Forest Shuffle

Where Our Story Begins

Forest Shuffle from Lookout Games is a game about creating your own ecosystem. You have a hand of cards all with either a tree, or two tree dwelling flora or fauna displayed on them. You are of course trying to jump in and get the most victory points, this time by building the best ecosystem of trees, animals, insects and flowers. This is a beautifully illustrated card game that is simple in its teaching and strategic in its playstyle. If you are looking for something with a cute theme and infinite replayability then you simply cannot go wrong with picking up this gem.

Basic Gameplay

This is a drafting, set collection and combination scoring game. You spend your turn either picking two cards from those in the face up forest market, or blindly from the deck. Or you can play a card from your hand, discarding cards to pay its cost. Simple. You play until the third winter card is revealed when gameplay immediately ceases. These winter cards are shuffled into the bottom third of the forest card deck, so you sort of know when they are due, but not exactly when they will come out. This is the timer of the game, and depending on your strategy, you may want to rush the game to its close or try to avoid taking cards to elongate the game.

Cards are arranged around trees. Once you have a tree in your forest, you will be able to place a card above, below, to the left and to the right of it. You will be trying to create synergies between the cards that you place, for example if you have a fox then this will score best if you also have European hares in your forest. A squirrel will score best if it is on an oak tree. Boars want to be with squeakers and so on. Each card also has a colour or two on it, if you manage to pay for your card by discarding cards of the matching colour then you will unlock a bonus. You will trying to secure the best cards into your forest whilst also not discarding cards that help your opponent too much. Keeping a well stocked forest of trees is also important to ensure that you have space to play these excellent cards too. It is a balancing act in strategic card play, and I love it.

For a very simple to learn and play game, there is devilish complexity in working out the best option for you. Many of the cards have scoring dependent on set collection or having other symbiotic cards present in your ecosystem. The beauty of card play comes in being able to pay for cards using the right coloured cards and activating their special ability. Generally these can be things like helping you play another animal for free, or drawing some cards or even just getting a whole other turn.

As the player count increases the game time will likely not change as the deck of cards is the same size. The scores will be lower the higher the player count as you all fight over the same cards for your forest. We have thoroughly enjoyed this game at 2 players, and as neither of us is trying to rush the game, have found that this has meant we were able to achieve some monster scores.

Components

Forest Shuffle is a pretty simple game in terms of components and really it is just cards with a small board. The board is pretty simple in design but very beautiful and honestly is superfluous to requirements as you simply need to wipe it after ten cards are placed into the forest.

The cards are the most important, these ARE the game! These have in my opinion utterly beautiful depictions of various fauna and flora on them. The animals (and insect/flora) cards are split either horizontally or vertically, but I have not found that this means they are tough to read. The trees are striking in their simple design which makes them easy to pick out of your hand. The colours are depicted with differing leaf icons which aid with quickly seeing which colours match. I will stress however that this does not help the colour blind amongst us as the trigger section for the benefit does not contain these icons.

One thing I really appreciate is that there is a deck of cards which give further details on how each animal works. These are in alphabetical order and are a pretty good quick read to refer to. I also appreciate this means that the rulebook can remain a simple leaflet which is ideal.

Replayability

If you are looking for a game that has almost no rules overhead but will usually feel different each time you play, then Forest Shuffle could be a hit for you. Each of the cards has different scoring abilities and varied scoring synergies too. We have had fun trying out varying strategies, from placing down all the trees possible in favour of animal cards, to maxing out every tree we have with as many cards as possible.

We have found that game time is a little longer than you would expect as your brain tries to calculate the best strategy. Some people may because of this always default to their previous strategy. Seemingly this is deer and wolves or foxes and rabbits in our opinion. I think it is necessary to make sure that no one player can get all the deer because these not only synergise but also create huge scoring opportunities of their own. I wonder if the deer are slightly too powerful, although they are expensive to place so perhaps that balances it out.

Round Up

For me, Forest Shuffle is a contender for game of the year for 2023. Lookout games tend to put out a lot of cool games that I love, but this one was a surprise with how simple it was to learn. There are so many different animals and they all work differently but it is pretty easy to get a grip on what you are doing. There are so many different strategies that will alter based on cards that make this feel like a game I won’t get bored of.

In forest shuffle, you are trying to create an ecologically balanced habitat for plant and animal life alike.

Set-Up

Place the clearing Game board in the centre of the play area.

Next, find the 14 white reference cards and put these above the clearing board. These cards all have a fox on their backs.

Give every player a cave card, and return the rest to the box. This card should be placed in the area in front of each player.

Find the three Winter Cards and set them aside. Shuffle the rest cards together. These should all have the same back that looks like a sprout. Once these are good and shuffled you will need to remove a certain number at random from the game and return them to the box, this number varies depending on the player number:
2 Player game – Return 30 cards to the box
3 Player game – Return 20 cards to the box
4 Player game – Return 10 cards to the box
5 Player game – Do not return any, you will play with the full deck.

