Review: Everdell

Introduction & Overview

Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest creatures has thrived and expanded. Ever since the famed adventurer Corrin Evertail discovered the hidden valley long ago, the citizens have prospered under the shelter of the Ever Tree. After years of tranquility, the time has come to expand territories and establish new cities. You will lead a group of critters with the intent of achieving such a task. Buildings must be erected to attract diverse characters, and certain objectives must be completed. You have a busy year ahead of you. Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?

This is how Everdell is presented to us, a design by James A. Wilson, this being his first game. It was published in 2018 under the Starling Games label, which sought the necessary funding through a successful crowdfunding campaign. The illustrations are handled by Andrew Bosley, who already proved his talent in games like Mission: Red Planet, Citadels, or Descent.

The game is published in our country by Maldito Games in Spanish (language dependency is significant). It allows for games of 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 14 years and an approximate duration of about 20 minutes per player. The MSRP is €55. For this review, a copy of the Spanish version from Maldito Games was used.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), with dimensions of 29.7×29.7×7.2 cm (standard square box like Ticket to Ride), we find the following components:

• Game Board (cardboard)
• 4 Basic Event Tiles (cardboard)
• 30 Point Tokens (cardboard)
• 20 of Value 1
• 10 of Value 3
• 20 Occupied Token Markers (cardboard)
• 8-Sided Die (bakelite)
• 129 Large Cards (63.5×88 mm)
  • 128 Critter and Construction Cards
  • 1 Victory Card
• 27 Small Cards (44×63 mm):
  • 11 Forest Cards
  • 16 Special Event Cards
• 30 Berries (rubber)
• 30 Twigs (wood)
• 25 Resin (plastic)
• 20 Pebbles (plastic)
• 24 Workers (6 per player) (wood)
• Ever Tree in 4 pieces (cardboard)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Everdell is a game set in a charming forested valley under the shelter of the Ever Tree, where each player leads a group of critters aiming to establish a new territory and expand their city. Throughout the year, the game progresses through the different seasons starting from winter. Players alternate turns consecutively. On each turn, the active player can place a worker on an available location on the board to gather valuable resources or draw cards, play a critter or construction card by paying its cost to add it to their own city, or prepare for the next season by recalling their workers if they have already deployed them all. Actions and cards allow players to obtain raw materials such as twigs, resin, berries, or pebbles, optimize the production of the settlement (which has a maximum limit of fifteen cards in front of each participant), claim events, or activate powerful special effects by combining characters and buildings. Once all players have reached the end of autumn and decide to pass due to being unable to perform more actions, the game ends and a final scoring takes place, adding up the base points of the cards, accumulated point tokens, achieved events, and prosperity bonuses. The player with the most points is proclaimed the winner.

Key Concepts

The core foundation of Everdell is the Cards. Throughout the game, players will play cards into their city (play area), keeping in mind that space is limited, as they cannot have more than 15 cards played at any given time. Additionally, there is a hand limit that prevents players from holding more than 8 cards. If at any point a player is supposed to draw cards and already has 8 in their hand, they will lose those cards to be drawn.

In a massive deck, we find cards that can be categorized in different ways. First, we must talk about two types of cards: critters and constructions. For each type of construction, there will be a linked critter card, which can be played without paying its cost. On the construction card, in the lower right corner, the name of the critter card that can be played appears, along with a circular icon of it. On the critter card, in the upper left corner, the name of the construction that allows it to be played for free is shown. It is important to note that this relationship only works one way; that is, if a player has a critter card in their city, they cannot play the associated construction card for free. Only the reverse path is permitted, meaning you must have the construction to play the critter for free.

Since there are multiple copies of most cards, each construction only allows you to play a single critter for free. To mark that a construction has provided this benefit, Occupied Tokens are used. This way, when we take advantage of this benefit, we place one of these small tokens over the critter icon on the corresponding construction card. If the card is removed from the city, the token is returned to the supply. Of course, the critter remains in the city (even if it was played for free thanks to the construction, they are not linked in any other way).

Within the critter and construction cards, we find that they are organized into common and unique. A player can play multiple copies of common cards in their city, while they can only put a single copy of unique cards into play in their city.

