Everdell

If The Wind in the Willows had a board game, it might look like this. Cute woodland creatures living together in a woodland village. Mice as farmers, crows as teachers, moles as miners, and dozens more. Anyone who looks at the game will be enchanted by the art that brings all the critters to life.

Year of Release: 2018
Number of Players: 1-4
Playing Time: 40-80 min
Listed Age: 13+
Mechanics: Card Drafting, Worker Placement
Theme in a Nutshell: Woodland Creatures

What I like:

Nice combination of card drafting and worker placement. The name of the game is combos though. Buildings let you play the corresponding critter for free once built, but should you wait for the building to show up? Or should you just go ahead and play the critter anyway because they do something cool.

Great art, and great production and components. If you don’t like the way this game looks you’re dead inside.

Game-play is easy to teach, but there is a lot of depth. Balancing what to spend your resources on, and when to use one of your very limited workers can be a real crunch. Even coming up against the 15 card limit can give you interesting choices.

We have the Bellfaire expansion which feels like base game 2.0. I think it fleshes the game out quite nicely and maybe fixes a couple of small issues with the game. The other expansions are much more of a thing that dramatically change how the game plays.

This might be in Queen’s top 5. If she did this sort of thing.

My Rating: 9/10

What I don’t like:

When you play for the first couple of times, you won’t do well against more experienced players. What you should be doing is not readily apparent. You have many available options open to you, but you have to make sure what you’re doing is efficient, and how to be efficient is not easy to know.

The tree looks cool, but gets in the way.

Is it good for kids and families?

Not really recommended for kids under 10 or so. Even though the theme is extremely kid-friendly, the game goes a little long for them. Some of the complexity will leave them playing, but having 0% chance to win, which can be frustrating.

Learn more about the game:

• Everdell – How to play (video)
• Everdell Gameplay Runthrough (video)
• Everdell on BGG
• Where to buy Everdell online in Canada