Forest Shuffle fans have a fresh forest to build, and this one comes with its own rivers. Lookout Games has revealed Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains, a standalone third entry in the popular card game that has you drafting trees, plants and animals into a working woodland ecosystem. This time the setting jumps the Atlantic to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee and North Carolina border.
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Start organising for freeIf you have not played one, Forest Shuffle is a tableau-builder where you draft cards to grow a forest, stacking creatures and plants onto your trees so their abilities feed off one another. Smoky Mountains keeps that core but leans into a new theme of water. There are new terrain cards centred on water that you can play on their own or tuck beneath your trees as universal waters, plus fresh synergies between flora and fauna that all flow from that watery element. Expect some big North American residents too, including black bears and bobcats. It plays 2 to 5 players in around an hour, for ages 10 and up.
Because it is standalone, you do not need the original box or any of the earlier expansions to get stuck in, which makes it a clean jumping-on point. That is worth flagging given Lookout only recently announced the UK-flavoured Exmoor expansion; Smoky Mountains is a separate, complete game rather than an add-on. It is also part of Lookout's GreenLine range of eco-friendly production.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeSmoky Mountains is up for pre-order now and makes its big debut at SPIEL in Essen in October 2026, with shops getting it at around the same time. If a light, gorgeous card game about growing an ecosystem sounds like your group's speed, round up a game night and get a table ready for autumn.
Sources: Lookout Games | BoardGameGeek | Tabletop Sentinel
