One of my favorite Haba games from 2008 was the delightful push-your-luck dice game, Cheese Snatching, which was part of the "Bring-Along" line from Haba. ("Bring-Along" is Haba-ese for "small yellow box that's slightly larger than a paperback book.") So when I saw that Haba was doing another dice game, I was very excited.
Hungry Wolves isn't a push-your-luck game, however... it's a real-time race, complete with player making animal noises and rushing about the room like, well, hungry wolves. It's also an absolute blast to play.
Woof! Baa! Run Around the Table!
Each player gets a single custom die and a wooden dog. The board is put together (it's a four-piece puzzle -- it's not daunting, ok? My four-year-old can do it) and the dogs are placed on the track at an equal distance from each other. (A nice touch from the folks at Haba: the board is double-sided. One side is for two players; the other side is for three or four players.)
The sheep counters are placed next to the board... or, if you're the Jackson family, they're placed on the sheep pictures on the board, because that's the way Collin likes it.
At an agreed-upon signal (you can yell "Go!" or shake your fists a la Rock/Paper/Scissors while saying "Woof! Woof! Woof!"), all the players begin rolling their dice and doing the appropriate action:
- If a player rolls a dog, he says "Woof!" and moves his dog one space forward.
- If a player rolls a sheep, he says "Baa!" and does not move.
- If a player rolls a wolf, he runs around the table. (Or, if space is tight, he stands up and spins around.)
Move Quickly to Win the Race
Players roll and do their various actions simultaneously... and as quickly as possible. There are no turns, per se: As fast as you can roll, make animal noises and do whatever you're supposed to do, you can roll again.
When one of the dogs catches up to another dog, the player yells "Stop!" and the round ends. The player who ended the round gets a sheep token, and the game is reset for another round of controlled mayhem. The first player to get three sheep tokens wins the game.
It is as loud and crazy as you can imagine... and kids as young as four can easily join in the fun. What's unusual with Hungry Wolves is that it works as well with two players as it does with three or four -- typically, raucous "run around the table" games don't work as well with smaller numbers of players.
As always, games like this come with the standard "don't play in a room full of collectible knickknacks or valuable electronics" warning. Of course, I think that's a feature, not a bug.
Details
Hungry Wolves was designed by Marco Teubner and published by Haba. It is for 2 to 4 players, ages 5 and up.
