Fill your flock to win in Oh My Pigeons, a game of nicking and flicking your feathered friends.
When you review board games as regularly as we do here at B3, you start to noticed patterns in the games that are released by larger publishers. Genres, mechanics and themes tend to bounce around like fads, so its always a delight when something quite leftfield appears. In this way, Ravensburgers’ Oh My Pigeons is incredibly refreshing: With its flicking, fast-playtime and hoarding of the feral pigeon.
Each player takes a bench card and a few pigeons and then draw three cards to form their starting hand. From there, players take turns playing a card (or two, if they have a matching symbol on them) and following the action that it has on it. These actions range from collecting more pigeons from the central area to flicking the included die at another player’s bench, collecting any pigeons that have been bowled over by your flick.
The real charm here comes in how the theme has been delivered throughout the entire game. Each of the cards has either some sort of bird pun, or — at least — some really fantastic art that brings it all together. The only real complexity comes from the introduction of cards which can be played in pairs, but it’s a really basic and not-very-present extra layer of play that’s fine once it’s happened a couple of times.
Victory comes simply, in being the first to entirely fill your pigeon coop; however, as a lot of the cards allow you to take pigeons from other players, there’s a really nice tension and pace which ensures that its a tight race until the end.
Oh My Pigeons is an example of how solid theming can completely transform a simple game into something memorable. Could it be done with rats (Drats, my rats!?), certainly, could it be done with cats, bats or any other animal? Almost certainly. But, here it’s done incredibly well, and made for a fun, easy family boardgaming session.
Oh My Pigeons is available now from Amazon.
