More about Everdell Farshore

Have you played Everdell Farshore? It works just like 🌳Everdell but has several tweaks that streamline the gameplay. Time to compare the two! 🕵️‍♂️

The first thing you notice is the new artwork. I haven’t realized until now how much I associated the world of Everdell with Andrew Bosley’s art. The new art goes for the same vibe and is in itself nice, but I feel it lacks a bit of that charm.

You’ll discover the coast north of the Everdell Valley. This means a whole new set of cards, with new critters and constructions! However, upon closer inspection 🔍 you find many abilities known from Everdell (either slightly changed or 1-to-1 matches), but there are also some cards that work with new game mechanics.

Another new thing is a score track around the edge of the board where your new boat ⛵ can move with certain effects (most notably by playing cards that match the types shown on the Windrose tiles). You get treasure chests every now and then that are worth points or can be used as a joker resource, plus you score your boat’s progress at the end.

There are several smaller tweaks like having 1 less worker, stacking the same cards in the display so you have more choices, and resources being generally harder to get while card draw is more readily available. Events (objectives) are also replaced by Maps 🗺️, that only need you to have specific card types in your city.

You also get 3 Anchor tokens that you can use to play a Critter for free by placing it on a Construction of the same color. This replaces the old Occupied tokens. This means you don’t have to luck out on finding matching pairs, but to me the game loses a bit of its thematic flavor due to this.

💭It feels like the designers took note of all the complaints about card draw randomness and did everything to rectify that. I personally never had a problem with this, so I feel like the game is a bit too streamlined now. You now have so many opportunities to draw cards, but not as many reasons to do so anymore. Ultimately, Farshore is good, as it still basically plays the same, but to me normal Everdell will always shine brighter (and would still recommend it).