Review: Forest Shuffle – Dartmoor – Exmoor

Introduction & Overview

The rugged landscape of Exmoor, with its steep cliffs and vast moors, is home to numerous plant and animal species. Rediscover familiar elements and discover new ones against the backdrop of this unique environment.

This is how Exmoor is presented to us, the first expansion for Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor designed by Kosch (FYFE). First published in 2026 by Lookout Games in English and German versions. The illustrations are by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella.

It is published in Spanish by Asmodee (there is language dependence on the cards in addition to the rulebook). It maintains the basic parameters of the base game, that is, games for 2 to 5 players, with a suggested minimum age of 10 years and an approximate duration of 60 minutes. The MSRP is €11.99. For this review, a copy of the Spanish version by Asmodee Ibérica was used, kindly provided to us as a review copy by the publisher.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom) measuring 11.1×11.1×3.4 cm (a small square box similar to Trio), we find the following elements:

• 55 Cards (56×87 mm):
  • 12 Terrains
  • 19 Top/Bottom Cards
  • 11 Left/Right Cards
  • 8 Shrubs
  • 5 Caves
• Rulebook

How to Play

Exmoor is an expansion for Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor that simply expands the deck with new terrain, shrub, top/bottom, and left/right cards, almost all of them featuring a new icon (Exmoor) and a new type of effect that allows playing free cards from the clearing, even revealing cards if there are none of the indicated type. It also expands the set of curves. As always, I recommend reading through the base game’s tocho-review to have the basic concepts clear.

Key Concepts

Let’s start by talking about the two new types of Shrubs, which incorporate effects related to reptiles or odonates.

Next, we have a new set of Terrains, where some show the new type of effect appearing for the first time in this expansion, allowing players to play one or more cards of a specific type from the clearing for free. If there are no cards of that type, the effect allows revealing cards to the clearing up to a certain number of cards (drawing stops if the matching number of cards of that type is reached).

In addition to the shrubs, the expansion expands the set of Top/Bottom as well as Left/Right cards.

Finally, the set of Cave Cards is expanded with five new options.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

The following steps are added:

• Shuffle the base game cards together with the 50 expansion cards.
• Remove cards back to the box without looking based on the number of players (70 cards for 2 players, 40 cards for 3 players, 25 cards for 4 players, or 10 cards for 5 players). After this, prepare the deck as usual.
• Use the 5 new cave cards instead of the base game ones during the corresponding setup step.

Game Flow

The game flow is unchanged.

Game End

The end of the game is unchanged.

Personal Opinion

Forest Shuffle (here its tocho-review) has established itself on its own merits as one of the great phenomena of recent years within the card game genre. Its accessible proposal, inspired by the same system as San Juan (here its tocho-review) or Race for the Galaxy (here its tocho-review), where the cost of cards is paid using other cards, perfectly combines hand management with the tension of letting go of cards that might benefit opponents, all wrapped in a tremendously attractive visual presentation.

The fluidity of the games and the huge variety of possible tactical combos (most of them consisting of effects on the played card that only trigger if the cards used as payment display a specific type) have allowed it to release expansion after expansion, demonstrating uncontestable commercial strength and earning a permanent spot in many gamers’ collections.

This rapid rise has transformed Forest Shuffle into a rapidly growing franchise that, for now, shows no signs of slowing down. After exploring Central European ecosystems (with two respective expansions), a second standalone base game dedicated to the British highlands of Dartmoor was released.

In addition to standalone base games, Lookout Games found a goldmine in this small-box expansion format, which allows keeping the product alive in the market without substantially altering the core experience. However, over-exploiting the system can end up turning against it if they don’t contribute enough.

If you are faithful followers of this humble blog, you already know that Forest Shuffle has become a go-to game in our house. Flaws and all, it works perfectly for us, and every Sunday we end up playing a game. That is why the release of a second base game allows us to alternate sets and not feel like we are always doing the same thing. Today we are going to analyze the first expansion for the second base box. Let’s see what it brings, but not before thanking Asmodee for providing the review copy that makes this rambling review possible. As always, I recommend checking out the tocho-review of the base game before continuing to have the best possible context.

