 You know, a while back we did an episode. We talked about this game, but we didn't talk too much about it. I think it was probably the pack south review episode. Yep. But now it's time to talk about this game in depth because we have played it many times and have indeed purchased it. And we know all there is to know about it. Sheriff of Nottingham designed by Sergio Halivan, Brian Pope, Benjamin Pope and Andre Zatz. So these are, I think the dice tower dudes. Is that correct? I am not 100% sure actually. I think I was told that these are the dice tower peoples. I can figure that out while we're talking. Yeah. But anyway, so Sheriff of Nottingham is obviously has the theme of Robin Hood, right? Kind of action. The art is all awesome with all kinds of crazy characters, really well designed and whatnot. I really like the art in this game. It's very, very professional arts. And basically the game works like this. Someone is the Sheriff of Nottingham. You know, King John is not in the picture apparently. Well, he's sort of in the picture. People merchants who have nothing to do with Robin Hood and his merry men were little John or Fryer, Tuck or Maid Mary or anything like that. They are merchants and they need to bring things into Nottingham from the outside world in order to sell them in the market. You know, bread, cheese, chickens, the things that people need. Right. The Sheriff, he's at the gate of Nottingham and he doesn't want anyone bringing things into Nottingham that shouldn't be in Nottingham. Things that might help Robin Hood and his merry men like crossbows, crossbows, rye bread, pepper, silk for Maid Marion. You know, nothing like that is allowed. Right. Only things that are allowed are apples, chickens, cheese and bread. That's it. No other imports. So every game, all you do is go around and someone's the Sheriff and everyone puts between one and five goods in their bag and they look the Sheriff in the eye. You have, it says, you have an actual bag that you put actual cards in and snap shut. A snap that makes a loud audible snap. And when you give it, you give this bag to the Sheriff and look them in the eye and tell the Sheriff what is in the bag. There are four chickens in this bag. Right. There's really only 20 different things you can tell the Sheriff. You must pick one and only one of the legal good types. So chicken, bread, cheese, apple, and you give a number between one and five. The number must be correct. If you have three cards in the bag, you must say three. Yeah. You can't lie about that. Right. So there's really only 20 possibilities of things that you could say. One apple, two apple, three apple, four apple, five apple, one chicken, two chicken, three chicken, et cetera. And you hand them the bag. Now what's in the bag? Could be fucking anything. Who knows what the hell is it? It could be five crossbows. Jesus Christ. Yup. Give you five peppers. It could be anything, but what you tell him is something legal. Cause obviously you're not going to tell the Sheriff's son illegal. Then the Sheriff completely of their own will may open or not open any number of bags. The Sheriff's choices are hand the bag back to you. And once they hit it back to you, they can ask for it again. You've got it back. Those five crossbows are going right into your stall. Tell the crossbows here. Crossbows. Or he can open it as soon as he un-snaps it. That's it. He can't re-snap it. He's looking in that bag. Or he can engage with you. So Scott, what would you pay me? Would you pay me five doubloons to not open your bag? I dare you to open my bag, Sheriff. You dare me. Go for it. What I dare you to open this bag. If my friend Mugsy were hiding. If my friend Crossbow was hiding in there. So here's the deal. If you have in your bag what you said was in there and the Sheriff opens it, the Sheriff owes you money because he opened your totally legit goods and wasted your merchant time. Man, if the TSA had to pay me every time there wasn't a bomb in my bag. That would be amazing. Now, if the Sheriff opens the bag and he finds something in there that's not supposed to be in there like my Scott. That's a nice crossbow you got. You said you had four chickens. I see three chickens, but this chicken is the King's chicken. How is the King's chicken in your chicken basket? So the Sheriff then throws away all the contraband if he catches it and you got to pay him based on there's just every card has a value that's points. It's worth and dollar. It's worth as contraband meaning if the Sheriff finds it. Yeah, this is basically an award value and a penalty value. It's like something will be worth like seven victory points if it's in your stall at the end of the game and you can use that as part of a bribe or whatever like a deal or it's just victory points at the end and on the bottom it'll say like four in red meaning if the Sheriff sees it in your bag, you owe him four bucks if it's in there. But if it's legal, it's always two. So the chicken's worth like three or four bucks or whatever, but if the Sheriff opens your bag and you've got five legit chickens the Sheriff owes you 10 bucks. Yep. So some of the goods that are contraband like, you know, are just like crossbow or silk or whatever. And they're just worth a lot of money if you can sneak them in the town. But there are certain other goods like the King's apples, the King's, you know, chickens, the King's bribe bread. If you get that stuff in the town, not only is it worth a lot, it also counts as cheese, bread, chicken's apples because the end of the game whoever has the most apples gets extra bonus points. Whoever has the most cheese gets bonus points. I guess it's because you get a reputation for being the best cheese dealer. I guess. I don't know. So the King's cheese counts as like three cheeses. It's like a super cheese. So if you get that in the town, it's going to be really easy for you to win the cheese battle of who has the most cheese because you got three cheeses and one card snuck through that aspect. Actually kind of like how small world modified the field of Vinci by hiding the