Starling Games Everdell Spirecrest, Multicolor

My wife loves this game and we crack it out occasionally to relax after a stressful day. The game is easy to play, seems very well balanced (our final scores are usually within 10 points of each other), the art is wonderful, and it's quick. Pros: - Great worker placement/engine builder that is easy to teach - Wonderful art and theming - truly delightful, even for a cynic like me. - Quick to play and easy to teach* (more on that in a second) - most of our games take 30-40 minutes. - Card-based nature gives it a bit of (shared) randomness and replayability. - Simple, elegant design, not a lot of bloated rules or unneded complexity. Cons: - I've heard this is true of many Starling Games, but the manual is not well written and poorly laid out. My wife is a rulebook fan, but we both needed to watch a round or two being played online to understand it. There's also some imprecise wording on some of the cards that are open to interpretation. Nothing a good copy edit and wording changes in a second edition wouldn't fix, but it can make the first game or two a little frustrating. - Full sized cards (preferably with sleeves), the big standing tree, and large play area mean you'll need a lot of table space for this. I wish the cards were a smidge smaller to reduce its footprint.

Everdell is a fantastic game that synthesizes the best game mechanics of a number of its peers. It blends the resource gathering / worker placement component of games like Agricola or Lords of Waterdeep, with the card draw / card synergy of Dominion, with the city building / planning of 7 Wonders. Considering I absolutely adore all of those games, Everdell immediately shot into the Top 3 Games in my collection. The card draw / card management aspect is the most unique and fun part of the game. Cards act as "quests" or "contracts," but also can be used as part of resource management, and you'll also need to have a keen eye for planning ahead to give yourself "bonus" actions / rewards. You start with a set of cards in your hand, and you'll send out your workers to gather resources to put those cards into your city, but there's also a community "pool" of face-up cards that can be bought by any player. The icing on the cake for all of this is that the theme, presentation, and artwork are a pure delight. There's just a magical "something" about the way the art captures the small details of the imagined premise of play that draws you in. It's a bit pricy, but when you see the quality of construction and the art, combined with the engrossing gameplay, it's worth every penny and more. If you have any interest at all in Euro-style board gaming, Everdell deserves---no, practically demands---space on your shelf.

