Canopy Evergreen

• Designer: Tim Eisner
• Publisher: Weird City Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20 minutes per player
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/40mwJ8w 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Underneath the dense canopy of the Pacific Northwest rainforests, a thriving ecosystem exists. Schools of salmon swim upstream, wildflowers and lush ferns dot the mossy floor, and a gray wolf looks for its next meal. In Canopy: Evergreen, players compete to grow the tallest trees, collect sets of wild plants, and create bountiful habitats to help native animals thrive.

In the game, players take turns selecting new cards for their forest from three growth piles. Each time you look at a pile, you may select it and add those cards to your rainforest tableau, or return the pile face down, adding one additional card to it. As the piles grow, you must search for the plants and animals that will benefit your forest the most — but choose carefully as mingled in with the flora and fauna are dangers in the form of fire, disease, and drought. After three seasons, the player who has grown the most bountiful rainforest wins!

Canopy: Evergreen is a standalone game featuring card drafting and set collection similar to the original Canopy game, with new rules for collecting food, growing trees on your forest board to gain permanent bonuses, and nourishing interactive wildlife. Get lost in the evergreen forest with new plants, animals, and environmentally-friendly 3D tree tokens that grow while you play the game!

To start setup, each player takes a forest map and randomizes the set of 11 ecosystem tokens onto the circles. One root section is placed on any tree space. Each player also starts with 3 points (marked with a units and tens token) on the points track on the right. Each player also starts with 1 food, marked on the track on the left. Finally, each player is deals a starting wildlife card and takes the token that matches their card.

The wildlife board is placed on the table, the wildlife deck upon it, and 3 cards are dealt out in a face up display.  Growth cone mats are placed between each set of players as well as one in the center of the table.  The forest deck is shuffled, and from this, one card is dealt to each Growth Cone pad except the center one which gets 2 cards.  A seed deck is made with 4N cards, and a seed token is placed on top of this to signify it.

On a turn, the player plays through three phases – though remember that optionally, at any time in your turn where it makes sense, use your active wildlife abilities as written on their card:

1] Attract Wildlife – using your food (found on the left of your board), you can attract any of the Wildlife cards in the market to your Forest. Spend the food cost on the card, seen in the upper right, and then place the card into your area. If it is an active Wildlife (has ability text), take the matching marker for that animal.  (There are three forms of each type of Wildlife – Active, Foraging, Point).  You can attract as much Wildlife as you can afford.  At the end of the phase, replenish the display to three cards.

2] Look at Growth Cone Piles -In this phase, you look at Growth cones one at a time, always going to your left, then the central pile, then the one on your right.  As you look at a pile, you must decide whether you will keep it or not.  If you keep it, place those cards into your Forest and then draw a new facedown card for the now empty Growth Cone site.  If you decide to pass on the pile, put it back on the Growth Cone and add a card from the deck on top. Then move to the next pile and repeat the process.  You can never go back and choose a pile that you have already passed on.  If you pass on al three piles, you simply draw the top card from the deck.  If you decide that you don’t want that card, it is discarded and you get nothing.

3] Add cards to your forest, grow trees and collect rewards – you must add all the cards from your chosen pile to your forest, though you can choose what order to add them in.  There are a number of different types of cards:

• Plant, Weather and Threat cards – are placed with other similar cards
• Instant effects (lightning bolt) – resolve as soon as you add them
• Tree cards – add the depicted tree segment to your board.  If you complete a tree, score it – by multiplying the number of tree parts multiplied by the value of the canopy piece.  If you have connected a path with completed trees at both ends (and one of the trees is at least 3 segments tall), you gain the ecosystem token placed on that path in setup

When the season deck is empty, you simply stop refilling the Growth Cone pads. When a player does not have a pile to choose from, the Season ends. Player each do a bit of upkeet at the end of each Season:

• Pine Cones – for each Pine Cone you have collected this season, draw 2 cards from the Seed deck.  Additionally, draw one additional card for each Wildfire icon you have.  Then, choose up to 1 card to add to your Forest for each of your Pine Cones.
• Wildfire- If you have 2 wildfire cards, you must discard 2 Plant cards of your choice. If you have 3+ Wildfire cards, then the fire spreads and every player must discard 1 plant card of their choice
• Disease – If you have 2 disease cards, you must discard 2 Wildlife cards of your choice. If you have 3+ disease cards, then the disease spreads and every player must discard 1 Wildlife card of their choice
• Foraging Wildlife – each Foraging creature scores points
• Tallest Tree – the player with the tallest tree gets a point bonus and replaces the canopy of that tree with the Tallest Tree marker so that it cannot win again in a later season
• Weather – score 1pt for each set of sun+rain icons. The player with the most sets earns 5 bonus points and 2nd most gets 2 points
• Plants and Mushrooms – score for these cards
• Cleanup – all players discard all their cards except Wildlife cards

To start the next season, reshuffle all the remaining Wildlife cards and deal out a new display of 3 cards.  Collect all the Forest cards, shuffle them, make a new Seed deck and reseed all the Growth Cone pads.  Do this for rounds 2 and 3.  

At the end of the third Season, there is some endgame scoring:

• Point WIldlife: score each Point card
• Wildlife sets: score 5/2 points for 3/2 cards of a particular wildlife type
• Wildlife Chain: there are 7 chain icons that are linked in a circle. Score points for your longest chain
• Food – 1 point for each 2 food left over

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most wildlife.

My thoughts on the game

While this is touted as a followup game to Canopy, I have not played the original so all of my thoughts here are for Canopy Evergreen as a unique standalone game.  This is another game that feels like it is trying to capitalize on the success of Cascadia, using a nature theme and lush beautiful artwork. Here, the game itself lives up to the beautiful art.

At its heart, this is a fairly simple set collection game with a unique method of letting you choose your cards.  I really like the push-your-luck feel of the card selection where you have to start with the pile to your left and then move to the right, forever passing on the previous piles.  It can be an agonizing decision if the first pile only has a single card in it, but it’s one that you really want… Do you risk going onto the next pile – after all, there are three cards there, and maybe you’ll still find the same card?  Also, if you pass on your first pile, the only other player who looks at it is your LHO, and it’ll be the third pile they look at (assuming they even get that far).  Of course, when you pass on a pile, you add a new facedown card to it, so it almost always gets better for the next person!

I have found that the luck of the cards (or maybe my questionable decision making skills concerning which pile of cards to accept) ends up determining my strategy.  I have found that getting tree cards never happens when I want them to appear in my piles, and I have also discovered that anytime I play the Wildfire betting game, I’m bound to lose.  But, as you collect cards early in a round, it likely steers you in a certain direction.  In the second and third rounds, the tokens you have collected from your player board will also give you headstarts in those directions and make their matching cards more valuable to you as well.

The powers of the animals are variable – it all depends on what else you have.  I like the way that there are three different classes of animal actions, and it gives you lots of options to choose from – should you be lucky enough to get cards that produce food.  The chain scoring was a little opaque in my first game, but cleared up with more plays as I realized that the chain icons are at the bottom of the cards and you can just line up your animals next to each other where the icons match up.  A genius bit of graphic design there, and a touch I missed in my first game.

I have read some concerns online about the deck of cards – namely that you use the entire deck in each of the three rounds.   I find that this isn’t an issue at all, nor does it cause stagnant play because I’m only exposed to about half of the deck in a given round – there are a number of Growth Cone piles I can never access (well, not without animal power help) – so while all the cards are in play in every round, the subset that I see will almost always be different.

As I mentioned at the top, the artwork is beautiful and all of the components are well done.  The game even includes little boxes to store everything in when you put it away.  I’m very impressed with the overall packaging of the game. It’s rare that I don’t have even a small quibble with the bits, so that deserves mention here!

Canopy Evergreen is a beautiful game that would fit in at the lower end of a gamer’s night but at the upper end of casual play.  As a result, it turns out to be the sort of game that is flexible enough to make nearly anyone happy to play it.  The set collection ideas are easy to grok, and players will be engaged during the entire 45-60 minute playtime.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson – I’d happily play this again. It moves quickly, the decisions are interesting, and despite the box art/theme, it doesn’t really feel like Cascadia at all. (Not a bad thing in my book, btw.)

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Mark Jackson, Steph H, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/40mwJ8w