victory points by doing that. It sort of makes the game, like it makes the game not just calculated at the end. It makes it hard for someone to say, I'm winning by eight. So I should do this because the, if someone's got a bunch of normal contraband, that's just a bunch of victory points, but you don't know if they've got like the chicken contraband. You can't be, you're not secure in your chicken empire. When you sneak stuff in the town or bring it into town legally, it's publicly visible what you have brought into town except for contraband, which is face down. So people know how many cards of contraband you've snuck in, but they don't know what is on those cards. Nothing is better than when you convince the sheriff to not look in your bag and he hands it back and you pull five motherfucking contraband, just lay them all face down. I can't, I cannot express to you how good that feels. So here's the thing in this game. Number one, the way you draw the cards, you're not going to get into those rules because it just started a little bit fiddly. It's hard to teach this to people. Yeah. But basically you draw cards in certain ways and it's also discard piles and sort of like a rummy situation. It's easy for other players to know what you could have in your hand because some of the cards you draw are face up when you draw them. And if anyone's paying attention, which the sheriff should be, they can figure out what is in your hand. So if you're like five chickens, someone would be like, you just picked up like three peppers. There's no way you could have five chickens in your hand. It's not possible. Uh, and then they'll just call you out. Another thing is that, uh, even when it is possible, people could look around and count the visible cards. So later in the game, they're like, huh, there's already like 40 apples out. There's no way that you can do four apples right now. It's so unlikely. What I found happens in practice is there are so many cards in that deck. You can't count perfectly because there's so many freaking cards. People fuck up the soft count that we play with. Like there was a game where I legit had four bread in my hand and I was like four motherfucking bread and the sheriff and other people also like one bread, two bread, whatever. And the sheriff was like, there's a lot of bread out. There's no way you have bread and no one was lying because the soft count was really misleading because there's so many cards and people overestimated what they'd seen. Right. Also, while sneaking contraband into town is such a hugely powerful play, if you can pull it off, it's actually kind of difficult. And from what I've seen, accepting cases where someone manages to bring in a ton of contraband into town, usually the person who wins this game is someone who was just able to really efficiently bring in the most legit goods in the town. Well, it depends because I win a lot. I seem to be really good at this game. I'm also pretty good. You are, but you have not won it in a while. You won the early games. I won many times, but I think the problem is you play a very conservative strategy. What Scott will do is be like, so I got four bags here. I'm going to open two of them, pay me $10 to not be in that lottery and he'll do it randomly. Yep. It works. It works. Okay. But I've had better luck by maybe it's just, it depends on who you're playing with, but you have someone just really obvious. Like I had this beautiful moment with a friend of ours. Well, I looked at them. I'm like, you said you have five chickens in here. What would you like to offer me abroad to not open your bag? And they're like, I would like to offer you for, and I immediately opened the bag because I knew there's a fucking contraband in there. And I knew they weren't clever enough right then to have been tricking me because I made them talk and make the decisions too quickly. Right. That's another thing is much like settlers. I don't really see a reason to bargain with anyone. If someone's bargaining with you, that means they're going to pay you, they want to pay you some amount less than what the penalty is going to be. But if I just open the bag, I get the penalty money. Yeah. You say that. What if I offer you, look, I'll give you, I got five cards, right in here. I'm going to tell you right now, three of them are contraband. You'll make 12 bucks. If you open my bag, I'll give you 15. Then I would do it, but no one has made those kinds of offers. Everyone is always offers less than what the penalty is going to be. So there's no reason to take their deal. Also, if I have that much contraband, why would I offer that? Why wouldn't I just, right? Well, you never know. I'm basically giving that person the game. I might propose a deal like that to see if the sheriff is like, Oh, I know there's contraband in there now and then opens the bag anyway. Oh, it is actually just two chickens. Now there is, right. So there are some strategies that are out there that I don't see and I haven't seen used enough, right? One of them is I got fully legit goods, but try to offer a bribe to get the sheriff to open the bag and thus pay you the penalty or I want to see the strategy of no one's done this of offered like, everyone's always like three cards, maybe four cards. I would expect at least occasionally someone to be like one card and it's just the most valuable contraband because the sheriff's like, who would, who would lie about one? No, but that's the thing is that you put your, when you're trying to sneak contraband in, you try to do it with just one because that's the only way you're getting it through. Except occasionally I've laid down five fucking contraband. Yeah. Well, yeah. But I think one thing is that the rules of the game are such that all the goods you legally declared, you get to keep even if they opened it. So if you want to sneak a contraband in, you're better off because you only have two, basically one, two times the number of players turns in the game. So there's five players. You have 10 turns, two of which are going to be the sheriff. So you only have eight turns