WBG Score: 8.5
Player Count: 1-4
You’ll like this if you like: Euros with combos. Lots of combos!
Published by: McDavitt Publishing
Designed by: Sam McDavitt
This is a review copy. See our review policy here
Sam McDavitt is a guy just like me or you. He loves board games, plays a lot of board games, and thought to himself, "Hey, I could make one of these!" The difference between him and most of the rest of us is he followed through on that thought and actually made the game. The good news for all of us is that the game is wonderful! It successfully funded on Kickstarter, and there is now another game being developed too. But, let's stick with this one for now. Why is it good? And is it for you? Let's get it to the table and find out.
How To Set Up Everstone: Discovering Ignis
First, place the main board in the centre of the table with the dice and resources next to the board. You can separate the resource colours if you prefer, but this is not crucial. Now take all the relic cards and find the ones with the starter "S" marked on them. Shuffle these and deal three to each player. Place the rest into the main Relic deck, shuffle them, and deal four face up below the bottom of the board with the rest in a face-down pile to the left. Next, separate the villager tiles into the A and B piles, then based on player count, take three of each (for a solo or two-player game), three A's and four B's (for a three-player game), or four of each (for a four-player game). The chosen tiles will now be placed on the Explore spaces on the main board, with the final two placed on the Outer Limit spaces on the bottom right of the board. Now shuffle the Caravan upgrade cards, Miner Relic cards, Personal Quest cards, and Reserve Extension cards and place them beside the board.
Next, each player will take a Reserve and Workshop mat and place them in front of them along with the Caravan token, 20 Influence tokens, and player pawn of their chosen colour. Take one starting Quest and Personal Quest card and place them face down in front of you. Each player will place one Influence token at the bottom of each of the three Influence tracks on the left side of the main board. If this is a two-player game, cover the three blank spaces on the Influence track with three non-playing Influence tokens. Now each player places another Influence token on the right-hand side Reputation track, noting the starting space based on your player count as shown next to this track. Place the remaining Influence tokens in stacks of three on your reserve mat on the five spaces for them. This will leave one leftover token; we will get to that shortly. Now, place your Caravan token on the Ignis space on the main board and your player pawn on the Barter section on the left-hand side of your Workshop mat.
Next, each player looks at their three starting Relic cards they were just dealt. One needs to be discarded in exchange for your starting resources, as shown by that card's resource cost on the left-hand side of the card. One will be kept and tucked under any of the four spaces on your Workshop mat to boost one action's power. The third and final card will be stored in one of the four spaces in the middle of your Workshop mat. You will be able to build or discard this later. Now, for that final Influence token. Look at the Explore spaces on the main board, and look at the Location bonus as shown on the bottom of the space. Place your final Influence token on your chosen space, and gain that Location bonus. Randomly pick a starting player and you are now ready to begin.
How To Play Everstone: Discovering Ignis
The game will now move around the table, with each player taking their turn until one player gains ten Reputation points. Continue until all players have had equal turns, and then the game ends immediately.
On a players turn they must move their Player Pawn on their Workshop. It cannot stay in its previously position, meaning for everyone's first turn they can do whatever they like other than Barter, where the Player pawns all start. You can chose to either Explore, Harvest, or Repair. And then on your next turn, the other two you did not pick this time, and now also to Barter. More on those four actions in a bit.
Then, you can perform a Caravan upgrade if you have previously gained one and tucked it above the space you just picked, before performing the main action of the four actions you just chose: Explore, Harvest, Repair, or Barter. Then, if the Workshop space for the section you just chose does not have a Relic card on it, you will be able to perform an additional optional Workshop action if you wish, as well as any optional Repaired Relic actions for tucked cards in this section. You will have one at the beginning of the game added for free, so it is worth considering during setup which action you think you may do first, to try and make your first turn as efficient as possible. Finally, when all this is done, if you have fulfilled the request of any quests or global achievements (more on them soon), then you must reveal that now and score the appropriate number of Reputation points. You cannot store these to reveal multiple ones in one turn. Play then moves to the next player. So, what about those actions?
