Squirrels are pretty cute, but they’re even cuter when they’re running a little store selling things to ferrets and badgers. Welcome to Everdell. Everdell is a worker placement game that requires resource management and city planning. It has received a lot of praise and has already had a lot added to it, but now, we are getting two new expansions and a massive collection box to store all your cute critters. Through a series of worker placement rounds, unique goals, and building a little city of cute villagers and adorable locations, this game ends up being a really great test strategy and foresight.
This is a relatively new game, it came out in 2018. On BoardGameGeek, Everdell sits at #29 in the overall ratings, #29 in the strategy games, and #2 for family games. For those who may not know, those ratings are insanely high and only the best of the best games are even in the top 100. It’s won a ton of awards and isn’t terribly difficult to play, but it does offer a lot of replay-ability and requires a lot to master. In addition to this base game, Starling Games has put out three expansions over the last three years with two more coming this year.
Newleaf and Mistwood, the new expansions, are part of a successful Kickstarter and now people can do late pledges at this link. The New Leaf expansion adds 4 new sets of meeples, 59 cards, 32 visitor cards, 9 special event cards, a new station board attachment, and more. Mistwood adds another 4 sets of meeples with 2 new boards and new mechanics in dealing with the villainous spider Nightweave. Along with all that, there is a new storage box to fit everything Everdell into one location. The Big Ol’ Box (also included in the Complete Collection) also includes new wooden tokens, stickers, a master rulebook, and organized storage inserts. But if that’s not enough for you, or you’re just starting out your Everdell collection, they’re also currently offering a gigantic $200 complete collection that has everything. It includes the base game, and all five expansions all packed into the Big Ol’ Box.
We’ve loved playing the game a lot. Between the worker placement, city building, and unique progression that’s complemented by beautiful artwork and cutest creatures, this is an easy recommendation for just about anyone who enjoys board games.
