WBG Score: 8.5
Player Count:1-4
You’ll like this if you like: Flourish, Village Green, Canopy.
Published by: Weird City Games
Designed by: Tim Eisner
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.
Canopy was a card game that came out in 2021. It's a great little game. I reviewed it here. In 2024, designer Tim Eisner decided to turn this popular card game into more of a board game. Canopy: Evergreen is the result. A board game version of Canopy. That interestingly still doesn't really have a board! There are a few new rules and some art changes, but otherwise, it is very similar. So, is it better? Do you need both? Will there be another Canopy game? Let's get it to the table and find out.
How To Set Up Canopy: Evergreen
Each player takes a forest map and places it in front of them along with the pieces from their chosen colour. They are all stored in handy boxes, so very easy to set up and pack away. Place your score markers and food tracker down on the starting spaces. Place your ecosystem tokens face down on the circular spaces on your board. Note two pieces are used in the advanced variant mode only. Now, take one root piece (that you will have to build out of the box but can then leave set up in the box) onto any open space on your board. Then take the five starting wildlife cards marked with a star, shuffle them and deal one to each player. Each player then takes the token that matches the card they were dealt, place this colour side up.
Now place the Wildlife mat in a central area, shuffle the Wildlife deck, and deal three cards face up onto the mat, placing the deck face down next to it. Place the remaining wildlife tokens and tree pieces nearby. Then take the forest deck. Remove any cards marked three or four in smaller player counts, then shuffle the deck. Deal four cards per player into a face-down Seed deck, placing the Seed deck token on top. This will be used at the end of each round. Then deal cards from the remaining deck face down onto the growth cones. Use three for a one or two player, and four for a four player. Place one card on the first pile, two on the second, and three on the third in one or two-player games. Place two cards onto the central pile and one on the rest in a three or four-player game. Finally, give the first player token to the last player to water a plant and you are ready to begin.
How To Play Canopy: Evergreen
At the start of each player's turn, they can spend the food they have gathered to attack one of the three face-up Wildlife cards to add it to their hand. Wildlife cards will stay with you for the entirety of the game, unless disease strikes and food is hard to come by. So choose wisely! Any taken Wildlife cards are immediately replenished from the deck so there are always three options. Wildlife cards either offer end game scoring, end of round scoring based on the other plant cards you collect this season, or active powers. Just check what is shown on the card. You can activate a Wildlife card whenever you want, just remember to flip the token to the black and white side when you do this to remind you that you cannot do this again this season. At the end of the season, flip this token round again as you can do this action once per season.
Note the symbols on the bottom right and left corners as well. If you can place cards that are next to other cards with matching symbols, you will gain extra end game points, judged by your longest continuous chain of symbols, up to a maximum of seven cards, which will gain you 17 points.
Players will now take turns to look at the cards on the Growth cones, picking one pile to add to their hand. If you like what you see, simply take the cards and add them to your hand. Activate any immediate effects then replenish the pile you chose from with one new face-down card from the deck. If you want to pass on the pile, add one more to it, so it becomes juicier for the next player, then look at the next pile. If you pass on the final pile, you have to then take one card blindly from the top of the deck.
Cards will come in one of three main types: planet, weather, and threat cards, all simply adding or taking away points each season depending on what the card says. Most cards work in groups. This is a set collection game at heart, such as the Cat Tail Moss card below, which will give you five points for each Cat Tail Moss symbol, one of which exists on this card at the top left. The Wildfire will be safe on its own, but if you gain a second, then you will have to discard two plant cards at the end of the season. Get a third, and then you only discard one card, but so does everyone else! Disease works the same but affects Animal cards instead of plants. The Huckleberry cards have an immediate effect as shown by the lightning symbol, and offer you a chance to get food. One food if you currently have an odd number of Huckleberry symbols in your possession, three food if you have an even number. The tree cards come in two types, either a root/trunk to grow your tree, or a Canopy such as below, which ends a tree, immediately scoring it based on the number of parts the tree has multiplied by two as is the case with this particular Canopy card. Others multiply by other amounts. Most other cards will be self-explanatory.
When you plant a new tree with a Root card, you can place it into any open space on your board. When you have two trees next to each other connected by a single path, and at least one of the trees is three sections or more, you immediately gain the ecosystem tokens from the board that is between them. This will give you extra icons to work as multipliers in the card scoring. The tokens do not work alone and need at least one card of the same type to be activated.
