Everdell Journeys Review - It's A New Location...But Is It One Worth Visiting?
Transcript
Hey, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co, and today I'm reviewing Everdell Journeys from Tabletop Tycoon. Everdell Journeys is a one to six player journey game. It's a game about going on a journey by laying out a bunch of cards and then trying to fulfill a variety of goals based on what you've done on the journey so far. It's designed by James and Clarissa Wilson, the designers of the original Everdell and most of the Everdell, maybe all, possibly all of the Everdell variants since then, I don't entirely know. But either way, let's go ahead and dive into this. First and foremost, this is a prototype, all rules and components subject to change, and I'll have a link to the crowdfunding campaign down below. And also, this channel is sponsored by All Play. More of them at the end of the video. In Everdell Journeys, you are going to be playing out across three rounds. In each round, you're going to draw eight cards, and there's two ways to play the game. There's open drafting and closed drafting. Open drafting has the cards where everyone can go ahead and take them and see what's available as you slowly replenish them. And closed drafting, my preferred way to play, you're going to have a hand of eight cards over here, and then you're going to go ahead and draft five cards into your journey for round one before repeating that for rounds two and three, ending up with a total of 15 cards. By the way, that general concept is the same, closed or open drafting. The open versus closed only really changes as far as whether you're doing a closed hand of cards or an open table of cards. But in the game, you're going to take a look at your hand. For example, looking at my hand over here, which is organized those cards, I'm going to try and figure out what goals I'm trying to achieve. Now, I should note, starting off, you don't have a ton of things you're working for because you don't have your own tableau that you're building out, but you do have a few goals that you're mindful of.
In round one, you're going to score for this tag on your various cards. In round two, you're going to score for that terrain type, and in round three, you'll score for those symbols on those cards. So, without knowing much more, I am already incentivized to look at this card off hand. Maybe this card is works for me, or I can't do this one. This would be too hard to be able to do right off the bat, so I can't do this one yet, and I'll explain why I can't. So, let's focus on possibly doing mountains. That's the only mountain. This would be a great starting card. The only problem is I can't afford to go on it because it costs five campfires. And you might think to yourself, "Well, Alex, you already have five campfires, so it seems like you can do that. I can't. I'll explain that soon. But, let's go ahead and ignore those. Focus on something else instead. Let's gather. This one's not the worst. It's not the best, either, but it's not the worst. Let's go ahead and take this one. Let's not overthink it too much. So, I'm going to draft this card. This card costs three campfires to be spent.
So, one, two, and three. But, then additionally, you also have to spend a campfire whenever you're moving to a new terrain type, and that includes your first card. So, it's going to cost an additional campfire that five mountain could only have I could only have done that if I had gone to it while coming from another mountain with all my campfires refreshed. So, I go ahead and play this card, and I move on to the card. Because on your turn, you draft a card, and then you either journey or you rest. If you journey, you spend your campfires and move as far as you possibly can on any number of cards. You could go across multiple cards at once. So, I'm going to spend those four campfires, and then I'll do the card effect. I'm going to get a point for every yellow tag I have, and I have three in this card, so I'm going to immediately go ahead and move up three points before passing my hand to the next player, and getting passed a hand of seven cards from them. That's turn one out of five in the very first round.
Now that I have my next hand of seven cards, I'm going to go ahead and look and see what I want to do. Now, this one over here lets me copy a green card. I don't have a green card to copy yet, so I can't do that. I might want to lean into the yellows over here, but the problem is this has me copying a blue, which also won't help me. Uh this one is not the worst. It gives me the blue tag, and it costs zero to go on. So, we'll go ahead and place this card. I'm going to select this card, put it down, and that's also going to give me a new book over here, which are these personal goals that I'm trying to work towards. So, I'm going to reach in the bag. Well, actually, I'm not going to, because I'm not actually going to travel to this card. Instead, I'm going to take a rest turn, where I'm going to go ahead and refresh three campfires. On a rest turn, you refresh three campfires, as well as reaching in the bag and taking a new goal that you're going to be working towards. Something else I'm working towards. Right now, I want three mountains, which will give me three points. Over here, I want two of each tag, which will give me eight points.
