SNAP Review – Mutton Bustin

I really don’t know much about rodeos, do you?

No, I’m not a rodeo person.

Apparently, there’s a version of bull riding for kids that’s a little bit gentler – (okay?) they call it “mutton busting”. The goal is for the kid to ride a sheep as long as they can, while the sheep obviously tries to get them off. This is for very little kids.

Why do people do this? I don’t know.

I don’t know, but this idea is recreated in a silly game, which is appropriately called, Mutton Bustin.

This is a SNAP review for Mutton Bustin.

Game

Mutton Bustin is a speedy dice-rolling game for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up.

Those folks would be too old to ride real sheep.

It was designed by Matt Wolfe and it’s published by 25th Century Games. The whole game only takes about 15 minutes to play.

Art

Artistically, Mutton Bustin is pretty simple. Ed Vill’s illustrations are evocative of silly rodeo animations – it’s a precursor of things to come, by the way. There are also six sheep dice, that are mostly blank, and there’s just a regular six-sided die.

You’ve got your sheep pen board, a scoring tracker, and the cards, which are where all the hilarity comes in.

Mechanics

So, let’s talk about how we play Mutton Bustin.

The basic idea is that every player gets to be “the Rider”, while the other players play the role of the sheep trying to stop them.

The Rider gets the regular die. Split the sheep dice amongst all the rest of the players, and give them each a Sheep card. Reveal another Sheep card next to the board, which will be the shared Sheep action.

When everyone is ready, the Rider shouts “Go!” and everyone starts rolling their dice simultaneously, as quickly as they can.

The Rider is trying to advance along the Ranch track to increase their score. They roll their single die, and cannot advance until they roll a number at least as high as what’s shown. That minimum number gets higher and higher as you advance around the track.

Meanwhile, all the sheep players are rolling ALL of their dice. Any time they roll a “sheep” symbol, they have to perform the action on their personal Sheep card, and the action on the shared Sheep card. After they’ve completed those actions, they can lock that die in the sheep pen.

If the Rider reaches the end of the track, they must yell STOP – and they’ve earned ten points!

The Rider also has the option to yell STOP earlier in the round, immediately after moving to a new space. This will end the round and let them lock in their current points.

But, if all the sheep dice are locked away before the Rider yells STOP – the sheep win the round! The Rider is knocked off their sheep and they end the round with zero points.

Either way, when the round ends, all the players pass their personal Sheep card to the player on their left. The Rider gives their meeple and die to the player on their left in exchange for sheep dice for the next round.

Once everyone has had a turn as Rider, change up the personal Sheep cards and add a new public Sheep card to the existing one. Sheep players will now need to do even MORE silly actions in order to slow down the Rider!

The game ends after everyone has had two chances to be the Rider. The best sheep wrangler gets the Championship buckle – at least for a photo op.

Expectations

All right, (laughs) what did we expect from this game?

Well, I don’t love speed-rolling dice games. They can get pretty frenetic, and not always in a good way. So I was nervous about this one with our family.

I also wasn’t interested at all in this theme. But the idea of doing an action to sort of slow down your rolling, in a speed-rolling game? I found that part interesting.

I was, honestly, not excited about playing this game at all. I had no interest in it.

Surprises

But! The game did surprise us.

It did. This game was SO MUCH sillier than I expected it to be. When you’re a Sheep, you’re rolling and then doing these actions, which are often loud and obnoxious. It’s just as much about distracting the Rider as it is about having fun being silly.

And, when you’re the Rider, it’s really hard to block out all of that extra activity – (So much noise!) – and just focus on your one die.

It’s also hard to make the decision of when to stop – because you don’t get to make that decision at any time, only when you’re actually making progress along the board! And it means you have to check what the Sheep are doing.

I definitely had way more fun with this than I expected. I have to say that up front. I still don’t really think it’s my kind of game, but I actually don’t really think I’m the target audience for this game anyway. We’ll probably pull this out at family gatherings to get people laughing, because it is hilarious to hear people yelling and making weird noises around the table.

Mutton Bustin is better with more people, which kind of makes it a shame that it maxes out at four. We really did not enjoy it at two, maybe because you kind of get tripped up by your own self-consciousness when you’re the only person (“oh Sheep!”) doing these ridiculous things.

But combined with the game being better at more players, it also goes faster, because you have more Sheep rolling sheep dice – or more people rolling sheep dice, whatever – so Riders have less time to get around the edges of the pen, to get more points.

Recommended?

We recommend Mutton Bustin for a silly good time with your family. It plays really quick and it doesn’t really require reading. We’d love to see this support a higher player player count since it does work so well multi-generationally, and I think you could probably just add more dice to make that happen, maybe when you roll a six it’s a sheep?

It also definitely gets loud.

We’re coming up on the cold months, so if you’re looking for something to do after Christmas dinner, or you’re trying to get a bunch of kids to burn off some energy without going outside, take a look to see if Mutton Bustin fits the bill.

The winner can lord the Mutton Bustin championship over their friends. For a little while.

We give Mutton Bustin 3 sheep out of 5.

And that’s Mutton Bustin – in a SNAP!

You can find Mutton Bustin on Amazon, direct from 25th Century Games, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Mutton Bustin from 25th Century Games for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?