Designer: Stefano Di Dilvio
Publisher: dlp games / nanox games
Players: 1-4
Age: 14+
Time: 30 min/player
Played with review copy provided by publisher (Dale) and copy I purchased (Tery)
It’s Evenfall, and the Clans of Magic are preparing for a new era. Evenfall is the time when the boundaries of reality collapse and the supernatural awakens. The World-Tree opens its glowing gateways to unknown distant regions. Send Witches from your clan to discover and control new Places of Power. Use them for arcane rituals and battle for the favor of the Powerstones. But there is only one seat on the Enchanted Throne! Do you have the skills to lead the world into a new era?
Evenfall is a card-driven, engine-building game with both novel and familiar mechanisms for 1 to 4 players. Manage your resources, execute your actions in an efficient order, and discover card and action synergies that generate victory points. The game ends after three rounds, then the player with the most points wins.
To set up, the three region boards are placed on the table as well as the VP and Mana track. On each of the region boards, place Places of Power cards on the appointed spaces. Each board also gets 4 random Powerstones. A main deck is made from shuffling together the Ritual and Specialist cards.
Each player gets their clan board – the group should decide to play with the basic version (sun side) or the advanced version where each clan gets a special power (moon side). All players must use the same side. Leave space around all edges of your clan board as you will need to put things around it. Each player also gets a Mana dial, 3 Herbs and 3 Potions to start.
The game is played over three rounds. In each of those rounds, there are four phases: Scout, Action, Battle, End of Round.
Scout Phase – Each player takes income as shown at the top left of their Clan board. Mana and VPs are tracked on the common board. If you get cards, they come from the Main Deck.
Action Phase – Clockwise from the first player, each player takes a single action, continuing until all players have passed for the phase. You can also take any number of Free actions on your turn, for example, discarding any 2 cards to get a basic resource of your choice.
1] Discover a Place of Power – Take a Place of Power card from one of the regions on the table, paying Witches from your board as shown on the card – placing the witches on the circle on the Region board. The Place of Power is put in your Outer Circle; that is next to the upper right portion of your clan board.
2] Activate your Clan Token – you can do this once per round – when you play with the Sun version, they all do the same: Harvest all places of power in your Outer Circle (gain resources equal to what is in upper right corner of these cards) and Gain 1 Herb and 1 Potion.
3a] Play a Ritual Card – Pay a cost shown in the upper left of the Ritual card and then place it on top of one of your Places of Power, which may trigger a bonus. The Ritual may have an ongoing effect, a one-time immediate effect, or an action space which can be activated later.
3b] Play a Specialist Card – pay a cost shown in the upper left and then place the card to the left of your clan board. Looking at the text box in the upper half of the card, you will get either an ongoing benefit, a free action or a battle action. You may not have two Specialists with the same name.
3c] Play a Council Member – pay a cost shown at the bottom of your clan board. and then slide the card under your board so that you only see the bottom portion – effects here could be ongoing, triggered at round end or triggered at game end. You may have two of these cards.
4] Use an Action Space – Action spaces are round and have the outline of a pointy hatted meeple on them. Witches can activate all action spaces while Elders can only activate action spaces in your inner circle – that is cards to the bottom of the right side of your clan board. To activate a space, move an appropriate meeple and place it on an empty action space. One powerful action here is the transfer action – this allows you to move cards from your Outer Circle to your Inner Circle. This can be useful as Elders can only power actions in your Inner Circle; additionally, your cards only score VPs at the end of the game if they are in your Inner Circle.
5] Build Catalysts – Catalysts are played onto your Ritual Cards. There are 2 types. Scythes are made by spending 1 Herb. Scythes copy the Harvest bonus of the card it is on. Orbs are made from 2 potions. Each Orb allows you to move a step up the Coven track, found to the left of your Clan board. For each step, you get the benefit next to that space.
Battle Phase – In this phase, you clan fights in each Region to gain Powerstones and other rewards. They always happen from top to bottom (Northern Lakes then Central Mountains then Southern Slopes). If you have a Witch or Elder in the Region, you are automatically included in the fight. Everyone fighting picks up their Mana disc and dials in a number showing how much mana they are going to spend to increase their strength. They are revealed, and this number is added to the number of witches and elders (and Mana is lost from the Mana track). All players take their Battle bonus, with cumulative levels at 4pts (draw a card), 6pts (get 3VP) and 8pts (take a Transfer action). Then, the player with the highest total wins a Powerstone; this can be placed on one of your Ritual cards and can double the VP value in the final scoring if it matches the type of stone shown under the card title. Whoever wins the battle in the Northern Lakes also gets the start player marker.
In Round End, take back the meeples, refill the card slots that are empty, refresh the clan token and untap all cards. Also, resolve any End of Round effects on cards.
