Forest Shuffle – Board Game Review

Forest Shuffle – Board Game Review

by | Apr 5, 2025 | Reviews, Board Game Reviews

First, let me tell you how I played this game wrong. The first time I played Forest Shuffle, I thought animals had to be put on trees matching the tag in their corner. This lead me to be frustrated for the entire game that I couldn’t find the right trees to match my animals and really soured my experience. Thankfully, I was wrong.

In Forest Shuffle, designed by Kosch, with art by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella, and published by Lookout Games in 2023, players are competing to gather the most valuable trees and attract the best fauna to those trees, creating a mutually beneficial point generating engine.

On a turn, players can either draw two cards, or, play a card from their hand. Each card is either a beautifully illustrated tree, or, the card will be split down the middle, representing a pair of animals. The trees get placed in front of you, while the animals need to be attached to one of the four sides of the tree card, covering up one of the two animals on the card. Each of these cards have a cost, and many of the cards boast a bonus that you earn if you pay for that card with cards of the same suit. After you’ve taken your turn, the next player goes, and around and around the game plays until 3 winter cards that are shuffled into the bottom third of the deck are drawn, and trigger the end game.

Perhaps you can see why my rules gaff would create such an unnecessary restriction, and would make me sour on the game. After all, it’s the restrictions that make me dislike many other tableau building games such as Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars. Instead, Forest Shuffle is a pretty forgiving game. Sure, there’s 8 tree varieties, sometimes getting two of the correct ones into your hand to trigger a bonus can be a challenge, but it’s rarely a real issue. Instead, the challenge in Forest Shuffle comes in the form of the animals, and the ways they score off each other. Bats score 5 points if you have 3 of them, foxes score 2 points per rabbit, the rabbits score 1 point per rabbit you have in your habitat. Some trees give points based on how many creatures are attached to that tree, while others give points based on having the most of that variety in your forest. With a thick deck of cards, there’s a ton of variety in the scoring, and almost anything you do will earn you points in the end. But will they earn you enough? That’s the real question.

Now, I love multi-use cards. Not only does each animal card have two different animals on it, but much like other card based tableau builders (Race for the Galaxy and San Juan come to mind), the cards in your hand are also the resource you need to discard to play other cards. Unlike those other two games, however, the cards are discarded face up to a central board, where other players can freely draw them into their hand. In a 2 player game, when you can keep tabs on what your opponent is building towards, this does create some delicious tension. If they’re obviously building towards a massive hedgehog dynasty, the last thing you want to do is, just, hand them more hedgehogs. But if neither of the animals on that card are useful to you, now it’s just a dead card in your hand. Can’t be used to build something else, it just sits there.

Outside of hate drafting cards away from your opponent, there is a single other point of interaction. One of the trees gives you points if you have the most trees of that variety in your forest. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle is truely solitare. Not a bad thing if you and your partners like to build your own little happy forests and not need to worry about some psycho chopping down all your hard work. But if you’re looking for a dynamic and exciting game, Forest Shuffle is going to leave you disappointed.

On one hand, I want to say Forest Shuffle is a great game to draw players into board game hobby. With easy to understand turns and delightfully cute artwork, it’s certainly an attractive option. But because every card has 2 options, the decision paralysis of what cards to play from your hand, and which cards to take from the centre can grind this game to a halt if players struggle to keep 20 different card effects in their head. It can be jarring when players sit down to a cozy game with cute animals, and get hit over the head with point optimizations and information overload.

There is a lot of luck in Forest Shuffle, mostly in that you manage to draw the cards that work with your strategy. Many of the cards reference other, specific cards. Such as foxes that give points on how many rabbits you have, or the boars that give points only if you find one of the three squeakers in the game. When you can build a engine that really works, like the deer and wolves, or the ferns that give 6 points per lizard, it feels great. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle feels like you’re shuffling through a pile of trash, hoping to stumble upon the golden nuggets before your opponents do.

The real downside, is that Forest Shuffle sits in a crowded genre. For tableau building games, I’ve already mentioned Race for the Galaxy, and San Juan. There’s also Innovation, Mottainai, and Res Arcana to consider. If you really want a forest or nature theme, Arboretum, Ark Nova, and Earth are all strong contenders, not even to mention Wingspan. Although perhaps I’m being a little unfair with some of these recommendations. Forest Shuffle is not an engine building game, so to compare it to engine building games is like trying to race a bicycle against a motorcycle. One just has an innate excitement, while the other, is great for a sunday ride, but it isn’t going to turn any heads.

