Sheriff of Nottingham vs Qwixx

“Sheriff of Nottingham” is a great game for providing some action and laughs at a smaller get-together, which is to be expected from an easy game that revolves around light roleplay, random banter, and lying and bribing your way to victory.

While not necessarily a roleplaying game, sometimes players can’t help but change their voice when taking on the role of the sheriff and threatening the merchants. The same principle works the other way around – merchants tend to come up with witty excuses when trying to bribe the sheriff or pass their stock as legitimate. All of this can lead to some hilarious and memorable moments.

"Sheriff of Nottingham" makes for a great gateway game because of how easy the rules are. Even children can understand the main gist quite easily. The game revolves around managing your hand, collecting sets, and lying straight to the sheriff's face.

Every turn the players discard and redraw cards from discard piles and the deck and maintain 6 cards in-hand. The players then choose 1-5 cards, place them in a burlap sack, and declare them to the player taking the role of the sheriff by saying how many cards of one type are in the sack, but the only thing that must be truthful is the number of goods - the actual contents can be contraband or different types of goods. For example, a player says that their sack contains 3 chickens, whereas it actually contains 2 chickens and a crossbow.

It is up to the sheriff to decide who is inspected and who is let in. If the sheriff catches a merchant trying to bring in contraband or different goods than he declared, then that merchant must pay the sheriff the penalty price written on the cards. If the sheriff inspects the bag of a truthful merchant, then the sheriff must compensate the penalty to the player and let the goods go to the merchant stand.

The game is won by the player who has accumulated the most wealth after every player has been the sheriff two times (three times if playing with three players).

The components are all well-made and should hold up to regular wear and tear and even an accidental drop now and then. The game consists of gold coins, merchant stand boards, and a Sheriff marker made from thick cardboard, cards made of durable cardstock, merchant bags made of dense fabric, and a useful foamcore card insert for holding the cards during the gameplay.

Arcane Wonders have made a free mobile companion app for “Sheriff of Nottingham” that helps with keeping the time of inspections if you’re playing with a time limit, keeping score of your finances and who is in the lead, and providing an atmosphere with ambient sounds and voice-acted audio comments.

If you just want to make the game funnier, you can pay 3$ for the “Merchant Fun Pack” to get a clickable soundboard and unlock over 70 more audio comments to spam throughout the game, featuring such highlights as “COUGH Contraband COUGH COUGH” or “Crossbows are illegal, right?”.

Qwixx is easy to learn, has virtually no setup, accommodates anywhere from 2 to 5 players, and can played in about 15-20 minutes. Thanks to all of this, it's a great impromptu game for any get-together.

Qwixx is a rather simple game that revolves around rolling colored dice, and then using the values of the dice to cross off numbers on a scorecard. It's similar to Bingo where a number is determined by random chance and then you cross it off your card. Any number crossed off on any given row takes the numbers to the left of it out of play for the duration of the game. You get points for each number you cross off. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. These rules are very basic and can be understood by everyone easily, including non-gamers.

Due to the dice rolling nature of the game, it moves along at a quick pace with very little downtime between turns. The thrill in every random roll and hoping for your perfect numbers to come up ensures the game stays exciting for its limited duration. Even if you get a bad roll with dice values that you can't or don't want to use, there is always the hope and anticipation that the next roll a mere few seconds later will be better.

While this is mostly a game of dice rolling and chance, there are a few small opportunities for some strategy and choices to come into play.

Every time you mark a number off your scorecard, all the numbers to the left of that number on the same row are taken out of play. This mean you won't want to mark off numbers every roll since marking a 12, for example, would take out your whole row. Therefore, on any given roll, you are allowed to "pass" and not mark off any numbers. This incurs a small point penalty and you are only allowed four passes per game, but it allows for a little strategy when you use your passes wisely as it helps keeps your options open on the scorecard.

Additionally, when it's your turn to be the active roller, you have the choice to use the sum of any white die with any colored dice. For example, if you rolled a 1 on a white dice, and a 5 on a red dice and 6 on a blue dice, you could choose whether you want to mark off a 6 red or 7 blue. This gives you a bunch of flexibilty when it's your turn to roll, as you can choose the numbers that would benefit you the best.

Qwixx is very minimalist as it only contains six dice and some small scorecards. This makes it easy to transport without having to lug around a huge gameboard with dozens of pieces.

Setup is as quick as giving each player their own scorecard and getting out the dice. When the game ends, cleanup is just as fast.

This is one the most affordable board games around, as it normally runs under $10 brand new.