At the end of the 3rd round, the game ends. Players now place collected Powerstones on any Ritual cards that have a matching icon on them. Now there is a final scoring:
- VP for each Specialist Card
- VP for each endgame condition on your Council Members
- VP for each Ritual and Place of Power in your Inner Circle, remembering to double the VP of a Ritual with a matching Powerstone on it)
The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most Mana left.
Our Thoughts on the Game
Tery: I like the game. I’ll get back to the issues I have with the game in a minute, but I really do like it. It has worker placement, card combinations and some interesting engine building mechanics, and I enjoy the theme. The game is well-designed, and everything flows well together. It is absolutely overwhelming when you first start because there is a lot happening and not all the graphics are helping you figure out what you are doing. However, once you understand what the actions and options are, they all make sense and flow together with the theme. Build a place of power to cast your spells and build a community that can help support your efforts. You cannot do everything you want to do, so you have to make some hard decisions about what resources to allocate where and how to play certain cards. You also have to time certain actions just right – move something to your inner circle too soon and you might regret it, but you can ‘t wait too long and you can’t play a ritual. Do you take another place of power, or do you take advantage of an action space? Waiting to do either risks another player from doing what you wanted to do. Deciding whether to play specialists for the special abilities or as a council member can be a hard decision, too.
Is it complicated? Well sure, a bit. But the complications mostly make sense and once you’ve played a round or two you know what you are doing and it makes sense. The actions are well-thought out and as long as you still have cards or elders or wizards there is generally something you can do. There are also a few action spaces that can help you get resources to take another action or to manipulate your witches to provide additional services.
I am not always a fan of battles, particularly when they involve some blind bidding, but it works well enough here. Winning the battle certainly gives you some benefits, but it isn’t everything; there are spoils available to all involved depending on the amount you bid.
The game is beautiful; the art fits the theme and everything is interesting to look at. The components are well made. However, the graphics seem to suffer a bit for this beauty; there are several cases where a simple improvement in the iconography or even the addition of some iconography would help. We struggled in the first game to figure out some of the basic things, like which side of the player board we were supposed to be using. Using more icons that are clearly distinguishable from the art would help.
There are a lot of rules, which is not unexpected based on the number of things you can do. I am extremely glad I learned this game two-player on a Sunday afternoon, when we could puzzle through and take our time. They are reasonably well-written, but there is a lot to learn, a lot to try to understand and a lot of room for interpretation. We did have to make a few group decisions about how we were going to handle something, but they were minor and in some cases cleared up later on in that game. The FAQ is useful, though and I would recommend reviewing it before you play.
I have yet to play with the varied powers option since there has been a new player or two in all of my games, but I am looking forward to trying that soon.
Dale: Well, when I first read the rules, I’ll have to admit that I was a bit befuddled. There is a lot of terminology in play here, and honestly, until you play the game and repeat the terms a lot, it was hard to remember things. After a first play, it made a lot more sense. So, don’t be turned off if your rules read (or read of my review) throws a lot of new words/terms at you. I get that the designers wanted to build up the world of Evenfall, but in terms of gameplay and learning/teaching it – there’s a lot of things to confuse you on your first go.
Also, the rules are a bit in flux, and there is a QR code that goes to a webpage with a FAQ – as of the writing of this review, the FAQ is 1 page of Q&As and then 9 pages of detailed clarifications on cards – this is in addition to the pages in the rulebook devoted to the card actions. In the end, I’m glad that the game is being supported with an updated FAQ, but it is also understandable if you don’t easily grok the game from a rules read as there are a lot of questions to be answered…
Once we felt like we had the rules down, the game was a pretty interesting engine builder/worker placement affair. There are definitely a lot of things to think about, and in my first game, I ended up just trying stuff out and seeing what happened. Yeah, it wasn’t a very successful game but I learned a lot, and I was really able to play the game right on my second play. If you don’t mind a bit of experimentation, I felt like this was a great way to get a handle on things – if I tried to optimize on my first play, my own turns would have taken 75-90 minutes on their own!
Thoughts of Other Opinionated Gamers
Mark: As the boy wonder of the dynamic duo, and as Tery (and Dale) mentioned, a tough first go round. But once grokked (i.e. ½ way thru first game, or second game, like me) the flow made sense. “Pro” tip, find ways to get your elders some actions early as they typically just sit around their inner circle twiddling their thumbs, and you’ll be wasting potential actions with them on the bench, to use a basketball term. I like the tough choices the game provides. Do you buy that place of power with your witch or use the special action to get an immediate benefit? Overall, I like it.
Ratings of the Opinionated Gamers
I love it!
I like it. Tery, Mark
Neutral. Dale Y
Not for me…
