Starling Games | Everdell: Spirecrest 2nd Edition Expansion | Board Game | Ages 10+ | 1-4 Players | 40-100 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Season cards now effect gameplay, putting players through blustering blizzards or ferocious floods as their brave meeple soldiers on. On paper though, when compared to its forbearer it seemed that Spirecrest was indeed a much more evolved addition to the core game experience. Author’s Note: I’m breaking with our traditional review format today, so this will be a review that integrates the gameplay description with my thoughts on the expansion.

I decided to put base Everdell CE, Bellfaire, Mistwood, Legends, Rugwort, Extra Extra, the small promos, and all the meeples/meeple powers together in the base game box (obviously without the insert), since these options can be played with any expansions (I think so, anyway). In Deutschland wurde mir, der Produktbeschreibung entsprechend, die Collector's Edition zugestellt (Dez. e. the rabbit who will bravely hike across the trail, unearthing new and mysterious locations along the way. This happened on my wife and I’s last game, and it was nearly impossible to get any Green Production cards out.What keeps me coming back for more, though, is that you bring the mountaintop high back to the ground and get back to business from season to season. Spirecrest avoids this issue by leaving the deck well alone and adding all its content during the Explore phase. I gather they’ve been busy much, much longer, but I’m happy to leave that in the realm of speculation. While I think Spirecrest is the most complex of the expansions, I don’t think it is that much more burdensome than Pearlbrook, and I wouldn’t say the additional complexity is substantial. I would love to hear what you think of your expansion endeavors and whether the family comes around.

They all tread different thematic grounds, but I love the interaction of setting and mechanism for each! Or the white wolf known as Whisper, who can ignore the exclusive placement rule altogether that otherwise affects the various locations across the main board. The player moves their Traveler meeple to the next trailhead and reveals the Weather Card for the next season. Along with these cards come the Big Critters, a unique type of worker with useful abilities and their very own meeples that are here to lend a hand to any intrepid adventurer brave enough to pass by. Lastly, you can place the Big Critter meeples and saddles off to the side and then grab each players’ Traveler meeple (the large bunny with a walking stick) on the beginning of the trail.

The player chooses one of the three available Map Tiles face up on the trail and places it to the right of their current Map Tiles, creating their Expedition. What separated Spirecrest from Pearlbrook and landed it higher on the list is the way the new mechanisms keep attention on the base experience. The resources allow you to pay the cost of playing the respective construction or critter card into your city (a space on the table) up to a maximum of 15 cards.

In fact I think the Weather cards provide an essential challenge in counterpoint to the Discovery cards. My point is that this particular collector´s edition adds a cherry on top, as opposed to Pearlbrook which robbed you blind of the entire dessert if you acquired the retail equivalent. Regardless of the merits, I knew from the start that Bellfaire would have to appeal to me somewhere other than the player count. The catch with this is at the end of the game, you must start with the left-most Map Tile and pay that cost before your Traveler meeple can advance to the next Map Tile.In fairness to my love of Everdell, though, and in my desire to represent the full breadth of options well, I sat down to Mistwood and a mono e mono showdown (does Nightweave even have hands? I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised, though the absurd play did reinforce several of my opinions regarding the expansions. The second edition of Spirecrest includes 8 big critters, but you’ll likely only see a few of them per game. I can still remember my daughter striving to build the EverTree—her favorite card—only to then trash it via the University or Ruins for a bonus and a chance at the twenty-five point Starfalls Flame.