Morels - Tips & Strategies

If you’re not fortunate enough to receive a basket in your initial 3 cards, you need to make it a priority to grab the first available basket. The basket’s only purpose is to allow you to hold 2 additional cards in your hand – it’s certainly not the most powerful card in the game. However, if your opponent gets the only basket early in the game, it will be pretty easy for them to keep you from getting one later in the game.

The extra hand limit they’ll enjoy will allow them to stock up on foraging sticks… which they can use to buy any baskets that come out in the future before you can get to it. The game is incredibly lopsided if one player can hold 10 to 12 cards all game while the other is stuck at 6.

In fact, trying to keep baskets from my opponent is the first strategy I try to execute each game. I’ve always won by 20+ points when I can control the baskets. If your opponent either starts with a basket or gets one on their first few turns, don’t worry about this tactic and focus on the more straight-forward path of cooking the best mushrooms.

One of the challenging parts of this game is the hand limit. It’s easy to lose track, and there are no rules in the book for how to deal with it, as it can provide a significant unfair advantage to someone with too many. We’ve resolved this by having the person with too many cards hold out their hand and allow the opposing player take out a card at random for the discard pile. This really keeps you on your toes.

House Rule ~ If you’ve got too many cards in your hand… you lose that many cards at random. (“…and don’t let it happen again!” says Granny.)

The best way to deal with the fiddliness of this game is to set up a circle instead of a conveyor belt. Have 2 figures “walk” around in the circle of cards. Improves speed of game greatly. See BGG for details.