Everdell: Spirecrest Review

So you’ve already fallen in love with Everdell; the most adorable civilisation building game, but you’re looking to add a bit more edge to the game?

This is where the Everdell: Spirecrest expansion steps in. You venture past the meadow, and beyond the edges of Everdell Valley into a new alpine adventure.

Expansion Components & Gameplay

You can now play as: foxes, moles, owls or lizards.

The mountain board connects seamlessly to the original board in the base game. It has a trail for rabbit travellers, who trek through the foothills, up the peaks and over the ridge of the mountain. These bunnies allow you to choose a map tile as you advance up the mountain trail (through the seasons). The map tile gives you a personal objective and allows you to go on an expedition – if you can pay the cost – at the end of the game. You will collect a total of three of these tiles, which can be very rewarding, but be warned, you must explore each map tile in the order you charted them.

When you prepare for the next season you can now select a discovery card. These cards which represent discoveries your traveller has made along the way, bring significant benefits with unique abilities & the opportunity to use big critters! You get to pick from three discovery cards each season, depending on it’s position on the board you may have a cost to pay. The big critters are beautiful giant animeeples which replace one of your workers (you can choose to have your worker ride on their back). They can be used just like a regular worker but they have special powers.

The final challenge this expansion brings is the weather cards. These change each season; you might be snowed in with a deep freeze in winter & have to hide from lightning storms in the spring. You think summer will be lovely but there’s a heatwave & then wildfires in the autumn! The weather makes it more difficult to perform your actions – adding another layer to the game.

There’s also more 3-point tokens, plastic saddles & frog ambassadors (for the Pearlbrook expansion).

Does Everdell need more adventure?

Absolutely yes! The base game is fantastic but Spirecrest just adds so much more depth to the game. If you enjoy Everdell and are considering incorporating an expansion into your collection, I would highly recommend this one.

The additional components and new gameplay rules fit effortlessly into the original game. As I mentioned above the new board slots in like a puzzle piece to the end of the main board, not only that but the artwork lines up perfectly. You will not be disappointed with the new discovery cards. Each one is beautiful with unique artwork and straightforward instructions on how they can be used. The weather cards are made smaller but are equally charming and have their perfect place on the board. The wooden animal meeples are all of excellent quality and have a distinctive colour so you can tell them apart from the original workers in the base game.

I love how you have to contend with various weather conditions depending on the season, giving you limitations on locations. Having the rabbit travellers collect the map tiles as objectives gives you something to work towards for the end game & encourages you to collect more resources to pay for them. There are 42 different discovery cards giving loads of replayability & lots of fun effects to gameplay.

If you want to add more strategy to the endearing game of Everdell, Spirecrest is the expansion for you.

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