Designer: James A. Wilson (Everdell)

Artist: Andrew Bosley (Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game, Citadels, Everdell, Mission: Red Planet 2nd Edition, Tapestry)

Publisher: Starling Games (Archmage, Everdell, Kings’ Forge)

Genre/Mechanisms: card drafting, hand management, set collection, tableau-building, worker placement

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Everdell: Spirecrest & Bellfaire is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 26x the initial funding goal with 5 days left to go on the campaign!

Player Count: 1-6

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About:  Cute animal worker placement & hand management game Everdell gets 2 more expansions: Bellfaire adds 5-6 player support, a new Market location, new Special Event cards, and shared end-game goals called Garland Awards; and Spirecrest adds weather cards with challenging limitations, Big Critter workers with helpful abilities and mounts, and Discovery cards with new critters & locations that provide new abilities and strategies.

How It Works: Everdell is a worker placement and tableau-builder with hand management. On their turn, players can do one of the following: Play a Worker, Play a Card into their tableau (paying the required resources or already having played the associated, linked card), or Prepare for the Next Season. Preparing for the Next Season involves retrieving the player’s workers, gaining the additional workers for the following season, and triggering their green production buildings if applicable (in Summer there is no production building trigger, but instead the player may draw two of the face-up Meadow cards).

As with Stonemaier Games’ Tapestry, the way each player takes their actions may mean they advance to the next season on different turns; consequently a game can involve players simultaneously playing during different seasons, and some players may finish the game before other players do. At the end of the game, players receive points for the played cards in their tableau, for any point tokens they’ve accumulated, for Journey bonuses, Prosperity Card bonuses, and Event bonuses. And then the player with the most points wins.

Everdell looks simple on the surface, with a very simple set of possible actions, but there’s quite a bit of variable strategy and tactical choices over the course of the game, and it can be quite crunchy/heavy by the final seasons. As mentioned above, Bellfaire adds a few additional gameplay elements and modules, but mainly it adds the ability to play the game with 5-6 players. Spirecrest adds Discovery Cards and Weather Cards, map tiles, and Big Critters for workers to ride.

Comparisons:  The tableau-building mechanic in Everdell is similar to that in both Imperial Settlers and 51st State. The worker placement mechanic is similar to, well, any worker placement game. But the combination of the two makes Everdell unique, and the variability that results between both mechanics gives the game its breadth of tactical choices. Finally, there’s the cute animal meeples! For other cute animal-themed games, see Bunny Kingdom, Root, and Explorers of the North Sea, though all of those games play very differently from one another.

What Should I Pledge?:
$25 Everdell: Bellfaire: includes the new Bellfaire expansion.
$39 Everdell: Spirecrest: includes the Collector’s Edition of new Spirecrest expansion.
$64 Spirecrest & Bellfaire: includes both of the new expansions, the Collector’s Edition of Spirecrest and Bellfaire (there is no CE of Bellfaire).
$168 Everything Everdell: includes the Collector’s Edition of the Everdell base game, the Collector’s Edition of the Pearlbrook expansion, the Collector’s Edition of the new Spirecrest expansion, and Bellfaire (there is no CE of Bellfaire).

Add-Ons:
$65 Everdell Collector’s Edition: the CE of the base game
$39 Pearlbrook Collector’s Edition: the CE of previous expansion, Pearlbrook
$15 Metal Coin Set: includes 20 1-point coins and 10 3-point coins
$19 Wooden Ever Tree
$5 Punchboard Ever Tree (one is already included in the base game)
$39 Collector’s Edition Upgrade Pack: upgrades the retail version of Everdell to the CE with all of the KS-exclusive components.
$5 2nd Printing Rulebook
$6 Wooden Twigs: includes 30 Wooden Twigs
$15 Enamel Pin Set #1
$15 Enamel Pin Set #2
$15 Art Pack #1
$15 Art Pack #2
$15 Art Pack #3

KS Exclusives:
Since Bellfaire is mainly a 5-6 player expansion, with some additional Special Events, end-game Garland Awards, resource boards, and a flat board that can be used in place of the Ever Tree, there is no additional, KS-exclusive content in the Bellfaire expansion.

The Spirecrest expansion, however, includes the following KS-exclusive content: Firebeak Discovery Card & Big Critter, Truffle Discovery Card & Big Critter, Prospector Discovery Card, Mountaineer Discovery Card, Cave of Dancing Lights Discovery Card, Tezel’s Laboratory Discovery Card, Star Weaver’s Discovery Card, 6 Lizard Workers & Frog Ambassador, and 6 Mole Workers & Frog Ambassador.

All-In Total: Assuming you don’t feel the need for the Enamel Pin Sets or Art Packs, then in the continental U.S. you’re looking at $168 for the Everything Everdell pledge, $18 in shipping, and $15 in taxes, for a total of $201. If you’re including the Wooden Ever Tree, then your total should be $220, taxes included.

Everdell: Spirecrest & Bellfaire completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, October 3rd and tentatively ships in February 2020.