Another distinct category refers to the card effect type. There are five different types:

• Traveler Cards (Tan Bindles Icon): these are immediate-effect cards. Once played, they provide no further benefits.
• Production Cards (Green Sprout Icon): these are cards that provide a benefit when played and will activate again when changing to certain seasons.
• Destination Cards (Red Paw Print Icon): these are cards that can be activated by placing a worker. As a general rule, only the player who played it can activate it, although in specific cases an “Open” sign will appear, allowing its use by other players (with the card owner receiving a bonus).
• Governance Cards (Blue Scroll Icon): these are permanent-effect cards. You must stay alert to apply the effects whenever the situation indicated on the card occurs.
• Prosperity Cards (Purple Flower Icon): these are cards that provide end-game points based on a certain condition.

Now that all the card classifications have been explained, let’s look at their anatomy:

• In the upper left strip, we find the cost to play the card in the different types of resources the game includes (if it is a critter, the name of the construction that allows it to be played for free appears as an alternative).
• Just below, we find a colored symbol indicating the card type based on its effect.
• To the right of the symbol, in a colored strip matching the symbol’s background, we find the name of the construction or critter.
• To the right of the name, there is a yellow circle with the victory point value that the card provides at the end of the game if it is in the city.
• Just below the card name strip, the card’s rarity (common or unique) and type (critter or construction) are displayed.
• Finally, only on construction cards, the name of the critter card that the construction enables to be played for free appears in the lower right corner, along with a circle featuring the critter’s illustration.

In addition to card hand management, the other main mechanic of the game is worker placement. Each player will have a crew of up to six workers (although they will start the game with only 2). These workers can be placed in various action spaces. These workers remain on the action spaces until the player uses their turn to recall all their workers, changing seasons and receiving new workers (as well as activating some additional effects).

In addition to the players’ cities, we find a large main board representing different areas of the valley:

• At the top center, the Ever Tree is placed, which serves as a support for several elements and shows the effects of the season changes.
• On the sides of the board, we find the spaces to place the basic events (which we will talk about next).
• Below that, we find the river, where most of the actions activatable by the players appear, represented by a paw print and a circular outline that can appear closed (only accepts a single worker) or open (accepts multiple workers, including several from the same player).
• In the center of the board, we find the Meadow, where a common card supply for all players is placed, and cards can be played from here as if they were in the player’s hand.
• Flanking this Meadow, we find four spaces to place the forest actions (we will talk about them next).
• Finally, in the lower area, we find two special actions: Journey (which allows players to get victory points) or Haven (which allows players to discard cards for resources).

The Forest Cards simply add new action spaces with diverse effects that will vary from one game to another. All forest cards show two action spaces, though the second one is only enabled in four-player games.

During the game, we will have to accumulate and manage Resources to play cards. There are four types: twigs, resin, pebbles, and berries. The first three will be necessary to play constructions, while berries will be used to play critters. At the end of the game, resources will have no value unless a construction in your city indicates otherwise.

Through certain cards or by activating certain actions, players will obtain victory points directly. These points are represented by Point Tokens that players will accumulate.

That is enough to get started.

1. The board is deployed in the center of the table.
2. The four basic event tiles are placed in the designated spaces on the board.
3. The Ever Tree is assembled and placed on the stump of the board.
4. The deck of cards is shuffled and placed in the hollow of the Ever Tree.
5. The first 8 cards are revealed and placed in the Meadow on the board.
6. The forest cards are shuffled, and four are placed in the designated spaces on the central board. The rest are returned to the box.
   • In 2-player games, only 3 forest cards are revealed.
7. The event cards are shuffled, and four are placed on the lower bough of the Ever Tree. The rest are returned to the box.
8. A general supply is formed with the resources, point tokens, and occupied tokens.
9. Each player chooses a color and receives 2 workers of that color. The other 4 are placed on the top of the Ever Tree, separated by season (1/1/2).
10. The starting player is chosen at random. They receive 5 cards from the deck as their starting hand. The remaining players receive one more card than the player to their right.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Everdell takes place over an indeterminate number of turns alternated between players (starting with the initial player and continuing clockwise).

