Evenfall – a solo review

It’s the witching hour, and it seems every coven this side of Salem has gotten the message. With the Enchanted Throne vacant, witches circle it like vermin around a bubbling cauldron. Witches are drawn to places of power like moths to a flame; their rituals and incantations are catalyzed by ancient powers that lurk in unsuspecting surroundings. Nothing is as tempting as the promise of power.

Name: Evenfall (2023)
Designer: Stefano di Silvio
Publisher: Nanox Games / dlp games
Play type: multi-use cards, worker placement, area majority, variable player powers

What the game is about

Can you lead your coven in the battle for the Enchanted Throne? Evenfall is a tableau-building card game where you discover sacred sites to perform rituals. You have some witches and elders you can send out to gather resources, but this also leads to a battle for control of regions at the end of each of the three rounds. All of this to gather the most points to claim the Enchanted Throne!

I was given a review copy of this game by Nanox Games in return for an honest review. My thoughts remain my own.

How the game works

Evenfall is a card-based engine builder, combined with resource management and worker placement. You are a coven of witches, trying to discover sacred sites to perform rituals in. Doing this revolves around a core loop of actions:

1. Discover a place of power and add it to your outer circle. You can discover a place of power from one of two locations that are seeded with three randomly drawn locations each. You can discover a site by placing one or two of your witches on the location.
2. Then, you can place a ritual at a place of power, paying its resource cost. Rituals can give you instant effects, end-game bonuses, continuing effects, or even a new spot to place workers on.
3. To be able to score a ritual at the end of a game, it needs to be in your inner circle. Certain game effects can move a place of power from your outer circle to your inner circle.

Where a place of power resides has two significant effects. For one, while your witches can go anywhere, your elders can only perform rituals in your inner circle. Since you have four of each, and your witches tend to go out into the world more, it is useful to ensure your elders can also contribute to the coven. And secondly, when you activate the harvest action, only places of power in your outer circle provide resources.

What’s a coven without witches? Besides the meeples you have, you can also draw witch cards from the deck. These are called specialists, and they serve a dual purpose; you can play them as a specialist, placing the card to the left of your player board; or you can play them as a council member, tucking the card beneath your player board. Every version has a different effect, from instant effects to end-of-game scoring effects.

Another important part of the game is the coven track, which grants you bonuses as you progress. The four factions you can choose from each have a double-sided player board with both a generic and a unique side. Their special ability and coven track bonuses are either generic or unique, based on which side you pick.

In solo games of Evenfall, you play against an automated faction of opposing witches. Every turn, you flip over a card from the general draw pile and move a marker across a track some spaces equal to the point value of the revealed card. You then execute the action it lands on. The AI doesn’t collect resources, cards or mana; instead, for each of those, it gets a VP instead.

Wait, mana? Besides resources, you as a player will also gain mana during your turns. This is additional leverage for the area control battles that take place at the end of each round, on each location board in the centre of the table. By placing meeples here, you can draft

You can also place your witch meeples on one of the location boards in the centre of the table. Not only can you gain cards from here, but you can also activate certain abilities (like drawing cards or gaining resources). At the end of each round, an area majority tally decides whether you or the AI wins control over each region. If you have meeples in a region, you can spend mana to increase your presence. Per region, the winner gains a power stone (to double end game scoring of one of their regions). Everyone who partook in a battle also gains bonuses based on how high their presence was.

At the end of the game, you and the AI gain end-game points from witches and completed rituals; the winner is the one with the highest score. The AI has a few difficulty levels, which are nothing more than additional VP for certain actions they take.

Theme, setting & narrative

I think the theme of the game – witches trying to gain influence as they try to perform their rituals – is one that shines through in most aspects of the game. While I feel this theme is interchangeable, it makes sense here nevertheless. I really felt like I was the head of my coven, duking it out with sisters from other misters. I think it is good that the setting is nondescript and not tied to historical events regarding witchcraft. We don’t need another namedropped Salem! Even though Evenfall came out amidst other games with the same theme, I feel that at least from the onset (I haven’t played the others; Witchcraft! and Septima), Evenfall makes its theme very pronounced and distinguished.

How does it play?

As a tableau-building game, Evenfall does something I haven’t seen before in this genre. While its addition of worker placement isn’t novel, the way it sticks area control onto it is. This gives you as the player another layer of strategy you need to take into account; what are the resources you need worth right now, and what else could you do with other resources if that gives you something better at the end of the round? On top of that, we have several card types that have multiple ways in which we can employ them, often with more than one effect on the card itself.

Basically, Evenfall is a triangle that constantly pulls in three directions: how to play which cards, which resources to collect, and which spots to claim in the various locations. I find it wildly fascinating how each of these interacts with the others. There are few clear-cut decisions because every decision can often be challenged from at least two different angles. And let’s not forget how your unique faction factors into this; every coven has its own strengths, and playing into those is vital. That means that no one card is objectively good or bad, but it also depends on how well it serves your coven’s specific goals.

What I liked about the locations is that the battle for supremacy at the end of every round is both an additional factor to take into account when placing your workers, but also a relatively predictive battle with no real losers. The winner gets a unique bonus, true, but all contestants gain a generic bonus based on their strength. This means you can try to aim for what you want, and winning the combat almost feels like a bonus. Like I said, no real losers here. If you can get your elders (who are normally relegated to worker placement spots in your own coven) to join the battle, that’s all the better for your chances. Speaking of the elders, I like how they are hard to employ (you need to have a spot to put them on), but can really help your game. If everyone can only use four workers and you can reliably place a fifth or even sixth every round, I don’t need to tell you how beneficial that is.

In general, tough choices is the name of the game. There is a lot to consider, and every decision matters; sometimes frustratingly so. I often found myself scripting my turns, ignoring the AI and just planning ahead how my turn would look. Since I am playing solo, I could just put my cards face-up on the table and assign resources to them to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything – because as you might surmise, miscounting one resource can shatter your whole round, and perhaps the game as a result. On the flip side, being able to plan ahead so much, you can start to feel like you’re merely the executing party of your own plans. You made them yourself, mind you – but it’s telling that you can script a round this way. I found that I usually take a few moments to figure out my game plan for the round, and after that, it’s pretty much auto-pilot territory. The only real changes that can occur are if my options change, like when I draw a powerful card, or when the AI blocks a spot. That might make me reconsider my plans, like spending my resources elsewhere, or using a card for a different effect.

This brings me to the AI. Instinctively I’d say it’s not quite an automa, but it also feels like more than an AI. While it does operate under its own set of rules, it does block you, and it racks up points in its own way. The interaction is minor; not confrontational enough to be in your crosshairs all the time, but also not so inconsequential that you can ignore it. I also like how they managed to distil the basic game flow – play location in outer circle, play ritual onto it, move to inner circle – into a system that works and can’t break down. By moving along its own track with a few must-stop spaces, the AI is ensured to do its thing without giving you as the player a huge stack of rules to manage.

I must say, AI behaviour and challenge are hugely influenced by the difficulty level – I found that with little practice, I was able to crank up the difficulty and therefore the challenge for myself. But the more I upped the ante, the more I felt inclined to script my turns and execute those actions. With a system that is so tight, I felt every step up meant less leeway to do my own thing, and therefore look for the optimal play instead. I could resort to lower difficulty levels instead, but then again, when there is no challenge, then what are we playing for?

What you might like

• the way it splices area majority onto the tableau-building/worker placement-shell creates yet another interesting layer of decision-making
• area majority still gives out rewards if you don’t win, so there are no real losers
• the resource management is tight, but since you’re playing solo, you can put your hand on the table to make sure you’re not missing one or two crucial resources
• multi-use cards are interesting and provide tough choices
• the AI is easy to manage and provides a force to keep an eye out for

What you might not like

• the resource management can sometimes be punishingly tight (but that’s admittedly less of an issue in solo play)
• tight decision space can result in scripting your round and then executing your plan, one step at a time
• the first few difficulty levels aren’t too challenging, but the more you up the challenge, the less wiggle room you get

Conclusion

Existential questions aside, Evenfall is a wonderful game that brings a novel take to the worker placement genre. By adding area majority onto it and then fusing it with multi-use cards, it creates an interesting decision space every round, provided you can find the right difficulty level for you. Because when Evenfall manages to steer clear of both lack of impact and lack of agency, it shows you an exciting mix of things you’ve seen before, but never put together in such a clever way.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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