Everdell, by Starling Games - A review

Everdell by Starling Games

Everdell is a combination worker-placement, tableau-building game with a dash of engine-building, that plays 1-4 players.

The Evertree has become overcrowded, and it's time to establish cities outside of its welcoming branches. Each player will compete to develop the greatest city, comprised of 15 cards that represent Constructions and the Critters who run it. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game wins, with ties broken by the players who completed the most Events, and failing that, the player with the most resources in their collection.

I backed the Collector's Edition of the game, so I received both the standard components and the fancier components, which included metal 1-and-3-value coins for VP scoring, plus Occupied token-discs that I had to put stickers on, and bonus cards (which I did not incorporate into our first playthrough).

Components: 8 (components) / 9 (art) of 10

I am going to give this an 8 of 10 for the grade of the basic components and 9 of 10 for the artwork.

A small sampling of the art in this gorgeous game!

The easiest part to explain of that is the 9 of 10 for art - this is one of the most gorgeous games in my collection now. Andrew Bosley's art is top notch, with the only thing keeping me from giving it a full 10 of 10 being that in some cases, the artistic choices mean that text size can be either inconsistently sized, or in some cases, so small that you'll probably need reading glasses to make out the text. This is especially apparent when looking at the tags that indicate if a Critter can be played for free due to a Construction already being built in your city.

The Husband can be bought with three Berries or if you have already added a Farm to your city, can be played for free. Easy concept, but the tags in the upper-left corner of the cards are a bit tiny and hard to read when the tag has more text, as in the Chip Sweep's card.

The 8 of 10 for component quality comes from the fact that the tree, while also very pretty, is a little wobbly, even assembled according to the updated instructions, and we almost toppled it a few times due to the suggested area for the cards being tucked between its legs. While a good idea to keep table space compact (which is a valid consideration ... this board, plus your player cities, will monopolize most large tables), due to the shortness of the lower platform, drawing cards poses a high risk of toppling or at least sending into disarray the components held on its two platforms with an inadvertent knuckle or clumsy reach for the cards.

See those cards down there? Not a lot of space between where they are and the first platform... and I'm a clutz by nature.

It's a mite crowded up here, waiting for the seasons to change!

The second point I deduct will be due to the logs, which roll pretty freely. They have the slightest of weighted or indented sides that will stop them from rolling once brought to a halt, but not enough to keep them from swiftly rolling off the board or table if they are given the slightest accidental nudge. If/when they create a second printing, I hope they put some thought into giving them a larger flat surface side to stop that.

Fanboy moment: the tactile feel of the berries is amazing! They can be a bit roll-happy, but because they made the top and bottoms flatter, and added texturing to the top side, they are not as prone to rolling right off the table at the slightest provocation. They also have a bit of squish to them, as they seem to be composed of some sort of rubbery material. I would DEFINITELY make sure that if I were playing this with or around little kids with a penchant for taste-testing, to keep an eye on them or keep these components as far away from them as possible.

The stones are smooth, hard and flat, and a tiny bit hard to pick up due to those features, but altogether quite usable.










Cards are of a high quality linen finish. I think I had the wrong Euro-size sleeves, because the Euro-sized cards would not fit in them without bending.

The meeples for each player are differentiated by both color and shape, which will be a win for any color-impaired players.

Lastly, the box art in my case came with gold-foil text and a slipcase, featuring unobstructed art from the cards free of text.

Rules / Rulebook: 8 of 10

Again, Bosley's artwork shines through every page of the rulebook, and the important text here is fairly easy to read and laid out well. The rules are simple enough in concept, with only three basic actions to keep track of, but their interaction seems a bit fuzzy at first:

• You can place a worker at any location that is exclusive (indicated by a complete oval around a paw print), or non-exclusive (indicated by an incomplete oval) location either on the board, or in a player's city if the location is marked as "Open" and take the associated action ... if you place a worker in another player's city-location, that player gains one VP as a benefit from your visit; 
• You can play a card either from your hand or from the Meadow (the tableau of 8 cards in the center of the playing board) if you have the resources or tag to pay for it, adding it to your city (they suggest three rows of 5 cards, each);
• You can choose to Prepare for Season, but only after you have no more meeples to place, triggering that season's effects for yourself (which changes based on whether it's Spring, Summer or Autumn you are preparing for), collecting the extra meeple(s) associated with that Season (1 / 1 / 2, respectively).

