Board Game Arena

This game is completely unbalanced. And all the extensions. Deer and wolfes or moor in Dartmoor. Really very boring when opponent making moor-moor-moor every move.

I learned about this game just recently and thought "wow, hits all the sweet spots". Now, after playing some 30 games I can very very clearly see how stupidly imbalanced it is. It's either wolf + deer or nothing. Period. Might as well stop playing it b/c it's only frustrating.

YukitoXKun wrote: ↑15 September 2025, 20:49

Hypersonyk wrote: ↑16 July 2025, 18:09 Why does nobody play anything other than deer? It is getting very, very boring and old. No one I have played does anything else -- deer, wolf, deer, wolf.Boring. C'mon, people. Try something else.

And to our publisher friends at Forest Shuffle -- do something to fix this boring, boring meta. Until then, I'm out as the game is just about drawing deer and wolves and nothing else can compete.

I guess you dont really know how this game can be played. Playing Rabbits can easy win you a game. Playing a Rush Strategy with Racoons and Bears and Vultures can easy win you a game. Playing Birds can easy win a game. *

*moderators removed insults

No and it's insulting of you to claim ppl don't know how to play this game. Rules are v simple to follow. This games is super imbalanced and the luck element here is atrocious.

Kater74 wrote: ↑14 December 2025, 00:31 I learned about this game just recently and thought "wow, hits all the sweet spots". Now, after playing some 30 games I can very very clearly see how stupidly imbalanced it is. It's either wolf + deer or nothing. Period. Might as well stop playing it b/c it's only frustrating.

I'm with you. I feel like if a deer/wolf shows up you're kinda obligated to take it just to keep the other player from playing it. I like the deer that add 1 point per tree. At one time I had like 15 points per tree, 1 card draw per tree play and 1 per mountain play (so 2 per mountain tree). That game had a neat amount of synergy and made for my most atrocious beat-down so far (424 to 188).

That said i do with there was a discard mechanic where if you drew at 9 cards you drew 11 and had to discard to 10. Then you could just throw deer and wolves away.

While I understand the sentiment coming from these topics, you have to realize that the skill factor in this game isn't about building the prettiest forest, but rather securing good cards for you and away from your opponent. Clearing the market, dealing with your hand size, building card draw, denying strong cards from the opponent, that's what wins you games. And usually, yes it involves deers and wolves. But if you play your cards well, those deers and wolves will and up in your forest rather than your opponents'.

First you have to DRAW deer and wolves. If you don't you're out of luck. and once your opponent gets that rolling, you're done.

As for the Alpine being a good counter, I've been trying that. It doesn't dilute it enough. I'm still getting blasted by wolf/deer.

I've also tried playing with both. And then butterflies can compete if you get the stinging nettle and can stack them and the plant that gives 3 points per insect/butterfly.

Also tried playing with the Forest Edge expansion. Again, if your opponent gets deer/wolf it's no contest.

Having to combat deer/wolf with deer/wolf an/or doing all you can to get rid of wolfs makes the game not fun. There are many combinations that look fun, but can't compete with deer/wolf or in fewer cases, butterflies.

I’ve had plants/trees compete with deer/wolf. I still need a red deer to help but the expansions give you viable other alternatives

The problem is actually the expansions make the game even more imbalanced. They make the butterfly strategy stronger which is a serious problem as that only empowers the deer strategy. The reason being is the deer strategy means you have to discard several cards to play deer so to make it stronger you need to play cards that are free to play In addition to the deer and what animals are the best to play for free with the deer? Butterflies!!!

To make matters worse with the expansions you have multiple cards that strengthen the butterfly strategy for the bottom of the tree making it easier for the deer players to fill each tree which means they then snatch up every beech Martin in sight and every mole
in sight for that matter, which frustrates players who are focusing on the paw strategy, because the beech martin is a paw animal after all.

Personally I wish some strategies were designed so you couldn’t mix them. Like if the beech martin couldn’t score points if there were any deer icons in your forest.

So the whole point of the expansions to help the other strategies was nearly a waste. The problem is that while people think deer show up less often, is actually untrue, the mole, stag beetle, goshawk, pond turtle, toad, these are the cards that show up the least. Because there’s only 2 or 3 of these. And there’s 3 species of deer and 4 of each, so the individual species shows up less often but there is always deer that show up throughout the game. Sometimes the goshawk doesn’t even show up until the very end the game, I’ve been known to grab it and then the game is instantly over my next turn. And with the expansions sometimes the mole is nowhere to be found. And what usually happens is the deer player gets the mole and then plays several butterflies in one turn.


Even with the expansions with me playing a different strategy instead of deer and butterflies I always lose. In fact i played 20 games in row and i lost all 20 games and in several of those games i lost by over 100 points. Yes forest shuffle is super imbalanced even with the expansions.

That’s why forest shuffle dartmoor is the better game half the strategies are balanced with each other and the other half are balanced with each other.

And my win ratio on Forest shuffle dartmoor is more like 60/40.