The Gang – Board Game Review

The Gang – Board Game Review

by | Mar 29, 2025 | Board Game Reviews, Reviews

I don’t know if it’s still true, but Otter has said that cooperative games are his favourite games to play. He loves the collaboration, and especially, the discussion that most cooperative games feature. Creating a plan together, and seeing it all come together, is very satisfying. It makes sense with his personality, he’s a very kind and inclusive fellow. Gross, right?

The Gang, designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath, art by German design studio Fiore GmbH, and published by KOSMOS in 2024, is cooperative poker. Much like how Balatro is roguelike Poker, The Game uses the familiar mechanisms of creating 5 card poker hands in a unique and interesting way. Or, it would be familiar if your experience with Poker was more than randomly clicking buttons while playing Vegas Stakes when you were 7 years old. And besides, Vegas Stakes Poker game was 7 card stud, not Texas hold ’em

Now, because I don’t live under a rock, I’ve been tangentially aware of what Texas hold ’em is, because it’s always on the many screens in pubs over the years, as well as being featured in Casino Royale. I’ve seen it around, but I’ve never really played the game. For some people, it can be hard to imagine that people out there are largely unfamiliar with how Poker plays, yet, before Balatro hit earlier this year, I was an utter novice at anything Poker.

So, here’s a rundown for the uninitiated. In Texas hold ’em, each player is dealt two cards, face down. Then everyone has a chance to bid or fold. Once bidding is complete, three cards are turned face up from the deck into the centre of the table, creating a pool of community cards. Then another chance to bid or fold is presented to all players. Then a fourth card is turned face up, and again, all players have the chance to bid or fold. Then a 5th card is added to the community pool, and all players have a final chance to big or fold. The goal of the game is, to create the best 5 card poker hand between the 5 community cards and the two cards that were dealt with you at the beginning of the round. A pair or two pair is having one or two sets of cards, a full house is when you have 3 of the same card and a pair, a straight is when you have a run of sequential cards, and a flush is when you have 5 cards of the same colour.

The Gang, uses the core mechanisms of card distribution and hand value, but strips out all the bidding. Instead, after each phase in which players are given information, each player must take one of the poker chips on the table. There’s one chip for each player, starting with a value of one, and increasing for every player at the table. The ultimate goal here is that on the final round, players will take the value of chip that corresponds to the order of strength of their hand. And of course, much like The Crew or The Mind, there is no communication allowed during game play. All you can do is take the chip that you think tells the story of your cards.

It’s worth mentioning that we played The Gang a bit wrong at first. We were getting frustrated when players would jump to grab the low chips before someone who was a bit less experienced with Poker (me) had a chance to evaluate their cards and consider what they wanted to grab. Then we realized that when you take a chip, you can take it from the supply, or, from another player. It was hilarious when two players just took the same chip back and forth from one another, and the accusations and mud that were slung when the hands were revealed and one of those players was the misstep our gang took, were something to behold.

In Poker, if you’re not first, you’re last. It doesn’t matter if you have a pair of kings if someone else is rocking a flush. But in The Gang, correctly assessing where you stand in the order of hands is paramount. sure, you might have a pair of 7’s with a queen kicker. But does anyone else also have a 7 with a king kicker? Is your hand the worst, or the second worst? Maybe you started the round with an Ace and King of the same suit, you have strong potential here, it could literally be the best hand in the game. Do you take the 5 to demonstrate the potential your cards hold, or do you take a middle of the pack chip, to hopefully communicate to your teammates that you don’t have anything solid, but not nothing.

Communication is important in all aspects of life, but the joy in The Gang lies in what you can communicate with those bidding chips. Kind of like Brandon Sanderson’s second law, which reads “Limitations are more important than abilities“. When all players get into the flow, make the correct reads, and actually succeed at the heist, oh the feeling of jubilation is something to behold. If you enjoyed The Mind, I can strongly recommend The Gang. That said, if you found The Mind a boring exercise of sorting cards, then The Gang isn’t going to change your mind.

I also need to caveat that none of the players at my table are poker players. None of us are able to tell you why an Ace Jack suited is actually a better hand than a King Queen suited. None of us knew the odds of the river holding the card we needed, or how to really value a good hand from a bad. We all played based on vibes and our guts, and we had an absolute blast. It’s also worth mentioning that, especially when playing with inexperienced Poker players, The Gang is exponentially more difficult to succeed at when you have more players at the table. The odds of two players having nearly identical is higher, and really, it’s just luck at the end of the day if those players manage to get their chips in the right order.

