Lowlands is a fascinating Euro-style game set in the Netherlands, and a storm is coming! You play as rival sheep farmers, located along the same coastal shoreline. But while you want to compete with your opponents for the title of best farmer, you all share one common enemy. And that’s the ever-rising tides that threaten to flood your land and livestock…At a glance, you might look at Lowlands and mistake it for an Uwe Rosenberg game. With individual player mats, farms, fenced pastures, building tiles and and animeeples, it looks like Agricola. (Well, supposedly Rosenberg assisted with Lowlands, but the design itself is from C & R Partenheimer.) But Lowlands differs in a dramatic fashion. Here, there’s an unspoken element of semi co-op mechanisms that lurk beneath the surface. Because unless the farmers work together, it’s likely that the tide will destroy their farms.Your turn consists of worker placement-meets-action selection. Hand management plays a big role in Lowlands, too. You’ll spend these cards – different resources – on asymmetrical buildings to help boost your modular sheep farm. But you can also opt to invest these cards into the construction of a communal dike. A coastal dam of sorts, which stretches along your farm, and that of your neighbours’ farms. If you fail to work together to build the dike, your hard-earned efforts could get washed away! Lowlands is not ‘another farming sim’. It provides wonderful levels of negotiations and cunning, alongside standard Euro-style decisions. Ewe can’t afford to miss this one! Lowlands is one of many superb mid-weight strategy games from Z-Man Games. Player Count: 2-4 PlayersTime: 50-100 minutesAge: 14+