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The Fox in the Forest Review
To dip my feet into modern board gaming I decided to pick up a small two-player card game. I chose The Fox in the Forest specifically because it was considered to be one of the best two-player games out there at the time and it was cheap, about $15.
A year later, I am now writing a review about Fox in the Forest and telling you why I believe it’s one of the best two-player card games I have ever played.
What is The Fox in the Forest?
The Fox in the Forest is a trick-taking game with a twist. Some of the cards you play with have special powers to spice up the game. However, the biggest twist is that if you win too many times, you end up losing the game. But losing on purpose sometimes isn’t as simple. Sounds interesting right?
What is Trick-Taking?
In the simplest explanation… Trick-taking is a genre of card games where you play a card from your hand and then your opponent plays a card of the same suit. If their number is higher they win the trick, if yours is higher you win the trick! But if they don’t have the same suit in their hand as the one you played, they can play any other suit they want.
If they play a suit that matches the “trump suit”, (the special suit declared at the beginning of the round) then they win no matter who’s number is higher.
Here is an example. In the photo below, the trump suit is Moons (the card under the deck). The top player plays a 6 of Bells. The bottom player must follow with a Bells card of any number from their hand. But since they dont have a Bells card to play, they play a 2 of Moons instead. They win the trick because even though their number was lower than the top player, the suit of the bottom player matched the trump suit which is the suit that wins all other suits.
Trick-taking is a deceptively simple mechanic. Once you understand it you’ll be able to make interesting decisions about which cards to play and which to save. You’ll be able to read your opponent and try to bait out some of their cards and maybe remove a suit from their hand entirely.
The Twist!
The Fox in the Forest card game takes this concept of trick-taking with a regular deck of cards and removes one suit of cards to make the game tighter. Then it gives half of the cards special powers that spice up the game. Some examples are…
– Replacing the trump card for another card in the middle of your turn.
– Or a card that when played forces your opponent to play a specific card from their hand even when they dont want to.
The game’s card pool is small enough to remember what each card does and you’ll find yourself playing around cards that you “suspect” could be in your opponent’s hand. These special cards can turn the tide in the middle of a round. Do you use your special cards early to set yourself up to win that round or save them for later to surprise your opponent?
Then we add the icing on the cake of this card game. The concept where if you win too many times you lose. The first one to score 21 points or more is the winner. The game is played in a series of rounds where each round consists of 13 turns. You are dealt 13 cards and each turn you will play one of those cards. At the end of the round, you count up how many tricks you have won and compare that number to the end of the round scorecard. This card and scoring mechanism is the magic of The Fox in the Forest.
Do you have a lot of high cards? Maybe go for 7-9 wins, but not too many. Maybe lose a few tricks on purpose first before showing off all your strong cards.
Do you have a lot of low cards? Maybe go for 0-3 wins, but if you start losing too fast your opponent will catch on to what you are doing and will try to foil your plans.
Scoring 0 or 1 point while your opponent scores 6 is a big swing. So each round the stakes are high.
What I like about Fox in the Forest
The gameplay is solid. It is fun, and in fact hilarious when you purposely end up losing tricks to “overfeed” your opponent making them score 0 points after winning most of the tricks.
There is a lot of thought and strategy that you need to put into how you plan on playing out the round. At first, it’s a tip-toe tug of war, poking at each other to see if anyone is trying to lose all their tricks on purpose. Then once that threshold is passed for both players it’s a sprint to the most wins. So I found the pacing to be very enjoyable.
The rules are clear and I had no issue learning the game or the special powers on the cards. This was my first trick-taking game too, so the fact that I learned it so quickly means the rules were written well.
The game is small, the perfect travel size game to take anywhere with you.
The components are good quality for the price. I like that they added a scorecard and card powers reference for both the players so you dont have to reference the rules mid-game.
What I did NOT like about The Fox in the Forest
The rulebook is a long foldout and I dislike those because reading them and returning back to them to find one rule is a bit of a mess.
The theme is based on some fairy tale. So The Fox in the Forest is just a twist on the trick-taking genre with a fairy tale theme slapped on top of it. The rules of the game were just rules and did not connect with the theme of the game.
I wish there was a theme behind the rule to help me remember the rules. I found myself making up stories to help me remember the rules like, “The tricks we win are food that we as foxes are battling over, and if you eat too much you end up as a slow fat fox so the hunters are gonna get you.” That’s why you lose when you are greedy.
Kinda sounds ridiculous, but that helps me remember rules. I try to give them a reason or meaning behind them.
Final thoughts on The Fox in the Forest
My girlfriend and I pulled this game out on a quiet Saturday morning and fell in love with it after our first playthrough. We ended up playing this little card game all day long. It was the catalyst for us to try more new board games.
As we started to pick up more complicated two-player games like Star Realms or 7 Wonders Duel we started to play The Fox in the Forest less and less. But Fox in the Forest still remains a fantastic game in my collection. I’ll pull it out when I wanna teach someone a quick simple card game and I would definitely prefer it over any card game using a regular deck of cards.
Although I did find some of my friends had trouble wrapping their minds around the trick-taking concept. But for the ones who it clicked for or for those who already knew trick-taking, this game was an absolute blast.
A solid 7 out of 10 from me, but my urge to replay it has been dwindling as other games offer far more replayability. The Fox in the Forest is a great game if you are looking for a light fun two-player card game and are new to the board gaming hobby.
Pick up your own copy of The Fox in the Forest here.
And check out the list of my Top 100 Board Games if you haven’t done so!
Till next time, happy trick-taking!
– Tony Sticks
