Remember, you’re aiming to collect high-value mushrooms and bank them by cooking them together in your pans. The more you put into your Pan at once, the greater their value. Card Counting The Decay pile, which should be located after the Forest in front of your feet, can contain up to four cards. I’ll explain how the Forest cards end up here in the How to play section. It’s essentially a temporary Discard pile. Don’t align these cards perfectly – seeing each one is essential. After playing a few rounds of what I’ve called the “straight-line” setup, you’ll appreciate this so much. Trust me. The alternative Forest and Decay setup means you spend much less time sliding the cards around and, in my opinion, makes everything flow much better. For this action, you will just take one of the first two cards in the forest from where the shoes are and add it to your hand. You can't hold more than eight cards in your hand at once without a basket.

According to the official rule book, the player to go first is the last person to have had “mushrooms for dinner”. In my experience, nobody really cares about this. There aren’t many people in the world who can say, “Ah, yes, the last time I ate mushrooms for dinner was the 21st of July, 2019.” It’s a nice touch from the developers, but you’re probably better off tossing a coin or going with the traditional “youngest first” approach. Bear in mind that Fly agarics also impact your total hand limit, even if only temporarily. Ending the Game Image From Benjamin Kitchen Try to stay fluid and know when to switch strategies. If it doesn't look like you have a set on the way as planned and the next cards in the forest could be better. Its not a bad idea to switch gears and go for those mushrooms instead. Pros and Cons of Fungi You can take all the cards from the Decay (not the Discard!) pile if you like. However, your new total mustn’t exceed your hand limit. Manage your hand well, avoid poisonous mushrooms and don’t forget to add a bit of butter and cider to your dish for extra points and you should do well in Fungi. It’s a charming two-player game, although its gameplay shows its age.The aim of the game is for players to collect “forage points” counters. Points from 2 to 4 are collected by creating clusters, as shown on special mushroom cards. Clusters are made by obtaining the required colours of mushrooms in your foraged card collection. However, you can only make clusters when it’s your turn to forage. The number of points you get depends on the number of mushrooms required for a cluster: for example, 4 mushrooms are required for 4 points, which is the highest-value and most difficult cluster to make. All completed clusters are then put in the discard pile. If a player is the first to reach a total of 10 points, they are the winner. To score these points players have to collect several varieties of mushrooms trying to score points by cooking sets of the same type into meals with pans and extra flavourings such as cider or butter to score extra points rewarding large numbers of the same variety. What's in the Box? Although the game can be played by two players, there’s more fun to be had with three or four players. There’s more choice of who to steal cards from or swap cards with, and the game lasts a little longer. This is a light card game, so you can play multiple games in one sitting; it’s good as a warmup or filler on game nights, or when time is limited and you’re looking for a short burst of fun. Final Thoughts If you fancy a beautiful and strategic mushroom foraging trip, Pegasus Press’ Fungi may right up your woodland path. In this neat card game two players compete to collect and cook the most rare and delicious mushrooms they can as they move along a pathway of forest cards representing the route they’re strolling through the wood. To add Butter, you must have combined at least four identical mushrooms. For adding Cidre, you must cook at least five.

Put cards straight into your hand unless they’re a Basket, Fly agaric, or Moon, in which case play them immediately. 2. Put a Pan down Before you start, ensure you have a big enough playing area. Even though this is only a two-player game and doesn’t take up as much room as some others, you’ll find many cards in play by the end. I’d recommend a large table or, failing that, playing on the floor. The game itself is very enjoyable and can be played as tactically as you wish. Myself? I like to try and collect odd cards to spite my opponent, but with a strict hand limit this can be risky. The difficulty is balancing collecting mushrooms and resources such as pans, baskets etc – as one without the other simply won’t win the game. For me though, the beauty of Fungi really is in its simplicity. An easy go-to on a cold, Tuesday night, its theme is strong enough to transport me to a roaring camp-fire with the smell of buttery mushrooms lifting in the air.

This time, put the Decay pile directly between you in the center of the table. Imagine there are spaces for ten cards around the empty pile, in either a rectangle or circle (a rectangle works best). I’ve chosen to explain the standard “straight-line” setup in this article. I’ll also walk you through the alternative format, which I highly recommend once you know how to play. What’s In the Fungi box? You can’t use anything from the Discard pile. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Some cards (like Moons) go straight to be discarded, bypassing the Decay pile. Special Cards