Lambchop is a simple and intuitive game well-suited for young children -- in particular the default one-sheep version with "smart moves" on -- but it is by no means trivial.
 
Your mission is simple: Drop your sheep onto any square, then on each turn move it one space in any direction, orthogonally or diagonally, eating any grass it lands on. Win by eating more than half the grass on the board.
 
The amount of grass you eat is tracked by a patented Grass-o-Meter on the right side of the board. The winning position for each player is marked by a little flag.
 
In the variants you have multiple sheep, with flocks ranging from one to seven. All sheep must be dropped before any can be moved.
 
 
Lambchop is a basic game that poses an age-old problem: In the struggle for existence, who gets more food? The principal strategy comes naturally. You want to eat your opponent into grazed portions of the board, leaving your own sheep free to chomp the remaining grass. But this is not always so easy, and delicate tradeoffs must be made. Should you eat this patch of grass in the corner? Or should you rush across grazed portions of the board to a larger patch of grass, so your opponent does not eat it first? Such is life in the pasture.
 
Lambchop is designed to be immediately playable with a minimalist rule set. In this it follows the mold of Breakthrough, Sidewinder, and Zonesh.