Lots in the Shuffle

One of the games most recently rocketing up the rankings on BoardGameGeek is Forest Shuffle. From a designer known simply as Kosch, it's a game with its own distinct blend of systems, but the sensibilities of Wingspan. It's another game about nature with a sprawling deck of cards; in this game the cards represent a forest you grow and all the plants and animals that are closely connected to the trees there.

The game is driven by combinations of card effects. Certain trees score well by concentrating on their own type while others encourage diversification. Certain plants inevitably drive you to play specific kinds of animals that go well with them. The connections are "loud" (very easy to recognize as you read the card) and powerful (the rewards for pursuing the combinations always feels worth it).

The system for paying to play cards is one common to quite a few games: each card has a cost that you pay for by discarding the indicated number of other cards from your hand. But there are a couple of wrinkles added to this that make the game something different and compelling. One is that the cards you discard in payment go in a face-up row (that holds up to 10 cards before it's truly removed from the game). This means that the cards you throw away can be picked up by your opponents, which in turn means that you really need to pay attention to what your opponents are doing -- your trash could really be someone else's treasure, and you need to discard with that in mind.

That's further supported by the most distinct feature of the game. All the plant and animal cards in the game are actually two cards in one, split top/bottom or left/right. Each such card must be attached to a tree you've played -- above, below, to the left, or to the right of the tree. (And each tree can have just one card on each edge.) This "dual card" element is designed with a subtle and deliberate cleverness.

Sometimes, both sides of a split card will appeal to you, and you will face the challenge of deciding which side you want to play for yourself. Other times, one side of a card will clearly help an opponent... but the other side isn't too shabby for you, and so maybe you'll play it yourself after all. But bottom line, every non-tree card in the game has two shots at catching your interest, which dramatically increases the chances that most cards in the game will "matter" to you and your decision making in some way.

Because most cards in the game are really two cards in one, the functions need to remain pretty simple so as not to be overwhelming. This is another way in which Forest Shuffle shines. Simple and elegant game design is not as easy as it looks, yet the game does it again and again. The game could be accused of being a "point salad," since many of the effects just fundamentally come down to different ways of scoring points based on different configurations of cards. But there are also cards that encourage you to collect other things for various reasons: cards that stack together in a single space next to a tree, cards that let you take extra turns, cards that (when paid for with cards that have matching icons) unlock bonuses, and more.

And so I find that Forest Shuffle fits well on that quite coveted shelf in a board game collection: a game that's fairly simple to explain and quite fast to play, but that nonetheless offers enough decision making to be more than simple filler. It also takes from 2 to 5 players, and has been satisfying at every player count I've tried at (which is all but the 5-player, so far). It's a game that feels to me like it could usurp for a good while the "one more quick one before you head home?" slot on game night.

I give Forest Shuffle a B+. Fans of nature-themed games and fans of games that can be played in under an hour will both likely want to check it out.