And I want those two two symbols, which will give me six points. Uh you can only hold on to three of those at once, which means as I gather more of them, I'm going to have to pick and choose which ones I keep. Uh once you start accomplishing them, they don't count against your three. That was a rest turn. We'll do one more turn before diving into the other things you need to know. I'll draw the other six cards I just got passed to you by the third player in this uh fictional game of just me at the table. Uh looking at the cards over here, I once again might be incentivized to stay on the same terrain type over here. Keep in mind, I only have five cards I can play before we're going to score round one. And looking at this right now, none of these are particularly amazing. I could just try to place one of these down, but I don't think I need those either. This one's not the worst, but it gives me for that symbol. You know what? I will go ahead and gather this one over here. It's not going to award as many points as I like, but it's still going to be two points for this one. I won't get the three points cuz I don't have that, but I'll still be able to get two points. And over here, I'll be able to move. I'm going to take a journey turn, so I'm going to move on to this one, where I will draw a token from the bag, and I'll choose which one to keep. I think I'm going to actually get rid of this one because this one's really hard to achieve this early cuz two of each tag requires a lot of cards.
Although granted, I have two yellows on this one card here, but then I can keep moving because again, you can move as many cards as you want. So I'm going to keep moving here, paying only one campfire, and then going ahead and taking the two points for that card. So I'm going to move up two more points. That's the basic idea of what you're doing. You're drawing a card, drafting a card, and then you're going to be play that card into that tableau, and either journey as far as you can or want to, or take a rest turn instead. When you journey, you resolve the effect at the top of the card, and at the end of the round, once you have five cards, you can go ahead and play out five more cards. As you can see, uh and those cards will not necessarily be optimal. I'm just going to have them over here. Uh then you're going to go to the end of round scoring. End of round scoring is going to have you look to see how many blue patches do you have. I have two blue patches, and you only count what you've gone to. In other words, if I were over here, I would not count this blue patch. I haven't yet traveled that far. Uh so I'm going to go ahead and get two, going one, two, moving along this track. Uh when you get to the end of the track and go back to the beginning, you're going to draw a song card, which is going to go into your display and give you some things, give you points, and sometimes gives you in-game symbols. So, for example, I have a wild patch that can count towards anything. That's going to be the basic cycle of the game. You're going to play it across three rounds. In each round, you're going to move down another row, so you're going to have five more cards to the next row, five more cards to the next row. You don't actually have to go down, it's just easier to visually keep track of things.
You're trying to move along the cards as far as you can, getting more and more points, because as you can imagine, on your seventh card, you have six cards before that you can possibly score. On your 15th card, you have 14 cards before you can score for, so you get more and more points as you go through it. And then around two, you're going to score for this goal as well as this goal. By the way, these are variable, so you're going to put those there. And around three, you're going to score for all three of those goals, slowly moving further and up this track, getting more and more song cards. There's a few other small things, so for example, at the end of each round, you're going to compare your your your song level, your cheer level, compared to the other players. Whoever has the most compared to the player to your left is going to get five points, and if you have less than the player to your left, you'll be able to refresh a campfire. You're also going to refresh a campfire when you go from round to round. You get to only refresh one campfire, not your whole supply. And that's basically everything you need to know outside of the cards' abilities themselves. Then for example, there's one card type we haven't shown you, which is relevant when I talk about review stuff over here. This card over here is going to be, I believe they're called legend cards. I have to double-check the rulebook, but this compares an attribute to the player to your left, seeing if you have more than that player in order to score 10 points for those cards. That's Everdell Journey's, across three rounds of play, draft five cards, discard the last three, build out a path, and try to move along the path, scoring for the cards that came before it, which means it's time for my review of what I like, don't like, and can see others not liking, starting off with what I like. In general, the game does escalate nicely.
