Sheepy Time

Sheepy Time is a luck-pushing game where players are trying to catch winks, and the first player to reach their target wins. How many winks you need starts at the idiomatic forty, but the number will come down during play, as we’ll see.

The board is a small circular track around which players will race their Sheep. Every time the sheep pass the Fence at the start, they gain five winks, and can choose whether or not to keep going for the current round, or stop. Keeping going is good, because another gambol over the fence means another five precious winks. But it’s also risky, because you may be caught by the Nightmare. This creature pursues the sheep around the track: if it lands on the same spot as you once, your sheep is scared: it may continue moving, but is laid flat to show that if the nightmare catches you again, you wake up: out of the round, and all winks received in this round are lost. At the end of each round the sheep who gathered the most winks reduces their initial 40-wink target by eight winks, and everyone else reduces by five. Any sheep who were woken by the nightmare reduce their target by three.

Movement is powered by cards, which give you actions. You only ever have two to choose from, and the actions are very simple: move x spaces, and/or place Zees. Zees are a kind of secondary currency: each player has a supply of zees tokens and cards will allow you to place zees on the special actions around the edge of the board (minimal at the start, but more are added at the start of each round). If your sheep stops on a space where you have any zee tokens, you can remove one and take the action there: it might give you bonus movement, extra zees, or some other canny yet not-too-complicated benefit.

After playing your card and moving your sheep, you replenish your hand from the draw deck. If you draw a Nightmare card, you must immediately reveal it, and move the nightmare. And hope it doesn’t catch you! The instant any player reaches their target, the game is over.