However, there is always someone missing out who might be stumbling upon a text related to the franchise for the first time, so here is a quick summary for you. With Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor, the franchise leaves behind continental forests to shift its setting to the iconic highlands of southwestern England.

The standalone game takes as its backdrop Dartmoor National Park, famous for its blanket bogs, imposing rocky outcrops, and fauna adapted to the wet British climate, such as its characteristic wild ponies. This new expansion, Exmoor, complements this ecosystem by introducing the identity of the neighboring region, marked by steep coastal cliffs and expansive heathlands.

At a mechanical level, this second standalone game keeps intact the system that made the original title famous: a series of alternating turns where the active player chooses between drawing two cards (from the deck and/or the clearing) or playing a card in their forest, paying its cost by discarding cards.

The main innovation lies in the introduction of terrains, a new type of base card played horizontally offering four attachment slots (two top and two bottom), specifically designed to host flora and fauna native to this habitat, as opposed to the trees present in the original game that allowed hosting a card on each of their sides (top, bottom, left, and right).

The main virtue of this standalone version is that it natively integrates elements that arrived via expansions in the original game, such as shrubs (which provided passive effects to draw cards when playing cards of a specific type) and a cave deck with special effects that allowed developing different strategic approaches.

We no longer feel that forced add-on sensation or huge decks where card combinations got diluted because a large number of them were left out of the game. Let’s say that in Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor everything feels more organic and interconnected, with considerably more options in terms of combinations without having such obvious scoring paths.

However, as expected with a product that sells in droves, it was time to keep milking the cash cow. And that is how we arrive at this first direct expansion for the new standalone title: Exmoor. Lookout Games didn’t hesitate to apply the exact same formula that worked so well for the original design. The problem is that with these small additions, you run the risk of exhausting players.

And that is precisely what happens with this expansion, stumbling again over the same stone that Alpine Twist (here its tocho-review) was in the original saga. Instead of seizing the opportunity to introduce a mechanical twist that justified the purchase, this addition is limited to being a mere pack of additional cards that pads out the deck without bringing particularly interesting concepts.

The only addition worth mentioning is a new type of effect: the ability to play cards directly from the clearing without paying their cost. The novelty lies in its search mechanism: if there are not enough cards of the required type in the clearing, the effect forces revealing cards from the draw deck into the clearing until finding the right type or reaching a pre-set limit. A mechanism designed to guarantee player benefit (though not with absolute certainty) and noticeably accelerate deck progression.

While this effect brings moments of modest satisfaction, it remains a fairly isolated twist that doesn’t alter the global strategic flow. It certainly introduces an extra point of randomness and unpredictability by revealing cards blindly, but it feels more like a patch to streamline the deck than a genuinely compelling addition.

Thus, if we analyze the expansion in isolation, Exmoor suffers from that very same nature typical of products designed for a very specific player profile: the completist or the true devotee of the base game. For the casual player or anyone bringing the game to the table sporadically, it brings nothing that transforms the experience or justifies the extra cost. It certainly increases variability for those who have already squeezed the main game to death and demand to see new cards, but this was something that, in theory, Dartmoor already solved by integrating concepts from all the original game’s expansions and adding terrains.

Moving on to production. As in the base game, the cards feature acceptable card stock, smooth texture, and a rather lackluster flexibility, making sleeving an absolute must (not only to shuffle more comfortably, but because it facilitates overlapping cards). The rulebook strictly explains how the new effects work. Visually, Toni Llobet and Judit Piella continue to delight us with a spectacular level of detail when depicting the flora and fauna of British landscapes.

And let’s wrap this up. Exmoor is a small expansion for Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor that has a relatively low impact on the gameplay experience, as mechanical contributions are minuscule, leaving the inclusion of an effect that combines revealing cards into the clearing with playing cards for free from it as the only notable highlight, streamlining the deck at the cost of introducing an extra touch of randomness. While for those who bring the game to the table regularly it might be an acceptable addition simply for the variability it adds, the reality is that, overall, it is a skippable expansion. For all these reasons, I give it a…