When the Season deck is empty and all piles have been taken, players will now run through the end of season steps. Unless it is the third season, in which case the game ends.
First, check for any Pine Cone cards gathered this season. Players can use these to gain two additional cards from the Seed deck to use now as end of season scoring.
If you have any set of two or more Threats, you must now activate them, discarding Wildlife or Plant cards accordingly. Remember, three cards affect all players.
Then activate all Foraging animals, scoring points accordingly to the Plant card symbols you gained this season.
The player with the Tallest tree now gains the Tallest tree award, replacing the top canopy piece of the tree with the Tallest Tree token, reminding all players this tree is ineligible to enter the Tallest Tree award in any subsequent rounds. In the first season, this awards three points, in the second you get four. And in the final third season, this will award the player with the tallest tree with five points.
Next, activate any Weather cards gained this season. Players score one point for each set of Rain and Sun symbols they have, and the player with the most sets gains an additional five points. The player with the second most gains two points. Remember, your Ecosystem tokens help here if you have any.
Finally, score your plant cards that reward you with points. Again, using any Ecosystem tokens you may have.
All cards except Wildlife cards are now discarded. The season is over, and they have served their purpose. You only get to use them once! Wildlife cards stick around for the rest of the game though. Ecosystem tokens also stay.
At the end of the third round, players will score like this but also for the points on their Wildlife cards. Any pairs of Wildlife cards also score two points, or five for a family of three. And then score based on the Wildlife chain symbols. One point for a chain of two, three for three, five points for four, eight for five cards, 12 points for six, and finally, as mentioned, 17 points for a chain of seven cards. Any remaining food scores two points. The player with the most points wins. In the case of a tie, the player with the most Wildlife wins.
Is It Fun? Canopy: Evergreen
There are quite a lot of games now that look and play like this. They are popular because they are gorgeous, quite relaxing to play, feel good with the theme (green stuff calms you down, right?) and offer a nice lower-mid weight experience that plays in a relatively short time. That is quite a lot of positives! But, (there is always a but!) as I said, there are quite a lot of them. So, they do need to stand out in some way to justify their existence on your shelf. And this game isn't even only similar to a lot of other games in its class. It is also VERY similar to its own spiritual predecessor. It has a lot of work to do.
And in truth, it doesn't do this. There are not enough big changes from Canopy or the many other games in this sector to really make this stand out. BUT (it's a big but this time, did you see the capital letters?) it's good.
So, if you don't own other games in this mould, go for it. You will not be disappointed. There is some really interesting card play here. But if you do own others in this genre, and perhaps even have a copy of Canopy tucked away somewhere, perhaps this is not for you. Unless of course, you adore Canopy and want everything within its wheelhouse. For those of you though who do like the sound of this and don't have similar games, let's get into it!
There is something so satisfying about building up your collection of cards in this game. Due to the fact that at the end of each season, you need to rebuild, what you create and score from is fresh every round. What you can build over a short period of time is quite amazing. The way the cards can interlink, not just working in sets with each other, but matching the Wildlife chain symbols as well, makes the process absorbing and highly rewarding. In some games like this, every card is good and you will want to keep everything. But in Canopy: Evergreen, there will be certain cards you will really want. You won't always get what you need, but the search is strategic. Included in the box is a handy card showing the frequency of each card. You know what the chances will be of finding that final card of a certain type for each player count, and can decide if you want to risk it all searching for the more elusive cards, or build up a more solid but less rewarding scoring system from the more common cards.
Everything looks delightful, and the mechanics are silky smooth. It flows so well and has a wonderful pace to the game, especially in two or three players, where I prefer this game. In a four-player game, I can find the downtime between turns a little frustrating, and the search for cards more of a challenge. The new board works well, and I much prefer the little standees over the cards for the trees versus Canopy. However, the rest of the game has not changed that much. The board is still not overly used; it just houses your trees and Ecosystem tokens, that's it. It feels like a better game than Canopy. I prefer playing it and would rate it a notch higher. But it also seems odd to me that this game exists when Canopy already does, and this game doesn't change as much as I might like. That said, judging this game on its own merits, not against Canopy or other games in its field, it is an excellent game I would recommend to anyone who finds this theme compelling, enjoys set collection and clever card play, and is looking for a light to mid-weight game that plays fast but offers an interesting strategic experience.
Comments