Living Forest -- Starting Deck

I don't have a physical copy of Living Forest, and the Board Game Arena version doesn't show you the cards in your starting deck, which makes it hard to assess the risk of continuing to draw when you have two solitary animal cards in hand.  Fortunately, BoardGameGeek is here to help:

Here's the data, tabulated.

Start Cards
	Sun	Water	Tree	Hopping	Flowers
	3				-1
		2	-1
	1
	-2		2
Regular	2
				1
		1
					1
			1
		1	1		1
			2	1
Solitary		1	2
	2	1	1
	3		1
Total regular	4	3	2	1	0
Average regular	0.4	0.3	0.2	0.1	0
Total solo	5	3	7	1	1
Average solo	1	0.6	1.4	0.2	0.2

So:  fourteen cards, five of which are solitary animals.  And the non-solo animals are ... and I hate to insult the woodland creatures defending the forest from evil ... but they are not the strongest.  Even so, we need to check in on the odds of drawing a third solo; if the risk is super-low then it might be worth it to pick up one of these lightweights.

Alas, even with only two cards, both solos showing, you have about a 50% chance of getting that third solo on only your second draw.  So, generally speaking, it's a good idea to stop once you pick up your second solitary card.  Unless:

• You are only planning (or have the numbers) to take one action, in which case there is nothing to lose.
• You are willing to take only one action, being compensated by the fact that the solitary animals are all fairly strong.

Ok; those are very similar scenarios, but you get the basic idea.  The point of drawing more at this stage isn't to get the lighter animals; it's to get the heavies, and if you can score some of the lighter ones too, that's a bonus.

Here's a chart showing your odds of busting.  The numbers can be a little misleading in that the "Draw 2" column represents the probability of busting given that you have decided ahead of time to draw two cards.  If you draw just one card, and it's not solitary, then the odds have reset, and you can use the "Draw 1" column on the next row down for your second card.

Probability of Busting with two solo cards showing
# cards showing	Draw 1	Draw 2
2	0.25	0.45
3	0.27	0.49
4	0.3	0.53
5	0.33	0.58
6	0.38	0.64
7	0.43	0.71
8	0.5	0.8
9	0.6	0.9

Example:  If you have four cards face-up, and two are solitary, you have a 30% chance of drawing a third solitary with the next card.  If you have four cards and want to try to reach six cards, you have a 53% chance of either not making it, or making it by drawing your third solitary.

Data

You can see the above data here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A8m1W_XnaApAzIC4_uXiBT06UsWlVnp34PLJMcqICFg

Further Questions

I only have more questions about everything, but in particular:

1.  What happens to these tradeoffs when you start purchasing cards?

In the beginning, not much, since the new cards are still diluted in your deck, once they're shuffled in.

2.  How valuable are tokens?

Likewise, they aren't worth much in the beginning.  They won't let you draw that many additional cards before busting again, and the animals you gain will not be the strongest.  Unless you have picked up some fire cards.  Fire cards are especially damaging in the early game, since they take the place of solitary animals, which are your strongest cards at that point.

3.  How valuable are gregarious animals?

We can half-answer this now, at least for the early game.  A Greg is likely to earn you 1-3 regular animals, and it doesn't look like you should count on that doing much for your hand.  But you will also land an extra solo, and according to the table above, that will generally grant you one sun and one tree point, plus an odd point here or there.  Unfortunately, the Gregs generally grant you negative points as well, and until I can get a peek at the whole deck I can't make any judgements on what the net balance is.

Strategy Takeaways

• When filling your hand in the early game, stop after drawing two solitary animals, unless you want to get a third solitary animal at the cost of an action.
• Do not choose to get tokens unless you have fire cards to dispose of.

Further Information

I started playing Living Forest after hearing about it on one of my favorite podcasts, Decision Space and listening to their community talk about it on their Discord channel.  You can listen to the episode here.