Flockers
- Board's Eye View
- 45 minutes ago
- 3 min read
We're used to encountering hand management card games but Mark Swanson's Flockers is perhaps the first game we've played where there's additionally a focus on flock management! In Flockers, your cards all represent snow geese. The players have hands of five cards from which, each turn, one has to be played to your flock - initially as the lead bird and then subsequently following the lead in a 'V' shape. Players' flocks are also represented by the beautiful pre-painted metal bird tokens that they'll be moving across a track of progressively revealed terrain cards.
Your flock of snow geese is flying south for the winter and the game is a race to be the first to reach a destination that is 10 terrain cards from the start. When you play a card to your flock, you take the action indicated by the icon at the top left of the card. This can be, inter alia, to fly, to place out another terrain card (you start the game with only one on the shared track), to swap the position of any two birds in your flock or to graze. When you graze you are removing birds from your flock. This sounds counterintutive until you consider that the maximum size your flock can grow to is seven birds (your lead and three birds following in a line above and three in a line below). Your game ends (ie: you take no further part in the game) when you place a seventh card in your flock, so unless you use actions that let you remove cards you will have only seven turns in the game and it's almost certain that other flocks will pass you by on that all-important terrain track.
When you activate the fly action, you look at the terrain markers on the cards in your flock. To move your snow goose piece forward you must be able to trace a line of terrain markers in your flock, starting from the lead bird, that match the terrain over which you are passing and/or landing. Some terrain cards have icons that affect your flock: a wind icon advances you further, a fox will gobble up a bird in your flock (as we've observed, that's not necessarily a bad thing), a decoy duck forces you to shuffle the cards in your flock and place them out anew in a randomised formation, and an eagle preys on all the young in your flock: the snow geese depicted on each card will either be an adult (white or black) or juvenile (grey or yellow). The distinct types of snow goose is also significant for activating a set collection bonus action.
In practice, Flockers becomes a clever puzzle optimisation and tableau manipulation game as you build, modify and reconfigure your flock over the course of the game. It can be frustrating to have your flock carefully configured to make good progress across the revealed terrain but not have a card that triggers a fly action but it wouldn't be much of a game if everything always went your way.
There's a solo mode but the competitive game takes 2-4 players and plays in 30-40 minutes. Interaction is limited. When you take the (explore) action that lets you choose the next terrain card to place out (from the three in an open display) you're dictating the requirements for all the players, not just yourself, and when you add a card to your hand at the end of your turn you are picking from the three on display so you could 'hate draft' to deny a card to an opponent, but in the main Flockers is multiplayer solitaire. And none the worse for that. If that's an issue for you, however, the game is due to come with optional expansions that include more player interaction.
Flockers is published, appropriately, by Odd Bird Games, who are bringing the game to Gamefound. Click here to check it out.
