PLAYED FOR YOU

Who is the Sheep?

Wooolf!!

And where is the big bad wolf hiding?

Who is the wolf, where are the sheep, is there a sheep at all? Damn and blast, is there a dog or not? These questions and many more are asked all the time and you will ask them yourself while playing a deduction game of Wooolf (yes, the title is spelled with three o), published by Capstone and in a German version by Smiling Monster Games.

Wooolf is fun, an incredible lot of fun, but only in a congenial group of players, oh, and by the way, a bit of deduction is required too, just playing along as in a simple dice game is not in the cards, you must employ your brain to arrive at the right conclusions on which character is played by who?

So, what's really going on? Each of the five to eight players (best, four players is possible with a special rule) is dealt two secret character cards. The cards each show one character and a number value (Sheep - 1, Dog - 2, Hunter - 3, Shepherd - 4 and Wolf - 5). Despite being dealt two cards you have to impersonate the character of higher value of those two cards. This means that there is always a wolf, but it is possible that some character(s) are not in play, because you will only be a sheep if you have been dealt two sheep. On a summary card you find the number of character chards of each kind that are used for the various numbers of players. Each player is also given two random questions card, a suspect board featuring 2 spinners with arrows and clue markers of his color.

In your turn you have one of three choices:

1. You can place a question card in front of another player on which for instance sheep, shepherd and hunter are depicted. The questioned player must answer truthfully if he impersonates one of those three characters by placing the question card under his summary card, showing yes or no which corresponds to his answer,. Another kind of question cards does not ask directly about the player's character, but for instance if one of the two cards of the person questioned is a dog. Such a question must be answered truthfully, too, but does not give away much, as the card - if the answer was yes - could well be the one of lower value.

2. You can draw one of the two cards of another player at random and look at it. Each card shows an additionally small circle that either shows the character of the card or a question mark. If the circle depicts the card character, for instance the hunter, you place your hunter marker in front of the player. All other players have now also received this information. If the circle shows a question mark, however, you place a question mark tile in front of the player, and all others have learned a lot less than you - but this can be valuable too, as not every character has a question mark in the circle. But there is an exception for the Shepherd. If he should see the character in the little circle instead of a question mark, he - as the notorious old swindler that he is - must always place a wolf marker in front of this player. This can really cause some confusion on the one hand, but also, on the other hand, reveal the Shepherd if someone should already have deduced correctly who really is the wolf!

3. Beginning with the second round each player can voice a suspicion; if you do that - depending on the number of players - first or maximum as the third player, you are voicing a so called "early suspicion". Such an early suspicion is rewarded with 2 instead of 1 victory point, but - should you be wrong - cancels your right to voice an early suspicion in the next round of the game. If you voice a suspicion you turn the wheels on your spinner to mark the numbers of those players who you suspect to be the characters corresponding to the marks on your cards- characters. Should one character really be embodied by to players it is sufficient to mark one of them. The wolf has only one goal, he needs to find a sheep; but as sheep are not always in play it can take some time to be really sure.

When two or three early suspicions have been voiced, all other players are now entitled to voice a final suspicion. This of course creates some tension, especially if you have only rudimentary suppositions about your target characters. At the same time the end of the round is triggered. All turn up their character cards and check if their suspicions are correct or not and take the corresponding victory markers or error markers. The game ends after three rounds or if one player must take his second error marker.

Resume: Wooolf is a game that is well liked in nearly all of my gaming rounds, albeit only if you not reject deduction games. Sometimes randomness can be responsible for considerable discrepancies in available information; it can be very frustrating when one of the players already voices an early suspicion in his second game, which is something that especially the wolf manages sometimes, as he has only one target! But this is part of the game it is usually of secondary interest who the winner is, because fun takes first place and usually you can hear happy laughter when the Shepherd has once again led a deduction astray with his wolf marker, a fact, for which he scores extra points, by the way. Wooolf can be especially recommended to larger groups of friends, and also especially because there are not that many games that can be played with eight players in a reasonable time frame. For Spiel 13 at Essen two small expansions were published: Little Red Riding Hood und Three Little Pigs.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 4-8

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Bono Light

Artist: Tommy Ng

Price: ca. 18 Euro

Publisher: Capstone Games 2013

Web: www-smiling-monster.de

Genre: deduction

Users: With friends

Special: Many players

Version: multi

Rules: cn de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Good for larger groups

Good combination of chance and deduction

Different task for each role

Compares to:

All deduction game with role cards, e.g. Bang, The Resistance, Jäger der Nacht

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating:6

Gert Stöckl:

Definitely one of the best deductions games, probably just because it manages to get be entirely without werewolves or vampires, albeit there always being a big bad wolf!

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0