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Living Forest Duel or how to experience all the thrills of the award-winning Living Forest in a tense and tactical two-player showdown!
SUMMARY:
In Living Forest Duel, two players face off as the spirits of Summer and Winter, each striving to save the sacred forest and be recognized as its ultimate protector. Although their goals are similar, only one season will claim the honors.
Your goal? Be the first to achieve one of the four victory conditions:
Plant a 3×3 rectangle of Guardian Tree cards in your Forest
Have only cards of your season on the recruitment line
Collect 8 Fire tokens
Move the Onibi creature to your opponent's side once the Onibi card is in their possession.
The game is played in alternating turns. On each turn, choose one of the following options:
Draw 1 guardian animal card from the shared draw pile and add it to the shared help line
Use 1 action token on 1 guardian animal card in the shared help line
• Draw a guardian animal card
Draw a card from the shared draw pile and place it face up on one of the three help lines:
the shared help line if it’s a neutral animal
your help line if it’s an animal of your season
your opponent’s help line if it’s an animal of their season
Each animal provides elements that you can use later with one of your two Action tokens.
Be careful: revealing too many solitary animals can be detrimental. After 3 solitary symbols, you lose an Action token, which will significantly reduce your ability to act.
• Use an action token
Place one of your Action tokens on a card to point to the last element corresponding to the action you want to perform. Count all elements of this type visible from the start of the common aid line OR from the last Action token pointing to this element.
Possible Actions:
Recruiting one or more Guardian Animals
Extinguishing the fire by collecting one or more Fire tokens
Planting one or more protective trees
Advancing Onibi toward your opponent
• End of the turn
The turn ends when both Summer and Winter have used up their 2 action tokens.
Add up the value of the fire tokens in the clearing: the value of each fire token is determined by its location. Then, add up your water values. Check to see whether the fire value in the clearing is strictly higher than your water value. If so, add a fire varan card corresponding to your season to the shared discard pile for each fire token present in the clearing.
Next, place a fire token on each of the cards on either side of the Onibi standee.
Retrieve your 2 action tokens back in front of you, and place all of the cards in the help line, as well as the cards in the players' personal lines on the shared discard pile.
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No prior knowledge of Living Forest is required to enjoy Living Forest Duel.
—description from the publisher
- interesting two-player changes improve control
- familiar core with new interaction
- shared deck-building and line-building; environmental growth motif
- two-player version of the popular Living Forest
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- line-building — line-building element to progress actions
- shared deck-building — deck-building shared between players with interaction
- timed actions — timed action timing to increase strategic tension
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's very tactile so I'm really excited to see this one come out
- the rules pretty simple and then there's some strategic thinking
- there are not that many games out there that take the three dimensional rotational aspect of things into account
- you are octopus with a cube like six-sided Cube
References (from this video)
- interesting multi-condition win paths
- good two-player design that maintains tension
- protect the forest across opposing seasonal spirits
- two-player duel between spirits of summer and winter within a sacred forest
- Lord of the Rings Duel for Middle Earth
- Forest Gump
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Combat: Deck/Hand — competition between two players with aligned goals but opposing seasons
- Multiple victory conditions — four different ways to win (grid, tokens, cards, or Onid positioning)
- Two-player duel — competition between two players with aligned goals but opposing seasons
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- In Conserv, the sea is represented by a bag full of fish and water tokens.
- fast-paced cooperative dice defense game that's infused with Southeast Asian aesthetics
- Saga Collection introduces a new legacy mode that allows players to master gameplay from every set while delving into the game's lore.
- two decks in this game of cards to manage. One for combat and one for development.
- Beyond the Horizon, a civilization game in which players compete to become the most influential society in history through exploration and expansion, development and production, research, and technological advancement.
- Raw. An auction and set collection game with an ancient Egyptian theme.
- Northwest, a two to four player tableau building game with unique point salad scoring and shared movement mechanics.
- What's that I hear? Why, it's that sound game.
- Living Forest Duel, where two players face off as the spirits of summer and winter.