Come with me to the dance floor!
Firstly, a huge thank you to the team at both Zatu and Ravensburger who provided me with an advance prototype copy of this expansion.
When I first reviewed the base game for Oh My Pigeons, I remember thinking that the cards and system opened themselves up for the potential of being expanded, new tricks could easily be fit into the deck with very little change. Never did I think that this would mean a dancefloor platform in the middle of the table for the pigeon meeples!
The new Party Pigeons expansion adds a lot of new cards into the mix as well, nearly doubling the base game deck. This adds a ton more variety into the base game cards, which centred around stealing or gaining pigeons onto your own bench, or removing them from someone else’s.
The centrepiece of the expansion, literally, is the dance floor. It sits in between the players and acts as another raised platform for pigeons to gather on. A lot of the new cards take advantage of this dynamic, acting as means to add or remove pigeons from your own (or others) benches, and place them here.
Why, you ask? Because that is a new way to win. You now can be the first player to not only fill your bench, but you could also succeed in being the last player to add a pigeon to the dance floor spaces. This adds a new push your luck dynamic to the game, as everyone wants to buy into filling the dance floor, but everyone also wants to keep it just less than full until they might get the chance to win themselves!
Accompanying this package is a new larger die. Replacing the base game D6 is a chunky D12, which is filled with multiple new options. From a dance party face, which moves all of your own pigeons to the dance floor, to the regular flick the die at a bench face. This too has been given as facelift, as the dance floor is now also a viable target for a wrecking ball D12 to knock the meeples fowl.
A note on this: The dancefloor is raised, meaning that a flat rolling flick isn’t likely in my experience to rock the dance floor and release too many party pigeons, but a flick slightly into the air might well do the trick!
I love the chaos of this game, and even more so with the new expansion. It’s simple, never overstays its welcome, adjusts well to different player counts, and never fails to raise a smile to the face of anyone. It’s very family friendly for a wide age range, and I definitely recommend whether as a gateway game for people wanting to branch out beyond the classics, or as a great starter or finisher for game night to more seasoned gamers!
