First Evenfall impressions are in!

There was a lot of talk about Evenfall in the days leading up to SPIEL23, and all of it was very positive. This made us excited for the game, but we were also wondering if it was because of rose-tinted glasses due to the cult of new? Well, we had a blast playing it yesterday so they were all right about it, and Evenfall is indeed outstanding! 🥳

The heart of the game is building and curating your tableau of cards, which depicts your growing Coven 🧙 of witches. There are some neat thematic touches, like being able to move cards from your outer circle to your inner circle, which changes a bit how you interact with them, plus many fun ideas and twists to the engine-building. Another main focus is resource management, as all those cards you want to play cost a lot of herbs 🌿, potions 🧪 and knowledge 📙. You also have witch and elder meeples that are used for worker placement, and as the game goes on, more and more spots for these will come from cards. Finally there is a bit of area majority fighting at the end of rounds where you can secretly bid to use your Mana 🌀 to raise your strength.

The game’s structure is simple: you basically do 3 rounds of Income > Actions > Battle > Clean-up, then tally up points to see who wins. The game shines due to the amount and variety of cards and card effects. ☝️ There are so many possible interactions between these, it really gives you a cool sandbox to build your engine. 😊 Even though the iconography is clear, some interactions need clarification - the official FAQ helps with this, but unfortunately not every card is included yet. Still, these interactions are the essence of the game that also fuel the replayability and fun, and I think the more you play, the more clear these get.

I love how long you can stretch out your rounds. This reminds me a bit of my two favorite games, Everdell and Terraforming Mars - sometimes you think you have to pass, then you find a way to do a bit of this, a bit of that, and achieve so much more than you first thought was possible. It’s a great feeling!

We’ll be definitely back with more about the game! 🙃