The golden age of board games is truly a wondrous time to live in – but it can be a perilous path to try and include the younger squirts in your dinner table shenanigans. Navigating a web of offerings that can be outright puerile, to those that miss the brief entirely on what a younger player might desire – and don’t get me started on the dog dirt out there that come with electronic components. Nah, that just ain’t it chief.
But My Lil’ Everdell absolutely IS it. The gateway drug to 2018’s Everdell, this slick little package manages to pare back the systems at play to create a rapid, core experience that equates to about 30 minutes of fantastic fun – unblemished by bloated rules or quirky gotchas that slow down play. Up to four players, four rounds – and then a brilliant Mario Party-esque score capture at the end. It’s a killer way to blast out a sunny afternoon, ogling gorgeous artwork of animal townsfolk and their tourist spots.
The aim of the game is resource gathering and management – all in the duty of throwing a killer parade. Build up resources to snag up townsfolk and locations, then leverage those into bonus objectives and parade tokens – big scoring pieces degrade as more people grab them, so you need to be fast! The locations and critter folk offer a variety of fun modifiers to the game and your resource management, so after a few turns you’ll hopefully be pulling off some crazy combos to further seize the means of production. This should hopefully net you an amazing network of goodies to translate into overall points when the final turn wraps up – and the counting begins.
Resources stocked and ready to rock
Each turn, players place a friendly meeple to gather resources. These range from berries, to twigs and finally orange chunks of resin. You can snag these from some convenient bins, but every turn there are a range of resource dice that will offer more lucrative returns – but only for one meeple on each space. Once you have sent your little token out to grab your resources, you can browse the meadow and hopefully pick up one of the cards there for its resource cost. These are separated into two main types – Critters and Places – and each card will also have a colour associated with it to govern when its bonus effect will take place.
The structure of the game will see each player alternating their activations to grab resources and nab the different cards on offer – each player has three dudes to deploy, and by taking turns you will have to consider what resources may initially be on offer compared to when you next get to activate. These smaller activations within each turn add a surprising amount of depth to each round when you consider what objectives in play may be attractive to the other players. Sure, you might get to snaffle three sets of resources and three cards per turn, but you will need to deal with an ever changing playboard after your mates finish snaffling their goodies. It means that victory conditions will be fluid and volatile in nature, so keeping your horizons broad can do wonders for an eleventh hour victory coming from nowhere.
It’s toyetic nature is an instant hit with the target audience
Taking note of the different cards in play is key to making big progress. Each Critter or Place card you buy out will end up in your stable, and while all cards offer end-game progress to your score, it really comes down to how they interact with each other. As mentioned above, the bonus effects kick in at different times and can lead into some glorious combinations that completely shift how your turn behaves. This can range from cool stuff happening at the start of each turn, to whenever you spend resources, to a broader win-state of giving you goodies if you stack enough of one type of card. It’s accessible and fun, offering a constant thought process as you play.
The entire presentation of the game is brilliant, with vibrant artwork and a great mix of physical tokens – both card and plastic. Coupled with a simple board and a reasonably manageable set of cards and player goodies, it’s quick to set up and easy to appreciate. In the sense of physicality, my only real gripe with what comes in the box is the questionable nature of the resource bins being interlocking cardboard. These crates seem wantonly hungry to destroy themselves, delaminating their printed detail the second I tried to press-fit them together. This isn’t helped by the inclusion of actual plastic tokens in the form of the resin and twig counters, suggesting that a plastic alternative likely wasn’t too far off the table.
The final score phase, where dreams are made and hearts are broken
There is also a criticism to be leveraged to the player cards that house your resources. Each is placed in front of a member of the game, and personal resources are gathered and stored there, but short of containing some attractive artwork, they offer no other insight to gameplay. My wizened (read: elderly) brain would occasionally forget which card type would take place at what time, and retreat to the manual to remind myself. Having a key or glossary on these cards would have done wonders, particularly while initially learning.
On the topic of the manual, I was a little surprised to see such a short-form explanation on the game structure. It was by no means unserviceable, but curiously it had that odd habit of assuming mechanics before they were rightly introduced. In my initial playthrough, I assumed that meadow cards would replenish at the time they were taken – before realising that I had not actually confirmed this. Checking the turn structure, no mention was made to when these cards would re-enter play – that information was a few pages further along. Odd with how it would omit such a simple detail at that time, but given my initial assumption perhaps it was rightly considered to be intuitive enough to skip.
You’ll struggle to only play a single game, given its incredibly quick and satisfying turnaround – but once you manage to pry yourself away, everything packs up beautifully in its slim-line box. Plenty of baggies are provided for every token or deck you may touch on, including a thoughtful addition of some bonus play modifiers to help the younger audience get started. You can even opt in to playing a solo experience – with a dice-driven opponent that may just luck out and stomp you. Which won’t upset you at all. Not one bit. I’m fine.
Chasing parades is a good time
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to see why Everdell is a beloved game for adults, when a stripped down version aimed at kids can still be so chock full of heart and fun. There is a sense of wonder at every corner of this board game, sure to delight young and old with its quick rate of adoption and clever moment-to-moment experience. It is the kind of game I wish I was playing when I was younger, but obviously that was a different time – and the golden age of tabletop fun is upon us.
Review copy supplied by the publisher
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