From “Meh” to Must-Play

🌲 Black Forest was the biggest surprise of LeiriaCon for us. A very positive one in fact! 🥳 Playing so many different games, I didn't think this one would win out, especially as I wasn't interested in this last year either when it was one of the big releases coming out. Turns out it's pretty good!

Black Forest does feel like a typical Uwe Rosenberg game, but it's much more fresh than his older titles. As usual there are tons of buildings 🏠, all with different abilities, so a lot of the game is spent looking at them, trying to remember what they do, and trying to cobble together a combination of them that helps your chosen strategy. The board holding them helps though, by sorting them according to their effects. 👍 Buildings are double sided too for better replayability.

The game features resource wheels like Glass Road. 🧐 Whenever you have every basic resource available, you rotate the pointer of the wheel forward, which changes the amounts - reducing basic resources but producing glass (or making provisions from food on the second wheel). This is a unique and intriguing mechanic, but it really does need some getting used to. 🤯 At least 2 times I produced wood to have enough for a building, which in turn rotated the wheel spending my much needed wood for glass automatically. 🙈

Choosing actions is pretty neat. You have a worker 👨‍🌾 on the main board, which can move from town to town by spending provisions, landing between two action tiles and doing those actions. There is also a traveling merchant which you can use to swap it with another action tile so you can better combine what you need. This is much more interesting than basic worker placement, but isn't too complex either. 😉

Your board is another cool aspect. ☝️ This is where you place buildings but also forests, ponds, fields and pastures, which are needed or used by different actions. E.g. the more ponds you have, the more water or fish you can collect. 

💬 We are very much looking forward to playing Black Forest again. 😊 I think getting to know the buildings will help a lot, making the game faster, but also allowing you to have more of a plan.