in the game to get cards through. You got to get as many cards through as possible. So if you just spend a turn on one contraband, even if you get it in, that's, even though that card is real valuable, that's not that great. You were better off going with like three, three cheese and a contraband declaring four cheese. And if they open it while I still get my three cheese, that turn wasn't a waste. So you say that, but you're playing the game. I think your style and strategy, well, I'll get to this in a second. The end game of all smart players works. If like everyone at the table is super fucking pro, but in reality, it's like playing bonanza. If I get the one through the sheriff, just because of the feel of the game and the like you want to open bags, it feels really good to open someone's bag. It's way more fun to open a bag than to give it back to him. And I feel like if the sheriff doesn't open, I mean, if we were playing TSA agent, the game or right, what is it more funny to say, go on through, go on through, or is it more fun to like and look through everyone's cases and see what they got? So I feel like if me and another player collude to like put small amounts of stuff through, so the sheriff is like, eh, like he doesn't bother opening our bags. It's probably more likely to open other people's bags. But if you're, if you're a sheriff, right, someone putting through a small bag, you know, it's like, if I'll, if someone says one, I'll open it no matter what. Because the penalty is going to be small and it's likely that they're trying to sneak something through, right? And if they, if it isn't something illegal and they only did one, it's like, fine, I'll pay you the penalty of two dollars. You're not winning this game anyway. If you spent a whole turn just to get one cheese. But I've seen people who at a turn where they just put one fucking thing in there come within two or three points of winning. Well, because they basically, you know, it's as good as putting one thing in there and getting it opened that's legal is as good as putting two things in and getting them through. Yeah. Well, what he comes down to is this game. We haven't fully explored, like it's, it's the same brain feel as Bonanza. This game serves the same niche of gaming. It's a really, really social game. There's a lot of like, what's in the bag? What's in the bag? Come on. Like you just, you really, like people slip barons into the bags, like cards and other games, just to fuck with the sheriff and like fun stuff like that. The game is super fun, just like Bonanza is super fun because it's really a vote who wins game in the end of everyone's super smart and it might just be a completely, well, there is a, it's a very largely vote who wins, but there's also a large element of luck, believe it or not. Oh yeah. If you just get, if you just get like ton, if you, let's say you just keep drawing tons of chickens and it's just like, well, I'm probably going to win because I can get these all in legally. I say five chickens, sheriff calls bullshit. I get, you know, 10 extra dollars. Right. And it's like, if you can consistently put in your bag every turn a large number of legitimate goods of the same type, because your draw was so great. It's like, you don't need to even try for contraband because you're going to get the points or having most of legal good, whatever. But the same thing happens in Bonanza. If I just happen to keep drawing red beans, well, fuck you all. I'm not trading for shit. Exactly. The sheriff is going to open your bag sometimes at least and you're going to get extra points for that. And you're going to get all these legal goods, which are worth a ton of points. So it's just like, that's, you know, if you go for the high contraband strategy, cause that's all you get. Sure. Sometimes the sheriff won't open your bag and you'll get a million points and then sometimes they will and you'll have to pay a bunch of money and you'll get zero points that turn cause he was all contraband. So I think basically Bonanza is probably one of our favorite most go to like social games cause it's, it's a real game. There is a pretty high luck factor, especially when everyone's good. And the game comes down to your playing it with a bunch of friends who are super, super manipulative and the game is this really abstract social game. Sheriff of Nottingham is the same brain feel and it breaks down at about the same point. Like Bonanza, if you play it too much gets to this point where people toward the end of the game make very like, well, Scott's winning. So I can't trade with him. So I'll trade with you in this very like, how many victory points do you have? They break down at the same level of analysis. The thing is, okay, let's say you're the sheriff at the end of the game, you see who's winning, right? And you're in second place and it's used like, do I open their bag and perhaps end up giving them money and they win? Or do I not open their bag and then they sneak a bunch of stuff through and they win. So one thing sheriff has the Bonanza doesn't is that the Bonanza trading on lying about like what's actually in your hand and what's coming up is more about convincing other people who's actually winning and convincing them to trade with you. This is more about distracting people, getting them to forget to open your bag or like getting the focus on someone else. It's this is a game of redirecting your friend's attention. And that is actually a fun game. But I among if five people who have complete poker faces and act like me and Scott play this game, it's the same as Bonanza. Everyone's like, I'll trade you this. Fuck you. Yeah. I'm pretty much my only strat. If anyone ever says, Hey, Scott, pay me to not open your bag. I'm just like, I dare you to open my bag. I dare you. Go for it. Yeah. