

I picked up Wooly Bully for our cafe due to Tom's recommendation. I agree it's cute, colorful, and well done in terms of the components, but I did have a few problems with it.

First, the rules seemed excessively complicated for what really at its
heart is a simple family tile-laying game. Cards played out of turn... free moves... variable tile draws... who needs all this?

Second, towards the end of the game, the number of (double-sided) tiles in your hands becomes just too unweildy. I got sick of trying to shuffle through them all so I just laid them flat on the table.

Finally, the scoring seems a bit weird, seeing as how you're a sheep-herder trying to keep your sheep penned in and safe from the wolves. Why not count all penned in sheep? Sure, it could reward a really conservative playing style that leads to players penning in their sheep two at a time, but is that all that bad? Heck, the first customers who played the game went and counted all the penned-in sheep
even after we told them the official rules!

So with those problems, I sat down with my GF and our part-timer and worked on our own house rules:

1) Colors remain secret throughout the game. Of course, like Tom said, he doesn't take much too determine who's who, but keeping your color tile in hand the whole game avoids the instant action rule and the
mid-game swapping of color ID tiles. It worked out well in our game.

2) Draw four at the start of the game. After that, play one, draw one. No bonuses for matching tiles on multiple sides.

3) As for the scoring, I considered a couple of different methods... count all sheep, as well as the top one or two largest pens. BUt my testing staff just said count them all, which we did. It's more
intuitive, doens't take all that long, and was kinda fun in a way, scanning the board looking for your sheep (unfortunately, either way we scored it, I lost).

4) Hunters and wolves are still played in pretty much the same manner, just not out of turn. You can play a hunter on top of a wolf to kill it, and a wolf can't be played in a forest with a hunter.

With those changes, it was still quite fun, just easier and less, well, busy.

Brian

Post originally by Shannon Appelcline at 2004-10-15 10:18:22
Converted from Phorums BB System

I'm usually relatively pedantic about playing games the way they're written or not at all. Don't know why.

But, yeah, I generally agree that you've highlighted the problems with the game, mainly the large hand sizes and the out-of-turn plays.

I'm a bit less convinced about scoring all the teeny pens, because it might turn the winner into a random person, depending on who keeps penning 4 sheep. Not sure. Maybe if those minimum sized pens were halved for scoring, like the original Carcassonne rules, though that just adds new complexity ...

Shannon