I love trivia. I’m pretty good at Trivia HQ and I’ve played in plenty of team trivia events at local establishments to earn a little cred amongst my friends. My source of pride and simultaneously my greatest shame is that in college I knew every single answer to Star Wars Trivial Pursuit. When I learned about a new trivia game hitting the market that allowed for up to 12 players, I eagerly volunteered to be the guinea pig to review it. Fun to play, Wolf can also have a surprising bite.

At its core, Wolf by Gray Matters Games is a trivia game, but it’s equally a fun strategy game grouping you with your friends or pitting you against them as the “lone wolf.” Looking at the contents of the box, you can see that the setup and rules are simple, so you can be in a head-to-head trivia battle in almost no time! The game comes with rules, two answer boards, a score board, dry-erase markers, and two boxes of trivia cards.

Box contents for ‘Wolf’ by Grey Matter Games

How to Play Wolf

To play the game, a player is first designated to be “The Wolf.” The reader then pulls a card from the box and announces the category. The wolf then has the opportunity to form an alliance by picking a person to join their “pack” to answer the trivia as a team. However, the wolf can also choose to go it alone and whoever is left is now on a collective team for the card in play. Once a decision has been made, the questions on the card are read aloud and each of the two divisions has 20 seconds to answer each of the five progressively harder questions and an additional tie-breaker question on a single card.

Scoring is pretty simple. All the answers are read aloud and the two packs (or lone wolf and opposing players) are awarded points based on who got the most questions correct. It’s all or nothing in this game, so even if you get almost every answer correct, as long as the other team gets more, they get the points. If you were brave enough to go it alone and win, you get double points, but if you rolled the proverbial dice and lost, you actually lose points.

The game is played in three rounds where one round allows everyone the opportunity to be the wolf. After round 3, you tally up each player’s points and declare your winner. Yes, I just wrote three paragraphs about the rules, but it’s really actually quite simple and you and your friends can get in on the action very quickly.

Examples of trivia cards for the game of Wolf.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like About Wolf

I was excited about this game because of the ability to play up to 12 players. It’s uncommon that I have that many people on hand to play a game, but it’s nice to have in the arsenal for that possibility. Also, the board game geek that I am, I recognized the potential for this to be a game I keep in my cubicle at work for the occasional office party or casual Friday gaming session. Even if folks aren’t typical board game fans, I can usually get them to relent to a trivia game, so I used my coworkers as my play testers.

Because there are 6 questions per card (5 regular and 1 tiebreaker), a 30-45 minute game can see you answering a ton of questions depending on the number of players if you play the full three rounds. I see that as a huge plus. If you don’t know the answer to one question, there’s another right around the corner, and the questions are a good mix of easy and hard.

I really like the strategy aspect of this. Because of my inflated sense of ego about my trivia abilities, each time I elected to attempt to answer a group of questions as a lone wolf, I invariably came up short. I quickly learned I really needed strategic help in answering questions, which meant I made mental notes about who knew a lot about certain types of trivia. Pop culture? Science? Music? You name it. I was able to identify a go-to pack member. There is definitely a truth to the phrase “safety in numbers” in playing Wolf. The collective knowledge of the group mostly outweighed the individual or small pack.

I’m indifferent on this, but thought it should be noted here: because of the transient nature of picking packs and needing to be discreet to decide on answers, there’s a lot of moving around the room to different locations. We played around a big conference table, but I think an open circle with chairs may be a better option.

Really, the only thing I wasn’t a fan of was the quality of dry-erase boards to write your scores and answers on. Right out of the box, the boards became easily smudged and wouldn’t erase completely. If this is a game for you, I’d definitely recommend picking up some real dry-erase boards instead of the coated cardboard ones included. Additionally, while the game states “up to 12 players” on the box, the score card only accommodates six. I may have missed this in the rules sheet, but I could only assume that after six players, folks were supposed to double up as teams. Otherwise, the rules and gameplay were very straightforward.

The Bottom Line

If you’re a fan of trivia games, Wolf is a howling good time! Its easy rules and variety of questions mean it’s accessible to a wide range of players. Also, even though Wolf can take 30-45 minutes for a full game, if you wanted to shorten it and just play a single round (instead of the normal 3), it still works. A nice reprieve from Trivial Pursuit and others, Wolf is worth adding to your collection.