Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons: Solo Play of FORAGE
Board Game Gumbo is pleased to present another game night recap with Jeremy Dobler. This time, Jeremy gives us his first impression of FORAGE a new game from the team at Flatout Games that is on Kickstarter right now. Here is Jeremy with his initial impressions after his first solo session:
Got a solo play of Forage in. It’s a great little action selection game in a similar vein as Three Sisters, and just as combo-tastic. Forage is designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin and Shawn Stankewich, with gorgeous artwork from Beth Sobel and is currently on Kickstarter from Flatout Games and AEG. (Editor’s note: Jeremy will be teaching us FORAGE live on stream this Monday, February 23, at twitch.tv/BoardGameGumbo at 6:00PM Central. Come join the Chat Krewe!
You start the game with one of each of the three card types: Pantry, Exploration, and Gift Giving. Each corresponds to a specific type of dice action you can take each round. The dice are rolled and a Journey tile is flipped out. These journey tiles are interesting because if you have excess time in your log (gained from various game effects) you can spend some of them to gain additional VP, forage icons, or even actions.
The dice are divided up into two categories: matched dice (A,A,A and/or B,B), or non-matched dice (A,B,C). Matched dice go on the left side of the board and correlate with the Pantry action, and non-matched go on the right correlating with the Exploration action. Selecting a single group of dice, you choose an action. That could be all the Porcini Mushroom (brown short mushroom) dice, or all the Huckleberry (pink blueberry) dice on the left side, plus you get the one special dice from the middle, and then mark off like color jars on your pantry, because you chose matched color dice from the left side.
Alternatively you can select all the non-matched ones on the right, plus the special die in the middle, and cross out the icons on your Exploration cards attempting to cross off adjacent icons, to create paths that surround forest areas gaining their icons to use elsewhere.
The last type of action you can take is a gift giving one, where you’ll still select a single group, but it can be from either side of the board, and those foraged items are applied towards your gift giving cards, which want X amount of grey (any combination), pink, or green goods. Sometimes it wasn’t specific pink or green and you’d have to adhere to that.
Any which way you go, completing portions of the cards gives extra icons to be used either there or elsewhere, or VP for end game scoring, and completing the card as a whole has an additional icon you get as well as making you eligible to score some of the Goal cards like ‘Complete 3+ Gift-Giving Cards’. Everyone who achieves a Goal card in a round will be eligible for the highest VP value, but be quick about it, because at the end of that round, you mark out that VP value and it gives finished values of completed later. There’s no particular turn order, everyone plays simultaneously, signalling the end of your turn, by drafting a new Pantry, Gift-Giving, or Exploration card, keeping it face down until everyone has done so. After which you flip it over and choose whether you want to add it to your tableau to potentially fulfill, or discard it for an extra time unit you can use later. You’ve also got the extra time units you’ve earned that can be spent either as a dice of a type you need, or two that can be used as a whole extra dice action with the caveat being that you must select a DIFFERENT group than you previously selected, but you still get the special die again.
At the end of a round there’s a bit of a clean up, discarding any Journey tiles purchased with time units, or immediate tiles that everyone got to action at the beginning of the round, re-rolling all the dice to set the selection for the next round, and then flipping over a new Journey tile, which re conveniently also the game timer. 13 rounds to Forage as much as you can to fulfill as many cards as you can.
At the end of the 13th round, you tally your VP:
- 5VP per pair of Experience and Knowledge tokens, plus 1 VP for each unpaired;
- VP from Goal cards you’d achieved;
- VP from Journey tiles you’ve purchased, if any;
- VP from completed Gift-Giving cards (these are typically additional VP for completing XYZ, or straight raw VP);
- VP from Pantry cards; and
- VP from Exploration cards.
Sum it up to see who was the best Forager with the highest amount of VP. For more information on the game and the crowdfunding project, click here:
Forage & Honeypot Kickstarter Page
Jeremy is an omni-gamer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who games at home with his wife and young son, but also can be frequently hosting or visiting game nights with friends all over Acadiana. Jeremy loves games about nature, IP games involving turtles and batmen, and games appropriate to play with his young son, but expect lots of different games discussed here each time. All photos courtesy of Jeremy Dobler.
** A complimentary copy of the prototype was provided by Flatout Games, who is a supporter of Southern Board Game Fest. Many of Flatout Games’ titles will be available complimentary of the company for play-to-wins at the Festival.