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It has been quite a few years since the release of Everdell in 2018. Through this time, the game has gained massive praise among the players for its theme, component quality and great gameplay mechanics like tableau building and worker placement. It has also seen the release of the super deluxe complete edition game box and its numerous expansions which are equally praised among the fans of the series, as well as reimplementations with My Lil’ Everdell and Farshore.
Having played my fair share of Everdell at all player counts (2-4 with the base game and 6 when combined with the Bellfaire expansion), my experience with it has been, well, bittersweet. I feel the game is a lot more nuanced that most people describe, and I believe it is important that people have the chance to know that there are a couple downsides with the game, especially at larger player counts, that usually fly under the radar until too late for some gaming groups.
What’s in the box?
Everdell was designed by James A. Wilson and is published by Starling Games. At its core, it is a worker placement and tableau building game. You deploy your workers on the board to get resources and those resources allow you to play cards from your hand or the meadow into your city. The game runs through four seasons in total and, while starting a bit slow, it ramps up quickly as you acquire more workers and start activating the combos available in your tableau with each season change and card played.
The artwork is, hands down, amazing. And there is no denying the theme and production value are a big selling point (I have acquaintances who acquired the big box because “it’s so cute”!). And honestly, I was a victim of this myself when I originally bought it. I was just started getting into the hobby and theme blindness and FOMO got the best of me. I absolutely do not regret having it in my collection but I’d be lying if I said it hits the table as many times as I expected. Let me elaborate.
Gameplay
As said above, at first Everdell’s gameplay seems relatively simple. The winner is the player with the most victory points and to get these points you may take one of three actions available to you once per turn: Place a Worker, Play a Card or Prepare for Next Season.
When placing a worker, as expected, you will be placing one of your meeples on the board in exchange for resources, victory points, cards or completing events (objectives which in turn also award victory points). As you place your workers, you’ll find yourself competing for spaces with your opponents, with some of these being locked when a single worker is placed on it, forcing everyone to adapt their strategies as they go.
The resources and cards gathered with your workers are the components required to build your city (tableau), which is the core of “Play a Card” action. You can play cards from your hand or from the meadow, which is an open market that gets refreshed during play available to all players. There are 5 different types of cards, each with their own style of effects, sprawling from one-off triggers to quite combo heavy effects. These cards are worth victory points by themselves, but they may also award you with victory points through their effects or by set collection via the events.
Finally, “Prepare for Season” is the action that allows you to gather back all your deployed workers while also triggering some of your card effects again.
The gameplay is quite nuanced. Cards need to be read carefully to ensure you’re optimizing your tableau and actions. And often you’ll also find yourself looking at your tableau looking for what effects get triggered when, to the point where you might get a bit lost. On top of this, you’re always dependant on the previous players actions as your next step might also be theirs and you may be forced out of a play if someone else gets there first. It is this constant need for adaptation that causes, in my opinion, its downfall: Everdell is very prone to analysis-paralysis and it suffers from a lot of downtime.
Now, to make it clear, me and my group love strategic games. And we have no issue with changing plans on the spot, giving time to other players to plan their plays or play a game for 3-4 hours if it is justified. But when a game claims that playtime is about 20 minutes per player, I certainly don’t expect the reality to be double that (not a single of my plays lasted less than 2 to 3 hours minimum). For this reason, I now avoid playing Everdell with more than 3 players and I honestly feel it is unwise to recommend this game to newcomers of the hobby.
Again, it is definitely a game worthy of being in your collection and getting to the table if you’ve got the right group of people but, for newcomers and AP prone groups, there are games with similar mechanics that are equally challenging and fun while playing better at higher player counts and being easier to grasp by new players.
Final thoughts
Everdell is a great game. Standing at #35 in the BGG ranks is no easy feat. The amount of new people that it brought into the hobby is remarkable, its core design is good and the production value is incredible. But, in my opinion, it isn’t an introductory game. The theme makes Everdell a very inviting game but it will take a while to truly understand everything it has to offer and the constant need for adaptability requires players to be able to think quick on their feet and adapt to the circumstances, something most newcomers usually struggle with.
In my opinion, the price point is also a bit steep for what a lot of people consider an introductory game to the hobby. You are technically paying for production over core gameplay, and while that may be okay for some people, I believe the main point of gaming should be, well, gaming! Feeding this over produced frenzy agenda to newcomers will teach them that looks are more important than content, which is definitely not true. It will also lead them to wrongly believe that modern gaming should be about these intense, deep thinking downtime sessions when the whole point of it is having fun!
If you can manage having fun anyway, amazing! That’s why board gaming is such an amazing hobby, there’s a thing for EVERYONE! But if you are the type of gamer who likes to be always in the action, gets easily bored and annoyed at how long it takes for other players to take their turns before you, then maybe give the game a try in a boardgame café before investing in it as it can be too much for some people and that will lead to bad gaming sessions. And trust me, no one likes those!
