What is it about the Germans and hedgehogs? Hare and Tortoise is known as Hare and Hedgehog in Germany. Another hedgehog game I've come across is Igel Argern or Hedgehogs in a Hurry. In this game, each player gets a set of four wooden disks to represent their hedgehogs. The designs are drawn by Doris, whose art has also appeared in Elfenroads along with the other Doris & Frank games. The object of Igel Argern is to be the first to get three of your hedgehogs from one end of the board to the other.
The board consists of six tracks numbered 1 through 6. Each track is 9 spaces long and contains one black hole somewhere along it's length. The black holes are the key to making this game great. Whenever someone's hedgehog lands in a black hole, they can't be moved again until all 6 columns of every row behind the black hole are clear of hedgehogs.
After a starting player is determined, the hedgehogs are placed one at a time in the first row. All columns of the row must be filled before you can put one of your hedgehogs on top of any others. Once all the hedgehogs are placed, movement can begin.
Movement is accomplished with the aid of a die. At the beginning of a player's turn, the die is rolled. The player may then move any one of their hedgehogs sideways one column provided that they are not covered by other hedgehogs. They must then move a hedgehog forward that is in the column designated by the die. The forward moving hedgehog does not have to belong to the player moving it. This can allow someone to slide a hedgehog from column 3 to column 2, for example, and then immediately advance themselves in column 2. It can also enable someone to throw another player's hedgehog into a black hole that they're sitting in front of. In our group, this provides a tough decision. Do you help yourself or shaft someone else? If you can do both (and occasionally you can), all the better. It's great fun to see someone put their hedgehog in danger and then nervously watch the die for the number that will throw it into the hole.
Igel Argern has another interesting property. In the games that we've played, the field of hedgehogs has spread out as everyone advances themselves as much as possible. However, as the game moves along you have to worry about your opponents progress. Since you have to move someone forward it's possible that you will have to move another player's hedgehog ahead, possibly over the finish line. This leads to the field bunching up near the finish line as hedgehogs farther behind are moved forward to avoid letting the leader in a column get across.
In most of the games we've played, the finish has been a race between two, three or even four people with two hedgehogs already across the line and another one space away.
The game mechanics are simple and the movement system increases the amount of strategy that you can use in the game. You can try to take advantage of an empty column so that other player's will be forced to move you ahead or you can decide to pile on top of someone to prevent them from moving.
My copy of the game also came with a set of forty variants for the game, in German, of course. They range from minor modifications, like considering the 1 and 6 columns adjacent for sideways moving, to major ones like allowing a player to move any hedgehog sideways.
Igel Argern has become an instant hit with everyone I've played it with. Often we've played three or four games during the initial session, because everyone enjoyed it so much. It may be tricky to find, but it's worth digging for.