On their turn, a player must choose one of these options:

• Play a Card. The player places a card from their hand or the Meadow into their city area, returning the necessary resources to the supply. If it is a traveler or production type card, the effect applies from this moment on. You also have to look out for potential effects from governance cards. There is the option to play a critter card for free if the construction card linked to that critter card is already in the city.
• Place a Worker. The player places one of their workers on an available action space and carries out its effect. The options are:
  • Basic Action Space: the player receives the items indicated by the action.
  • Forest Card Space: the player carries out the effect indicated on the forest card.
  • Destination Cards: the player activates the card’s effect. If it is a destination card in another player’s city with an “Open” sign, the card owner receives the indicated point tokens.
  • Events: the player can place the worker if they meet the requirements. Upon activating the action space, if it is a special event, they must carry out the indicated effect.
  • Haven: the player can discard as many cards from their hand as they see fit. For every two discarded cards, the player will get 1 resource of their choice from the supply.
  • Journey: the player discards as many cards as indicated by the occupied space to receive that same amount of point tokens.
• Prepare for Season. This action can only be performed if the player has already placed all their workers. The game begins on the verge of winter ending, and upon activating this action, the player moves to the next season. This has two consequences:
  • The player recalls all workers placed on the board (if there is a worker on an event, they also claim the corresponding basic event tile or special event card).
  • Depending on the new season, a benefit is triggered for the player:
    • Spring: all production cards (green) in the city are activated again, and the player receives a new worker.
    • Summer: the player draws 2 cards from the Meadow (which is replenished after drawing the two cards) and receives a new worker.
    • Autumn: all production cards (green) in the city are activated again, and the player receives two new workers.

After this, the turn passes to the player on the left.

Game End

The game ends when all players have passed because they cannot perform any new actions on their turn during autumn. Players then proceed to score their cities, tallying the following points:

• Base Points from Cards in the City
• Accumulated Point Tokens
• Points from Prosperity Cards
• Points from Events

The player with the most points will be the winner. In the event of a tie, the player who has completed the most events wins. If a tie still persists, the winner will be the player with the most remaining resources in their supply. If they are still tied, the players share the victory.

Variants

Solo Mode: the player faces a bot over 3 years (with their four seasons). This bot blocks certain actions and builds cards from the Meadow (a die is rolled to determine which one) every time the player plays a card in their city. At the end of each year, the bot scores for its cards, as well as for events that the player failed to activate (each year, the number of points the bot scores for this increases). The player must try to get a better score than the bot.

Personal Opinion

The hobby of board gaming is expanding unstoppably. And proof of this is the assimilation of certain genres that were previously more niche within the community but, due to certain turning points, move into a new state of acceptance. The genre we are talking about today is the card-driven tableau builder. I suppose the general public viewed these types of games as a byproduct of Magic: The Gathering, where a massive deck of cards implied a significant effort to understand the game. An entry curve that many players were not willing to climb. And yet, mechanically, they are not complex games at all, but they do require players to have some knowledge of the cards that make up the game, their effects, and the different synergies that can be established between them.

Along the way, there have been games that perhaps haven’t received the attention I think they deserve (at least in Spain), such as Seasons (here its tocho-review), Deus (here its tocho-review), or even what is probably the king in this category, Race for the Galaxy (here its tocho-review), published in our country as Galaxia: La Conquista with a rather unfortunate version by the now-defunct publisher Gabinete Lúdico. In my opinion, it’s a genre that exploded late. The turning point in this case was the launch of Imperial Settlers (here its tocho-review), a slightly simplified and softened version (in terms of setting) of Ignacy Trzewiczek’s 51st State. A game that started being talked about everywhere and that everyone played, although I also get the feeling that it hasn’t managed to hold its ground over time. But the wall that was torn down with the success of this game is what made access to more ambitious games possible.