You start off getting very few points, because again, like a card like this over here is only going to score you three points right now, but if you place it later in the tableau, and you have a bunch of these yellow patches, you do start to work your way towards these trends, these combinations. You work on those legend cards. A legend card might want you to have a bunch of yellows, so you work for other cards that give you a bunch of yellow, or maybe you'll turn you'll turn over you're focusing very heavily on the actual goals you're going for and trying to go for those. The downside of going for those, cuz going for those is doubling up on my points. You get your own tableau, plus you get to do what the game is going to reward you for. The downside of them is usually other players are going for those as well. So, if you are trying to build out a fun strategy around yellow and green cards, and that's the thing the board wants you to have, other players are going to be taking them from you. So, there's a nice trade-off as far as do you go for the the game's incentive, or do you go for your own incentive and build out your own little tableau? The game gives you a nice pacing as far as the recharge turns versus advancing. The fact that on an advancement turn, you can move multiple, means whenever you take a rest, you're not necessarily giving up the ability to get all 15 cards covered in the game. In fact, I'd say from the games I've played, I'd say it's about 50/50 to whether I get to like somewhere between 13 to 15 cards.
Half the time I fully cover all my cards, get every single last one. Other times I make my way towards the very close to the end, getting like 13, 14 cards. I think the fewest I've seen someone get is 11 or 12. I'd have to like remember exactly where they were. But, it's definitely something you do get to cover most of your cards, and if you don't, it's usually because you had a bunch of high-value, high-scoring cards. One of my favorite things in the game, we haven't really talked about it, but you did see them briefly, is copying cards. Cards that copy another card, because if you really if you're willing to invest heavily into a card that might cost all your campfires, but gives you a chunk of points for it, and then you have another card that's cheaper that's you copy that, you get a nice little engine of being able to copy expensive cards for a lower price point. I love the synergies there, but obviously you have to make sure you can afford it and work your way towards those campfires. There's also caravan cards, we haven't seen those, but caravan cards functionally allow you to kind of skip adding extra terrain. They give you small little boosts, but they kind of act as a freebie to move along them. So, there's a lot of ways to try to get as much as you want out of the system.
There's a lot of balancing around trying to get cheer over here, both of them in-game abilities that might give you, but also over here you have three of these over here. You might get able to go 1 2 3 just from that card alone. But, also from achieving these goals, again, you have to decide the trade-off is how hard you want to pursue them versus the other players, but you can get a lot of movement around this track and get a bunch of these abilities, which can be very helpful towards giving you that one straight-up five points over here, but giving you various tags and points that will really help you further uh develop your tableau. And then the small little goals over there that give you an additional aspect as far as other things to go for, just to get a few extra bonus points here and there. Overall, it teaches relatively quickly, plays relatively quickly, and gives you a satisfying journey to go through with resource management and economy that you're trying to balance along the way. As far as things I don't like in the game, two small things. First of all, well, one smaller thing, one bigger thing. Uh first of all, the song cards over here, I don't love the fact that these two are a perfect example. This is the best possible song card you can get early game, in my opinion that is. Uh but basically, it's a low point one. It's only worth one point, but it gives you a wild pass that you can score for everything, and you can do that across the whole three rounds, 15-card place of the game. Get this early and you are well set. Uh on the other hand, uh this is one of the worst cards to get late in the game. If you get this as your final end-game card, like in that last round when you're weighing things up and you get that then, it's barely going to help you at all, and it's worth the fewest points. Uh the reverse is true of this one. This is five points. It's one of the best ones you can get at the end of the game, one of the worst ones you can get at the beginning of the game. So, the song cards definitely have an aspect as far as whether they feel they Or even just the randomness as far as when they suit your engine. Getting this green
symbol over here might be completely useless to me, but getting a yellow one might have been incredibly helpful. So, there's definitely the largest amount of randomization as far as how those cards help you, and not a lot of a ton of mitigation as far as being able to actually get the ones you want. This mechanic does seem very reminiscent of Far Away, that you have like your main journey cards you're going on, and then you have extra cards to go on top, but in Far Away, they specifically build around the selection of those cards to help them work with your engine. Over here, it's much more random, and that game suffers a small amount for it. My other bigger concern, this is a very small nitpick, my other bigger concern is that I'm not confident of the replayability over here. Uh this is a game I've managed to I've I've played several times already and I do like the fact that there's nice little piles of goals over here, so you could mix those up, but the game doesn't feel meaningfully different if you're going for yellow patches or green patches or if you're going for mountains or forest.
