Kodama symbols can net you an additional action. This additional action cannot be the same as your other actions unless a new lvl 2 Guardian Animal Card or the 11 tree is in your play area.

If your Help Line shows 3 solitary symbols (not canceled by gregarious symbols), you can then perform only 1 Action.Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands) may take longer to reach you. You win the game by planting 12 different protective trees, or by collecting 12 sacred flowers to awaken Sanki, or by putting out 12 fires to permanently repel Onibi. Each turn has 3 phases and up to 2 actions to perform. Your main task is to choose the winning way! Phase 1: Guardian Animals You can also use them to discard any Fire Varan cards that appear in your Help Line. Varans are Onibi’s servants and they heat up the gameplay! As a result, you may be able to keep drawing Animal Guardians into your Help Line even with a bunch of lonely, solitary wolves in there too!

You can only ever take one Tree per action. Across the game you can take two identical Trees if you want (if you want to double up on certain Tree’s element bonuses). Note that you need 12 different Protective Trees to trigger a victory condition. (Not 12 Trees total.) And… due to all this speculation about how to best win the game, I’ve been thinking about the game pretty constantly this week, and that doesn’t happen often. As a result, this is easily one of the more intriguing games for me this year, and one I still want to explore further. I will probably play this in person with my regular groups more, but it’s also available online at BGA if you want to try it there. In some ways, this game might play easier online as you’ll have the computer to count up your totals in the different areas as well as make sure that you’re not missing any bonuses from your trees or tree board (as we often miscounted things on our own in the FTF games). Move forward on the circle of spirits. Add up the amount of spirit elements you have and move forward that amount of spaces. This will gain you victory points. Be the first player to plant 12 different Protective Trees. Think of these like a defensive army against Onibi’s relentless fire. Your choice of actions to take are to do with the elements present on the cards you drew this turn. The sun, water, sapling and wind. (The flower isn’t an action you take – that’s one of the victory conditions, remember? If you draw cards that have a sum of 12 flowers then boom! That’s one of the game-end triggers, and that awakens Sanki, the great Guardian of the Forest.)

Living Forest doesn’t have a set number of rounds. Instead, when one (or more) player(s) triggers one win condition, that signals the final round of the game. It’s a race, then, in that regard. There are three different win-conditions that you’re all shooting for: But how do you go about accomplishing these goals? First, let’s set up the game and grasp what the components look like on your tabletop. Setting Up The Game Plant a protective tree – if your Guardian Animals awarded you any plant points i.e. visible in your Help Line, you can buy a tree tile and place it on your board. The placement must be adjacent to a previously planted one. Every tree gives you permanent elements and/or a bonus action. Plus, filling rows, columns get you added permanent rewards (with corners offering an immediate one-off boon!).

Or, you could add up the value of your water symbols. You can use this sum to extinguish Fire chits from inside the Circle of Spirits. Fire chits come in values 2/3/4. Let’s say for example there is a three 2s, two 3s, and one 4 Fire chit on the Circle of Spirits, and you have a sum of six water. You could choose to extinguish the 2 and the 4 (=6), the 2 and the 3 (=5), both 3s (=6), or all three 2s (=6). If you have a choice, you’ll take the highest quantity Fire chits (three 2s, rather than 2 and 4). Why? Because one of the victory conditions is to be the first to get 12 Fire chits! Build An Engine Out Of Trees There’s one other action though, which is to move your piece on the circular forest board where all the player standees are. Doing so nets you a bonus depending on where you land, either a free action of one of the other types, or a useful fragment, which you can spend during your draw to discard a solitary card. In a clever twist, if you can leap-frog another player piece, you get to steal a victory tile from them, which reduces their progress toward one of the win conditions while increasing yours. However, you also set yourself up to be leap-frogged in turn if that player has enough movement action total and chooses to take it. In case you don’t have enough symbols to spend, you can always consider the ‘Take 1x Fragment Tile’ action. This is always available. Not the most exciting… But if the timing is right, it could create a mega Help Line for you! Woah-oah! Livin’ On A Flare Once all players have finished drawing their cards, the guardian Animals phase ends and you can move on to the Action phase. You can stop drawing cards whenever you want. However, if you reveal a card showing a third solitary symbol , then you must stop drawing cards. This card closes your Help Line.

About Dale Yu

Jonathan (5+ plays) : I really like this game, enough so that after a few plays on BGA, I went and bought a copy. I said ‘love it’ in this review because the game takes ~5-7 rounds and each round, each player takes two out of the five possible actions, but some of them chain, so you can move around the rondel which lets you get a tree, which lets you get some fire tokens. Although it is one action, that sequence lets you take three actions with one. It has enough choice each turn without out staying its welcome and has led to memorable moments and surprises, such as thinking you are winning and then realize your victory next turn will be a turn too late. You do need to pay attention to what the other players are doing, as there might be certain actions you want to avoid taking because they will set up an opponent. I did not feel there was too much take-that, which I dislike, but for those who don’t like it, I am confident a variant will be found. As an aside, I like the colors green and blue., so I found the game beautiful as well.

Rounds continue in this manner until one player hits one of the three victory conditions. Once this occurs, that signals that this will be the final round of the game. This could cause players to take high risks in this round! Should you draw more cards than is safe? It might help you get that mega-move you’ve been building up towards!

Plant one and only one Protective Tree: Add up the amount of leaves and take one, and only one, Protective Tree for a total cost equal to or lower than your number of leaves. Place it in your Forest, on a space adjacent to a Protective Tree already planted. Diagonal spaces do not count. Reminder: having 12 different Protective Trees is a way to win the game. In Living Forest, players play as one of the four Spirits of Nature, trying to become the Grand Protector of the Forest. The Four Spirits of Nature – Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn – have been called to rescue the Sacred Tree of the Forest facing the devastating flames of Onibi… You can keep drawing Guardian cards, but if you reveal 3 Guardians with “ solitary” symbols printed on them in a row, you must stop. A “gregarious” or “neutral” symbol will cancel out a solitary symbol. You can use any Lotus tiles you have acquired to discard a card just revealed with a solitary symbol card to enable you to keep drawing if you like.