If you haven’t experienced the magic of Everdell, you are missing out! The base Everdell game is an amazing storytelling masterpiece that creates a mythical world of industrious and friendly forest folk. The artwork and design is incredible, gameplay is perfectly complex, and each experience is unique and challenging. Everdell has all the elements of board game excellence, and it is one of our family’s favorite board games. (Read my review of the original Everdell game and the Bellfaire Expansion.)
There is more than just the base Everdell game, however. Starling Games has created three expansions so far (with the final two expansions on kickstarter right now!), including Everdell Pearlbrook, where the story continues in the waters of the Pearlbrook River.
In addition to regular workers, players get a Frog Ambassador to send to the river on diplomatic journeys to trade information and resources with the other river folk.
Your Frog Ambassador can occupy 1 of the 4 river destinations on the river board per season once your city contains the required card types (you can see on the board above that the top Frog Ambassador spot requires the player to have 3 green production cards in his city before placing a Frog in this location).
When a player places a Frog Ambassador in a River Destination, he can collect pearls if he fulfills the requirements of the revealed card. Sending a Frog to a River Destination can be risky, but successful attempts gain great rewards!
The expansion contains 12 River Destination cards, but all are not used every game.
It also includes four WONDERS: lighthouse, fountain, gate, and bridge. Players can place 1 worker on a Wonder spot to build a Wonder and earn the listed points at the end of the game. This is a way to get TONS of points, but they also require lots of resources so…strategize carefully!
Each player receives two Adornment cards at the beginning of the game that can be played anytime throughout the game. Adornment cards cost 1 pearl to play and don’t take up space in your city. Once played, activate the ability on the top half of the card immediately and earn the number of points listed on the bottom of the card at the end of the game.
Pearls are used throughout the game to buy other valuable assets or are worth 2 points each at the end of the game.
The rest of the game is played according to the original Everdell rules. Workers can be placed once per season to gain resources. Resources are used to buy cards to place in your city, which gain you other resources and abilities. Players move through all 4 seasons and build a city with a maximum of 15 cards. The player with the most points at the end of the final season wins the game!
The lovely Pearlbrook expansion just adds a little bit of complexity, more ways to earn points, more decisions, and more fun!
GAMESCHOOLING
This is a beautiful storytelling game that can be used for all kinds of language arts exercises – create/write poems or short stories about any of the characters, create new character cards, give the critters a back story, use the cards for spelling word practice or reading practice, the possibilities are endless! Pearlbrook also helps with Math Brain skills like analysis, strategy, logic, decision making, problem solving, arithmetic, and more.
Everdell is a wonderful family gameschooling game for 1-4 players ages 12+ that takes about one enjoyable hour to play. Thanks so much to Starling Games for sharing this beautiful world with us!
