Theme: Trees and Forests

Autumn is coming to an end in the Savernake Forest… Help the animals gather and store food for the winter! Savernake forest is a game where 2-4 players build their own section of the forest with paths where animals and food will appear. To get the highest score, players must ensure that on each path the animals can collect their favorite food.

Foxes, hedgehogs, beavers, owls, rabbits, woodpeckers, wild cats... Up to 23 different types of animals live together in the Savernake Forest. At the end of autumn, they all prepare to spend the cold winter with enough provisions and here you are to give them a hand… Or a paw! To play Savernake Forest you have two decks of square cards, one showing the animals and the other with forest paths full of succulent food. Each player is randomly given an animal card, showing how many foods they can store and their preferences. For example, the fox loves eggs, but not berries or nuts. To get the best score, you must try to get each animal to collect its favorite foods.

During setup, three road cards and one animal card are laid out for all players to see. Each player, on his turn, will choose one of them and add it to his forest, always respecting three rules: there can never be two animals on the same path; cards must be adjacent and no cards can be placed outside of a 4x4 grid. The game ends when all participants have completed their forest, with a total of 16 cards.

Throughout the game, players will have the help of some animals, depending on the card they choose from the central market. The rooster will help you get up early, so you can be the first to choose a card in the next turn. The armadillo teaches you how to dig better shelters to store more food, so you can take a burrow token and add it to one of your animal cards to increase that animal's storage capacity by 1. The goat teaches you to hydrate yourself better, offering a water drop token that can be associated with a food and increase its value by 1. Finally, the rabbit helps you attract new animals to your forest.

For players looking for more advanced challenges, the rulebook includes a two-player variant with some modifications that increase the difficulty. Quite a boost if you already master the basic rules!

With a dreamy art, Savernake Forest offers a perfect balance between fun and strategy that makes it perfect for any type of playgroup. Family and friends will have a great time helping the animals of the forest, while trying to make the most of their paths to reach the highest score. Stroll through Savernake in the fall and be swept away by the enchantment of its wildlife!

—description from the publisher

A clever tile placement game by Uwe Rosenberg

A wide orchard lies in front of Applejack's cottage.
Help him and his daughter plant apple trees and harvest the juicy apples. Don't forget to set up the beehives between the trees. Because at the end of this game, whoever gets the most honey wins!

On their turn players choose 1 tree tile from the harvest board in the middle of the table. This tile shows a combination of types of apples and apple blossoms as well as beehives. The beehives show the cost for the tile in honey.

The tree tile will be placed on the players orchard. The beehives need to be placed next to other beehives on tiles already in play in order to get the players honey tiles.

When the Applejack die on the harvest board comes across an apple icon this type of apple will be harvested - again gaining the players honey tokens. But only if they arranged the apples in a meaningful way.

After 19 turns each players orchard is filled and the final scoring takes place. Apples, apple blossoms and collected honey will be scored. Whoever has the highest score will win a game of Applejack!

Summer nights, the woods, and the campfires where it is good to roast marshmallows — it doesn't get better than this!

Well - that is about to change! Suddenly, out of the bushes, hordes of zombie animals are rushing towards you. Do they want to steal your marshmallows? Not at all! It's your brains they want to cube and roast over the campfire. Your goal in Oh My Brain is to rid yourself of these assailants — that is, the cards in your hand — as quickly as possible to avoid gradually losing your mind because losing your brain entirely means being transformed into a zombie...and losing the game!

The card deck consists of cards numbered 0-19, and to start a round of play each player takes three cards from the deck and places one in their "cemetery" (a card holder) and the other two in their hand. They then do this twice more to have a hand of six cards and a cemetery of three cards. Each player starts with a number of brain tokens.

On a turn, you must play to the central pile (campfire), playing a number higher than the current highest number. You can play multiple copies of the same number, and if you do, you place all copies of that number after the first one into the cemetery of one or more opponents. You can always play a 0, which restarts the pile. If you play an 8, the next player must play lower than an 8, then the pile ascends again. If you play an 11, you take another turn. If you play certain high or low cards, you must roll the special die, which may have you play again, steal a brain from another player, swap campfires with an opponent, or take some other action.

If you cannot play, you lose a brain token, clear the pile, draw two cards, place one of those cards in your cemetery, then start the pile again by playing from your hand. If you have fewer than three cards in hand at the end of a turn, refill your hand to three from the cards in your campfire. If you have played all of your cards, success! You have fended off the zombie animals, and all opponents lose a brain token for each card in their hand and cemetery. If any player has no brains remaining, the player with the most brain tokens wins; otherwise, shuffle the cards and play another round, starting with the player who has the fewest brains.

In a post-apocalyptic world, the tribes of the wind are going to rebuild the world on the polluted ruins from the past.

Players will have to plant forests, build new villages and temples, and decontaminate surrounding areas.

They will be able to play cards from their hand. But be careful! The effect or even the possibility of playing the card may vary depending on... the back of your surrounding opponents' cards.

Players may also send their wind riders to explore the area, plant forests, or build villages and temples using all the gathered resources.

As the game progresses, you strive to complete objectives that will allow you to unlock your guide's special abilities, and to improve your tribe's powers.

When someone builds their 5th village, the end of the game is triggered. The player with the most points, depending on pollution, villages, temples, layout of their forests, and other various objectives, wins!

—description from the publisher

Renature is a majority game with dominoes for 2-4 players.

Each player gets a board with large pieces of wood in the form of turf, bushes, pines and oaks. These plants are used for the majorities on the large valley board and are available in a neutral color and in the respective player color. In addition, each player gets a stack of dominoes with two out of ten animal motifs on each of them.

On your turn, place one of the three dominoes in your hand on two brook spaces of the valley board. Of course, the domino must be adjacent to another domino that shows the same animal. If the placed domino borders a free space of a brown area, you can decide whether a tuft of grass or any other of your plants should be placed on that space. Tufts of turf have a value of 1, bushes of 2, pines of 3 and oaks of 4. After placing the plant, you score points for it and every plant piece that is already in this brown area and has the same or a lower value.

Once a brown area is framed with dominoes, the majority is scored and the player with the highest total plant value in the area gets the points that are printed as a large number on that area's flower token. Whoever has the second highest value gets the lower number. Two things make this especially tricky: The neutral pieces count as their own color and not among the majority of the player who has used them. Also, if colors are tied, they a treated as though they are not present at all in the area. After the area has been scored, the player who framed the area receives its flower token, which will give them extra points at game end.

In the course of the game, you may run out of plants, but these can be bought back from the game board with clouds. Clouds can also be used to buy another turn and to appoint a new joker animal. This animal then counts as all animals and makes it easier to put on. At the end of a player's turn, a domino is drawn and it is the next player's turn.

Once all players have run out of dominoes, the game ends with a final scoring.