And here is where one of the greatest successes of recent years enters the scene, one that continues to receive expansions at a pace that is perhaps a bit exaggerated. Yes, friends, the famous Terraforming Mars (here its tocho-review). The Fryxelius brothers’ game has broken all kinds of records and normalized the genre. Now we find a significant mass of players willing to tackle a design with massive card decks, full of text and synergies, accepting that it will take a few games before reaching cruising speed and truly enjoying the experience. And it is curious, because Terraforming Mars, as a design, despite having many virtues, has shown significant shortcomings that have been solved over time with various expansions. This is why its overwhelming success is even more surprising. I suppose it was a game published at the ideal moment, with a theme that was trendy and a visual aspect that, without being spectacular, caught people’s attention when deployed on the table. If it had seen the light of day one or two years earlier, its fate might have resembled that of the previously mentioned titles. I emphasize “in our country” again, because Race for the Galaxy, Deus, or Seasons are very well-regarded games in the global community. With the context established, it’s time to talk about the game at hand today. Yes, a new card-driven engine builder that seeks to grab players’ attention. Let’s see if it has succeeded, but not before thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that makes this possible.

Everdell is a game set in a fantasy-medieval world with anthropomorphic animals looking to establish new cities in an enchanted valley. Each player will form their own city in their play area. This city is represented by cards that must be played by paying a resource cost. Each card displays an effect that will apply differently depending on the type of card it belongs to, featuring immediate effects, recurring effects, permanent effects, actions activated on demand, or end-game scoring effects. The goal, naturally, is to be the person who has accumulated the most points at the end of the game between the cards played and the various elements they grant access to. Up to this point, it is a standard tableau-building card game.

Where is the novelty? Well, just like Cédrick Chaboussit did back in the day with the great Lewis & Clark (here its tocho-review), good old James A. Wilson introduces the ultra-ubiquitous worker placement mechanic. Thus, each player will have a crew of workers that can be placed on various action spaces available on a central board. These actions will be mainly focused on obtaining the resources that will allow playing cards. In a very similar way to the racing game heading up the Mississippi, workers will remain on the common board until the player decides to end a stage—in this case, change seasons—at which point they will recall all their placed workers, gain a few more for the next season, and, as a bonus, receive a predetermined benefit for this moment.

The second differentiating factor of the game is the forced synergies, something we have seen in 7 Wonders (here its tocho-review) or 7 Wonders Duel (here its tocho-review). I am talking about cards that, when in the player’s area, allow playing other different, directly connected cards (the name of the other appears on both cards) for free. But, unlike Antoine Bauza’s designs, here this forced synergy is present on absolutely every card. Regardless of a card’s effect, it additionally belongs to one of the two types of elements we can add to our city: constructions and critters. Each distinct construction will be associated with a distinct critter, so all construction cards allow placing a critter card for free in our play area. This is the most interesting element of the game, in my view, as it keeps us in a constant search for predefined combos to try to exploit them to the fullest, although we must never forget that the number of cards in the deck is high enough that we might not see a specific card in an entire game.

And as a third remarkable feature, we find the events, which would be like milestones similar to those in Terraforming Mars for which players must compete, as they require a certain prerequisite in the form of cards played in the city. The first to achieve the necessary combination can use one of their workers (if available) to claim it. Within these events, we find two types: those that only require a quantity of card types (effect types) and those that require having two specific cards in the city.

And it doesn’t have much more to it. Normally, card development games do not imply a particularly wide conceptual burden. They are games where hand management is paramount (drawing cards and deciding which ones to use and which to discard), looking for combinations that generate certain engines to lead us to victory. It is the small details that make a design stand out. And Everdell has a few strong points worth valuing.

The first, and one of the most important in my opinion for this type of game, is the duration. Card development games, because of what was mentioned earlier, are monotonous by definition (draw card, play card). We enjoy them because of the engines that are generated, seeing how, turn by turn, we are capable of doing more things. Almost all of them become a race to see who can generate the best snowball effect. This is where the designer needs to be sharp so that games do not drag on (the main flaw of Imperial Settlers or Terraforming Mars). Fortunately, Everdell is very well measured, establishing certain limits that prevent the game from dragging out forever.