Barter - This is how you will gain extra Relic cards. You will move your Caravan token to Ignis, if it is not there already, then you can buy one of the four face-up Relic cards as shown under the main board. The card on the far right is free; the others have a cost of one or two resources as shown on the icon above the card. Take the card you want, pay any required cost, and then add the chosen Relic card to any open space on your Workshop board. This will cover a Workshop action, so note that as you place the card. Which actions do you want to keep open to yourself? Which one can you afford to temporarily lose?
Once you have done this, as shown on the Ignis space on the main board, you can now choose to either gain one resource of your choosing from the three types, as well as discard any card previously placed in your Workshop to gain the Discard benefit as shown on the left side of the Relic card; or pay a resource to move up one space of the corresponding Influence track on the left of the board. When you move up this track, you will jump any spaces covered by other players' markers and instantly gain the shown benefit here. If your Workshop space is free on your own Workshop, you can do both of these actions instead of choosing one.
Explore - Here, you will move your Caravan tiles to your chosen Explore space on the board and you will carry out the action there. If an opponent's Caravan is already there, you can still move there, but you must pay that person the location's bonus and move their Caravan to Ignis. All players with Influence tokens at this location can now also carry out the location bonus. If players have multiple Influence tokens here, they can gain the location bonus more than once.
Once all this is done, you can now carry out the Location action. The A spaces mainly give you resources, the chance to move up the Influence track, Miner Relic cards, or the chance to gain a Reserve Extension so you can hold more resources. The B spaces offer more complex actions to gain Influence points in exchange for resources, moving down the Influence track, or discarding Relic cards, Caravan upgrade cards, additional Relic cards, or to gain a Relic discard bonus in exchange for two red resources. The tile in the Explore space you just visited is now moved to the very bottom of the Outer limits. The tile there moves up one space, and the tile this displaces moves up to the location you are currently in. This way, the Explore actions regularly change.
You may now complete the Workshop bonus action if a Relic card is not covering it, which for Explore is the chance to spend a yellow resource to add an Influence token to your current location. This way, the next time another player visits this space, you will gain the location bonus.
Harvest - First you must roll the three Harvest dice. Now, check your roll against the back of the Relic card in the face down deck at the bottom of the board. The back of the cards are all different, and the back of the current card shows the current cost to gain a Relic card via the Harvest action. It will also show one free way you can manipulate the roll of the three dice you just rolled to try and get the required roll. Your Workshop action, if available, also allows you to spend resources to manipulate the dice roll. If you can manage to manipulate the dice to show the three dice on the back of the current Relic card then you can discover this Relic, meaning you can either sell it to gain the sell reward as shown on the right of the main side of the card, or keep it, and tuck it under any space on your Workshop, increasing that actions power the next time you do it.
If you do not manage to manipulate the dice to discover the relic, then you can add any two of the dice together and move up one of the three Influence tracks, as decided by the total of the two dice. Two to five, and you will move up the left track. A total of six to eight, and you move up the middle track. Anything over nine, and you move up the right track. You will then gain the benefit of the space you moved up to, and the number of resources based on the pip value on the third die. Blue resource for the left track, yellow for the middle, and red for the right. Quite a fruitful way to gain extra stuff. And don't you just love stuff!
Repair - This is the final action, and how you will use the cards added to your Workshop earlier in the game. Simply, pay the resource cost as shown on the left of the Relic card, and then you can either keep the Relic, tucking it below either space on your Workshop board; or sell it to gain the sales reward on that card.
Workshop space is open you can now move any previously placed Relic cards into a new space, or move a previously tucked card to a new space, simply for the cost of one blue resource.
There are a few other rules around the Minor Relics, which add additional resources in tucked spaces on the Workshop; the Caravan upgrades which have various powers and choices on each card; and the Quests you need to achieve. The main ones are the shared common objectives on the top of the board, which are all pretty self-explanatory, but can only be completed by one player. When this happens, that player marks this space with an Influence token of their colour and takes the shown Reputation. Otherwise, this should give you a good idea of how to play.
