Prince John is coming to Nottingham! Players, in the role of merchants, see this as an opportunity to make quick profits by selling goods in the bustling city during the Prince’s visit. However, players must first get their goods through the city gate, which is under the watch of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Should you play it safe with legal goods and make a profit, or risk it all by sneaking in illicit goods? Be mindful, though, as the Sheriff always has his eyes out for liars and tricksters and if he catches one, he very well may confiscate those goods for himself!
Addiction2k
This gets much better with the expansion which adds some tactical play to the game. Might be better than I give it credit for but I've only played it with children involved.
aaj94
This is one of the games that birthed our Saturday game night. Back in the day, we owned maybe 5 games, and Sheriff was one of them. In Sheriff of Nottingham, each player plays as a merchant, who is trying to bring goods to market under the nose of the powerful Sheriff. Players take turns in the role of the sheriff, and must try to guess what other players are bringing in: legal goods, or valuable contraband pepper, silk, and mead? The player with the most valuable market at the end of the game wins! Sheriff is a different game with every different group you play with, and the role of Sheriff is never safe from crushing loss or lots of gain. We love this game and the bluffing that it provokes from cocky smugglers and honest merchants alike. This game is exponentially more fun the more you get into the roleplaying. We've also had blustering Sheriffs, timid Sheriffs, and loose cannon Sheriffs that will sometimes open every bag and sometimes let everything pass scot-free. Great fun! I have only played the game 26 times over 5 years, but it's always good for a few plays a year. We gave it a long break as the metagame of our game night staled a bit (very restrained, all legal goods with very little lying), but a recent play with a totally different group reminded me that I still enjoy this game. Yes, it is possible to break the game with the wrong table. I prefer more resilient games in my collection (I would wince or actively steer away from the game with certain groups or particular players), but at its best, Sheriff is good enough to stick around on my shelves. 7 might be a bit of a burnt-out overreaction, this one is an [BGCOLOR=#66FF99] [b]8.0[/b] [/BGCOLOR] in my book. We tried the expansion and sold it -- not for us. May 2018 -- rated 7
Akindor
The artwork and quality of tiles and coins in this game is top-notch. The plastic button snaps on the plastic/velvet bags suck. We had to abstain from snapping/unsnapping bags (even though the rules encourage it from a signal-of-intent perspective) for fear that we would either rip a hole in the bags or the snaps out of the bags. The free app is excellent and adds some great sound effects and Monty Python-esque humor to the proceedings. It also can handle all the MATH required at the end to add up your points. For a game so light and fluffy, the avalanche of math that falls on you at the end to determine winners is a pain. The app lightens this burden. I had grand hopes of my fun loving, jovial gaming group hopping right into role playing this game, as so many others have said... but something about it caused them not to. It was a very dry, "I have five apples," experience. We didn't need a timer at all we were whipping through rounds so fast. Interestingly, everyone said it was fun, but it wasn't the instant-fun-maker other folks have referred to in their reviews. I still like the game, but maybe I need to find a theater troupe to play it with. Positives - Fantastic artwork, quality tiles and coins - Excellent companion app - Simple mechanics - Encourages role-playing Negatives - Bags look awesome on the surface, but their cheap quality manifests the first time you try to unsnap them - Easy to sidestep role-playing and make gameplay very perfunctory and dry - For such a simple concept, the rulebook is dense with text, technicalities and examples-- which can be good and bad - Final scoring is very complex in comparison to the game mechanics