The clever tweaks and new mechanics in Emerland prove that it's so much more than a fresh coat of paint on Everdell

I remember stumbling across the original Everdell a number of years back while meandering through the board game area at PAX East. With its striking box art, featuring a badger alongside other woodland critters all in an idyllic forest, I was sold before I even knew what sort of game it was, and it would quickly go on to become one of mine and my wife’s favorite board games. Now, Emerland, the latest standalone title in the series, has been released, and this new jungle-themed romp does far more than apply a new coat of paint on Everdell. The clever tweaks and new mechanics make the old Everdell formula feel fresh all over again, so it'll go over well even if you're a long-in-the-tooth veteran of the best board games.

It's a jungle out there

At its core, Emerland is still an Everdell game with its general gameplay and fundamental mechanics remaining largely untouched. On their turns, players will be placing out their workers to gather the resources needed to build Constructions and recruit various Critters into their burgeoning city, which serves as your main point-scoring engine. Each round, portrayed as a single season, you will send your workers to the various locations or even onto other players' city cards in order to collect the resources required to build or bring new cards into your town or gain additional benefits to help earn you points for the endgame. New to Emerland are special realm cards that can also increase the number of buildings or townsfolk you can add to your town, in essence replacing the event cards from previous iterations of Everdell.

Alongside the players’ wooden animal meeples – this time picking from capybaras, tree frogs, chameleons, and monkeys – you also get a little group of smaller bug helper meeples in your player color, including beetles, caterpillars, dragonflies, and ants. Aside from just looking adorable, these helpers will either double the goods you get from a spot when deployed alongside one of your main pieces, or allow you to go somewhere another player is already visiting. By placing down a bug per player at the space, your little buddy will act as a negotiator, allowing you to gain the benefit from the space! As someone who has only really played base game Everdell and adores it, this blew my mind, and I quickly fell in love with my buzzing buddies. Just like your normal pieces, you do earn more as you progress through the seasons, and playing at an especially powerful spot with a lot of players already there will quickly eat up your bugs for the turn.

I've always found Everdell to do a great job balancing how "mean" it is while also being a pretty chill and low-hostility game. Sure, it was always a little frustrating to have another player take a spot you had been planning to take that turn, but that situation rarely happened because that player was specifically out to spite me or someone else. The addition of these cute little helpers just adds a new layer of flexibility and allows you, if you really need a spot, that you can still go there. Albeit for a greater cost. It manages to increase the options players have, without it ever feeling like it "breaks" the systems that Everdell fans have come to love.

The next jungle-inspired addition found in Emerland is the mysterious ruins, a separate track of sorts that you can spend one of your actions on to explore. By exploring and working your way through the ruins, you can find artifacts that will net you a range of points at the end of the game.

A signature centerpiece

In addition to the realms and helpers, Emerland features a host of other tweaks that slightly change up the formula that may intrigue Everdell aficionados. Hand limits are down from eight cards to only six, and a (starting) city limit of 12 instead of 15. As someone who had only previously played the original game, these reductions at the beginning felt restrictive, but other elements balanced out the experience. There are no longer common or unique critters or constructions and similar cards in the store, or plateau, stack on each other, making each spot a different choice to pick from.

The last of those new mechanics are upgradable cards and a new variety of card, the Artisan cards, that provide benefits when cards are tucked underneath it. Each card that you can build from the center store or draw from the deck to add to your village is now double-sided, featuring an enhanced side with better effects. Strangely enough, the new Artisan cards actually suffer the most from the new upgrade mechanic. You would think that, seeing as they are both introduced here, maybe there would be more synergy together.

The issue stems from the tuck limit that each Artisan card has. When you upgrade one of these new orange cards, the previously tucked cards don't suddenly go away, and you don't get any additional slots either. The fact that neither of those things happens turned me off from ever using these new cards unless they were upgraded, feeling like it would be detrimental to do so otherwise. I wish that upgrading would let you scrap a card previously tucked underneath if you wanted, because at least then there is some incentive to utilize the card's un-upgraded side.

Even with the smaller hand sizes, fewer land plots at the start, and fewer cards to pick from (or more depending on whether you could use the reverse upgraded sides as their own card or not), Emerland is a more complex game. In original Everdell, on your turn you really only had three actions – place a worker, play a card, or prepare for a new season – with the last one only being occasionally used. Emerland, by contrast, gives you six: placing a worker (either with or without one of your helpers), placing a helper by themselves, playing a card, tucking a card under an Artisan card, using your archaeologist to explore the ruins, or preparing for the next season. I love the fact that it gives me more options of things to do after I have placed my last worker, but if you or someone in your game group is susceptible to "analysis paralysis," just be aware this new version will present you with more options. I fall on the side of I’d rather have the options available to me, and more avenues to think up strategies. Plus, my game group is no stranger to using timers to keep games moving along.

While this may sound a bit blasphemous to other Everdell fans, my biggest issue with the base game is the Everdell tree, more specifically, having to build the damn tree every time I want to play. Gorgeous as it is, the slight inconvenience of knowing I have to put it together and disassemble it at the end has steered me away from tabling it at least a few times during game nights. It's fun to bring out every now and then, but by and large, games have enough set up as it is for me to have to take extra time to construct a superfluous doohicky just so it looks nicer on my table.

With that background, imagine my delight and surprise when I discovered that Emerland's centerpiece ruins come in both the series' signature 3D centerpiece and a simple flat version. This simple little board has made Emerland so, so, so much more appealing for me, with all the neat new mechanics, features, and beautiful components really just being delightful extras for me. The fact that this feature is also not unique to Emerland, with some of the other standalone Everdell evolutions (a fact I only discovered after playing this), piqued my interest in those as well.

Should you buy Emerland?

When it comes to the modern era of board games, it's hard to imagine the Everdell series not being viewed as a classic years from now. Emerland's twists and tweaks to the tried-and-true formula were a breath of fresh air and gave me that same sense of excitement in discovering strategies and combos as when I first tried Everdell.

For veterans of Everdell who are looking for something new to spice up their game night, I never found that the additions in Emerland diluted the satisfying engine-building and worker placement formula that has endeared the original to so many players; instead, they did the opposite. There are a few added layers of complexity here compared to the original game, so if you aren’t sure and want to instead dip your toe in the waters before you head deep into Emerland’s jungles, then trying out Everdell first may be a better option.

For my wife and me, I don’t know if I will go back to the original game anytime soon since Emerland manages to give me everything I love about that version and then more on top of it. I can’t wait to see what the Wilson duo works up next for the critters of Everdell!