Everdell; a worker placement game that has whittled its way into many hearts with its wonderful art, characters and gameplay. The big 3D structures featured in the core games also add great table presence.
Now, this series of games has a new entry as we explore a new region in this world… Emerland.
We don’t go down to the woods today… no this time it’s the jungle
Emerland is deep in the tropical jungle to the west of Everdell Valley, and is a land of music and artistic culture, fantastic natural resources such as valuable gems and underground caverns to explore. This vibrant new setting is where we find ourselves this time, so time to send out the explorers.
Everdell; a worker placement game that has whittled its way into many hearts with its wonderful art, characters and gameplay. The big 3D structures featured in the core games also add great table presence.
Now, this series of games has a new entry as we explore a new region in this world… Emerland.
We don’t go down to the woods today… no this time it’s the jungle
Emerland is deep in the tropical jungle to the west of Everdell Valley, and is a land of music and artistic culture, fantastic natural resources such as valuable gems and underground caverns to explore. This vibrant new setting is where we find ourselves this time, so time to send out the explorers.
Exploring the treasures inside
Everdell has always had fabulous quality components. You can always tell there is a pride in the end product and Emerland is no different. Now metaphorical cards on the table, this review is based on us having the collector’s edition, complete with additional upgraded components, but fear not, even Everdell’s standard editions have always cared for quality.
All the components across the board (no pun intended) are well made and feel good to last. Alongside this, the artwork is back in full swing. Complete with a new artist for this game (a pattern the designers and publishers seem to like doing), the artwork once again pops, and really draws you into the game. The best bit, is now the cards are double sided, so more art to go around!
The 3D structure, a kind of cavern or ancient ruin for an explorer to head into find treasures, is well designed and easy to assemble, but similar to previous games, if you have the standard edition you will probably want to keep it built to avoid wear and tear over time – this obviously has storage considerations. However, if you do decide to disassemble the structure, you will be pleased to know, the insert in the box is so well designed that you will find everything, and we mean literally everything has its place. The insert also has space for the upgraded component trays (sold separately).
From every direction, you will not be disappointed with the quality of this game.
Exploring Emerland
Much like the previous games, Emerland is worker placement and tableau building at its core.
Each turn you will perform a single action which can include:
· Place a worker (and/or a helper in this new game)
· Play a card from your hand or the main board
· Prepare for a season
· Explore the ancient ruins
Like all good worker placement, if you chose to place a worker, you take a meeple (animal shaped, in case you have never played Everdell before), place them into an available space and do the action on that space. It’s simple, it’s clean and it works. Actions can be things like drawing cards, taking resources, or upgrading cards for example.
In Emerland, they introduce the helper. These more miniature creature meeples can either be placed on their own spaces for actions, or doubled up with a main worker (as a negotiator) to allow you to enter an occupied space.
You also have your explorer. This is another worker that you can action in a turn, limited by the season, and brings (arguably for the first time in the glorious Everdell series) the most interaction with the 3D element in the game. Your explorer can move spaces, again gaining points (and on later spaces forcing you to pay resources to move), until you reach the final space, which will grant you those important bonus points at the end of the game.
Playing a card can include either creatures or constructions. You play them by paying the necessary resource cost, as long as you have space in your city (also known as the player’s tableau). You start with twelve spaces, but one available action on the main board lets you take realm cards which expand your city capacity, a lovely new edition.
Once a card is played, depending on its type (depicted by a specific symbol and colour combination, such as; production, traveller, governance, prosperity, and destination), you get either instant bonus actions or resources, bonuses that could happen during preparing a season, event triggering bonuses, or point scoring bonuses at the end of the game. Emerland also introduces a new type of card, the artisan, which allows you to discard cards to trigger actions. This is an interesting new edition to the series and works well.
All cards are played on their non upgraded side, unless told otherwise. You can play a card upgraded by utilising the harps resource in the game, which also allows you to play cards without paying any other resource. To upgrade cards in your city, your helper can go to a special action slot and play emeralds to achieve this.
Preparing for a season is how you progress the game, and when a player does this, they get more animeeples and/or helpers, possible new resources and also the possibility of rolling the resource dice… yes DICE!!
This game now comes with dice. You roll them to start the game and place them on the designated spots on the board. Using one of your workers or helpers, you can then activate these to gain resources. During the prepare a season action, the first player to do so gets to re-roll them, which adds a nice new element of randomness to the game.
Once all players can no longer play any actions or prepare new seasons, you will progress to final scoring, gaining points from cards, tokens, bonuses and more.
Musings of a wise old owl…
Why are owls always considered wise? Even in Everdell they often feature in wise and teacher like role? We digress……
For existing fans, Emerland has brought much of the familiar, whilst offering enough new stuff to make this game worth existing alongside its predecessors.
For those unfamiliar with Everdell, although this is number four in the main game series (not including the smaller games released under the Everdell branding), it is easy enough to jump right in. You do not need to have played Everdell before to enjoy this game.
The rules are, as is always the case, simple and straightforward to learn, but offer enough space for those wise old owls who wish to become master players by getting points many could only dream of.
The artwork is gorgeous, honestly you could lose time just looking and admiring the artwork, and all the components are good quality and clearly designed by a team who care. If you are lucky enough to have the collector’s edition and upgraded tokens, the quality of these feel great and will definitely last, and for big fans, they will be very pleased. Both versions will make a great gift for yourself or that board game fan in your life.
The 3D structure in this game is probably the first time it feels a core part of gameplay rather than decoration. Yes, in previous games they would hold cards, or a worker placement slot, but the ruins in Emerland really feel like you want to make use of it throughout the game, and feels almost a race to the end to get the most points.
This game is a great edition to the series and should not be ignored by any gaming fan, cute, fun and thinky, what more could you want?
About the author:
We are Peaches and Meeples, busy professionals who love to chill out to fun table top games. We love board games, card games, miniatures games, competitive or co-operative. Put some dice in our hands and we are in our happy place.
We are also proud guinea pig parents to two lovely fluffballs of joy.