Where things feel a little strange is that, either due to bad planning or sometimes bad available card draw, you may find yourself being in a new Season before other players. This is why the end of the game states that players may end up passing and waiting for other players to finish out their seasons.

You're going to need this page for a bit.

 Secondly, they could easily have fit a quick cheat-sheet / player aid on the back cover of the book, which would be handy reference until players are all familiar with the various icons used in the game.

Lastly, there are some card interactions which are not completely clear, such as the Mole Miner who allows you to duplicate any other player's Green (essentially, Production) card in their city ... I need to find clarification on what happens if you do so on a Green card that is not an Open location, such as the Storehouse, for example.

I suppose a good addition to that cheat-sheet would also be in going over scoring, as it's somewhat easy to forget things. Your end score will be determined by any Events you achieve (such as basic ones like having 4 or more Green Production cards in your city, or unique events that are played to the bottom platform of the Evertree at the beginning of the game, which are usually more complicated to achieve but worth more points), added to the value of all the cards in your city, plus any bonuses from special Critters / Constructions in your city, plus any Journeys you sent your meeples on in Autumn.

Theme: 8.5 of 10

The art really sells the theme, the rules mostly back that up, especially in some of the card interactions, such as the Husband and Wife Critter cards, who can be paired up on a space in your city and are worth more points if they are. The fact that you can populate your city through a combination of paying for Critters (with berries) or using Constructions (by keyword) helps reinforce that certain Critters are attracted or related to those Constructions (ie. You can build a Farm, which then allows you to "build" for free, either a Husband or Wife on a later turn). Rounding that out is the flavor text and work put into the theme in the card text and rules text (such as a cute exchange of letters between Husband and Wife). At the base of it, you can't get away from the fact that its worker-placement roots are obviously front-and-center, but that really doesn't detract from the theme in any way and integrates nicely with the other mechanics.

Final Thoughts: 

Our first game took about 2 hours, with setup, punching out components, and learning the rules.

One notable rule we messed up was in the hand-limit mechanism; as written, you can only ever draw up to your hand limit of 8 cards. If you take an action that would give you a card draw, and your hand is full, you have essentially wasted that action.

However, we also had forgotten about one of the spaces on the board, Haven, which allows you to discard as many cards as you like from your hand, and collect resources on a 2:1 basis (1 resource per 2 cards discarded), which would have helped to remember early on, when a player had plenty of cards they couldn't use, but not enough of the right resources to use the ones they wanted.

There is some capacity for player interaction... as with most worker-placement, you can block key spaces, but there are usually more than a couple ways to gain resources (even if you have to sacrifice cards at Haven, which is not an Exclusive space). There are even a couple cards (the Fool) you can play into another player's city that take away points at the end of the game, but there are still other cards you can utilize to remove Critters and Constructions from your city, so that can be mitigated.

I haven't had a chance to try out the solo rules, yet, though I've read a couple people saying that it was challenging. I'll update this post when I can get around to that.

All in all, a very solid game. I'm very happy with the quality of the components and the game play is interesting enough I think it will see regular visits to the table. It offers a wide variety of actions and routes toward victory, without feeling wholly "point-salad" oriented. There are 16 unique Event cards, only four of which are used per game, randomly, and 11 Forest location cards that are also randomized, with only four used in a 3-4p game, offering enough variety that I think it'll be awhile before we've played out all the possible combinations.

Final Verdict: Two Paws Up