Rogue Review - Goat Lords

During a recent visit with family, my sister introduced me to a Kickstarter game from Wesley Marriott she had picked up called Goat Lords. It’s a quirky little game that revolves around the cut-throat world of stealing goats from each other. But not just any goats, magical goats.

The basic premise is players try to acquire a stack of cards consisting of matching goats, each of which is worth from five to fifty points. Whoever has the most points wins. You can add goats to your stack or steal them from another player. This last part is where the fun begins.

On each player’s turn, they will take one of five actions. First, they can “give birth” by playing a pair of matching goats from their hand. Second, they can have an “assisted birth” by playing one goat from their hand along with a matching goat from the top card of the discard pile. They are also free to discard a card. Or they could “duel” and try and steal a stack of goats from another player. This is where most of your points come from.

When you play a pair of goats, they won’t be worth but so many points, as the goats range from five to twenty points, most of which are on the lower end. So a pair is typically around ten to twenty points. But when you try to steal goats from another player you have to play a matching goat. They can then attempt to counter you by playing another matching goat. And you can then play another. Or a wildcard, which are worth 25 to 50 points. Once you’ve stolen a stack of goats, all of those played cards are added to the stack. And everyone is now going to want to steal that stack from you. So a measly ten point pair of goats can quickly balloon to over a hundred points.

Fortunately, you can only duel someone’s top stack of goats. So if you steal a big pile and succeed in holding on to it for an entire round, you can play a new stack on top and protect it. Though, nothing is ever final in this game. There are also Action cards which can change things in a variety of tricky ways.

The best action card is the Escape Goat, which is the only defensive card. It allows you to prevent someone from stealing your goats. And you still get to add the card they attacked you with to the stack. The rest of the cards you play on your turn. These cards allow you to do things like move a person’s goat stack to the top of their pile, allowing you to then try and steal it. You can also rotate everyone’s top stack to the left or right. So if someone next to you has won the motherlode stack, just rotate it to the top of your pile. I never really got to make good use of this one. The big stack was never to my right or left when I didn’t also have a high point stack on the top of my pile, which I would have to give to someone else.

All of these actions cards also allow you to play one additional action on your turn. So if you bring someone’s big stack to the top of their pile, you then have a chance to steal it. Also, if you do make good use of the rotate card, you can then play a new pair of goats on top, meaning the big stack you just stole cannot be easily stolen from you.

If you are in a vindictive mood, there is also one Atomic Goat action which allows you to just flat out nuke a stack of goats. Someone else win the big two hundred point stack everyone has been fighting over? Nuke it from orbit, it is the only way to be sure.

The game plays pretty quickly and is easy for kids and grumpy grandparents to learn. There is some skill involved, knowing when to try and steal and play actions. But it is also heavily luck based. You can end up winning simply because your last card happens to match the big stack allowing you to steal it. Overall though a fun, quirky game that’s fun for the family or a game night.