Sheriff of Nottingham

Smuggling and bribery, it's all fun and games...right?

That's the theme of Sheriff of Nottingham.  Each of the players is trying to get goods from the market into the city of Nottingham.  The problem is that the Sheriff is checking sacks as they come through the gates and not everything in your bag is legal.
How Does it Work?

Each player is going to start by picking one of the five player boards and the bag in their colour.  The characters are all the same with no special abilities but the boards act as your "shop", holding all the items you get into the city, legal and illegal.  They also act as a player aid with the turn order printed on them.

Each round a different player takes the role of the Sheriff.  It is their job to stop the other players getting any contraband through the gates to their stalls.  The other players get a chance to "go to market" they can discard cards from their hand and draw new cards from the discard piles or draw deck.

It is then time to fill the sacks they are trying to bring through the gates.  There are two types of card in the game, legal goods and contraband.  The legal good, in green, are worth less than the contraband, in red, but players will not pay a penalty on legal goods if their bag is searched by the Sheriff later.  Players will have a hand of six cards, they can put up to five into their sack.  They can place any combo of cards they want in the bag before closing it.

They then have to hand their bag to the Sheriff and looking them in the eye declare what is in there bag.  Obviously they can only declare legal goods but must state the exact number of cards in the bag.  So if I put three apples and a crossbow into my bag I would have to declare it as four apples.

A timer now starts and the Sheriff can question players.  Deals can be made and players can bribe the Sheriff not to search their bag if they don't want it opened or they can try and convince them it is all above board.  Deals can be anything and the rules do state that deals promising future favours are allowed.  If the Sheriff accepts a bribe it must be honoured (future deals do not need to be just those taking place at the time) and players can pay to have other bags opened if they think other players are trying to get through contraband.

Once the Sheriff has decided which bags they are letting through unopened and which they are opening (and collected any bribes they accepted) the unopened bags are handed back to their owners.  They can now open them and place the cards in their shop.  Contraband is placed face down but everything legal is put face up.  The bags that are being searched are opened by the Sheriff.  If their were any goods (legal or illegal) that were not declared the bag owner must pay the Sheriff the penalty (the red number in the bottom right) and the card is lost.  Anything declared is still let through to the players shop.  If all the goods in the bag were declared the Sheriff must pay the own the penalty cost of every item in the bag.

Players will then draw back to six cards and the Sheriff will change and this carries on until the game ends.  Players will then score points for everything in their shop.  They receive a point for any left over money and the cost (gold number in the top right of each card) of each item in the shop both legal and illegal.  There are also bonus points for having the most of each type of legal good.  Most points wins.

What do I Think?

When I first heard about this game it didn't really appeal to me.  I knew about it from the great reviews it got on The Dice Tower, especially since it is one of the Dice Tower Essentials line.  I also saw it on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop but probably wasn't paying that much attention because it turns out the reason I didn't want to play the game was actually me not understanding one rule.  I didn't know that if the bag is opened and it is all legal the Sheriff had to pay the player.  Without that I could see no reason for the Sheriff not to open every bag.  Once I realised it was me wrong not the game my interest peaked.

I really like the game.  I like bluffing games anyway but this is a good one.  I like trying to talk my way out of getting my bag searched or scaring people into paying me a bribe not to check theirs.  The game is a good length, an hour.  It always provides laughs when we play it and I find it goes over equally well with gamers and non-gamers.  The production quality is good and the rules are very clear and easy to understand.

There may be issues depending on your group, I have friends that don't generally trust each other in games and aren't always willing to make deals that might benefit other players.  It can make getting bribes or contraband through a little less likely.  This doesn't ruin the game for us though.  Deals change we are more likely to pay for the Sheriff to open someone else's bag and we have been known to get into bidding wars between players to get someone else's bag opened.

Because of the King and Queen bonuses for the most legal goods it makes playing completely honestly a real option so if players aren't confident lying or just don't want to it is possible.  I think the game would fall down if everyone in your group plays this way because it just comes down to who draws the best cards.  It is also possible to bribe your way to victory and get lots of high value items through.

Bonus
There is a companion app for the game.  I have downloaded it on my phone and use it during each game.  It doesn't do anything you couldn't do without it it but I enjoy it.

The app has a few features.  The app has a build in timer than can be used to time negotiation phase.  During the timer the app is plays a few funny sound bites.  There is an add-on with some more adult sound bites which I have.  None actually swear but the jokes are a lot more "sack" related. 

After you can use the app to calculate the scores which is quicker than doing it by yourselves since it works out the bonuses for you as well.

There was an issue with this when I first got the app and it just seemed to randomly delete peoples scores as you were putting the results in meaning we had to work it out ourselves anyway.  Recently I have tried again and it worked perfectly.

The app also saves your stats for games.  You can see how people have done overall with win/lose records and who scored what if different games.  I record my plays on BGG.com anyway but this is a nice way of keeping them without having to search through the records there.  It also makes saving the results to upload to BGG later easier since I don't like doing it while we are playing games.

It is not a necessary app by any means, but it was worth picking up if you play a lot since when the scoreboard works it makes it quicker to work out peoples scores and the timer sounds can lighten the mood.