Over 3 seasons, you’ll have to grow your forest into the biggest and best if you want to win. Can you attract enough wildlife, grow the tallest trees, and have enough plants to come out ahead? Let’s find out!
What Is It?
Drafting / Push-Your-Luck – Each round, players will draft one of the available piles of cards. If they pass on a pile, they can not come back to it, so if they want to go for something different, or a pile with more cards, they’ll have to push your luck!
Set Collection – Players will score points for collecting sets of certain weather, plants, and wildlife
Who Is It For?
- 1 to 4 Players – Solo is okay if you don’t mind the upkeep of the dummy player. I think 2 is still the best, but 3 is also good. The game gets a bit too long at 4.
- Ages 10 & Up / Family Weight Gamers – Light strategy, pretty small ruleset, and simple game flow
- Fans of drafting and set collection
- Fans of the original Canopy who want to play with 3 or 4 players
Variants
Solo – Play against the Fox Spirit which follows specific rules for how it attracts wildlife, and places trees, and which piles it drafts. – It works well overall. I thought the rules for Fox Spirit were clear to follow. For me, it was just a little too much upkeep because I felt like I was just taking 2 turns, so I wasn’t a big fan. But if you like the game and you’re big on solo, you might not mind as much.
Shifting Seasons – Reveal a card each season which has an effect (i.e. scoring changes for that round) – Nice little variant, easy to add in, and adds in some fun changes once you’re familiar with the game.
PROS
- Aesthetics – Great art, looks great when you build all your trees!
- Components – Nice quality across the board. I didn’t love building all the tree roots the first time, haha, but I do love that you don’t have to take them apart every play
- Rules are well written and clear
- Good reference cards
- Smooth game flow / turns
- Nice storage solution of various boxes within the box
- The push-your-luck style drafting works well, and feels unique from most other drafting games
- Nice variety of wildlife abilities
CONS
- Runs a bit long at 4 players
- Can start to feel repetitive (usually at the larger player count) because you reset and go through the whole deck each round, instead of seeing new cards or continuing to build up your forest
- The wildlife chain scoring felt a little tacked on
- Most people I played with agreed it was hard to remember that attracting wildlife was supposed to be the 1st thing you did on a turn, and we wished it could be done at any time
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed the original Canopy, and this was overall pretty similar in gameplay. I did enjoy the component changes, building up my trees instead of just having cards – that felt and looked great!
I love the debating players do with themselves each turn thinking “should I take this pile … or try to go for the next one…but what if it’s worse…?” I think that push-your-luck tension is great. However, that can also make the game run a bit long, at any count, but especially with the more players you add.
Overall, it is a super solid game for fans of drafting and set collection, with a touch of pushing your luck. Plus, it looks great on the table. Check it out!
Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10
Designer – Tim Eisner
Artist – Vincent Dutrait
Publisher – Weird City Games
MSRP – $40.00 (Standard)
Website
*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*
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Alex
I haven’t played the original Canopy, but is this completely standalone? Or is Evergreen able to be mixed with the original Canopy at all?
Steph
This is completely standalone! I haven’t played the original in a while, so I don’t know all the exact differences, but I know it has some rule variations.