(Review) Chickapig

In our household, my wife is the one with the least interest in games sold outside the "traditional" scope of department stores, so it came to my surprise last year when she forwarded me information about Chickapig.

Sure, Dave Matthews (of Dave Matthews Band fame) isn't the actual designer of the game (that goes to luthier Brian Calhoun), but I can't ignore something that piques my wife's interest.  I got her a copy of the game for her birthday, and on New Year's Day, we finally cracked it open and had a go at it.

It's a fun little game.  The premise is pretty simple:  herd your fantastical little Chickpigs across the board and through your gate.  The only problem is that the Chickapigs are excitable little critters that move until they are stopped by something, a fence, a hay bale, another Chickapig, or even a poo-filled cow.  You must navigate your Chickapigs and hay bales, all the while your other three opponents are trying to do the same thing... and possibly mess up your plans in the process. 

Then there is the cow.  Once a player rolls a "1", the cow breaks loose from its centralized pen and can move around the board.  From then on, the cow can be moved one square per move by any player, but on a 1, that player can move the cow to any spot on the board and leave a poop token.  The poop token doesn't block Chickapig movement, but it does force the player to draw a poop card, with negative implications (Lose the next turn, player next to you determines your next move, and so forth).

Having picked up a few of the old Avalon Hill/3M bookshelf games from the 60's and 70's awhile back, I got my nine year old daughter Maja into a few of the no-frills strategy games.  This has the same feel of those games, except the theme of the game, the ridiculous Chickapigs, and, of course, the pooping cow.

My seven-year old could not grasp the concept of the free-running Chickapigs, but she sure like moving cows and dropping poop.

The final arbiter of the game was my wife. Once I made a few sweet moves bouncing my first Chickapig through the gate, she took it up a couple notches and cleaned all of our clocks.  She enjoyed the game, she was interested in playing again, and we discovered some of our friends have unplayed copies of the game.  Played best with four players, Chickapig has the potential of being a casual game when couples come over to visit (or visit and we banish all the kids to the playroom), like couples used to do with rummy, bridge, or other cards games...

Just with Dave Matthews playing in the background.

With my wife's input and appreciation, I'm definitely giving Chickapig four out of five gnomes.

MSRP appears to be $34.95 and is available directly from www.chickapig.com.  I got my wife's copy through my FLGS using Alliance Game Distributors and Buffalo Games as an intermediary.