Forest Shuffle: Single-player modifications

I like playing board games a lot. Every once in a while, I come across a new game that just blows my mind. Azul did it a while back. I recently bought Forest Shuffle, and this game is just next-level fun. I don’t even care about winning when I get deep into the synergies of the forest I’m creating. You just admire the beauty of the forest in the end, regardless of the results.

I won’t bore you with all the details on how to play; the game is pretty simple to pick up. Here is my quick gist of the game. The game consists of a deck of cards that have the same backs, but the fronts can be any one of the 8 plant species, animals that live in the left or right slot of a particular tree, or animals, birds, plants, bugs, reptiles, or mushrooms that live in the above or below slot of a particular tree. During the game, you build your forest by planting trees and adding fauna to your forest. The interdependent synergies of flora and fauna exponentially increase your points, so you are always motivated to make your forest as synergetic as possible. For example, you want to keep a good population of predators and prey. There are umpteen more such synergies to play for.

I loved this game so much that I could not stop thinking about it. But convincing your friends to play a game that often runs more than 90 minutes is hard. So I came up with my own set of rules for a single-player version of the game. Here are the modifications:

Single-player rule modifications:

  • Play with 40 cards removed from the deck.
  • Open the clearing with only six slots. At the end of any turn, if there are more than 6 cards in the clearing, clear and discard all of them.
  • Draw six cards into your hand to begin. At any point in the game, you can have a maximum of 10 cards in your hand.
  • Your turns will alternate in what you can do.
    • Every other turn must be used to draw two cards: either two cards from the deck, or one card from the clearing and one card from the deck.
    • Every alternating turn must be used to play or discard cards. You must play at least one card, even if it is a zero-cost card. If you do not, you are required to discard two cards from your hand into the discard pile.
  • If you gain an extra turn as an effect, you can perform any action on that extra turn; after that, your regular turn rotation continues.
  • Modified rule for Linden Trees: Lindens will give you three points per tree only if you have at least three Lindens in your forest.
  • Modified rule for Great Spotted Woodpecker: The Great Spotted Woodpecker will score 10 points if you have all 8 species in your forest.
  • All other rules are the same. You play to maximize your score.

Here is a photo of how my game ended up:

I made 742 points! If you ever try this, let me know how many points you made!