Forest Shuffle

The Game

Forest Shuffle (2023), is one of the currently hot games. I played the digital implementation on BoardGameArena.com. It is a set collection game. You collect cards to form your own forest. Every card is an animal or plant, and they have various scoring criteria. The entire game is about collecting cards which score points based on what other cards you have. You maximise collecting the right combinations of cards so that you score points efficiently. 

There is a shared forest in the game. Cards here can be taken by any player. It is a common pool. On your turn, you either take 2 cards or play 1 card. When taking cards, you can take from the shared forest or from the draw deck. When you play a card, you play from your hand to your own personal forest. Usually you need to pay a fee to play a card. The fee is other cards in your hand. You place them in the shared forest. That means others might take those cards. If the cards are still there the next time your turn comes, you can take them back. 

When playing cards to your forest, you'll always start with a tree. You need to have at least one tree before you can have other animals or smaller plants because most of the cards in the game need to be attached to a tree. Many cards are divided into two halves, some split horizontally, some vertically. You can only use one half of a card. When you play such a card, you tuck half of it under a tree, revealing only the half that you want to use. A tree normally can have at most 4 cards attached - top, bottom, left and right.

This wolf is one of the animal cards. The number 3 at the top left means to play this card you need to pay 3 cards. The three rows of icons at the bottom mean the following: (1) When you play this card, draw a card for every deer icon in your forest. (2) The cart type of the wolf is red. When you play the wolf, if the three cards you use as payment are all red too, you enjoy this bonus. This circular arrow means you take an extra turn. (3) In Forest Shuffle acorn means points. The wolf scores 5 points for every deer icon in your forest. 

This flower doesn't give you any points, but if you have it, every time you play a tree, you get to draw a card. 

Usually the cards in the shared forest keep growing. Whenever it exceeds 10, they are all discarded. Your hand limit is 10 too. If you reach that, you can't draw any more cards. 

During game setup, three winter cards are shuffled into the bottom half of the deck. The game ends when the 3rd winter card is drawn. 

The Play

Every card in the game has a scoring ability. When it is your first time playing, there is a lot of reading to do. Most of the cards are effectively two cards. You need to read both halves. In addition to your own cards, you also need to read the cards in the shared forest, and also in your opponents' forests. My first big realisation was the importance of not giving away cards which my opponents wanted. You need to be careful what cards you use as payment, because they are going to go to the shared forest. One tactic is waiting for the shared forest to get almost full. Then you can pay with several cards which your opponent wants to push the shared forest over the limit. All the cards will then be discarded. 

There are many different scoring criteria. I think some are better than others. Some cards score a fixed number of points. Some score points based on other cards. The fixed points ones are less attractive to me, because I prefer those with more potential. It's no guarantee though. You might not get enough of the right cards to help you score many points, and also others may be competing with you. So it's not only about the cards themselves, it's also about your opponents' actions. 

I noticed that we tended to accumulate many cards, until our hands were almost full. The reason was we wanted to delay letting our opponents know what kind of cards we were going to play. This was so that they would not know what cards not to put into the shared forest. Sometimes we had many cards in hand simply because we were stuck with cards we didn't want to play and also didn't want to release into the shared forest.

Drawing a card from the deck is always a little exciting. There are so many different cards in the deck, it's like playing gacha. 

When the winter cards start appearing, the countdown begins. Gradually there will be more and more pressure to play all the cards you have been planning to play, before time runs out. 

I focused on two specific types of trees. One would score points if I had at least four of them. The other scored more and more points for each additional tree I had. 

Allen had a type of animal which scored 5 points for every full tree. He had three of these animals, which meant every full tree scored him 15 points. He had 5 such trees, so that meant 75 points! Our points went beyond 200. 

The Thoughts

My first impression of Forest Shuffle was this: this is just a whole bunch of scoring criteria lumped together. You are just picking some to work on, and you collect cards to make them count. You collect the same tree species, or you collect a variety of tree species; you collect butterflies; you collect a combination of wolves and deer; you collect foxes and hares; and so on and so forth. It seems a little dull to me. You are just collecting related cards so that you maximise your scores, while at the same time trying not to let your opponents collect the cards they want. 

After playing a bit more, I warmed up to the game a little because of the setting and the artwork. There are so many animals and plants to discover, and the art is beautiful. It is satisfying when you manage to collect big sets. How the various animals and plants score points really don't have much to do with what they are. Well, maybe except for those predator and prey combinations. Which scoring criteria is assigned to which specie is quite arbitrary. There is little aggression among players. Sometimes you compete for the same types of cards, but you don't directly harm your opponents. 

I played a bit more, and eventually decided this is just a bunch of scoring criteria after all. I am okay to play but it is not very interesting to me after I'm done admiring the artwork. Many Eurogames have this kind of multiple scoring criteria, just that the mechanisms for collecting cards or resources are different. In Forest Shuffle the mechanism is quite simple and not particularly interesting.