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Wonder Woods
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Description
Fall is here, the woods have been watered by the rain and the mushrooms have sprouted! You and your green-fingered friends are ready to go to your favorite mushroom patches to pick girolles, morels, boletes and Parasol mushrooms! Be careful though, there are others who have found these secret mushroom patches!
Use your talent for mushroom picking to make sure you have the most delicious harvest!
Use your talent to identify the best mushroom patches in these woods,
Harvest Parasol mushrooms, boletes, girolles and morels,
Share your secrets if you want to harvest even more mushrooms.
Will you have the most delicious harvest?
I walk our family dog in the forest near to our home. We follow a pretty well known path (with GPS in my pocket obvs!). But it’s rare that we come across anybody or any other pups when meandering between the trees. What we do find is a huge collection of multi-coloured and myriad shaped mushrooms though. Shiny red and white spotty toadstools to rival any Disney film. Big round puff-balls….. I’d never pick them (you only have to get that wrong once, right?), but I love to see them nestled on the forest floor.
So Wonder Woods with its gorgeous box art drew me in when I saw it. And I thought it was going to be straight-up set collection like Fungi (another fun-game! Haha). But no! Wonder Woods has us deducing and deceiving our way to gathering the best boletes and munchiest morels. Oh and there’s a little dash of area majority in there for good measure too!
Geroff My Girolles
Essentially, wonder Woods is a fun, light, deduction based game about finding the best mushroom patches in the woods. But what are the best mushroom patches? Well, usually the ones full of tasty treats. And as such, everybody wants a piece of that parasol pie! But the tasty thing here is that their true value isn’t known until the end of the game….unless, that is, you’re a dab hand at deduction!
There aren’t any set number of rounds – the end game trigger is when 2 of the 4 mushroom varieties run out. But each round has two distinct phases; (a) a Harvest phase where you are using your permanent baskets to fill up columns on the patch boards in the hope of snagging tasty toadstools – area majority style; and (b) an information exchange phase where you can show a card from your hand to bag an extra basket. But the price is that you are revealing what a particular mushroom variety is not worth – deduction time!
Not Mushroom To Move
The cards in this game are few – there are only 4 per mushroom type (valued 1,3,5 and 7) – but they are vital. One from each variety has been secretly chosen at random to be its end game value.
So, if you were to reveal a 1 Morel card from your hand, for sure you’ll gain an extra basket. But your opponent(s) now know that the Morels have got to be worth 3,5, or 7. And if others have the 3 and/or 5 in their respective hand(s), then they’ll now have a better idea of the likely end value of those meaty morels! Given that there are only 2 extra baskets on offer, you won’t get any reward if you have already played cards to get them. Luckily, you can pass this phase if you want.
Once the end trigger flips, the secret value of each mushroom variety is flipped over and the winner is the player with the most points!
Final Thoughts
Before I do anything else, I must praise the component quality in this game – the wooden baskets and mushroom tokens are so lovely! The publishers could have easily used basic cardboard tokens and thin boards, but they didn’t. And they come in a brown paper bag which adds to the mushroom picking theme (and overall environmentally friendly feeling of foraging in the woods for your tea! ).
The game itself is light but fun, and very easy to learn. it falls squarely in filler territory running at around 15 mins and scales well from 2-5. In fact, it plays so fast that the end comes just as I am starting to work out what the mushrooms might be worth! Or perhaps that’s just because my husband is a pro basket placer and drains the pools double quick!
Tis true that the cards you get in your hand are decided by lady luck. But Wonder Woods has a tasty tactical side. Knowing when it’s worth trading up some information for an extra basket and the chance to secure a mushroom (plus an extra if you have the most tokens on any board overall!) is key. And with the card flipping happening simultaneously, nobody gets a sneaky advantage.
Timing your tip offs has to be right. Especially as the cost of each mushroom increases the more the boards fill up – what originally cost 1 basket soon becomes 2,3 4, or 5 during a round. With that in mind, gaining extra baskets sound like a no-brainer. But if others have previously revealed cards that give you an existing advantage, it might not actually be worth showing what only you know to get some extra picking power! Alternatively, revealing a card could confuse and obfuscate – you’ll soon know if anyone drops their parasol inspired poker face or starts making a bee-line for those boletes! Haha
The pull to dominate boards versus spreading out and grabbing the cheapest of each mushroom is also neat – with values very much a mystery early on, going heavy on one variety could be risky!