The Gang was one of the most engaging games we’ve played in a long time. During each round, we were silent and tense, weighing the potential our hands held with the scant information that we could glean from the chips others took. Each revealed card swaying the balance, one person dropping their bid from a 4 star to a 1 star. After the 5th card is revealed, and we slowly reveal our hands from the weakest to strongest, we’d usually groan in defeat, but then launch into a frenetic conversation about what we all meant when we took the chips that we did. Yelling at our friends for taking the chip we wanted, or commiserating that we had a really unlucky deal. Inevitably, we’d shuffle up, deal again, and another tense hush would fall over the table. There’s no greater endorsement than when a player says, “I know I need to go, but let’s just do one more round”. And The Gang demands several more rounds.

Yamataï – Board Game Review

Yamataï – Board Game Review

by | Mar 22, 2025 | Board Game Reviews, Reviews

I wonder how including the diaeresis in the title of the review is going to affect the SEO of the review. It doesn’t really matter, if there’s one thing I’ve gleaned from the stats, it’s that unless I’m reviewing a brand-new game, or one that is a proven evergreen classic, SEO doesn’t pull too many eyes onto my reviews. Which means if you’re reading this post, you’re probably one of the few people who come back week after week to read my reviews, because you like the way I write, instead of seeking out the review because you have an interest in the product. So, thank you! If I described you, thank you for being here!

Yamataï, designed by Bruno Cathala and Marc Paquien and released by Days of Wonder in 2017, is a game in which players are placing ships between a dense archipelago, and either scooping up the coloured resources that are littered across most of the islands, or, if the island is empty, building one of the buildings to earn victory points and money.

The action selection mechanism is really the star of the show in Yamataï. Along the bottom of the board sit 5 action tiles face up, and 5 more face down. On your turn, you take one of the action tiles, which will provide you with a number of ships as well as a special ability for your turn. The action tile will also dictate where on the turn order track you’ll end up next round.

Your turn follows the same 5 steps each round. Pick your tile, optionally buy or sell one of your ships, then place your ships and either take the resources on the islands next to your placements, or build on an island next to your placements, then store any unused ships, and finally, trade in the resources for some special character powers. There is a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but you get the general idea of how the game plays.

As always, publisher Days of Wonder makes some really good-looking games. Yamataï is bright and colourful, with wonderful artwork. The wooden buildings that get built are all big and chunky and satisfying to hold and look at. Just from looking at it, I don’t feel like the insert is particularly good, but the copy I played with had everything in baggies, so, I suspect it’s not. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me.

The gameplay is something that I should love. I always talk about positive player interactions in games, where my actions benefit others and vice versa, and Yamataï has some of those feelings. The ships you place out next to the islands can be used by anyone during your turns, and in fact, you’ll need to utilize the ships that others have laid out to really extend into the centre of the archipelago. This creates lots of interesting decisions on your turn. You’ll want to try and place your ships in a way that benefits you, but doesn’t create amazing opportunities for your opponents. Furthermore, several of the buildings are these special red prestiege buildings that when you choose to build them, you don’t put one of your houses on that spot, you place the big red torii or castle on that tile instead. Then, anyone who builds one of their houses on an island adjacent to one of those prestige buildings earns one extra bonus point.

Yamataï doesn’t feature luck in its design. Instead, I feel like a skilled player will dominate a table of novices. Each turn, I felt like I had a tonne of decisions to weigh and consider. At the same time, the score feels a bit flat. And by that, I mean that if I simply execute my first gut instinct move without too much thought, I’d earn, like, 3 points per round. But if I sat, and gave it a lot of thought and really squeezed my brain to make the most optimal move, I’d earn 4 points per round. Yamataï is not kind to players who get paralyzed with too many options. Even at two players, the game could drag on as players take whole minutes to consider their moves.

Although it’s important to note that the 2 player game is similar to Five Tribes, in that you get two actions per round instead of just one. It creates a lot more depth and gives players a lot more control over how they’ll shape the round. You’re able to set up a juicy scoring spot and if the tiles you took last round afford you two turns in a row, you can capitalize on that spot immediately. It’s really satisfying.

