Herd Mentality Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of Herd Mentality is to be the first player to acquire eight cows by matching other players.

Setup

Assemble the paddock and attach it to the board.
Place the Cow Tokens and the Pink Cow inside the paddock.
Choose one player to be the Question Wrangler. They will still play the game, but they are also responsible for reading the Question Cards and handing out cows during the game.

How to Play Herd Mentality

Each round begins with the Question Wrangler drawing a card and reading it out loud. The game also allows players to come up with their own questions if they want to.

Question card — For this round all of the players have to write down whether they would rather be abducted by aliens, pirates, or ghosts?

After the question is read out loud, all of the players (including the Question Wrangler) have to think of an answer to write down on their answer sheet. You want to write something that you think the majority of the other players are going to write down.

A player writing down their answer to the current question — This player has decided to write down that they would rather be abducted by pirates.

If players are taking too long to write down an answer, the players should “moo” at them to make them hurry up.

Once everyone has written down an answer, all of the players will reveal their answers one at a time. The Question Wrangler reveals their answer first. Players can then earn cows based on how the players answered the question.

Earning Cows

Once all of the players have revealed their answer for the round, the players determine which answer was the most popular.

All of the players that wrote down the most popular answer, receive one cow token. If the cow tokens in the bank start to run out, players can exchange three one point cows for a three point cow.

Determining the most popular answer in Herd Mentality — For this round three players answered aliens, two players answered pirates, and one answered ghosts. Aliens was the most popular answer. Each player that voted for that answer receives one cow token.

If two or more answers tie for the most popular, none of the players receive a cow token during the round.

Pink Cow

After the players are done earning cow tokens, they will determine if any player provided an unmatched answer (no one else provided the same answer as them). If only one player was alone in writing an answer, they will take the pink cow. If there are two or more players that provide an unmatched answer, none of the players take the pink cow.

You will keep the pink cow until another player takes it from you by being the only player to provide an unmatched answer in a future round. The pink cow does not prevent you from earning cow tokens in future rounds. You cannot win the game if you have the pink cow though.

Winning the Game

The first player to collect eight cow tokens wins the game. If the player has the pink cow in front of them though, they can’t win the game until they get rid of it.

Winning Herd Mentality — This player has acquired eight cow tokens. They have won the game.

If multiple players earn their eighth cow token in the same round, the game continues until a player has more cow tokens than the rest of the players. The winner may need to get 9, 10, etc cow tokens before they can win the game.

Herd Mentality FAQs

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

160 Question Cards
52 Cow Tokens (38 One Point Cows, 14 Three Point Cows)
2 Answer Pads
Pink Cow
Paddock
Instructions
Big Potato Games Sticker

Year: 2020 | Publisher: Big Potato Games | Designer: Rich Coombes, Dan Penn | Artist: Robin Sowden García

Genres: Party

Ages: 10+ | Number of Players: 4-20 | Length of Game: 20-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.

Fred

Sunday 16th of June 2024

With 5 players we are never getting 3. Do you we need 3 to get half-or-more or is 2 players matching enough?

Monday 17th of June 2024

In the rules there is an example of a game with four players. Two players pick one answer and the other two players pick different answers. Basically one answer had two people say it while two other answers had one person say it. In this case the answer that two players said is considered the majority answer and both players that said it receive a cow token.

In a five player game I think you could get a majority with just two players using the same answer. In this case the other three players would have to write down an answer that doesn't match any of the other players though. In this scenario one answer would have two players, and then there would be three other answers that each got one player. In this case the two players that said the same answer would get a cow token. If there are two different answers that had two players say it though, neither would be the majority.