Overall, we are really enjoying Wonder Woods as a light, filler level deduction game. And as it plays super-fast, there’s no lingering better aftertaste when someone else is crowned first place funghi forager!
Hey there Funghis and funghirls! !f you’re here then you must be thinking about going mushroom picking. And we have the perfect game for you! Wonder Woods from Blue Orange and Coiledspring games is a fun mix of deduction, bluffing, and area control. Check out the full review on the other tab, and when you’re ready, allow me to be your guide through the forest in your first foraging foray!
Set Up
Set up is as simple as slicing shitake! Start by placing the 4 mushroom patch boards (Morels, Parasols, Boletes, and Girolles ) on the table for all to reach. Also pop the required number of mushroom tokens (8/10/12/14 in a 2/3/4/5 player game) by each board.
Then shuffle each of the four 4 card mushroom decks (each card valued either 1,3,5, or 7) – keep the 4 decks separate for now – and randomly place one (unseen) face down next to its matching board. This is the secret value of that mushroom for end game scoring purposes.
Gather the remaining cards (still unseen!), shuffle them into one big deck and then deal 4/4/3/2 to each player in a 2/3/4/5 player game. Discard the remainder unless you are playing 2 player – in that case, keep the pile face down and in reach as you will turn over one card in phase 2).
Also give each player 5 baskets in their chosen colour, keeping the spare 2 baskets to one side for later use.
That’s it – you are now ready to go mushroom picking!
Turn Those Toadstools Into Tasty Points
Okay, so each turn is broken down into two phases:-
Phase 1: Harvest – here, you take it in turns to “pick” mushrooms. To do this, you need sufficient baskets of the mushroom type you want to completely fill the leftmost available column on that particular patch board. If you do, you take one of the matching mushroom tokens. The first one only needs 1 basket, but then the price increases to 2/3/4/5! Oooft – better balance those baskets right!
Phase 1 lasts as long as players can pick mushrooms with the baskets they have. When nobody has any baskets left, or they cannot completely fill a single column on any board, Phase 1 ends.
Before moving onto phase 2, however, check each patch board. The player who has placed the most baskets on each board gets a bonus mushroom of that type for their collection. Tasty area majority bonus right there! Then gather up all the baskets you placed on the boards and get ready for Phase 2.
Phase 2: Information Exchange – In phase 2, you can get an extra basket. And that’s definitely going to help next time you go a gathering. But, to gain more picking power, you must be prepared to show a card from your hand. Oooh now that’s a delicious dilemma!
This phase happens simultaneously for all players participating (including the 2 player extra deck flip). Remember though – once seen, it can never be unseen! And there are only ever a maximum of 2 extra baskets to be had for the entire game. So if you have them already, showing any more cards (if you have them) isn’t going to do you any good!
Once everybody who revealed a card has taken their extra basket, another round begins with Phase 1. Game play repeats until………
Morels Make The World Go Round…
As there is no fixed number of rounds in Wonder Woods, the game end is triggered when two of the mushroom variety token pools run out. Then its baskets down after completing the harvest phase, and its counting time!
At that point, the hidden value card for each mushroom is revealed and scores are calculated by multiplying the number of each mushroom type you have collected by its true worth. Having some cards in your hand and (by this stage some on the table), the possible value is likely to be known. But big surprises can happen if your fellow foragers have been stingy in information sharing!
Once the game end has triggered, scores are calculated by multiplying the number of each mushroom type you collected by the hidden value card next to each patch. The winner is the player who has the most points.
Hopefully, through the powers of deduction, you’ll have been gathering up the prized Parasols or mighty Morels and not be left with bargain basement Boletes! It’s not in the rules, but timing is everything in this game! Knowing when to give up information and when to hold back is the key!
However it ends, I hope you have fun with Wonder Woods! Just remember – not all mushrooms are safe to eat! So if you do go foraging for real, maybe leave the funghi to the forest fairies!
That concludes our guide on how to play Wonder Woods. Did this help you? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Easy Rules
- Lovely components
- Fun mix of area majority and social deduction
Might not like
- It might feel a little too light and fast for some
- A little luck plays a part in the draw