Living Forest Duel

Living Forest Duel is the two player version of Living Forest. I think two player Living Forest works pretty well. Living Forest Duel is a slightly different game. 

One key difference is instead of revealing cards one by one from your deck on your turn, now you and your opponent take turns revealing cards from a common deck. There is still deck building and push-your-luck. On your turn you can choose to reveal a card, or if you are happy with the number of icons revealed of a certain type, you can choose to use up that icon type to perform an action. You will often be a little torn between the number of icons not being attractive enough and the worry that if you reveal a strong card you will hand your opponent a windfall. 

You can perform at most two actions in a round. Once you have done both, you must pass. If you reveal a third nocturnal animal, you will lose an action. This part of push-your-luck is still in the game. 

Of the various things you can do in the game, they now help you towards four different winning conditions instead of three. You win by either putting out enough fires, planting enough trees, filling the market with animals of your season, or pushing the evil spirit far enough towards your opponent. 

Fires spread from where the evil spirit is, and if they are not controlled well, they will lead to bad cards being added to the common deck. This is the deck building part of the game, where bad cards will lead to players finding it hard to get things done. You need water icons to put out fires. 

You need tree icons to plant trees. You need to create a 3 x 3 grid to win. Tree cards have icons along their edges. When you match the icons, you gain some benefit.

There is a mechanism to push the evil spirit along a track towards your opponent. This is yet another way you can win the game.

A slightly more complicated one to explain is filling the market with animals of your season type. Initially the market has three summer and three winter animals. One player is summer and the other winter. The common deck starts with neutral cards, which can be used by both players. If you buy and add a card which matches your season, in the future, when it is drawn, its icons will only help you and not your opponent. Normally, you would want to buy animals which match your season. However, you are allowed to buy your opponent’s animals. They will not be useful to you when they are drawn in future. However, when you buy them, their slots in the market are replenished using your animals. If you manage to fill the market with your animals, you win immediately.  This way of winning requires that you do something bad to yourself. It is a little risky.

This is a game of making threats and forcing your opponent to react. There are four ways you can threaten to win. It might become a race, when the players decide to rush for two different conditions. However, most likely you won’t be able to resist trying to slow your opponent down. Pushing the evil spirit and filling the market with your animals are two things where your opponent can undo your progress. Planting trees and putting out fires are areas where your progress cannot be undone. If you are doing well, your opponent will have to try to overtake you or they have to try to be faster winning using another approach.

This is a tight game. You cannot go in expecting a nice family Euro style game where you can happily explore and everything gives you some points. You need to be deliberate about what you want to do and how you want to win. You need to be efficient and focused, else it is easy to fall behind and never recover. Some attacks are feints intended to waste your time defending. Yet you cannot completely ignore them in case that avenue becomes a viable winning condition for your opponent. 

I like the original a little more, but it might be because I played it first.  Living Forest Duel delivers a slightly different experience. Like the predecessor, I like how you need to be constantly thinking about the four different winning conditions. There is always a sense of urgency.