The Fox In The Forest Duet: Review
A Team Based Trick-Taking Gem
Box Art
Published by: Renegade Games Created by: Foxtrot Games
One of my most vivid memories involving a trick-taking game came on my last day of high school. After finishing exams, inking the pages of countless yearbooks and talking with friends of the very real decisions that will come in the next steps of our lives, our teacher gave us the last hour of the final day of our high school year all to ourselves.
Legs of desks rattled on linoleum, screeching, while someone pulled out a deck of cards, soon split into hands corralled by eager fingers, organizing and placing like suits together. If we were going to welcome the last hour of our childhood, Spades was going to be the way to do it.
I, and my friends, and even acquaintances, loved playing Spades. It was our go-to game during lunch time, or whenever school days were less about studying and more about waiting for the clock hands to strike 3PM. For me, what did it, was the concept of partnership, of mind-melding with the person across from me trying to infer what they had in their hand, or the give and take of winning or losing a trick.
That essence is well translated into Fox in the Forest Duet. It's probably why it resonates so well with me, and why I think it’s one of the better small, filler games to come out last year. I’m kicking myself for not playing this sooner! Let’s see why this collaborative game of tricks is such a delight.
Tricks and Treats
Components
Fox in the Forest Duet is the sequel to its previous trick-taking game, Fox in the Forest. I’ll take a bit of a detour, there is a svelte box holding everything here—it’s a seriously tiny little thing, a cardboard critter—a 33-card deck, a board and some forest tokens and gems. It’s a neat and tidy production, and it’s worth mentioning every inch of that box is taken up by the components. No needless space is wasted here. I really appreciate that, and it bears repeating that game publishers should do everything in their power to minimize the overall footprint of a game. Good on Renegade Games for doing so.
Getting that out of the way, if you like trick-tacking games and are familiar with the genre, you’ll fall right in line with Duet—except that it makes a few changes to the formula to stimulate a different type of experience from the normalcies found within the category. For one, strictly speaking from its predecessor, Duet switches from a competitive game to a cooperative one. You might ask how a cooperative trick-taking game can work, and that will be answered shortly, but setting that aside, all the hallmarks of trick-taking games are still here. Tricks are won by playing a higher valued card over your companion. Trump suits still exist here, except there is no one defined suit (think Spades in this regard) and instead a trump suit is decided by a draw deck composed of all the spare cards not used in player’s hands. Maneuvering your deck to best dictate who wins or loses a trick is still the optimal tactic. And, finally, no talking to your chum across from you—you must infer information either intuitively or telepathically (this, I assume is the Duet part of the The Fox in the Forest Duet).
See, pretty standard stuff!
How Duet, then, utilizes what we know about trick-taking games is, in my humble opinion, clever. In fact, cutting your mate, throwing cards under a trump suit, cursing under your breath as your partner wins a trick you needed to take…it’s just an overlay for the true journey you must endeavor with your companion. Underneath it all, there is spatial puzzle you must traverse; an underbrush that sits under a trick-taking canopy—and it is both ingenious and devious at the same time.
A Game in Progress
Down a Winding path
The Fox and the Forest Duet bolts on a couple of ideas to the formula in order to marry two dissimilar mechanism into a cohesive whole, solely to serve the spatial area puzzle that sits in the middle of its players. It’s quite an ingenious design. The lay of the land, or in this case this foresty-themed board, has a winding central path, dotted by spaces along the way in which you move about a token. These spaces are attached to areas which hold gems—the ultimate true goal of the game. You see, in order to win Duet you must clear the forest from these gems. Miss a single one after using up all your cards after three rounds and you lose, sending your jolly stroll through the forest astray.
Well how do we move that token about to collect these gems? All the cards have a hierarchical numerical value—a 3 beats 2, but loses to a 7 and so on—but on some of them they also include a movement value. This value (represented by cute paw prints) forces the winner to move that many spaces on the board once you combine both cards played on that turn. So a card that has three paw prints and the other that has one forces the winner to move the token towards them along the path that many spaces, four in this case. If you land on a space with a gem, remove it from the board and you’re that much closer to victory. It’s clear then that winning and losing tricks is the key to moving the token back and forth, collecting gems along the way in hopes to clear the board completely. But of course, there is a bit of deviousness along the way.
The Path
Obviously, there are pitfalls. In the case of Duet, it’s going beyond the length of the path’s dead end. Hitting five movement values while the path only has three left, and you are penalized by having your path shortened one space, plopping down a forest token to cover one end of the path—do this four times running out of forest tokens and the next folly costs you the game. All of a sudden, winning and losing tricks is consequential to success. Play loosely with your hand, losing tricks when winning was necessary and three rounds seems like a tall order to complete.
This is where Duet shines. It’s the constant struggle to minimize suboptimal tricks, and the gentle cooperative tug-of-war between players—a dance with no set lead that waltzes between its partners at different tempos whenever the need arises in an ever smaller dance floor. Too close to one end and both must shuffle the token to the other side, while considering the risk to capture gems at locations that accessibility might be an issue with the current state of your hand. To add to the tactics, some cards have special abilities that can negate rules, or that aid in switching the trump suit. They are helpful, but not game breaking and add some spice to the game.
The Foxtrot
The Token
The Fox in the Forest Duet is a neat little game. It’s design is both elegant and haphazard. The elements of careful hand management and syncing with your partner, winning and losing tricks and moving that token back and forth, never stepping on each other’s toes as you scoop up gems along the way, is quite satisfying. But a misstep is a misstep in Duet, one that can send your fancy tango onto an ice rink with roller skates on your feet. When bad things carom onto each other, sometimes recovering can take a few well placed trump cards, or put you onto a path of failure. It’s not an impossible accomplishment to win here. In fact you’d probably flip the board onto its more expert mode sooner rather than later, but even in its easier side, it will give you pause as a drop of any card could be a detriment to your long term survivability.
If you’re going for a filler co-op game to add to your wares, I suggest giving The Fox in the Forest Duet a try. It’s a good little gem of a game whenever you need something to warm up your game night before heavier material hits the table—and especially if you consider yourself a connoisseur of the trick-taking genre.
To Consider
Good
One of the best filler games at this price range
Good combination of genres that compliment the gameplay well
If you like to sleeve your cards, the box accommodates for them (63 x 88)
Okay
If you aren’t into trick-taking games, Duet might not change your mind
Card quality isn’t the best, but a sleeve will help with that; cardboard components are good, however
