We were sent Sheep Dip for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.
A lifetime or more ago, I wanted to step out of the rat race and become a shepherd. I’ve always loved sheep and even now, some twenty odd years later, I can’t pass a field without admiring the flock. These days I get my sheep needs met by watching This Farming Life and now it seems, playing the Sheep Dip game.
Sheep Dip is aimed at players aged 7+ and is for three to six players. It takes around half an hour to play and the rules are thankfully simple.
It comes in a small box which contains a playing board, two decks of cards and four sets of easy to understand instructions. Firstly, I’m a big fan of having more than one set of instructions, with one set, you are never quite sure if the person explaining might be pulling a fast one, four means that most players can be in sight of a set of rules throughout.
How to play the Sheep Dip Game
You begin by shuffling both decks of cards – the Flock cards and the Ewe Do cards. There are 71 Flock cards, each has a cartoon sheep on it and a number. The Flock card deck also contains a few sheepdog cards, wild cards and one special rainbow sheep card, which is worth a potentially game winning 20 points! The deck contains four different sheep breeds, each with 15 unique characters; there’s Hardy Herdwicks, Leggy Leicesters, Sturdy Suffolks and Bonnie Blackfaces.
The Ewe Do cards are action cards, each with instructions for each player in each turn. There are 45 Ewe Do cards which allow you to protect, swap or steal to grow your flock.
You deal out five Flock cards to each player, and from them in take it in turns to pick up a Ewe Do card and compete the action. The aim of the game is to collect five cards of the same sheep breed and put them in a “fold”, or just to one side if you prefer. The more sheep folds you gather, the greater your points potential is. You keep playing until the last Ewe Do card has been drawn. The winner is the player with the highest score, it’s as simple as that.
Our first game we took slowly, learning the rules of the game and trying to steal the sheep, and the points from each other! Once we knew what we were doing, the action hotted up and we started to get a bit more strategic about it all.
It was a fun game, and a strong competitor for our post Christmas dinner family game this year! It is such wholesome fun and the cartoon sheep, complete with their own individual descriptions are really quite funny. You don’t have to be a sheep farmer or an ovine enthusiast to appreciate this game, it’s for townies like me and you too!
Sheep Dip is available online and at a selection of toy shops for around £23, and if you’re after some quick-fire sheep based fun, then this is the game for you!
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