Is It Fun? Everstone: Discovering Ignis Board Game Review
If you enjoy combo turns, oh my! You are in luck. I love games with combo turns, and I thought I had played games with pretty combo-tastic turns before. And then I played this. It ramps it up to eleven! There were some turns where I did something, which let me do something else, which triggered another thing, which in turn meant I could move here, and gain this, and move there, and gain that... you get the point. It's wonderful!
It can get a bit much if there are divergent paths, though. Doing action A could mean you get benefit 1, which then means you get to do action B, which gets you benefit 2. It may be that from action A, after getting benefit 1, you also get benefit 2, or action A.1, if you get my drift! So, I found sometimes I was mid-turn, getting confused about what I had left to do. Had I done it all? And what was the plan again?
But it is not a bad thing. It just sometimes a little overwhelming. But again, in a good way. I love getting stuff in games. Who doesn't like getting stuff?! And in Everstone, you sure do get a lot of stuff! There are times when resources will be low. And like any good euro, you will be left thinking, how do I get stuff again? But then you will remember, take an action, and suddenly be laden with loads more stuff.
Then you will want to spend that stuff. Perhaps you repair, sell, and tuck a load of previously stored Relic cards from your warehouse. Opening up the warehouse actions again, gaining loads more resources from the sales, and increasing the power of your actions for later turns with the tucked cards. Perhaps the sale benefit move you up the Reputation tracks a few spots. Maybe that gains you some extra cards and resources. Maybe now you can even look to sell another card. The knock on effects are just so deliciously powerful. Seemingly endless. And make each turn feel powerful, full or opportunity, and put simply, fun to do. This is a fun experience. Stuff is great. I love stuff!
It doesn't hurt that the entire game looks and feels gorgeous too. The art and iconography are all very good and clear. The board and Workshop side board, though busy, are clearly laid out, and all comes into place in your mind after a few turns. Picking Everstone up for subsequent games days or weeks later is a breeze. The rule book hopefully will be a thing of the past, bar the handy icon reference on the back after game one or two. The Relic cards, also busy, quickly pull into focus; and you will find that everything sits where you expect it to. This is a game made by someone who loves games, and it seems to me, has used a lot of meta knowledge to make things just seem right as you play. I sense he said to himself as he designed this:
Variable set-up works well in other games. Cool, I will add to my own one. It's nice to have a few things to make the game a little asymmetric, isn't it? Ok, cool, I will add those too. But we want clear icons, done. With a nice icon reference on the back page, obviously! And a rules book that references itself. Sure.
And I think that went on and on! It helps when the designer is a board game enthusiast too, doesn't it!
So, what are the bad bits? Well, the games can end quite abruptly. The first phase of the game can be slow, where no player gains any Reputation. Then in the middle phase, all players should start picking up a few Reputation points. One or two players will always pull ahead, of course, that's how games work, but no one should feel out of it. But in the third phase of the game, one player can suddenly pull off a mega move, complete multiple Quests, shared goals, and various actions all in the space of one or two turns, score multiple Reputation points, and end the game with other players desperately wanting two or three more turns to catch up.
I have found that when at least one person is knowledgeable about the game or simply good at games like this, this happens more often than it doesn't. And if any of the other players are a beat off, they will be somewhat caught up in a whirlwind finale they were not expecting. This is fine. Being good at a game means typically you win against those who are not as good. But it is not as common for a game to end this fast, and with this much of a gap between players, and for the last phase to happen in just one turn, when the other phases of the game take much longer.
Overall, I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good Eruo where you need X to do Y, and that can then lead to all sorts of other knock on benefits, combo turns, and additional options on your go. If that is your kind of think, this could well become your jam! What an incredible debut into the board game design world from Sam McDavitt. I am very excited to see what comes next. Oh, wait, I already know. Check it out!
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