We featured Forks on Board's Eye View back in May 2019. It was a fast-playing card drafting set collection game themed around embezzlement and corporate corruption. Now publishers Radical 8 have brought the game back in a new edition. There are some tweaks to the original to streamline play and to increase the player count to 2-6 (the original game only accommodated up to five players) but the principal and most noticeable change is the retheming: instead of bland corporations, players are dealing in travel locations. The change means that this new edition features vibrant artwork from Rusembell that evokes the tourist posters that used to be a common feature at branch stations on the UK railway network.
Designer Mark Stockton-Pitt has retained the core game, where you are choosing one card to keep from the three you are dealt - passing two to your neighbouring player. From the two cards you are passed, you keep one and play the other face down to the middle of the table. The cards played in this way, when revealed, will determine which locations score positively (the three locations in the middle with the highest total value of cards) and which score negatively (the two locations with the lowest total value).
Aside from the change of theme and artwork, the values in each of the five suits now range from 3-12 and with an extra duplicated card in each suit, tho' you should remove the value 10, 11 and 12 cards when playing with just two or three players. The extra cards in this edition allow for the increased player count, and we've especially enjoyed playing Forks with its new maximum complement of six. As game play is simultaneous, raising the player count doesn't increase the playing time: our plays at Board's Eye View have each been around 5-10 minutes regardless of the number playing - making Forks a great easy-to-play filler-length game.