Forest Shuffle : Dartmoor !

[firgon]

If you have attended Gen CON or been browsing the socials - you might have anticipated this: Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor is coming to BGA! Have fun with the beta version, we are looking forward to your feedback.

If you have not attended Gen CON and have been boycotting the socials : FS Dartmoor is new stand-alone from the Forest Shuffle universe. It will be released at SPIEL 2025 this October.
Like its predecessor, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor lets 2-5 players compete in gathering the most valuable terrains and trees and attract species, thus creating an ecological balanced habitat for flora and fauna.
Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, South West England. The moor and heathland landscape is home to countless species. Overall, the moor stores masses of water in the peat, while numerous rivers and waterfalls provide a pleasant, humid climate. The moorland and sourrounding area is protected by National Park status since 1951.

[Ricoco]

Am I the only one who doesn't think this new standalone version is great?

The changes introduced seem marginal to me. It's a far cry from the variety of Forest Shuffle with all its extensions.

The icons and colours don't seem easy to differentiate.

In short, I'm disappointed. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

For your information, I've played 500 games of Forest Shuffle and just under ten on Dartmoor.

PS: Nothing to say about the BGA aspect. I'm really happy to have this beta release so quickly and with such high quality.

[Nushooz]

I'm a big fan of the original Forest Shuffle, but I don't love the Dartmoor changes. Limiting the new moor cards to only top and bottom cards and requiring some cards to only be played in moors removes a lot of the simplicity of the original game's design. Getting rid of mushrooms in exchange for moor cards that give engine effects also feels weirdly limiting.

The scoring reduction across all cards feels a bit off as well. I understand the intent to not have dominant cards like Deer/Wolves in the original game, but after several plays it seems that Mice/Hawks are vastly better than any of the other cards and the problem exists yet again, just at a lower point threshold. I'm not entirely convinced the game is balanced better than previous iterations.

[cigma]

I have played more than 100 games of the original Forest Shuffle (2 players, mostly base game) and more than 10 games of Dartmoor. In both games I think you need several matches to know all the cards and learn how they interact.

The scoring reduction across all cards feels a bit off as well. I understand the intent to not have dominant cards like Deer/Wolves in the original game, but after several plays it seems that Mice/Hawks are vastly better than any of the other cards and the problem exists yet again, just at a lower point threshold. I'm not entirely convinced the game is balanced better than previous iterations.

I don't agree with that. In my view, Dartmoor is much better balanced (although also not perfectly) than the original. There are several quite strong combinations, and you will probably end up with a mix of them.

I had sometimes problems to get as many trees as I wanted to play for my strategy. Now the rules are published, it’s good to know: „In the rare case that you could do neither action (A or B), reveal your hand. Discard 2 of your cards and draw 2 new cards from the stack. This ends your turn.“ and to use it to your advantage, if needed. However, I find it remarkably that the original didn’t need such a rule, but Dartmoor does.

I like that you can play cards you want to keep away from your opponents as Universal Moors. With the original, it was much harder to get rid of them.

From my experience, there is less going on with paying by matching colors, less permananet effects and less interaction with the clearing - and, as a result, less interaction with your opponents. I’d like to hear if you had the same impressions.

Comparing Forest Shuffle base game and Dartmoor, I prefer to play Dartmoor due to its balance and more winning opportunities. My experience with the Forest Shuffle expansions is too limited to compare a game including one or both of them to Dartmoor.

[Rasguy]

I also prefer Base Dartmoor over Base Forest Shuffle. I’m not going to compare Forest Shuffle with Expansions to Dartmoor because those are two different experiences. If I find a physical copy of Dartmoor at a FLGS, I’ll buy it to replace my physical copy of original Forest Shuffle. For me, the tighter points encourages more planning and efficiencies than the original base. In the original, there always felt like one best choice.

[danielvictor]

Assuming ths is not really a bug,it would be nice if they could squeeze in the word 'next' asin' 'this card can only be played next to another bird' ,not 'to another bird'.It's also not entrely clear that you don't get to play the two birds together - you have to play the other bird first.

[Thargelion]

I found myself liking Dartmoor a lot.

I liked the original, but it was too prone to one-sided games with wolves / hooved animals.

The best I liked so far was Alpine expansion, that offered sufficiently strong alternative strategies to compete.

I was not thrilled at all by Edge, as the additions (when played just with the base) were weak and not motivating you to go for them.

Dartmoor, in my opinion, takes the best pieces of all these and combines them into an interesting and playable package. And - probably by the way of distribution at the cards, it seems that the competing strategies are equally spread in that way that you cannot pursue rationally multiple of them. And like it was said, the way Dartmoor is built causes games to be more close in score, and I like it. Several games I played were undecided till the last cards, and once or twice the difference was one point.