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? It doesn't matter what I've got in there. I say the same thing every time that way. It's just like they don't know what to think. See, but I pay attention to things like when someone draws cards, do they reorder their hand? And then where do they draw cards out afterward? Yeah. If you watch, if you actually look at other people, you'll see like they just take the first three cards because everyone's going to sort their hand by good type, right? So if someone takes the first three cards in their hand and puts them in the bag, okay, those three cards were next to each other. They're probably not lying. And someone else like three different cards in their hand and puts those in the bag. It's like, or not even at what I'll just see is someone will take like two cards out of their hand, put them in the bag, then they take another card and put it in the bag. Open in that shit. Yep. Of course. At the same time, if they were clever and they did that, it becomes a poison cup situation and that's where the game breaks down in the end. Okay. But in the same or put stuff in your bag under the table. So no one can see what the fuck you're doing. Yeah. But much like with games like mafia, like yes, and very pure analytical players will take a lot of the fun out of the game. But in practice, despite attempting to play analytically, people fuck up. They lose attention for a minute. They've a lot of people forget what they put in their own bag. Yeah. And the rules are very clear. A lot of times the sheriff forgets what people declared. Like the sheriff, like people go to the sheriff and like three cheese, three apples, four chickens, one bread. It's like, what did you have again? Three cheese? Was it three cheese? I forget. What did you say? Yeah. The sheriff doesn't remember what you declared. That's a problem. So it's a I think it's a great game to buy it. This and bonanza, if you own them both, you don't really need anything else in this category if you have those two. Exactly. I mean, the only other game in this kind of category at the high level is just mafia and you just need to deck of cards for that. Yeah. And you know, like we said, the theme just goes so well with the mechanic of you're bringing goods into town and the sheriff is opening your bags or not. It's so that's, you know, not a lot of games can pull off the theme matching mechanic. So well, the game is also ripe for a small number of very pointed expansions. I mean, what game isn't like Puerto Rico, like expanding it just over complicates it. Sure. I can try to imagine just quickly a good expansion to Puerto Rico, just some more buildings or something or tickets to your friend. So I'm not a big fan of the expansion. You can't expand. It isn't afraid. He's really well. It has an expansion. That's not good. Yeah. Monument. I don't know. Yeah. But Sheriff Nottingham, like there's like there's some sort of like dangerous good. Sure. Yeah. Like little like I would make an expansion. Yeah. Like bombs, like the sheriff opens it. They get hurt. If the sheriff opens it, they get hurt. If they don't open it and it goes into your stall, you get negative points. Yeah, that's good. Something like that. You want to do things. The problem is this game, it can't be things that just change the analytical side of the game. It has to be things that change the psychological side. Kind of like how in Mafia, the psycho killer, like from a game theory, like game analysis standpoint, it's pretty straightforward how to use the psycho killer in practice. People just want to, they want to be the psycho killer because it's cool. Psycho killer. You want, you're just waiting to flip that psycho killer over, even if it loses you the game. So like if someone's got the bomb in their hand, now there's this like they got to keep their cool even though they've got the rare cool thing and they get to do the cool thing with it. Like the bomb gets discarded and then someone picks the bomb up and then puts their bag with five down. This is proving to be a popular well selling game. I've seen it around a lot. So I don't see why it wouldn't get expanded because every other board game that does well gets expanded. And also honestly groups of people playing this game are always having a loud good time. Yeah. I've never seen anyone have a bad time playing this even if they lose. Yeah. So seriously, this and bonanza own them both and alternate which one you play and they both have infinite replayability together. Yeah. I guess, you know, the only thing like I said that's negative about this game is that there's just so many cards and the deck, the drawing is and discarding is a bit fiddly. Yeah. The rule, it's weird. The rules, if someone's a gamer, you explain the rules once, they're like, okay, I get it. But someone who's not like really versed in like German board games and card games and everything, they will have a lot of trouble with the drawing and discarding rules until you just demonstrate it in the course of play. Yeah. Luckily it doesn't, you can just, you can just demonstrate it in the course of play. It doesn't affect their decisions very much. No, it's just two discard vials and it's like they could have made this game with a lot less cards probably. Yeah. But I don't know, having so many cards, you know, it's interesting. If the game were a little simpler, card wise, it would be more analyzable and be less fun in the long run. The fact that there's so many cards, it pushes the game more toward the psychology bluffing, fucking with your friends. It's just annoying to have to deal with all the cards. Yeah. Shuffling them is hard to re-box it because it's just a million fucking cards. Yeah. You can't shuffle them properly at all. Yeah. And they always get sorted because like at the end of the game, all, everyone's, you know, tableaus or markets are full of legit goods and the discards are full of contra bands, way more contra bands than you can get into your good style. What we do is like the people who know how to play the game just shuffle the deck like crazy, split up while someone else teaches everyone else the game. I think you got to just take all the cards and do the big wash method for like a few minutes to really mix it up. Or at least end of game wash just a little bit before you put it away. That's also true. All right.