therese blog

I, again, had big plans of doing an unboxing post. But again, I got too excited. This time I have an excuse – CAPYBARAS!

Emerland is yet another game från the Everdell universe, following Farshore and Spirefrost. I have them all, and also all the Everdell expansions, which means I’m going into this review perhaps a bit bias.

I like the the mechanics of the game and I think they really mended the things in Everdell that doesn’t work very well. Farshore was a hit for me, although a bit easy and not as strategic as Spirefrost.

Emerland though, hits a homerun for me. There are a lot of strategic possibilities and a lot of ways to play the game for a win. The artwork and the cards are beautiful as always, but this one is my favourite with more of a jungle theme. It’s a 1-4 player game and I’ve played 2-player. Solo game has a new opponent with tricks up his sleeve for a varied and challenging gameplay. I’ve not tried it yet, but it looks really good.

I got the collectors edition with trays for all resources, a blanket with a CAPYBARA on it and a plushie CAPYBARA. I didn’t know the CAPYBARA was going to be quite that large, but it will find a nice place somewhere on a shelf perhaps.

The game itself doesn’t stray far from the original Everdell. You have workers (and also helpers in Emerland), you have a hand of cards and playable cards in a communal space (called the Plateau) and you play in four seasons, gaining more workers and helpers each season. On your turn you may do one of the available actions and when you can’t do any more actions you advance to the next season, meaning each player can be in a different season. The locations on the board gather resources, cards, emeralds, realms and you also have an archaeologist you can go on expedition with.

What are the differences then? Emerland has only 6 communal cards, and a hand limit of 6 cards. The archaeologist stands on the path and cannot be used for other actions. The little helpers (small bugs, super cute) can either help you gather more resources in a single action, or help you negotiate with another player if the space is already occupied and even frequent a few locations on its own making the action-taking very much more varied. This also makes it A LOT easier getting out a few cards already in the first season.

There’s also a new kind of card, Artisan cards. These are a separate action where you discard a card under an Artisan card to gain benefits, a great new addition to actions.

And also, all the cards are double-sided, because you can upgrade them, and there are quite a few strategic choices to WHEN you want to upgrade, because you can get a lot of benefits this way.

All in all it’s a fun game, rather fastpaced, with a lot of strategic choices and a lot of different ways to get your win.

I’ve not rated the game yet, since I’ve only played twice and not tried the solo gaming experience yet – but it leans towards a 9-10, it’s that fun!