Everdell is a turn-based worker-placement economic/farming/building game, similar to Viticulture (if you like one, you'll like the other). In a nutshell, you place your workers on the board to get resources of different types (wood, resin, pebbles, berries, cards, coins), and when you have enough resources to pay for a card, you lay it in your "city" in front of you, reaping the reward of that card. This progresses until you have no more workers, can purchase nothing else with your resources in hand, or opt to pass. At this point you retrieve all your workers, get some additional, and enjoy the benefits of the next phase (which is often the re-activating of some of your cards that make even more additional resources for the coming round). At the end of three rounds, players score to see who had the highest number of points/coins. Everdell has a few interesting mechanics that make it different from other worker-placement games. First, you are limited to the number of cards you may play ("in your city"), which means you might build the perfect engine and discover while you can afford expensive items you have no where to put them! So, it requires long term planning, strategy, and thinking about your options. Second, certain cards allow you to obtain other cards for free, so if you get the dependency chains just right, you can save your resources (but your city fills quicker). Third, the game doesn't hit a stall state where one player has done everything they can and must wait while others catch up before going to the next phase ("season"), rather you retrieve your workers and keep going. Although, at the end of the game, you might have to wait for players, but things move quickly and you can total your points at that time. This last item is where the game really shines -- because you're effectively making a choice: More Workers or Linger for more scraps (because you don't have enough workers to get all the resources you need). In the latter case, you get more millage from your turn, but the other player is going to be able to grab the stuff you want. However, there's a balance, in that your workers remain parked in places they'd like to be visiting (so you can block them). The game design in beautiful, it's colorful, it's got cute characters, and yes, there's a huge 3D cardboard tree as well. It's got nice little resource objects to fidget with while you're contemplating your turn. There's a huge deck of options, all kinds of variation cards so each game is unique and has its own bonuses, and there's even a mode where it can play single player. It's easy to explain and jump into. It is a good game for players that like a broad to overwhelming array of options that merely grows even larger with play. But, if you plan too far ahead, someone else can easily swoop in, take the card you had pinned everything on, and cause you to go back to the drawing board ...but because there are so many other options, the setback isn't that bad, often requiring a slight pivot of strategy, and so the game doesn't get frustrating when things don't work out as hoped. The cons. Turns out the 3D tree is highly superficial (and it has to be disassembled for storage). It's only function is to hold extra workers and four tiny cards, as well as some reminder text. The tree itself also holds the draw deck, which can make it difficult to get to. Print isn't in the best contrast or color selection, some text appears to be in a thin flourished font, and it's all a little too small for older eyes or bad lighting. The board itself is extremely busy, and the relative sizes of "one worker" / "two workers" / "many workers" is subtle. (Eventually you learn lower areas of the board are for multi-workers, cards have two spots printed on them, and pretty much everything else is one worker. Additionally, the iconography is pretty good, so the only thing to really worry about are the cards, which suffer less from the above issues.) The cards try to jam a lot of information onto them, and this can make reading them difficult due to the small sizes. For instance, want to know how many cards there are of that type? You have to look closely at the art work to find a very tiny number etched in a rock. Want to see what character a card can bring in? There's tiny print and even a tinier picture at the bottom right. We literally keep a magnifying glass at the table. Bonus cards better on readability, but they tend to use a comma where they mean an ampersand. But, again, none of this really detracts from game play, as once you get it, you won't need to do a lot of reading. The instruction manual is beautiful to look at and contains a lot of flavor content, and I give them props for keep it all to the side rather than interlacing it with the instructions themselves. The only serious complaint would be that the main instructions didn't go far enough in the text department. For instance, it'll show you a card and there'll be a tiny flyout reading "free character" and that's it. ...does that mean this card it's printed on is free? ...do all cards have this? ...are the cards that have this special? ...how do you use this, do you use this, when would you use this? Turns out, if you play the game the first time and discover that you've got a bunch of tiny chits you didn't use and a number of cards they fit on and you see other similar cards with those names, it'll click what they're for. And, it wouldn't have taken much to explain "If you card shows this, and the thing it names is available, cover it with one of those, and take the card without paying the cost." On the whole, Everdell is a very enjoyable and satisfying thematic game that offers strategy, construction, and engine building (over three phases) in such a way that there are extra considerations that make game play more fun. Would highly recommend this for game nights and gifting.

On first order, I received a Japanese, regular (not collector) edition. After re-ordering, I did receive an English version, but still NOT the Collector's Edition.

Bellissimo

Beautiful and fun game. Worth gifting to someone that enjoys tabletop games.

After 5 games under my belt, this has become one of my favourites. I don't normally splurge to this extent -- money's tight -- but I'd heard really good things about it enough to make this a bit of a birthday treat. Contrary to all appearances it is not a "gateway" game. There is a learning curve... steeper for some depending on experience. Be prepared to spend more time on the first few games than is being advertised. The theme though evocative of Wind in the Willows, Beatrix Potter and Watership Down, this is not a "children's" game although the entire family can have fun with it. The game certainly deserves all the praise it has gotten for it's beautiful artwork and delightful components. My copy (seems to be the second printing) came with the upgraded wooden twigs as well. Replayability factor is high. Every game so far has been different depending on the movement and pick of cards in hand, in the Meadow and around the forest locations. It does take a while to get acquainted with the deck to play more tactically but it's worth it to see improvements in how the tableau and engine shapes up. The worker placement in this is also very cleverly designed. Save your pennies as I highly recommend this for those who want a bit more of a challenge in terms of tactics and strategy.

The materials in the box are very high quality. You can play 1-4 players. Our first playthrough with 4 players took 3.5 hours. The art work is unique and 'cute' says my wife. With 2 players it can take around 30-40mins. Be careful with setting up the tree and you need to push pieces together. Try not to break it! As there are so many pieces, the box it heavy. Not easy if you want to pack it to take it somewhere.