Herr der Ziegen

About this board game

Herr der Ziegen is a board game for 2–5 players that takes about 40 minutes to play. Released in 2008, it challenges players to collect goat cards, complete sets, and build a scoring area across a 7×7 grid.

Each turn, your goat token moves around the grid and lets you pick up one card from the row next to where it lands. The board contains many sets of goat cards, along with milk can cards and herding dog cards, creating several opportunities to pursue points as the game develops.

Players keep a hand of two cards, using them in two important ways. Cards can provide movement points for continuing around the grid on a later turn, or they can be played as melds to work toward collecting 8 points from a set of five goat cards numbered 1–5.

• Move around a 7×7 grid to collect cards.
• Use goat cards to reach 8 points in different sets.
• Mark the remaining cards in a completed set as your own.
• Collect milk cans as a secondary scoring opportunity.
• Play herding dogs to move your cards into your home scoring area.

Once you achieve the required 8 points in a set, the remaining cards in that set are marked on the grid as belonging to you. These marked cards provide the main victory points, so players aim to complete several different sets over the course of the game.

Herding dogs become especially useful after you have claimed goats on the grid. They move your cards into your original “pen of goats” square or into any square contiguous with your expanding home area, where those points are doubled. In Herr der Ziegen, collecting the right cards is only part of the challenge: you must also bring them safely into your growing scoring area.