Longhorn

Today's review is of the 2013 release, Longhorn.  For two players, it takes 15 minutes.

Overview
You are a cattle rustler, looking to make as much money as possible from your illicit gains.  There are four colors of cattle, randomly distributed in numbers indicated on each tile in a 3x3 grid.  On your turn, you choose a color, take all cattle of that color on your current tile, and move the marker that number of spaces (take 3 cattle, move the maker 3 spaces).  Movement must be orthogonal (left/right/up/down).  Flip the marker; then it's your opponent's turn to do the same.

You must move the marker to a space with cattle if possible.  If you take the last cattle on a space, you get the token there (which could be good- like gold- or bad- like a rattlesnake that spooks the herd).  When you move the marker, if all legal spaces are empty, the game is over (there are other end conditions, not covered here), and you count up your earnings as follows:

For a given color of cattle, the number of cattle remaining on the board indicates their value.
1 orange cattle left = $100 per cow
4 orange cattle left = $400 per cow, etc.

So if you own 5 orange cattle, and there are 4 left on the board, you get 5 x $400 = $2000.  Do the same for each color, add other tokens if you have them, and the highest total wins!

game at start; image from here

Review
This game is okay.  The art is great, the modular nature of the grid is cool, and the random placement of cattle makes for a unique experience every time.  It's not intended to be deep, at a planned duration of 15 minutes.  The scoring is an interesting twist- it's a set collection game, sort of, but you don't to get too much of a given color, as there will be fewer cattle on the board, which drives down the price per head.  For this reason, it appears that you want to force an early end to the game, and leave lots of cattle on the board if you can.  That's interesting, but my dig is that it's hard to mentally calculate the best moves (especially at the beginning).  You understand what's going on, but it's hard to know how best to proceed- what strategy to use- until it's too late (close to the end).  So it feels random, though there's no chance involved.  That said, I could see some people being able to calculate turns ahead, and really enjoying this game; it's just not for me.

Rating: B-