Calupum
- Board's Eye View
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
This game's unusual title is a contraction of the Latin phrase cave lupum, which translates as 'beware of the wolf', and in Calupum the 2-4 players are trying to avoid their sheep succumbing to attacks from wolves by keeping out of the wolves' lines of sight. The game is designed by Adrian Dinu with attractive cartoon art from Sonja Müller. It's published by Board Game Box.
The game comes with boards and components, and even separate rulebooks, for Winter and Summer modes. Both versions are played over 12 rounds. The basic game is the Winter version, with the boards flipped and some elements added when you play using the Summer rules and components. The Summer game gives an additional way of scoring but you're mainly scoring by having the most health left at the end of the 12 rounds.
The quality of production from Board Game Box is strikingly impressive. Whether you play in Winter or Summer mode, the game is played on modular boards on which initially 12 hedges are positioned and held magnetically in place. Two wolves are placed on the edge of the board on opposite sides. Players have three tokens on the board, each representing sheep with initially 3 health points. They also have a hand of five cards. Players simultaneously reveal a card they've played from their hand. This shows the distance and direction of movement of one of their sheep tokens - you choose which one you want to apply it to. The cards will also show how far the wolves move - always the largest number out of all the cards played. Wolves take a bite (ie: reduce the health) of any sheep in the row or column on which they finish their movement but their line of sight is always blocked by hedges and other sheep.
You can see then that this is a game where players will be trying to guess where the wolves will end up and they will want to position their sheep so they cannot be seen by either of the wolves. The difficulty is that you may have to make some push-your-luck choices because you usually cannot be sure how far the wolves will move; another player may have played a card with a higher wolf movement number than you. You may also find other players' sheep movement puts your sheep at risk and if an opponent moves one of their sheep to a space already occupied by one of your sheep, your sheep has to move to an orthogonally adjacent space. And there's more: the game steadily escalates in difficulty because a hedge is removed at the end of each round...
The Summer game is the same except that it adds a shepherdess and sheepdog (both also magnetic). These also block wolves' lines of sight and they can be moved in place of a player's sheep. When a sheep ends up on the space of the shepherdess, or vice versa, the pieces swap positions and the sheep's health is increased by 1. The sheepdog also swaps positions but it rewards the sheep it swaps with by awarding a dog card. Players can use any dog cards they draw to supplement their card action.
Whereas in the Winter game sheep cards are replenished from a face-down draw deck, in the Summer game they are drafted from a face-up market selection. That means players with a good memory have at least partial knowledge of what cards the other players hold. Finally, the Summer game adds in tunnels that link locations on the board as if they were adjacent, and various magnetic objects. There are objective cards showing a pair of objects, and players can pick up and score for those cards whenever they end a round with two of their sheep on objects corresponding to those on an objective card.
The Summer game extras don't greatly overcomplicate the game so you'll probably just use the Winter version for an initial teach with new players or when playing Calupum as a family game with children. The additional components broaden players' range of choices over how to spend the movement on their cards, and players with a good memory can profit from their knowledge of what cards others have drafted. If your plays are anything like ours at Board's Eye View, you'll find the Summer game is rather more 'take that' - especially in vying for position in claiming or denying others the objective cards. Nevertheless, the cartoon art and the game's attractive presentation help to ensure that gameplay feels good-natured even when it involves sniping at other players.
