Back in October, Nathalie decided the theme for our monthly board game meet was to be Autumn. Since there were red squirrels on the table mats we agreed that Everdell would fit the bill nicely. Once the cheese, chips and chat were out of the way we set it up. Dave wasn’t particularly happy. “The only animals I want to see tonight are the ones on my plate”, he grumbled. He’s unreconstructed. But, having played a couple of times before, he had some valid gripes.
Sour grapes…I mean, some gripes
Dave’s gripe number one: it’s a table hog, make no mistake. As the towns around the Evertree expand so the dexterity challenge increases- you try holding a high ball glass full of rhubarb gin (with a cherry and slice of lemon) between your knees while preventing all the meeples falling out of a big cardboard tree, to put a wooden tortoise on a barely discernible paw print 2 meters away. And yes, that’s right. Rhubarb gin. These are middle-England games nights!
Dave’s gripe number two: the print on the cards might be manageable when they are in front of you but try reading it from the other end of the table. l’m sure Bono said that every time a game of Everdell is sold an optician claps her hands!
Dave’s gripe number three: after the first couple of outings in Everdell he, and to be fair, the rest of us, felt exhausted…and underwhelmed! Too many cards, too many clearings, too much stuff to do. It took at least an hour longer than the box promise (although we all know that box promises are even less reliable than Boris Johnson’s auto-biography) and Sarah’s analysis paralysis was triggered on multiple occasions. On the up-side, I made tremendous progress with Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’.
Why you should buy.
Stripped down to the bare bones Everdell appears to be a ‘by the numbers’ worker placement game- place a worker – get some albeit pretty stuff – use stuff to buy stuff which generates more stuff. Player with the most stuff related stuff wins. “I’ve got Lords of Waterdeep and Agricola so why should I bother?” Good question. Let’s get to answering that.
Everdell is one of the best produced games in its price range, so right out of the box you feel that you are winning. More than most of the games I own, this one grabs one’s attention and one’s willingness to engage from the outset. If I can organise myself (no mean feat), I’ll set up Everdell up in advance of my friends coming over and enjoy their gasps and exclamations as they happen upon the beautifully rendered forest clearing; its palate of rural colours spreading out from the base of an impressive 3D Evertree.
The playing cards are simply marvellous, depicting meticulously composed woodland scenes, rickety habitats and charming characters. Further, the inclusion of flavour text on the cards adds a little gentle humour to proceedings. Add to this the somewhat realistic resources -don’t let grandma eat the berries- and the shapely animeeples, and the ensuing result evokes a pastoral fairy tale world, reminiscent of Kenneth Graham’s turn of the (20th) century novel, Wind in the Willows.
Everdell begins as Winter draws to a close and the woodland creatures stir from their slumbers. Reflecting this, you begin the game with two ‘workers’ which you will most likely use to collect some resources. Everdell starts gently but this is a good thing. It provides an easy entry to casual gamers. You can teach as you play- by far the best way if you have attention challenged gen. zeders at the table. But don’t be fooled into thinking you can relax and get lazy. The creatures, or critters if you prefer, in these parts are going to multiply and get busy.
Perhaps the main innovation that designer James A. Wilson has contributed to the worker placement genre is the ‘staggered regroup’ mechanism. In a round (season), once you have played as much as you want to, you can ‘prepare’ for the next season by reclaiming all your workers and any bonus items you are entitled to. This will result in players finishing the game at different times. I suspect that ending the game later rather than earlier than your opponents is a good thing most of the time-and those that finish earlier can get on with making the tea and heating the crumpets.
By Summer time (in game terms) things will kick off good and proper. You’ll be building your towns on your opponent’s tears as you send your workers to block off the most desirable clearings, steal the critters they want and send the fool to taunt their townsfolk. Nathalie likes that there are ways to undermine your opponents plans but no option to storm into someone else’s town and burn it down, which, for her, would be both a game and a marriage breaker! There are multiple ways to score points, creating room for both strategic and tactical game play and some card synergies create combo-tastic moments.
But…..but….
And herein lies the rub. For newbies Everdell can be a bit daunting. There is a lot to grok, even before you place your first hedgehog, or squirrel, or…. You’ll have to process your hand of cards, plus a further eight in the meadow, plus the clearing cards and then the special event cards perched on the boughs of the Evertree – before you can develop an initial course of action. And then you have to keep an eye on the cards your opponents are drawing and playing or else! And when you finally develop a plan of action which requires that one card which just won’t appear in the meadow, it might just be ‘flip the table time’.
But………but……..if you can accept that it might take a few games to familiarise yourself with the cards and learn how the various parts of the game mesh together, you can have fun, a lot of fun.
Dave enjoyed his last journey in Everdell. He won by one point! Cheers Dave.