To start off, players begin with no resources, with only a hand of cards to have some decision-making power and a pair of workers. The latter will be in charge of gathering the resources to start putting cards into our city. In a few turns, we will have already changed seasons because the room for maneuver is scarce. Managing to establish a source of resources, whether through production cards or thanks to various effects, is essential to reach a good conclusion. Even so, there are few actions that can be carried out during the game, since we can only recall workers three times. And, although we see the crew of workers expanded with each recall, in total there will be only 15 action spaces that we can activate during the entire game (2 in the first season, 3 in the second, 4 in the third, and 6 in the last).

The next is the hand limit. A player can never have more than eight cards. At any moment. If this number of cards in hand has already been reached and the player could draw even more cards, they will have no choice but to lose these extra cards. It’s true that they could have opted for the usual solution of allowing the player to draw and subsequently discard the excess. But I don’t see this solution as a bad thing, since it gives value to the hand and to the decisions made when discarding is required. Furthermore, in reality, it is as if the player had two hands of cards, since on the central board there is a card supply that can be played by all players. A maximum of sixteen potentially playable cards seems to me a high enough number to keep from talking about an excessive influence of luck, which exists in every card game, as it does here.

Lastly, and no less important, is the limit on the number of cards that can be played in the city. Fifteen cards is the cap that we cannot exceed at any time and, except for exceptions due to specific effects, the normal thing is that each played card remains until the end in our city, so we must carefully choose which constructions or critters we keep.

All these limits bound the duration of the game to about fifteen or twenty minutes per player, so once the game is assimilated and a certain knowledge of the cards is acquired, games develop at lightning speed. Weariness will never invade us from feeling like we are always doing the same thing, nor will disinterest from having activated autopilot upon reaching a certain cruising speed. Decisions must be made on every turn.

Another problem that these types of games usually have is that they are very multiplayer solitaire. Each player seeks to set up their own business and, at the end of the game, compares it with the rest of the players to see who did best. To avoid this, each of the designs mentioned above sought tricks to introduce player interaction. In Everdell, this is achieved through the three elements already discussed. The first is obvious: worker placement. Most action spaces imply blocking by being occupied, so players must manage timings so as not to run out of certain actions, bearing in mind, furthermore, that their occupation can last a while if the player owning the corresponding worker is playing well and, thanks to card combinations, takes time to change seasons and recall. However, this interaction doesn’t fully hit the mark. Yes, it’s true that it’s annoying when at certain times a player occupies a specific action, but there are usually enough alternatives so that the annoyance is not crucial.

On the other hand, the concept of a shared hand seems tremendously interesting to me. The fact that players can choose cards from a common supply to play into their zone as if they were in their hand adds a very interesting point of tension. On more than one occasion, several players will be interested in a specific card, and the first one who manages to gather the necessary conditions to place it in their city will take the prize, leaving the other interested player high and dry.

In a similar way to the above are the events. Here two distinctions must be made. On one hand, basic events do pose an interesting competition, since with one worker you can obtain three victory points simply for having accumulated a set of cards of a specific type in your city. However, special events are quite demanding regarding the cards that must be placed in the city. In the games I’ve played, it’s rare for two players to get that combination of cards around the same time for the tension in the competition to be felt over who is the first to complete it. They are more of a goal that players can try to reach if the necessary conditions are met, but it’s not going to happen for everyone.

As a final interactive element, there are certain cards that allow altering other players, either in a positive way (giving them cards) or negative ways (for example, placing cards with negative values in the rival’s city). In this sense, Everdell is a relatively kind game, and direct hate drafting or negative effects are not things we will witness frequently.

As a second positive point, I would like to highlight the issue of forced synergies again. It’s true that the name I’ve given it doesn’t sound particularly positive, but it helps break that entry curve, since it offers players a direct relationship between cards, in addition to giving a certain theme to the game, as each critter is linked to each structure naturally. Thus, for example, the teacher is linked to the school, the miner mole to the mine, or the traveler to the lookout. In my opinion, it offers players a very direct guide on how to try to optimize the game, so from the very first occasion, players will be enjoying combos and enhanced effects.

And as a third remarkable detail, I like that, despite being a game that develops at a good pace and there are not too many cards played on the table, it is relatively complicated to evaluate the game situation during it. Between the point value of the cards, the scoring effects, and the events, it is not easy at all to determine how many points a player has at any given time, so uncertainty is maintained until the end of the game.