The specialists that offer players special powers can be very powerful, and it was quite fun to see new ones get revealed every round, and figuring out how they can work together is, I’m sure, the key to getting good at Yamataï. In one of my games, I was holding 40 coins when the specialist that changes the money to victory point conversion from 5 to 1 to 3 to 1. I snapped that specialist up, and the extra points it awarded me was the entire gap between first and last place.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with Yamataï. It’s a good game with a fine theme, great production, and fun mechanics. I would never turn down a game of Yamataï. But I also don’t think there’s anything special in this box that would encourage me to pull it off my shelf, especially sitting next to other Days of Wonders games, or Bruno Cathala games. Five Tribes is the game it most reminds me of (but let me be clear, Yamataï and Five Tribes are very different games), and I think I’d reach for Five Tribes 7 days of the week. At the highest player count, your ability to plan is just thrown out the window. There’s no catch up mechanics, there’s no randomness, there’s no real engine building or sense of acceleration. The specialists give you new actions or augment your existing ones, but each one is fairly minor, and you’ll likely see every specialist in each game, although the order in which they come out is random. The buildings are functionally the same, requiring 3 to 5 different colours of boats arbitrarily, and your ability to make clever and interesting plays feels limited to the 2 player experience.

It feels weird to be so down on Yamataï, because again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I like so much about it, from the action tile mechanism, to the shared building spaces, to the specialists that do combo together nicely. I had a fun time playing Yamataï, but I also doubt that I’ll ever play it again. I don’t feel like there’s anything in the game that’s really drawing me back to it. There are too many games and too little time to play games that don’t spark joy, and even though Yamataï didn’t do anything to snuff my enjoyment, there simply was no spark.

Gizmos – Board Game Review

Gizmos – Board Game Review

by | Mar 15, 2025 | Board Game Reviews, Reviews

There’s something inherently satisfying about watching spheres cascade down a gentle decline. Potion Explosion taps into that feeling with its five rows of marbles colliding and chaining together. Gizmos by Phil Walker-Harding seems to promise a similar experience at first glance, with its eye-catching marble dispenser, but the games themselves are very different experiences.

In Gizmos, players take on the role of inventors creating wild machines powered by energy marbles. The dispenser drops six marbles into the offer row, and on your turn, you’ll do one of four things:

  • File – Reserve a gizmo for later.
  • Pick – Take a single marble from the dispenser row into your supply
  • Build – Spend marbles to construct a gizmo from the offer pyramid or from your archive.
  • Research – Draw cards from the deck equal to your research level, and choose one to build or archive, then discard the rest.

Image Credit: Pongrácz Zsolt @PZS69 via BGG

It’s simple, but the real enjoyment comes from building a wild and exciting engine. Every gizmo you add gives you a bonus, like extra picks, or extra builds, marble storage increases, or even colour conversions. The best turns have you cascading those powers into satisfying chains, where one action triggers another, then another, leading to a flurry of bonus actions.

For example, late in our game, I had a moment where I built a red gizmo. Because I built a red gizmo, I got two bonus marble picks. Because I picked a red marble, I got to blindly draw two extra marbles from the dispenser. And because I did all that, I scored two bonus victory points. Those moments feel incredible.

Image Credit: Marco Scomparin @molecola via BGG

That one turn was great, but building up to that point is slow and painful. The game starts with every player having the same basic gizmo, offering a single blind draw from the dispenser when you archive a gizmo, which is about as exciting as a cold bowl of oatmeal. Gizmos absolutely shines when the engine building comes alive and starts firing on all cylinders, but it takes a while for things to get rolling.

And sometimes, they don’t roll at all. The dispenser can stagnate if it’s full of colours no one needs. There’s no built-in way to reset it, so if five black and one blue marbles are clogging the offer, and no one has black synergies, tough luck. Likewise, the game can be punishing if you don’t plan ahead. One player in our game archived a gizmo requiring six marbles, while his storage limit was only five. Without a way to discard that gizmo, he was kind of stuck for the rest of the game, desperately researching for an upgrade he could afford. It was brutal watching his game grind to a halt while the rest of us flourished.

Image Credit: Pongrácz Zsolt @PZS69 via BGG

The marbles, the dispenser, the satisfying domino effect of well-chained turns, it all works so wonderfully well for this light engine building game. But on the other hand, it also feels like it could have been pushed further. More variety in gizmos, variable player powers, a way to refresh the dispenser, any of these tweaks could have taken it to the next level. Gizmos was released in 2018, I feel like any hope for an expansion to add more to the game has long since perished.

That said, not every game needs to be a complex affair. Gizmos is a great family-weight game, but one I’d hesitate to bring out with younger kids due to its slow start and somewhat punishing nature when a player doesn’t plan appropriately. As for my core gaming group, it lacks the depth to be a go to engine-builder. Ultimately, Gizmos sits in that weird middle space, too light for one group, too slow for another.

