Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor is a new standalone game in the popular Forest Shuffle family. It keeps the same main rules but uses a completely different set of cards. The goal is to gather cards from the shared area and place them on your own playing board to earn points. During the game, you often have to pay for cards using others from your hand. These paid cards go back to the shared area, making them available for your opponents to use. The game focuses on collecting and playing cards that work well together to create big point combinations.
A major new feature in Dartmoor is the introduction of bogs. Besides trees, you can now play bogs as places for animals and plants to live. You can attach other cards to bogs just like you do with trees. However, bogs are played sideways on the table. This means other cards can only be attached to the top or bottom of a bog, with two spots available on each side. The sides of the bog card cannot be used for attachments.
If you have played the original Forest Shuffle, you will feel comfortable with this version right away. The experience is familiar, but there is enough variation to keep it interesting. I found that the game is mostly about deciding which card combinations you want to build and then focusing all your attention on them. It is important to watch what your opponents are doing. You should try not to give them cards that will help them a lot. However, building your own powerful combination is usually more important than blocking others.
Another small variation in Dartmoor is the cave cards. These cards have special powers that can help you during the game. At the start of the game, each player gets to choose their own cave card during the setup phase. This gives you a unique ability that can shape your strategy from the very beginning.
In my playthrough, I decided to use a bog strategy. I had some cards that gave me extra rewards if I had the most bogs on the table. Because of this, I worked very hard to make sure I stayed in the lead for the number of bogs. My opponent, Han, also had many bogs, so it was a close competition. Luckily, I drew many cards that supported a bog strategy. For example, I had cards that let me play another card as a bog for free. This helped me secure my leading position. I had several cards that scored points based on how many bogs I had. I mostly ignored other strategies and just worked on bog-related cards. I only occasionally looked at what others were doing to see if I needed to take a valuable card and use it for my own bog collection.
Similar to the original Forest Shuffle, this Dartmoor version was not particularly exciting for me personally. It is nice to see the many different animals and plants illustrated on the cards. I can understand why collecting cards that create good combos is fun for many people. I can certainly see why the Forest Shuffle series is popular with gamers.
