Brushwood
- Board's Eye View
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
There have been several games themed around countryside hikes but Brushwood from Korea Boardgames is perhaps the most relaxed and easygoing. Designed by Filippo Landini for 2-4 players, it's an easy-to-play game that can be readily taught to new players without the necessity of pre-digesting a lot of rules. Put simply, on your turn you move a shared hiker meeple your choice of 1-3 steps around a track and take the card to which the hiker ends up adjacent. For any cards you pass by, you add a berry token from a central pool rather than your personal supply, making those cards more attractive on a future turn but not directly at a cost to you.
The cards that you draft are added to your forest trail tableau and you'll score for all the birds and animals in your tableau, and each type of berry scores for the player(s) with the most. To score for your various types of mushroom you'll need to claim a matching scoring tile. This adds a push-your-luck decision as if you take a tile too early you may be forfeiting the opportunity to score more points but holding out for another mushroom and potentially more valuable tile could mean you get pipped to the post on a tile. The game ends when any two card stacks are empty, so players also have a degree of choice over when to force the end of the game, but most of our plays at Board's Eye View have come in at a filler-length 20-30 minutes.
Brushwood then is a light game - notably lighter than other hiking-themed games like Trekking (TCG Factory) or Trail Story (WizKids). It offers some choices, most obviously over which cards to take, and there will be some hardened gamers who will want to overthink their choices - weighing up the potential loss of an 'area control' style bonus due to the random berries they might add to cards they pass over. For most players tho', this will be a casual social game that you can play with non-gamer friends without having to focus too intensely throughout. Think of Brushwood as both mechanically and thematically a countryside stroll rather than a hike. And the art from Matt Sanz gives the game a great table presence as players build their individual panoramic forest tableaus.
