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Seven years ago in 2005 (thankfully without the additional four score) I decided that I wanted to make a game in which the pieces stacked up. Not a dexterity game of stacking pieces, mind you, but a game in which the pieces were stacked and moved around. I think I've always liked stacking bits. Perhaps it goes back to when I was a child playing Checkers and could say "King me" and get that second checker stacked on the first – then moving the kings around with the top checker a bit off center at a jaunty angle.
So I dumped my Box o' Spare and Random Bits out onto the kitchen table and began sorting them. I began stacking the mini poker chips, creating stacks of chips of a single color, then placing differently colored chips in the same stack. That caught my eye. There they were, staring back at me. These multilayered, multicolored stacks of chips looking like some kind of delicious parfait and demanding a home. I knew they would not let me sleep until I had designed a game for them. I nearly panicked, thinking of endless restless nights tossing and turning as half-baked game ideas ran through my mind as I got ever more desperate to end the insomnia.
Then suddenly I reached for paper and pencil. Time had no meaning. Effort was uncounted.
Just as suddenly it was over. I had a scribbled version of a playable game before me. I was exhausted. Thirty minutes had passed.
I wish I knew how I got game ideas. I really wish I knew how I got the better ones. At the very least, I wish I knew how I got all of the bad game ideas so that I could avoid that behavior. I know the brave and abused StrataMax playtesters wish for these things even more than I do.
Sometimes I start with a theme. This is especially true when I purposefully set out to make a train game. Sometimes I start with a mechanism such as rolling dice. When I began work on Credit Mobilier I had both of these things in mind – but Sheepdogs of Pendleton Hill started with me stacking up mini poker chips. I really have no idea where my next idea may come from: theme, mechanism, bits, or some combination of everything.
Fast forward seven years: A lot can change in that amount of time. Cars, electronics, computers all get outdated quickly. I remember my first car without air conditioning. My second car had an eight-track tape player. (It was really state of the art! Yeah, I was one of the cool kids. Once. For a short period of time anyway.) I had a lot of fun on my Commodore 64. And I had a lot of fun with the game I had designed – but what is expected of a game changes just as what we expect from other things changes. It was time to look at it again, but I was too close to the project. No worries – off it went to the cold-blooded, heartless playtesters. Not a sentimental bone in their collective bodies, which makes them perfect for the job.
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Image of the prototype courtesy of Bruce Murphy
*Gasp*
"The end game drags too much."
*Well maybe a tiny bit, but it's not that bad.*
"Yes, it is."
*Sigh*
First playtest group: "Each player needs two of a new kind of piece."
*Hmm...that sounds like a very large change. I don't think we should be adding new pieces.*
Second playtest group: "Each player needs one of a new kind of piece."
*Hmm...that still sounds like we're introducing a lot of chaos. I don't think we should be adding new pieces.*
Third playtest group: "Just put one new piece in the game that any player can move."
*Well, will you look at that. That's the best idea I ever had!*
And so the wolf was born.
"The sum of the ratios of the actions taken to the points scored per player is the sum of the square of the other two sides."
*Umm...yeah...I knew that... Really, I did... Kinda.*
Here we are seven years and thirty minutes later, with the stacked mini poker chips getting turned into sheeples that will be put into stacks that become flocks. The flocks will nearly always contain different players' sheep and will be moved by different players throughout the game. The game is tense to the end and the hungry wolf (my best idea ever!) constantly lurks about, going from place to place spreading uncertainty. The final version of Sheepdogs owes a lot to a large group of playtesters.
Even the title was a group effort. After several bad puns – most of them mine and many of which would not have gotten past the censors – Aaron Lauster (Days of Steam, Let's Take a Hike) suggested "Sheepdogs" as each player takes the role of moving the flocks to the shepherds on the board. Alice and Paul Sharp, the artists on the project, suggested adding "Hill" to the title to complement the illustrations on the box and board. My hometown is Pendleton, Indiana, USA. Add it up and there you have it.
What started out as a short spurt of individual effort ended up being the StrataMax design that received the most contributions from the largest number of people yet.
But I'm still putting my name on the front of the box...
Max Michael
•••
Oh, did you actually want to learn how to play the game? Here goes:
In Sheepdogs of Pendleton Hill each player is dealt a hand of three cards and each player draws a card at the end of each turn to refresh their hands. On your turn you play one card and take either one action or two actions as the card allows. The actions to choose from include putting sheep in the pens at the bottom of the hill, moving flocks onto the hill and into different pastures, placing shepherds on the hill, and moving the wolf – the trick being that the cards allow – and sometimes require – you to take actions that involve other player's sheep and shepherds.
Nearly final color draft of the game board
The "1" card has a single sheep on it. With it you may take one action. You may use it to place one of your shepherds on the hill or to place one of your sheep into a pen or to move a flock that has at least one of your sheep in it.
Or you may do any of these things "for" another player.
Why in the world would you do that? Because whenever a flock of sheep is moved into a pasture, any sheep and shepherd in that pasture that belong to the same player match up, the player scores, and the sheep and shepherd are returned to the player to use again. Why help another player score? Because the lower on the hill a sheep meets one of its shepherds, the fewer points it scores.
Defense is an important part of the game, but you must be sure to also promote your own cause by using your precious actions to get your sheep on the board and in position to make a run up the hill to your shepherds in the higher (and higher-scoring) pastures. Some of the toughest decisions come when playing the "2" card which has two sheep on it as well as the wolf. This card requires you to take two actions, and each action must involve one of your pieces. This card allows you to, among other things, move a flock with at least one of your sheep in it two spaces, or place two sheep into one or two of the flocks in the pens, or perform a combination move of placing one of your shepherds in a pasture and moving a flock with your sheep in it into that pasture and immediately scoring. Which of these you choose and when to do it are crucial decisions.
Among those "other things" you may use a "2" for is to move the wolf. Whenever the wolf is moved into a flock of sheep or a flock is moved into the same space as the wolf, the active player decides which one sheep in the flock is taken off of the board and returned to the owning player without the sheep scoring any points. (The rules refer to the sheep being scared away and running down the hill back to the owning player. The playtesters had their own more bloodthirsty version of what happens to the sheep. You may decide the fate of the sheep in your game to your own satisfaction.)
Deciding how best to use the "2" card – to put you in a position to score points and hopefully outscore your opponents, or to prevent a selected opponent from scoring anything for a sheep he has in a flock – is another tough choice.
The "1" and "2" cards allow players to move flocks that contain sheep from multiple players. Temporary alliances can be formed as players work together to move them.
Using the "1 + 1" card can be tricky as one action can be taken only for your color and one action must be taken that does not involve your color at all. You may do either action first which allows for a variety of combinations, but you cannot use a "1 + 1" card to move a flock that contains both yours and any other player's sheep. This important restriction requires careful planning and hand management.
The sheepdog is the hero of the story, of course, and the sheepdog card is a wild card that may be used at any time.
Sheepdogs of Pendleton Hill is a game about sheep and sheepdogs that is easy to learn, quick to play, and full of tough decisions and player interaction.
It really is the fluffy game with bite!
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