DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS
Designer: Ellie Dix | Publisher: The Dark Imp
Ellie Dix’s charming small tin game of competitive fowl raising is a unique merging of genre and mechanics, tasking players with the tricky challenge of simultaneously gathering birds whilst picking apart the puzzle of each bird’s value. Oftentimes, an original idea results in a steeper learning curve, but occasionally it just clicks. Don’t Count Your Chickens snugly fits into the latter, pairing its central hidden information mechanic with worker placement in a way that just feels right.
Much of this is down to its relative simplicity. Like most games in the genre, turns consist of placing a worker on a particular action, gaining its benefits whilst blocking them for others. With a central area of only seven action spaces, Don’t Count Your Chickens strays from the usual generous formula found in classic games like Caverna, and conversely uses a sense of restriction to evoke tension.
This restriction is amplified further through the clever mini bluffing game that kicks off each round. Players secretly choose one of the three coloured bird types to display. Any duplicates among players are instantly discarded with any remaining unique birds granting players a bonus bird of another colour. The downside is that this bird type can no longer be taken or traded in any of that player’s actions throughout the round.
The meat (poultry?) of the game lies in the action spaces. Some simply gift players with more birds from the market or discard coop, whilst others offer up snippets of information on the value of each bird. Finding the balance between gathering information and snatching up as many birds as you can is an immensely satisfying puzzle. Acting too hastily can result in an abundance of animals known to be high value, being cancelled out by a flock of unknowingly negative scoring birds at the end of the game. Such a clever idea could easily have become a more ambitious project. But ambitious doesn’t always mean better.
CHAD WILKINSON