Sheriff of Nottingham - Tips & Strategies

You can download the free App from Arcane Wonders that you can use as a timer for when you question the merchants. Has some good atmosphere sounds. Also has a scoring system but didn’t use it.

One of the best situations that can happen in Sheriff of Nottingham is the Sheriff inspecting your bag when you are telling the truth. It’s pure profit for you: the Sheriff pays you for your trouble, and you bring the goods to market anyway. If you’re being honest with your declaration, do everything you can to make yourself seem guilty. I like to offer a small bribe, fake a slip of the tongue, or threaten the Sheriff with the fine s/he will have to pay when they open up and see you’ve been telling the truth. Sometimes, honesty is a fine policy, but the best policy in Sheriff of Nottingham is making it look like you’re lying!

Keep a eye on who is collecting which items, Apples, cheese, chickens and bread. You can score big points if you can collect the most of each. Usually better strategy that sneaking in contraband. (but less fun – stressful)

One strategy to winning is being as honest as possible while maintaining a healthy suspicion.

Your main focus should be on 2-3 legal good types, preferably ones others are not also focusing on, with the goal of being King in at least one of them and Queen in the others. Do not be afraid to discard freely in an attempt to gather large batches of identical legal goods.

Your secondary focus should be on maintaining suspicion. If you are too honest, the sheriff will stop calling you out, leading to the elimination of revenue from tricking the sheriff, which is a vital secondary source of points. Maintain an air of shiftiness by “forgetting” what you put in your bag when you go to declare, grabbing a few cards in the discard piles with contraband notably on top, or “agonizing” when choosing your cards to put in your bag. This benefits you most when you submit suspiciously large batches of goods, which you should have by focusing on collecting 2-3 legal good types. Also, try to stoke a rivalry with another player by bribing the sheriff to check their bag, which could lead to them later doing the same for you when you try to pass a completely legal bag of apples…

Alternatively, if you have scared away the attentions of the sheriff or play with timid or careful players, you can sneak through one contraband load near the end of the game after having established a consistent history of duping the sheriff into raiding your legal goods previously. If you do this, maintain the same behaviors you do to keep suspicions up so that your approach does not suddenly change when you try to pass through a load of crossbows and silk. If you get away with it, the simple act of placing those cards in your contraband area will be enough to stoke the fires of suspicion again, so it is advisable that you proceed honestly for the rest of the game.

Typically when you go to market, you will discard a mix of contraband and legal goods, hoping to replace them with better matches for a particular good you held onto.

In an effort to not give an opponent the opportunity to cherry pick from your discards, place your contraband into the discard pile last so that it covers the legal goods your threw away. This will make it harder for them to pass a large quantity of matching goods (or at least pretend to). Picking up contraband from the discards is not usually as strong of a play, since the next sheriff will be more suspicious, so don’t worry about your foes dumpster diving for those illicit goods on top.