So much for the praises. Now it’s time to give a few criticisms, because Everdell is not perfect and has flaws. The first one I would highlight is the game end system. I don’t like it one bit that each player marks their own pace and, when they have no more options, stops taking turns and is left watching how the rest of the players continue to expand their tableau. It’s true that, once the game is understood, it’s rare for a player to enjoy more than two or three extra turns compared to a rival. But it feels strange and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those who finish early. Furthermore, this benefits rivals who are playing “better”, since by changing seasons prematurely, a player frees up the action spaces they occupied, leaving the option for those rivals who are stretching out the season to occupy them if they still have workers available. Perhaps it would have been interesting to propose pauses in the season changes, so that when a player prepares for the season, they wait for the others to finish. This would distribute the waiting times and smooth out the end of the game, besides giving it a certain thematic sense, since it’s strange that, being in the same valley, for one player it is autumn while another continues in spring.

I also find a small defect in that great idea that is the common supply of cards displayed on the central board. And that is, especially in two-player games, the case can arise where neither player is interested in any card from said supply, which, in practice, blocks it, ceasing to be useful in the game. Again, I think a mechanism should have been implemented to ensure rotation in this supply, such as expanding the benefit that occurs in the transition from spring to summer, where players draw cards from this supply. Not necessarily this way, but perhaps discarding cards with the season changes. I don’t know, something to keep this supply from clogging up.

These are details to take into account and that, had they been polished, would have left a much more rounded design. Even so, Everdell seems to me a very good card development game, well-timed, that forces you to be constantly adapting to look for the best for your city. It is not a game for hunting cards to exploit the ultimate combo (something very few games of this type allow, even if you know the cards). I won’t evaluate the typical problem of not knowing the cards and the first games going slightly roughly due to having to stop to read effects. This is a problem present in all games of this type.

Let’s move on to production. As a product originating from a crowdfunding campaign, the finish of Everdell is spectacular. The cards are of great quality, even with a somewhat light paper weight, they show great snap and a very subtle, pleasant linen texture. The resources are a wonder, using different materials. Everyone who has sat at the table, the first thing they’ve done is start touching these resources and making amazed faces, as if they had turned into babies playing with those texture books. Custom shapes and different materials for each one. Perhaps the least remarkable elements are the cardboard ones, especially the board and the famous tree. Both use cardboard of an acceptable thickness, but whose layers separate with relative ease, something we will discover when we assemble and disassemble the tree a couple of times. I hate these kinds of gimmicky components that, in the long run, are more of a hassle than anything else. For demonstrations and drawing attention at events it’s great, but to play at home, the normal thing is that we will never assemble the tree ever again. The rulebook is acceptably well-structured, although there is some small detail that can be overlooked due to not being highlighted well enough.

Regarding the visual aspect, we can only surrender to Andrew Bosley’s work. If Everdell stands out over all the previously mentioned card development games for anything, it is for its beauty. Illustrations with luxury of details that seem to want to tell us a story. And the cover is another marvel. The only flaw I will point out is the use of the critters’ illustration in a tiny circle on the construction cards. It makes players tend to try to look for the character by this icon, when it is literally impossible to identify them due to its reduced dimensions. I would have left an open door next to the name, and that way players don’t get distracted. In any case, this is a trifle and does not eclipse its magnificent finish.

And let’s wrap this up. Everdell is a design that combines card development with agile worker placement that sets the pace of the game. Managing a tightly constrained hand, constant tension over the shared supply, and that interesting incentive of forced synergies to combo critters and constructions give rise to dynamic, fluid games loaded with decisions on every turn. The feelings at the table are very rewarding thanks to a fantastically contained duration that prevents the engine from getting out of hand, maintaining scoreboard uncertainty until the very final tally. On the negative side, the end-game system feels a bit clunky by forcing faster players to sit around watching others’ tableaus, to which is added the risk of the card market becoming completely stagnant. All in all, its virtues far outweigh these minor mechanical details that keep it from being a perfect design. For all this, I give it a…