Forest Shuffle: Exploration
- Board's Eye View
- Jul 11
- 2 min read
Since its original release in 2023, Forest Shuffle (Lookout Games) has been one of our most played games. It's a set collection card game where, on their turn, players either add a card to their individual tableau and pay any cost by placing cards in a central display or they draw cards (face down or drafted from the central display). It's proven to be a popular gateway game, with its attractive flora & fauna artwork adding to the game's appeal and - like Wingspan (Stonemaier Games) - helping to bring it to a wider audience.
Players' tableaus score for the various combos created but you always need trees in order to place out your various insects, birds and animals. Players can choose to go for any of a number of different 'strategies', and the interaction in the game involves keeping a weather eye on what others appear to be collecting so you don't inadvertently help them by discarding to the central display the very cards they need to rack up their points.
One of the issues some have had with Forest Shuffle is that some set collection strategies seemed to be better than others. In the core game, it's arguably easier to do well collecting deer and wolves than, for example, trying to accumulate the various different species of butterfly. Similarly, some players focus on going heavily into tree planting. Lookout Games have published small expansions that help to address the perception of preferred strategies. The Alpine expansion added cards that helped balance strategies, tho' the additional Alpine tree varieties make it easier to, for example, collect the eight different trees needed to score for the Oak in the core game. The Woodland Edge expansion gives a further boost to the various other set collection options and it introduces shrubs that, like trees, can host other flora and fauna but which don't count as trees for the purpose of scoring.
Tho' both these two expansions help balance the game and add replayability (particularly as incorporating each expansion requires you to take a large number of randomly selected cards out of each game) but they are essentially more of the same: they neither of them materially alter gameplay. That's not the case with the Exploration expansion...
Like the Alpine and Woodland Edge expansion, Exploration adds more flora and fauna cards into the mix; in this case, cards that were previously only available as promos. This expansion tho' also introduces an automata deck to facilitate solo play, plus asymmetric alternatives to the caves in the core game that can be used in certain circumstances to stash cards.
We've incorporated all three expansions in with our core game and they've helped Forest Shuffle retain its place among our perennial favourites.
