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Forest Shuffle: Alpine
You could earn
799 Victory Points
with this purchase
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Description
In Forest Shuffle, players compete to gather the most valuable trees, then attract species to these trees, thus creating an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.
To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree or two forest dwellers (animal, plant, mushroom, etc.), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half.
On a turn, either draw two cards whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by paying the cost, then putting it into play.
During set-up, three winter cards were placed into the bottom third of the deck. When the third winter card is drawn, the game ends immediately, then players tally their points based on the trees and dwellers in their forest. Whoever scores the most points wins.
Forest Shuffle is the first in a line of Lookout games sporting the Lookout Greenline label, produced on FSC certified paper and avoiding plastic completely.
Forest Shuffle came out of nowhere to be one of the biggest hits of 2023, being nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year and also being nominated for the Golden Geek Medium Game of the Year last year. High praise indeed for a game I’ve already given a glowing review of on Zatu. I’ve played the game so many times since picking it up that there are now some more dominant strategies and cards that I might try and look out for, so now it is time to freshen things up with this incredibly small and low priced expansion for one of my favourite games of last year.
Forest Shuffle: Alpine Expansion brings 36 new cards to the game, including 2 species of trees with 2 new colours of cards in pink and purple and a new alps symbol that allows for a lot of new synergies between the new cards included. Setup remains the same, just shuffle the new cards into the deck and remove the same number as you would have previously with the base game depending on the number of players.
A couple of nice tweaks to improve some of the weaker strategies from the core game include a new butterfly, which then allows you to score 35 points for all 6 types of butterfly which makes them much more worthwhile pursuing. The two new types of trees in Larch Cone and Stone Pine also help improve your chances of scoring well for oaks, something that I found really tough the first time around. Mountain Hares mean that there are more hares to share around, although they can’t share a space with the European Hares from the base game. The Bearded Vulture improves the cave strategy and might allow you to take some cards from the display you think another player is after.
It’s hard not to instantly recommend the Forest Shuffle Alpine Expansion, it helps to balance some of the strategies found in the base game, while buffing other strategies that were weaker. There are no new complex rules to learn and this small box doesn’t try to do anything different that build on something that was already great and improve upon it in a way that means once you’ve first shuffled the Alpine Expansion in, you’re not going to need to take the cards out again and can easily explain any changes to new players of the game, as well as anyone who has played it before. I’m really glad I picked this up to build upon a game I already loved, and I hope they continue to build upon this going forward with some more small box expansions to keep adding diversity to the game.
Zatu Score
You might like
- small and cheap box
- no major rule changes/
- balances the base game and adds new strategies
Might not like
- wont convert you if you didnt enjoy the base game
- hard to remove once shuffled in
- Vulture could increase hate drafting