But when the engine finally clicks? Yeah, that’s a great game.

Crash Octopus – Board Game Review

Crash Octopus – Board Game Review

by | Mar 8, 2025 | Board Game Reviews, Reviews

At the end of the day, I just like playing with toys. It’s that core concept that keeps pulling my attention back to dexterity games, and no company in hobby board gaming does dexterity games quite like Itten games. I’ve previously talked about Tokyo Highway, and today’s review I’m covering designer Naotaka Shimamoto’s follow-up, Crash Octopus

First thing I want to speak of, is the cost. It’s not something I generally talk about when I review a game, but in times where the cost is exceptional, it’s worth commenting on. Crash Octopus launched on Kickstarter for about $30 (CDN), plus $15 shipping. Since the Kickstarter, I’ve only seen it for sale on Board Game Bliss for an eye watering $70+ shipping. So when it popped up on Marketplace for $25, I jumped on the opportunity. And talking with the fellow who I bought it from, there was significant interest in the game.

I didn’t expect just how small the box was going to be. At $70, I expected so much more. While the box was packed well (unlike Tokyo Highway‘s large, mostly empty box), there was still some dissonance between the product I held in my hands, and the perceived value. If I had paid $70 for this box, I would have felt ripped off. There is a discussion to be had about how to value a game, how the cost of the game is more than the physical production. The time and effort of everyone involved with a project deserve to be fairly compensated, but I can’t shake the feeling of holding a small box and mentally figuring out how many hours I have to work to pay for the game.

Enough about economics. Let’s talk Crash Octopus. Aesthetically, Crash Octopus manages to evoke an incredible about of theme from a vibrant pink half dome and 8 wiggly tentacles. The boats are simple and effective, and the treasures you’re trying to collect are suitably eclectic. Itten knows how to utilize simplicity and minimalism to great effect to create a great looking game. Crash Octopus is vibrant and exudes charm and fun.

The game is contained within a blue string, with a line of white and black beads. The gameplay is simple, on your turn you either flick a treasure at your boat, or flick your anchor to reposition your boat. If you flick treasure and touch your boat, you get to load that treasure onto your boat. The first to collect all 5 different types of treasure is the winner. Every time someone loads treasure, a pink crab moves one bead forward. When it passes a black bead, an octopus attack occurs. Each player drops the dice on top of the octopus head, then, moving either a tentacle or the octopus head itself, depending on the die roll. Should that die manage to crash into any boat and send treasure skittering back onto the table, the octopus attack ends. The game continues until either the crab has stepped over all the beads, or, one player has collected all 5 treasure types.

My biggest criticism with Tokyo Highway, and most dexterity games in general, is that if players are sufficiently skilled, the game can last forever. Tokyo Highway in particular comes to a grinding halt as soon as one player makes a mistake, and is tasked with meticulously rebuilding the city before play can continue. Crash Octopus‘s game timer (the crab and the beads) keeps the game short. I can’t tell you how often I had 4 treasures on my boat, only to get bumped by the dice and my hard-earned treasures knocked off the boat, effectively undoing several turns of effort. The visual representation of how many treasures are left to be loaded makes Crash Octopus feel quick and breezy, for which I’m thankful.

The dexterity itself is fickle. You flick the treasures with a little flag, and some of the treasures are awful shapes for flicking. Like the goblet, which is a cone shape and has a tendency to roll in the exact wrong direction. Or the stick, which somehow always seems to be pointing at the wrong angle towards your ship, making a direct flick nigh impossible. The pieces are all delightfully challenging in their own way, and it’s hilarious when someone mis-judges their flick strength and sends their treasure crashing into their hull, scattering everything else.

Speaking of flicking, it’s kind of satisfying that you have to use a little flag to do all your flicking instead of your finger. Using a foreign tool flattens the play field right off the bat, rather than having your Crokinole expert friend having an advantage right off the bat. The flags are stiff and are fun to use, and like everything else that Itten makes, is well crafted.

Flicking bits of wood is a simple pleasure, and Crash Octopus is a quintessential example of a good dexterity game. A little push your luck, some space for the hail-mary clear across the table shot that gets everyone shouting and standing in their chair when you manage to land it, and some delightful spite when you use octopus to attack to knock your opponents hard earned treasures back into the ocean. Also, the instant karma when you accidentally smash your own ship with the die. It’s so simple, so pure, and so much fun.