Robin of Locksley: Weird Chess Set Collection

Robin of Locksley is a weird Uwe Rosenberg game. It’s one that’s difficult to categorize given his other games: it’s not about farming, it’s not a sandbox game, and there’s no resource conversion or worker placement happening. Instead, Locksley is a weird—did I mention the game is weird?—combination of chess-like L-horse moves resulting in set collection resulting in selling your set to race to the finish. It’s weird!

I like weird games. Weird is unusual and unusual tickles interest. The other qualities that tickles my interest are smaller boxes and two-player only games: double-check. And of course, the fact that it’s a Uwe game has absolutely nothing to do with me badly wanting to try it. Really. Thank you Luk for making that happen!

In Locksley, you have two pawns: the horse in the centre of the board, moving exactly like in chess, collecting sets of jewellery tiles, and the Robin meeple on the edges of the modular board that simply has to race from the beginning to the end—twice. At each “step”, you have to satisfy a particular condition. For example, have at most three sets of two items each, or have two black and pink pieces of jewellery. If you can’t—or don’t want to—comply, you can bribe the person in charge there by paying a gold coin. You collect coins by selling sets: the more tiles of a particular set, the more money. That’s pretty much it!

The player interaction part lies in the movement of your horse: although you cannot block or conquer your opponent, you can try to prevent them from taking a particular tile or satisfying the “have your pawn diagonally across your opponent” condition. If you’re looking to pick a fight, you should look at 7 Wonders: Duel instead. In Locksley, interaction is limited to nail-biting when you see your opponent’s meeple race along while you keep on struggling to get over a particular roadblock.

There’s little else to this game: it is very easy to teach and play which can be a good or bad thing. Think of it as a Patchwork kind of box with a Robin Hood theme slapped on. Speaking of which, I found the integration of the theme to be quite lacking: this could have been any other kind of game. I know most Uwe games are abstract at heart, but still, the box art kind of mislead me into thinking that it would be a cool steal-from-the-rich and give-to-the-poor race. You’ll be needing quite a few beers for that to happen.

Should you get Robin of Locksley then? If you are looking for a light two-player game that involves a bit of tile collecting on a variable board whilst completing small objectives to race to the end, perhaps. Some of the turns can be satisfying by suddenly paying off four or more objectives and leaping ahead of your opponents, and while it is mostly a racing game, it can also be a strategic planning game. You don’t have to immediately satisfy objectives. You don’t have to bribe. You don’t have to immediately sell that collection. You can hold off for that one big turn, but while you’re doing that, your opponent might be picking up speed as well. It is in those moments that you recognize this is an Uwe game after all.

• Total plays? 10+ Easy to understand & plays very fast
• Solo friendly? No. This is a 2-player versus game only.
• Two-player friendly? Yes, see above.
• Quality? Good. The cardboard tiles are thick enough.

Keep or Cull? Cull. The biggest problem this game has is the fierce competition in the “shorter game, smaller box, two-player versus” category. It’s a good game but after a couple of months you’ll probably be tired of it. While the board setup is variable, the gameplay does not offer much variability. We’ve certainly had our fun with it but decided to make room for other stuff instead. I’ll be willing to play it but probably won’t suggest to bring it to the table myself.