I’m a big fan of what I like to call “deck-searching” games. Players draw from a shared deck, filled with scoring opportunities and special abilities, and try to build as efficient a tableau as possible—your Arks Nova, your Races for the Galaxies, and so on.
That said, the more of these games I play, the fewer I feel I need to own. It’s not that newer games are worse or derivative, but the draw of these games for me is diving into that Scrooge McDuckian pool of possibilities and seeing how much gold I can pull from it.
Without a memorable hook, newer games face an uphill battle against games whose decks I have more familiarity with. Still, I love to be proven wrong, and the latest challenger to ring the bell is Forest Shuffle.
How does it stack up? Forest Shuffle is a tableau-building card game for 2-5 players. It takes about 45-60 minutes to play and plays best with 2-3 players.
Forest Shuffle’s structure is pretty loose, with no phases or rounds to speak of. Instead, on each turn you choose from one of just two options: Cards may be drawn randomly from the deck, or from a face-up area called the clearing.