Dog Park

While finding and trying new games, we have a soft spot for games with a theme of cats or dogs, so when I saw a preview of Dog Park, I quickly hopped onto eBay to get a copy.

At first glance it looked too complicated, with too many little pieces to fuss over.  But I felt it would be worth having an actual copy of this one to see how it feels.

Yes, it has a lot of pieces, and multiple sets of cards, and a big board that gets cluttered, but since the turns are clearly split into phases, and each phase uses only a few pieces or cards, and one section of the board, it ends up feeling like three different games that you play in an alternating pattern.  There are also handy cards that outline what to do in each phase, so all players can follow along or look ahead to see what's coming next.

Like usual, for the first run through we went with just the basics, so we ignored the Forecast cards, Objectives and the dog abilities.  Each turn has four phases: Recruitment (bid on new dogs for your kennel), Selection (which dogs you're going to walk), Walking (walk the dog and pick up resources), and Home Time (score points and reset for next round).  There are only four rounds in a game, so it won't go on endlessly.  Your score is Reputation points, and you move your token along the track on the edge of the board as you gain and lose points.

For setup, just go through the steps in the rulebook.  There's a little set of dog breed (category) cards that get dealt out to a scoring area, so Toy dogs would get you 8 points if it's in the top slot and you have the most of them at the end of the game.  There are Forecast cards that add a rule to each round, and Location cards that add a few extra items to the walking area.  

In a two-player game, the rules add an "Auto Walker" to stir it up a bit.  This is a third player that follows very specific rules and gets in the way.  There is also a little dog house token that shows which player goes first on the current round.

Recruitment Phase: deal a dog card for each player -- and one for the Auto Walker -- into the Field.  Players put their piece next to the dog they want and pick a bid on their dial.  The bid will spend Reputation points.  The Auto Walker will always pick the highest value dog breed closest to the left.  You resolve those bids, spend the points and move the dog to your kennel.  The Auto Walker rolls a die to bid between 1 and 4 points.  If you lose your bid, you pick any remaining dog for one point.  Deal another set of dogs and bid again for a total of two new dogs per round.

Selection Phase: pay the resources shown on dog cards to put a leash on them and move them to the Leads section of your kennel.  The resources are: sticks, treats, toys and balls.  Each dog may require 1, 2 or 3 resources, so try not to run out of resources.  Pay the resources and put a collar token on the dogs.

Walking Phase: line up your dogs for the walk through the park.  Take turns moving your choice of 1-4 spaces, and you get the resources shown on each space.  After human players have moved, roll the die to see how far the Auto Walker will move.  If you land on a space with another player, you can only get the resource by spending one Reputation point.  There are also icons for Swap and Scout, but we mostly ignored those for now.  When players reach the end of the dog walk, they can choose any unoccupied space: 3 Reputation (4 player games only), 2 Rep or 1 Rep plus Scout & leash.  The last player left in the park get the -1 point penalty.

Home Phase: you gain 2 Rep for each dog you walked that turn, and lose 1 Rep for each dog in your kennel that has not been walked yet (it has no collar chips on it).

Those are the basics.  If you take each phase as it's own little game to learn, it's not that bad.

There are some layers of bonuses and adjustments.  Each round has a Forecast card that has a slight rule change for that round only.  And each dog has an ability that takes effect during Selection, Walking, Home or Final Scoring: these can give you extra points or extra resources, like finding a stick every time you pick up a ball, or adding 1 Rep for each collar token on the dog card during the Home phase.

Now, how does it actually play?

It's fun just getting the dogs and walking them, and picking up doo-dads along the way.  But when I try to plan my moves to actually win the game, the way the phases interact is a bit baffling ...  

You can rush through the walk to get the +2 Rep bonus, but then you will run out of resources.  You could go one space per move in the Walking phase and get all the things, but you will be left behind and end up on the -1 Rep space.  That's not so bad, because you will have the resources to walk more dogs in the next round, and each dog has a chance of extra points or rewards.

It is not obvious which dogs will be the right dogs to get what you need.  I found myself bidding on dogs which only need one or two resources to walk.  It felt like I would get more Rep bonuses and have more abilities during the walk phase by walking more dogs, if I chose the right ones.  In our very first game, I think I had a round where all my dogs needed 3 resources, and I realized there was more to think about.  It is also tempting to pick the cutest dogs, or the ones that look like dogs you have known.  It's a game, it's supposed to be fun or silly or laid back.

The final round is a bit different, since you won't be bidding on more dogs or paying resources to walk them when it's over.  You can still try to get as many resources as you can, especially if one of your dogs has a Final Scoring skill, like the one that will earn +1 Rep for each bone you throw on them during Final Scoring.

The biggest boosts at the end of the game are the Breed Expert awards, which you win by having the most a breed.  The Auto Walker keeps the dogs they won, and those should be kept face-up somewhere so you can see what you're up against.  In our two-player games, we each won two or three Breed Expert awards.  If you bid too much on the dogs trying to get the Breed Expert awards, it's self-defeating: you only get 8 Rep for the top breed award, so don't spend 12 Rep trying to get those dogs.

You can get a 5-7 Rep during final scoring if you meet the challenge on your Objective card.  There's an objective card where you have to win four Breed Awards, but that feels very unlikely.  For another, you need 6+ dogs with leashes or 3+ with more than one leash.  There are only a few Objective cards to chooses from, and they have a difficulty rating.

At the very end, you get 1 Rep for every 5 resources left over, but I can't imagine that will make much of a difference.  

There are score sheets where you can add up all these numbers, but it felt better to us to continue using the existing Reputation track and wrap back around to zero if you go past 40.  But maybe you want a written record of past games, so you can write all those scores.  It can be fun opening a game you haven't played in years, only to see all the old scorecards in there ... sure, we sometimes throw out a batch, but there are always a few bits of the past in those boxes.

Dog Park is a fun game.  It's big and modern and we could stress over all the pieces, but it can also be relaxing, just get your pups and walk them and gather stuff along the way.  It doesn't feel very competitive, but I suppose there are players who can turn any game into a life-or-death struggle.

There are five or six expansions available, with each one adding more dogs, possible more doggie skills and other options.  I'm sure that will keep it fresh going forward, but heck, the core game comes with about 160 dogs and we only used about 30 per game (8 per player, 8 for Auto Walker and some of the ones set out for swapping), so we haven't seen them all yet.