Everdell Mistwood: Review

Everdell Mistwood: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Worker Placement, Engine Builder
Player Age: 10+ 

Player Count: 1 - 4 Players 

Time to Play: 40 - 100 Minutes 
Game Designer: Rob R. Bell, James. A. Wilson, Chrissy Peske
Game Artist:  Andrew Bosley, Natalie Johnson, Naomi Robinson, Dann May

Publisher: Starling Games

Year Published: 2022

BGG Weight: 2.60
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Introduction:

Everdell is back and this time in the web-filled forest of Mistwood. The main addition to this expansion is an AI player named Nightweave. That isn't all though as it also brings in new critters, legendary cards, cards focused on the founder of Everdell (Corrin Evertail) and new unique farms to better match the change of seasons.

New Critters:

The four new critters added to the mix are pigs, stoats, butterflies and spiders. All of these critters have meeples and cards that make them backwards compatible with the additions of Pearlbrook, Spirecrest and, in particular, the unique character abilities from Bellaire.

Butterflies have a larger hand size of 4 cards. Stoats can discard cards to gain resources after they play a critter or construction.

As a spider, you can have Nightweave on a location and whenever a player goes there you gain a resource and a card, then Nightweave moves to another location of your choosing. Pigs manipulate farms. All farm cards go into a face-up pile next to that player and they may play a farm for free after every prepare for the season step without the farm taking up space in their city.

New Farms:

With the new farm-focused pig comes even better farms. These farms work thematically with the changes of the season. They will have different costs and different bonuses. Each of these farms will give players a choice out of two bonuses. During set-up, these farms will swap out the original farms.

Legendary construction and critters:

Legendary cards were originally introduced in the Everdell Legends expansion and like a good legendary tale, they have now returned. During set-up each player will gain one legendary critter and one legendary construction, where neither of these cards will count towards hand size. Legendary cards are upgraded versions of pre-existing cards. 

There are only two ways to play a legendary card; outright pay the cost, or discard the original version of the legendary card from your city and replace it with the improved legend. These cards cannot be copied by any effect and there is only allowed to be one card of this type, i.e. if it is a legendary gatherer then you can no longer play any more gatherers into your city. However, they do add an additional space in your city, thereby creating 16 spaces available if one is played and 17 spaces available if both are played. This is basically just to say that as well as not taking up space in hand, they don’t take up a city space either. 

Corrin  Evertail: 

Corrin Evertail's cards are strong and include one new card for each card type.  These cards have heavy interaction with other players, for example the King that scores for each purple card in an opponent's city, or the Leader and Warrior who gain coins from giving other players cards. These cards are easy to play as the critters can share a home with any building of their type and the buildings can open their home for any critter that matches their type. In this sense, the traveller and destination cards match each other. 

Nightweave:

Nightweave is an A.I. player that will steal cards from the meadow, block prime worker locations and complete events all in the process of causing chaos as a third player to a two-player or solo game. There are 5 difficulties available, essentially determining how many points it gains on a dead turn (a turn where it is unable to do any actions) and how it will score at the end of the game. 

Nightweave has an activity deck that, based on the season, will determine what action it will take. It will first try to do the first option of that season, if that is not available it will do the second option followed by the bottom option on the card.  There are multiple options for this group of spiders to do including drawing cards, playing cards from the meadow/hand, blocking worker spaces and blocking a meadow space on the board

Once all Nightweave meeples have been placed but a card requires you to place another meeple, Nightweave will prepare for the next season. During this, the deck will add more cards in-between seasons creating more advanced options such as claiming events and end-scoring locations aimed towards the last seasons.

Bonus Modules:

There are three modules that can be added which are meant to be used without any other expansion material. The Personalities can be played with one or two players. Plots and Plans can only be played in solo mode and cannot be played together. 

Personalities:

This module gives Nightweave a new penalty to players when in the meadow and will affect certain cards there. These effects are various and give will the players new challenges that will have to be persisted with. There are Web tokens to help players signify the cards affected in the meadow at any given time. 

Plans:

Plans are long-term strategies that the Nightweave will follow during the game. Some of these plans have foils on them that allows the player to pay a cost to reduce or prevent the plan when it is activated.

Plots:

A new plot will be drawn every time Nightweave prepares for the season. These cards can be a one-time effect with an opportunity to foil or an effect that occurs for the whole season. 

Final Thoughts:

- Easy to run and interesting A.I. opponent.

- More content in cards, especially the legendary cards.

- Interesting critters to keep the game feeling more asymmetrical in nature.

- Some players may not find a need for Nightweave.

In my opinion this expansion is for three types of people. Solo players who want an interesting challenge that emulates a multiplayer game, players who enjoy this game at a higher player count but at 2 players want more of a shifting board state, and completionists that want the new cards and critters. Nightweave functions great and is easy to learn how to run while still being effective as another player, creating a tighter board state and making players need to rush for those events. In saying that I'm not a solo game player and I already enjoy this game at a two players count so the question remains if there is enough content for the completionist? With the interesting new critters, especially the pigs and spiders, new farms, and more variability for the legendary cards I believe there is enough content to keep hardcore fans engaged even if they are just aiming for these new additions.

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Starling Games
Mistwood on BGG
Everdell on BGG
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