Everdell

12th November 2021

It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's for some impromptu evening gaming.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me."

Well, Everdell is new to me, mixing various game mechanics and lush anthropomorphic artwork.

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What's in a game?
Everdell is a game that has a big footprint and a lot components.

• Game board: Everdell's board is a curious circular shape and the central area is called the 'meadow'. Around the meadow with numerous spots to place the game's resources. There also various worker locations dotted across the maps, including some blank worker spaces that will be populated with randomly determined worker locations during the game setup. There also some location for 'events'. More on events later.
  Most of the worker locations earn players some combination of the game's resources and/or cards. E.G., 2 twigs and a card or 1 resin and a card.
• Tree: The game comes with a tree made of gameboard that can be constructed, placed on the board and used to hold various components.
• Basic event tiles: These score point when acquired.
• Resources: Everdell uses 4 main types of resources, berries, twigs, resin and pebbles. These are represented by shaped 3d plastic tokens.
• Meeples: Each player has up to 6 workers they can use, these wooden tokens are shaped in the style of different type of anthropomorphic animals.
• Cards: Broadly speaking, the game uses several different types of cards.
  Critter & construction cards: These are the core of the game and as the name suggests, come in 2 types. In the top left corner is the requirement or cost to play them, just below is the card type and at the bottom of each card it displays what benefit it confers such as victory points and more. There is a wide variety of different benefits available, this may even include extra places to put workers and sometimes these are modified by other cards.
  Special event cards: These cards are a variation on the event tiles above and as such will score when player's meet their requirements.
  Forest cards: These are used on the board to provide randomly generated worker spots in each game.
• Victory point tokens: Standard card tokens.

No doubt about, Everdell has fantastic production values.
The components are well made and the attention to detail for the most part is excellent. In particular, the resources look great as do the individualised meeples. We didn't use the tree but it's a nice touch
Even if the anthropomorphised artwork is not to your taste, it's hard to fault the quality of the artwork and rich, warm colour palettes used throughout on the board and all the cards.
​Iconography is where the game could be improved though. Sometimes, the text used on the critter and construction cards is perhaps a little too small as are the symbols and sometimes, to maintain the game's aesthetic, you'll encounter a small around of tiny writing surrounded by a lot of unused space. Having said that, it's a quibble, not a gamebreaker and doesn't really detract from the game's quality

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How's it play?
Setup

• Meadow: Shuffle the critter & construction cards into a face-down deck, then draw and place 8 of them face-up into the meadow on the board.
• Forest cards: Shuffle the forest cards and deal out the allotted amount as per player count face-up on to the blank spots on the board. This means that some of the worker spots are randomly generated each game.
• Events:
  Event tiles: Put out the basic event tiles on to their allotted spaces on the board.
  Special event cards: Shuffle these cards and deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces.
• Cards: Determine the starting player; then each player should draw cards from the deck, starting with the 1st player who gets 5, then 2nd gets 6 and thus forth.
• Meeples: Each player takes only 2 meeples in their colour, the remaining 4 will be acquired before the game's 3 later turns. 

Now we're pretty much ready to go.

On to play
The objective in Everdell is to construct the best city, that is the city that scores the most victory points. Players achieve this by playing critters and constructions into their tableau.
​When somebody becomes the active player, they can perform 1 action from a choice of 3 and then player progresses to the player to the left. Players continue performing actions until they have to or choose to stop; in which case the season has ended for them. Everdell is played over 4 seasons.

• Place worker: The active player may place a worker on a available spot. This will allow them to gain a mix of resources, cards or victory points depending on which spot it is.
  Some spots only allow for the placement of a single worker but some allow multiple players to make use of them. Furthermore, some cards that may get played have spots to place workers and acquire whatever benefits the card confers. This means a player may end up placing a worker in another player's tableau!
• Play card: The active player can play a card as their action, cards provide lots of actions or abilities which can be performed, too many to list here.
  Broadly speaking, cards come in two categories; critters and constructions which can also be common or unique. Cards also have a type such as Tan Traveller or Green Production which affect what function the card performs.
  For example Tan Traveller cards have a once-only benefit, but Green Production cards produce something whenever a production phase is triggered.
  Playing a card requires spending the relevant resources, having said that, the game has some synergy between cards and some critters can be played for free if the linked construction is already in the player's tableau.
  Players can play card types in sets to acquire event tiles/cards; e.g. the Grand Tour event can be earned if the player puts 3 destination cards into their tableau.  
• Prepare for Season: Players can continue taking actions until they run out of workers and cards that can be played, when this happens, the player must prepare for the next season.
  This involves taking back their workers plus an additional worker or two from the supply, players may be able to re-activate production cards in their tableau or take cards from the meadow, all depending on the season.

When all players have prepared for season, then the current season is over and play moves to the next one.

Endgame
When the 4th season is completed, then the game is over.
Victory points can be scored from a variety or sources, including cards, tokens and events.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
It's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into the game's presentation and charm. It's one of the best looking games I've seen in a while and I always appreciate the extra effort committed to a game.

Hmmm, what else to say about Everdell; for the most part, it's initially a pretty solid, straightforward game, although it feels a like a bit of a slow burner.
While the game's cards provide players with a variety of approaches choices and plays to make. Having said that, the game's action-economy is actually quite tight, almost too harsh. E.g, in the 1st season, players will only have 2 workers to gain resources in order to play cards, it means players will have to pay close attention to optimising their plays and actions. card synergy can make a big difference.
It gave me the feeling that players will need to know what they're doing from their first action in order to play Everdell competitively.

Additionally, in comparison to other tableau building games, it feels like the tableau in Everdell provides much more limited benefits that lacks the satisfaction putting together a good tableau.
​At best, production cards are reactivated once every other season - or round - but because players have multiple actions in a single season, it means a lengthy gap before those reactivations. This is something players will need to consider when playing cards.
All of this makes the choices in Everdell important - which is the sign of a good game.

Ultimately though, I just found it a little unexciting and unengaging and while it wouldn't be my first choice, I'd have no qualms about playing Everdell again.