Tonight, it was more Everdell, this time trying out the Newleaf expansion. I think this is the most “more of the same” expansion out of all the ones we have played, while still having some new stuff. The new side board has a train station, which essentially extends the Meadow by three cards (though it is the Station, and distinct from the Meadow for card effects). Additionally, if you play a card from there, you get a little bonus, indicated by the token on the train next to it, which is then discarded and a new one drawn. These tokens have things like a point token, two twigs, a wild resource, etc.
There are two new spaces to place your workers. The Knoll lets you discard three cards from the Meadow and/or Station, replenish, then draw three cards from there. The other space works with the big change to the game, Visitors. There are two face up stacks of Visitor cards. When you put a worker on the space, you discard the top card from one stack, then choose one of the two now showing Visitors to place next to your city.
At the end of the game, the Visitor will give you some bonus points (seems to go from 4 - 7 after a brief look through) if you meet the requirements on the card. For instance, one gave 5 points if you had two workers on Journey spaces. Another gave 5 points if you had 10 point tokens at the end of the game. I saw ones that required you to have no more than 2 production cards in your city, one that needed 9 constructions, etc. Just a wide variety of things.
There are also two more basic events, one you can claim by having 3 purple cards in your city, and the other by having 15 cards in your city. Other small, optional expansions that can be used are the train tickets amd the reservation tokens. Train tickets let you use an action to move one of your workers to a new location. After using it, you flip it. You can then use it one more time (but only after you have entered Summer) to move your worker and it is discarded. Each player is given one ticket at the beginning of the game. Each player also gets a Reservation token. As an action, you can reserve a card from the Station or Meadow by putting your token on it and moving it next to your city. It is not cou ted as part of your city nor part of your hand. Your can then build it for -1 resource. The token is spent until you Prepare for Season, after which it can be used again.
But the reason I say this expansion felt the most like “more of the same” is because they added a crap ton of cards to the deck! Like 50% more cards (which means my shuffling sucked)! However, all the cards felt fresh and new, but also fit really well, as if they always could have been there. One more tweak with these new cards, though, is with the occupation token. They don’t use the basic ones. Instead, each player gets three gold occupation tokens which work for the new cards. Instead of a 1-to-1 match between construction and critter, these constructions allow things like freely build any production critter, or any common, or any unique, etc. in return for using the gold token. Similarly, the critters have the ability to be played at any common, or any paw print construction, etc. It gives you a lot more options to freely play something, with the knowledge you can only do it three times.
And the cards are great. There is a road that does not count towards your city limit, but adds one to the limit. There is a Bank that gets a point token when played and during production which extends you hand limit by one for each token on it, cards that let you give a card from your hand to an opponent in return for drawing a card and getting a resource or a point token. Just lots of neat stuff!
Unfortunately, due to interruptions from our children, it took about 2.5 hours to play, and we needed a flashlight at times because one insisted the lights be out at all times. Once all was said and done, my wife won, 89 - 83. If I could have found a Husband card, we would have tied because I had a Wife and a School which would have added a total of 6 points. Not sure what the tie breaker is, if there even is one. We got through about 1/3 of the deck, I think, and never saw a Husband at all. I looked through the remaining deck afterward and all 4 were in the bottom third of the deck. Ah well.
I think this has been the best expansion so far. While I do like the Destination cards in Spirecrest, the seasonal weather penalties bring it down a notch, while Newleaf just adds more fun and interesting things.
We agreed not to do that again…
