Last modified April 2, 2025 by jarjar
FIRST IMPRESSION
The latest from Uwe Rosenburg (Agricola, Caverna and others), which is intended to be a collaboration with another author this time (Tido Lorenz) but still in a farm theme with resource management. We take up the concept of Glass Road in this game with these wheels that turn and that we must optimize thoroughly. But here in a well thought-out worker placement instead of card manipulation. It is also intended to be a little longer than its predecessor.
Dance Black Forest, you start with a small estate that requires buildings and livestock. You will travel through villages looking for the best specialists to assist you. By leveraging the skills of these specialists, you will gather resources, develop new landscape tiles (like ponds and fields), and construct various buildings. You will have the option to expand your estate by producing glass.
GAME FACTS
The third "dummy" player in the two-player setup doesn't seem to be unanimous in the community. Rahdo, a well-known YouTuber, has poured his heart out here and proposes another way to play 2-player by removing the "dummy" player: when you enter the city where your opponent is or a city adjacent to it, you simply give him a resource.
“Black Forest is primarily a Rosenberg design. Uwe showed me this game in 2012!, but we decided to go with the “smaller” Glass Road design at that time. While Glass Road was released shortly after in 2013, Black Forest had been sitting on our shelves for quite a while. In its original design, Black Forest had a similar action selection mechanic to Glass Road (specialty cards). While we really liked this mechanic, we wanted something different for Black Forest. And that’s where Tido came in: he turned the specialty cards into a village with the travel aspect.”
The publisher: Feuerland Spiele
TECHNICAL SHEET
Number of games played: 5
Best setup: 1, 3 players
Level: experienced player
My best score: 50
MY IMPRESSION
I loved :
>> This resource management with the wheel, wow really brilliant!
>> Very good solo, no automaton to manage, so no distraction, we stay focused on our shots.
>> Possible double actions of placement and the possibility of changing the configuration of villages with the action of the cart.
>> The large quantity of buildings available offering several options for building your points machine.
>> Lots of possible options in turn, lots of calculations, often missing just one resource to make a very profitable action.
I liked less:
>> The two-player rule that lacks refinement.
>> Not many task tiles available, with 4 players, they must run out quickly.
>> Long term replayability?
>> Player boards bending. Seems to be a widespread problem, didn't they test this at Capstone Games? They probably rushed it for Essen. I actually contacted Capstone (Eric) in October 2024, and he told me he would send me new boards, once they figured out how to fix the problem (still pending as of April 2, 2025, probably the worst service I've had from a publisher so far :/).
A game that excels in its field, offering many tactical and strategic options to target and optimize the production of specific resources. The manipulation of the wheel offers a good puzzle!
FUN FACTOR 🙂 🙂 🙂