I played several games of “Black Forest” at various player count for this review and I must admit that the more I thought about the game the more I kept asking myself why do I like it? Because spoiler alert, I like the game. It might be the mechanics it might be Uwe Rosenberg design approach or it might be the enticing theme of the game …. Ok the last one is a bit of a stretch on my part, to put it elegantly.
In Black Forest you will travel from village to village to enlist the best tradespeople around in the hopes that you will become the most famous glass maker in Germany’s titular forest, and in the process building up your domain.
Setup and Game Play
There is a lot of setup, in this game but to be fair most of, if not all, Uwe’s designs require a lot of setup. Firstly, put the game board in the center of the table. Populate each village with Tradespeople. Since the villages have several matching suits, just pick random tradespeople for each suit when deciding which tile to add to the board. Next to the game board add the buildings board for both small and big buildings, and populate them with the required building tiles, based on the number in the lower right corner of each tile. For your first game select all building on side A. Select the Big buildings in accordance with the number of players by randomly picking the required number of buildings, 4 for a 1 to 3 player game and 5 for a 4-player game. And we are done …. With the generic setup now, we have to switch to the player setup.
Give each player a production tableau showing the resource wheels. Set each dial at 8 o’clock position. Each player adds their resource markers on the dial. You will start with 0 sand, 1 charcoal, 2 water 3 wood and 0 glass. As you will be traveling from village to village you will need some provisions, 3 to be more exact, 1 meat, 0 porridge and 0 commodities. Add the brick market to 3. Each player starting from the 2nd player gets some extra resources 2nd player gets a pig, the 3rd player gets 1 provision and 1 meat and the 4th player gets a glass resource. Please note that extra resources can very from player count to player count. Each player will now take the main estate and add to that board a Glass hut plus a glass hut tracker, 2 Fields, 2 Ponds and 3 Forests. Starting with the first player each player will now add their meeple to a village from where they want to start the game. At this point if there is anybody left around the gaming table, you can start playing the game.
For all its lengthy setup the game flow is relatively simple and straight forward. On your turn you will move to a location in one village be it in the same village you are already in or another village on the map. If you move in the same village the movement is free but if you decide to progress to another village, you best be packing some food cause each movement will cost you one provision. After moving you can perform the action of the tradespeople you are next too. The board is built in such a way that you will always land between two trades people which will grant you 2 separate actions. You can perform these actions in any order. Conversely if you don’t want to take the action offered by the tradespeople you can complete a job. These jobs usually require some setting up and quite a few resources but their benefits are enormous. This back and forth continues until one or both the provision markers a player's cooking wheel have reached or pass the end game symbol. Once that happens, each player including the one that triggered the end of the game play one more round. Then each player tallies up their points and the player with the most points wins the game.
The Good
I am a fan of Uwe’s design philosophy. Just like “Feast of Odin”, Black Forest retains that ‘all actions give you points’ mentality. You get a pig, congratulation, you get a point. You expand your domain, you get 2 points; you build a building, you get some points, basically the game is not about ruthlessly out grinding the other player, just rather to optimize your resources and extract the most out of them. Unlike other games, cough cough… here is looking at you Brass, Uwe’s design awards optimal play as one would expect and it doesn’t punish drastically suboptimal play and I love this friendly approach to game design.
Black Forest is at heart a puzzledly resource conversion game which forces the player to deep dive for a maximalist approach. However, unlike other games such as Nusfjord and Feast of Odin, the resource conversion is done through the resources dials. And it is done quite brilliantly I might add. You see every time you would get a particular resource the resource token would swift on the dial towards a higher number to represent the newly acquired resources. However, if you move the last resources token and there is no other resource token next to the dial, that dial will move too. Essentially there are situation where you earn 4 coals (make belief example) just so that by the end of the movement the dial has shifted too and you are left with just 2 coals out of those 4. Again, the friendly approach of Uwe’s designs is noticeable, even if you lose the coal on the right side of the dial, on the left side of the you will win some glass (thematically you have converted coal and other resources into glass). This mechanism opens up interesting decision space around the sequence of earning and spending the mentioned resources.
The Bad
I don’t necessarily believe the game has any faults. However, I see some features which can be potential deal breakers for others. Firstly, being a resource conversion game you need to laser focus on what you want to achieve. Unlike other games which allow you to pivot from your initial strategy, here you need to figure out what you want to play for and never stray from that path. Secondly, the 2 players variant has a neutral player used to clot up the villages. You can move the neutral meeple around every time you use a commodity and interchange 2 tradespersons around. It is an interesting mechanic, a lovely mechanic, a useless mechanic. I played the game 2 times at the 2 players count and one time we forgot to move the neutral player while the second time we kept moving him to areas neither of us cared for. Thirdly, and I know this is pedantic coming from a guy whose favorite game is Ark Nova, the theme although done well is a bit lacklustered. Don’t get me wrong, the reason some resource convert into making glass or the way your hut moves when you acquire a new extension to your domain make perfect sense and it is historically accurate, but realistically speaking who wants to play a game about making glass in the 13th century in Germany. Even I am not that engaged by the theme and I am a certified history nut.
The perfect home
So, who is this game for I hear you ask. If you are like me an Uwe Rosenberg fan, I would definitely recommend it. There is a small caveat to this though, if you already own Glass Road from the same designer, this is more of the same. I am not saying don’t buy it, just don’t expect something revolutionary. Even if you aren’t an Uwe fan but you like crunchy resource games, this could be right up your alley. I have however a counter recommendation, a particular type of player that should stay away from this game. If you are prone to AP or you love looking over all the option before taking a call just skip this game unless you want your board game session to become a board game sleep over party.