The game's not super different there. It just changes the the card selection you're going for, but the overall strategy is how you combine different things doesn't significantly change. That's true of the cards as well. Every time I've played this game, I felt like I am working with the card uh the cards that have been given to me and trying to build a strategy and cohesive strategy around those cards, but it hasn't felt super different game to game. I enjoy the puzzle, but the puzzle is the it's the kind of puzzle where I wonder is this good for five plays, for 10 plays, for 15 plays? Like how at what point does it start to feel a little more stale because I'm not seeing a ton of things that mix and match mix and match or change up uh the gameplay experience. As far as I can see, others not liking, first of all, the comparisons to the player to your left can be slightly annoying. Uh over here, I actually don't mind it for the end of round getting extra five points there, that's great.
But when you have things like this, when you're rewarded for certain types of cards, if you're if you're comparing the number of green cards you have to the player to your left, that's all well and good, but that means usually if you have a situation where you and I are both vying for green cards, we're both fight uh fighting against the other, which can be slightly uh frustrating at times, but at least we're fighting against each other. Because you're fighting the player to your left, I can block somebody while not being blocked by the next player. It almost creates this weird incentive where you're fighting with me and I don't have to think about you at all, which is a slightly change to the dynamic. I I can understand the appeal of it, but I can also understand people feeling unfair as far as how it goes. And then lastly, the copying cards. I mentioned that I I really like copying cards. One of my favorite strategies in this game is getting high value cards and then being able to copy them if those cards come up. But to other players, if they see you doing that, it can feel like, "Oh, you know, Alex is getting chunks of 10 points at a time just because of like, you know, he happened to get a good combination of cards." And there's definitely luck of the draw to whether you get those cards and whether they sync up. Uh for me, I really enjoy it, but also if other players aren't doing it, it could feel like an easy way to get a chunk of points in the game. As far as final thoughts on Everdell Journeys, I have overall enjoyed Everdell Journeys. To me, this is a four out of five. It's a fun journey, no pun intended, just the name. It's a fun journey where you're going across these cards. It's very easy to teach, very easy to play, and satisfying as far as the strategy is the strategy present in the game. While not as I guess good is the wrong terminology. I'm a huge fan of Everdell.
I've been a huge fan of almost all of the Everdells that have come out. And and I don't think this is actually as good for me personally as Everdell. It's more accessible, easier to table. I still prefer Everdell. Everdell is a five out of five game for me. But the reason I'm only bringing up that comparison, as much as that's true, I am happy to see something new in the Everdell system. If you've watched my most recent Everdell reviews, they've been like, "Hey, this is great, but it's more Everdell." And this is different and new within the Everdell system, and I'm happy that they are experimenting with different things because they have more of a reason to stick around as opposed to just trying to figure out which version of Everdell I want. But overall, easy to teach, easy to table. Um my biggest concern is around the variability around the game experience. But for right now, a four out of five. As far as other game recommendations, I mentioned it already, but Far Away definitely has reminiscent aspects of the journey you are creating in the game. A similar puzzle, much shorter, but also shorter has pros and cons to like, you know, easier to play a quick game, but possibly less depth to how much you can get done in that game experience. And then also check out Let's Go to France. Specifically Let's Go to France, not Let's Go to Japan.
While Let's Go to Japan is a good game, Let's Go to France is a game that I think is excellent. Uh it's not just a theme difference, there's reasonable mechanical changes to it that make it better. But definitely check it out again for an idea of a game that gives you a journey to go to go on, and then things you're trying to score and synergize along the way. And I mentioned at the beginning of this video that All Play is a channel sponsor. If you go to allplay.com, you can find games from themselves as well as their partner publishers, and you can get flat rate shipping wherever you are. In the US, it's $4 for example, to be able to get anything from any of the the you find on allplay.com. And in this case, I'm going to recommend On Tour from All Play themselves. If you like journeys and aren't interested in all the symbologies, but just want the pure how do I go from point A to point B, On Tour is one of the better roll and write journeys out there. And in any case, until next time, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co. I hope you enjoyed this video and as always, I hope you have a good one.