Divide the remaining cards into three roughly even piles face down. Shuffle two of the Winter cards into one of these piles then place the final winter card on top of this pile. Place the other two piles on top of the one containing the winter cards. This is now your card deck, place this at the end of the clearing with the tree symbol in the corner, the other end will be the discard pile.

Now, deal every player 6 cards from the deck. Each player should privately examine their cards and look to see if they have any tree cards in hand. If a player has no tree cards, they are allowed to take one mulligan, where they discard their full hand and draw 6 cards again. This can only be done once per player.

Now you are set up and ready to play Forest Shuffle.

A look at the Cards in the deck

Forest Shuffle contains 4 different Types of Cards in the deck; Tree Cards, Vertical Split Fauna and Flora Cards, Horizontal Split Fauna and Flora Cards, and Winter Cards.

The first three types share similar elements and card features which we can have a look at.

Illustration – Tree cards will contain a single illustration and the Fauna and Flora cards will contain two illustrations. These just are a visual representation of the species on the card.
Cost – This represents how many cards will need to be put into the clearing from your hand in order to play the card into your area.
Card Colour with Tree Symbol – Cards belong to different tree groups, the tree you play them on to does not need to match this symbol but discarding cards that match the symbol on the card you are playing can sometimes net you a bonus.
Type Symbol – Each card belongs to a plant or animal group, these are sometimes used for other card effects and scoring requirements.
Name – The name of the species on the card.
Number in Game – Tells you how many of that card exist in the game.
Effect – Some plant and animal cards have an effect that activates when playing the card into your area, you immediately activate this when playing and is a one-time thing. However, some Mushrooms have, an ongoing effect these will say on the card.
Bonus – Some cards have bonuses that activate if you pay for that card with cards matching the card colours shown in the binoculars box. If you satisfy this you get a bonus you take one time on that turn.
Point Value – This shows how many points (the acorn symbol) the cards are worth at the end of the game. Some require criteria to be met to score points or increase in value as more of a type of card are played in your area.

All card effects, bonuses, types, and tree symbols are explained in the reference on the back of the rule book. Keeping this nearby while playing your first few games can help you learn the iconography.

The final type of card is the Winter Cards. These cards are used to signal that you are nearing the end of the game and the end of the game. These are been shuffled into the deck and when drawn are shown to the group and then placed next to the board. The first two do nothing but signal you are nearing the end of the game. However, drawing the third will immediately end the game. They have the same backs as the other cards in the deck so you cannot tell where they are.

Game Play

The rules say the player who last took a walk in the forest starts the game, but you can choose however you see fit.

Starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, each player takes one of two possible actions on their turn. These actions are to Draw Two Cards or Play a Card and Check the Clearing.

Drawing Two cards – When taking this action you will be drawing two cards, one at a time. For each card, you have two options as to where to draw from, either a face-up card from the clearing or a face-down card from the top of the deck. The clearing will not be an option at the start of the game as it begins the game empty but as players go cards will be added. Your hand Limit is 10 Cards so you cannot take this action with 10 cards in hand, and can only take one card on this action with 9 in your hand.

Playing a Card and Check the Clearing – To play a card from your hand you must first pay the cost in the corner of the card, if you are playing a split card you only have to pay the cost of the side you will be using. The cards you pay for the card with are placed face up on the clearing board. If the card has a listed bonus you can choose to match the card type listed there to get a bonus action. When you play a tree card you must also reveal the top card from the deck and add it to the clearing.

A tree can just be played into your area, but a split card must be played onto a tree. Each tree has 4 slots, 2 for each type of split card. Each slot can only hold one card except for certain cards like Toads which will tell you on them when you can put more than one in a slot. Tuck the split card under the tree so the half you have paid for is still showing, while the other half is hidden under the tree.

If you do not have any tree cards any card can be played face-down into your area as a sapling. This provides a card slot on each of its four sides like a normal tree. However, it does not belong to any of the eight tree species and is not considered a tree species of its own.

Next, look for any effects on the card and any bonuses you activated and take the related actions.

Finally, once you have finished with your played card you must check the clearing by counting how many cards are currently in the clearing. If there are 10 or more cards, all cards in the clearing are removed and put into the discard pile.

Play continues around the table until the third Winter Card is drawn which immediately will trigger the end of the game.

There are two other types of cards in the game, your personal cave card and the reference cards.

Cave cards are used with certain effects on cards, such as bears and raccoons. The effect will allow you to take cards from a location like the clearing or your hand and put them face down under your cave card. Cards put under the cave are now worth one point at the end of the game.

The reference cards are located in a stack near the clearing board. These are a detailed overview of each of the cards and how they score in more detail than the normal cards. They are there to help clarify anything and are for all players to use.

Final Scoring

When the final Winter Card is drawn this immediately triggers end-game scoring. The game comes with a scorepad to help you total each player’s score.

You first look at each of your tree cards scoring conditions and total up how much that is worth, then the cards at the top and bottom of the trees, then the cards to the left and right of the trees, and finally points from cards in your cave.

The rule book has an example for scoring and you can use the reference cards if you are confused by how any of the cards score.

The player with the highest score wins. If there is a tie the players share the victory.

That’s how you play forest shuffle.