Chicken! is an easy-to-play, fast-rolling, dice clucking
game for 2-8 players, where rolling lots of chickens can make you the
queen of the henhouse and help you to win the game!
Set up the included cloth mat with the henhouse inside and
scoring track around it. Players pick a character marker and place it on the
scoring track and put the four orange and four yellow dice inside the henhouse.
The orange dice each have two foxes, three chickens, and two blank sides. The yellow dice have three chickens, one fox,
one egg, and one blank side.
The four white dice are always rolled every turn and stay
outside the henhouse. They each have two hens, two eggs, one fox, and one blank
side.
The first player rolls the four white dice and separates
them by fox, eggs, and hens. If there are three foxes rolled, their turn is
over, and they gain no points. Otherwise, for each egg rolled, they “hatch” it
by adding one yellow die to the four white ones. When there are no yellow dice
in the coop, they add orange dice. Now, the player must gamble and decide
whether to roll all the dice just taken from the henhouse plus any white dice
that show eggs or are blank, leaving the foxes and hens on the table, or stop
and count the chickens they have. There is only one roll allowed, and if they
gain additional hens, the player has a chance for more points, but if they roll
more foxes and end up with three or more, they bust and get no points. The
options look like this:
- Stop without a re-roll, count your chickens, and move your marker that number of spaces on the board.
- Re-roll and if you do not bust, add all chickens from both dice rolls.
- Busted! Three foxes end the turn with no points.
Once the turn is over, and for all following turns, the dice
that ended up outside of the henhouse are all passed to the next player. Their choices are:
- Chicken out! Return all yellow and orange dice to the coop and lose one point—cluck, cluck—and then take just the white dice and roll them. Depending on the outcome, proceed as the first player did.
- Roll all dice passed to you, hope for the best, and either count your chickens and points or bust!
Play continues until any player reaches 25 points for an immediate henhouse victory! This is a colorful, thematic, and lively game night experience when you have a group of people looking for playful fun! The gameplay and theme lend itself well to a group taunt to “not be a chicken”, only to add to a player’s odds of making bad decisions—but also more fun! I believe that Chicken! plays best with 4-6 players. Playtime is 10-20 minutes. ~Marsha