Looking for a beautifully illustrated board game with a Narnia feel? You’ll find it in Everdell, a worker placement/ city-building game coming soon!
Everdell is a worker placement/ city-building game designed by James A. Wilson with art by Andrew Bosley. Published by Starling Games, Everdell plays 1-4 players and takes roughly 40-80 minutes a game.
Everdell $48.00
Get yours for less at Miniature Market
Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. From Everfrost to Bellsong, many a year have come and gone, but the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host – you have a busy year ahead of yourself. Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?
Everdell is a game of dynamic tableau building and worker placement.
Ages: 13+
Players: 1-4
Game Length: 40-80 minutes
Everdell: A Narnian Woodland Worker Placement Game
In Everdell you’re trying to gather resources, recruit critters(villagers) construct buildings and complete events. You send out workers on the player board to take various action and spend resources to play cards into your city which can only have 15 spaces. While you initially start with two workers you gain more as you prepare for the next seasons. Also preparing for the season also triggers any green city cards you have an additional time. Events can be claimed if you meet the certain criteria and place a worker on the event. Play continues until autumn which opens a final worker placement spot called Journey. To take a journey, you place a worker on the points you wish to earn 2-5, and discard that many forest cards form your hand.
Other than placing workers, Everdell has a variety of cards you can play either from your own hand or from the public display called the meadow. These usually cost a certain amount of resources such as twigs, pebbles, resin, or berries. However similarly to 7 wonders instead of paying resources some critters can be played for free if you have the named structure in your city. This can only be done once per set and you mark the construction card to notate this. The game board has a vast variety of worker placement spots as well as randomly generated spots that will vary from game to game which I really like. Also, the special events are randomly seeded as well so most every game will be very different.
Everdell really impressed me on many levels. The component quality is simply amazing. The biggest feature is the Evertree. It is a huge cardboard tree standie that holds the forest deck, future season workers, and special event cards. Now granted this isn’t super necessary, however, I love the board presence it gives off. People will definitely come over to see what is going on at your table.
Next are the resources, they look great and even the berries are squishy, small detail but it is satisfying. The worker Meeples are different animals for each player color, even the solo mode A.I. Meeples are unique sculpts. And last but not least is the beautiful and charming artwork. It is simply gorgeous, fun, and amazing game. The artwork is very reminiscent of Brian Jacques’ Redwall book series.
My final verdict for Everdell is that for a worker placement this one has all the bells and whistles. Rich, enjoyable gameplay, fantastic components, and it’s table presence is top notch, if not overdone. I will say cool components and unique Meeples always catch my eye and this game did and thankfully lives up to the hype. Originally on Kickstarter, which I did back, Everdell is coming to retail very soon.
It was for sale at Gencon then hopefully hitting your FLGS soon after. Considering the original target date for Kickstarter fulfillment was supposed to be December this year and instead made it in July which was amazing.
They are still trying to lock in an actual street date for retailers.
Everdell is a fantastic game and I hope you are able to check this fun worker placement game and enjoy it as I have.
