Everything Changes, I’m Still The Same: FOREST SHUFFLE DARTMOOR

My buddy, Doug, from the Acadiana Gamers invited me to learn Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor on BGA this month. I was always a little lukewarm to the original, at least in person, since it is a table hog, we tend to play it with a bunch of players, the board state changes so much before your turn, and the key is scanning all of the cards in the clearing which is tough when you are far away from the market. 

Those criticisms aside, Forest Shuffle has always been fun online, when you can take your time and choose your cards or your play wisely.

But the new Dartmoor standalone intrigued me. Here was a reimagining of the original game, with supposedly re-balanced cards, but with the promise of a new card called the Moors which tweaked the spatial card play a bit. Instead of just playing cards around trees in the four cardinal directions, now players can play two cards above and two cards below, and some of the cards that we draft actually can only be played on Moor cars. 

We played it. We loved it. We have fired it up multiple times since then. I even tracked down a physical copy at Little Wars in Baton Rouge when I was on a road trip and brought it home, to play it on the table two or three times since then. 

If you are already familiar with Forest Shuffle, then putting Dartmoor on the table is easy. You still have the familiar mechanism of getting a handful of cards, many of them multi-faceted, and use the cards as currency to play trees, animals, insects, and plants onto your tableau. Most of the cards will score points depending on where you place the card, or what other cards are already in your tableau. And many of the cards give bonus actions like taking another turn or playing a card for free, if you spend the right symbol out of your hand to the shared market. 

The deck is still seeded with three “winter” cards, and when they come out, the game abruptly ends. It makes for a very tense last few turns, as each player is trying to sneak in one or two more combos onto their tableau, but with the knowledge that each card draw that happens brings us one card closer to the end. 

But the reason I bring up Dartmoor is not as a review. Playing it led to a deeper question for me, one that involves games like The Castles of Burgundy or Concordia where you can get really familiar with cards or tiles over multiple plays. 

My question is simple: what happens next? By that I mean, I’m already a bit in a rut with Dartmoor in that I always seem to gravitate to playing the Moors cards and looking for the multiplying symbols that score three or four or even five points every time I play one. 

But Dartmoor has so many other combos. Fireflies, and reptiles, and mice, and plants and so much more. It’s the same for me in The Castles of Burgundy — I’m always relying on my tried and true strategy of closing out small areas and buying up as many high scoring yellow tiles as I can. 

It doesn’t mean I win all the time, of course. If I am not paying attention, another player can steal all the animals on particular boards and score a metric ton of points. 

The same goes in Concordia. Jerod always laughs at me because I fall into the trap of grabbing a couple of cloth areas, and the Weaver card, and then just hammer the production, Mercator, and Consul cards until I can break a 100. 

I guess what I am asking is whether other gamers are willing to stick their necks out, try new strategies, even though it means you will take your lumps with some bad choices or not-so-efficient moves as you learn the new strategy. Or is perfecting the best choices with a familiar plan the better way? 

As we get late in the year, a time when we will start playing big group and party games around holiday events, it might be time to refresh some of the ways that I play euro games, especially the ones like tCoB and Dartmoor and Concordia that I play a lot. 

It’s time to get out of my comfort zone, test out some new strategies, and squeeze out a little bit more enjoyment out of these games with something that is new and a little daring. 

I cannot be the only one that gets stuck in a rut, so if you have any advice, I’m all ears! 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo