I was captivated when I first saw an image of The Flowers of the Forest in the Homo Ludens backer’s Discord. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before and I was desperate to try it. Sadly, while the game, originally published in 1995, was reprinted in Battles Magazine in 2013 it is very hard to come by and the cost of a secondhand copy can be very high. In a stroke of unexpected luck, however, another member of the Homo Ludens community offered to send me a copy of Battles Magazine #9, game included, for the cost of shipping - an act of extreme generosity. As soon as it arrived I set about learning it with the intention of playing it sometime in the near future, but I quickly found that I couldn’t fully grasp the rules without a proper visual reference so I ended up setting up the game on my coffee table (the map was too long for my usual table). This was a slippery slope that resulted in me inevitably just playing the game that afternoon and I’m glad I did. The Flowers of Forest is one of the most interesing gaming experiences I’ve had all year, although it did give me kind of a headache.