Evenfall ►►► Rahdo's Final Thoughts

Help Rahdo Run: / rahdo ❤️ Code of conduct: conduct.rahdo.com 🙂 And now...
A video outlining gameplay for the boardgame Evenfall.
For more game info, boardgamegeek....
Part I: Gameplay Runthrough
• Rahdo Runs Through►►► ...
Part II: Final Thoughts
• Evenfall ►►► Rahdo's F...
...

[@StefanoDiSilvio]

Dear Rahdo, I am absolutely overwhelmed and humbled by your kind review and all the feedback that is starting to come in. I just want to thank you and tell you how happy I am that you liked my game so much. I have been watching your videos for 10 years at this point and it's almost surreal that you now reviewed my game. Thank you again, hope to see you at Essen!

[@rahdo]

congratulations, it's an amazing debut design! :)

[@danni0510]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYCxgqyIhsqXnJIsi=YEmzvanOQb5ZxFEU you got also an amazing review from the largest German KZbin Channel

[@rahdo]

_since someone else brought this up as a comment_ _but folks often don't look at replies to comments,_ _i figure this is worth repeating here:_ for the record: while the "rahdo only ever says games are amazing" perspective is a fairly common one, the actual data of what i do doesn't support the observation :) for starters, i rank every game i keep in my collection on a 1-10 point scale. you can find this at ranked.rahdo.com (with box art) or games.rahdo.com (with overall # ranking and link to runthrough) or top.rahdo.com (with the list broken down by year). note those last two URLs draw data from the bgg database which can be slow to respond, so you might have to refresh the page once or twice to get the list to actually show up. also check faq.rahdo.com #23 for a breakdown of how i rank games also, i only keep about half the games i cover, and i always explain why games aren't for me and why i might get rid of them (see faq.rahdo.com #7 for more details) for instance, of my last 15 runthroughs i've filmed, 8 of them we probably won't be keeping, and in each final thoughts, i went into detail what our problems with them were: • 3 ring circus • my island • amsterdam • oranienburger kanal • motor city • tribes of the wind • dom pierre • atiwa in addition to that, in every monthly roundup, i talk about a bunch of games i don't runthrough that we had issues with, like in the most recent roundup, I criticized issues I had with: • Time Stories Cavendish • Findorff • After Us • The Gardens • Space Explorers: Age of Ambition • Arnak: Missing Expeditions so yes, i talk about a LOT of games, and as it happens, a lot of those games are amazing because i work hard to avoid garbage games since i don't want to waste my or my wife's time. but it's certainly not true that i never critique or criticize. i do it quite a lot actually. after all, i was a professional game designer for 2 decades, so i definitely have thoughts :)

[@danielsanchez6235]

Oh how come you're not keeping 3 ring circus? I think that game looks great and it'll arrive to me soon, I can't wait to play it tbh. Just curious :D

[@rahdo]

well i talked about it in the final thoughts for that video, but basically we're not fans of the "lots of little turns and occasionally one big turn" structure, and we found updating the Barnum timer to be annoyingly easy to forget.

[@danielsanchez6235]

@@rahdo oh fair enough, thanks for replying :)

[@Tolara0815]

I basicly never comment anything on youtube... but: I love that you curate the games you cover. You are my first go-to when I look at the SPIEL 2023 list (only convention I go to, since I live 2 hours away) when I have a game that interests me and look up if you have a video on that game. When you have covered a game I already know that it's not total garbage and I am not wasting my time looking at a 30-60min long video, like you didnt waste your time making it. Always worth listening to the final thoughts aswell. Usually I look at your gameplay and form my own opinion. With Evenfall I wasnt convinced after the first 10min and wanted to skip it. You being this excited in your final thoughts will make me look at it again ;-) Thanks for all your videos and hard work you put into it!

[@vogelscript]

Hey Rahdo, I love how transparent you are with your ratings and ranking systems. I'm similar to you where I try to be very picky about my games and 1-2 things can easily cause me to sell it even if it's an otherwise great design. One question I had though: sometimes it seems like your monthly round-up rankings don't match your yearly rankings (in terms of relative game positions). As a recent example, in your July roundup you had Rauha higher than World Wonders, but in your yearly ranking it's the other way around. Is this just a factor of your preferences changing slightly when you actually write-in the decimal rating of a game vs when you film the video?

[@FlyByFry]

I had the absolute privelage to playtest this game in one of its final iterations and I am absolutely happy to see other people raving about this game. It is absolutely gorgeous and such great fun to play! I hope many more people get the chance to try this game out for themselves!

[@eliseh.2152]

This title came our of nowhere for me, I hadn't heard about it before, but it looks gorgeous!

[@rahdo]

yeah, this is going to surprise everyone i think!

[@sanderschippers2708]

I got some time this game now but it has some issues. Solo is pretty hard. The point is to get as many points as possible in less turns as possible. But as a gamer you want to play much as possible. It is also very different then competitive. Since in competitive you want to max out. While doing this it does not effect your opponents. While in solo when you do this the automa keeps going too. Also there is the luck of drawing the right combinations for end game scoring (wich are pretty much needed since they can give alot of points). Someone who is getting the cards from the regular drawing has an advantage. Because people who do not most of the time need to use a witch to draw cards. So they have a witch less to do other stuff.

[@nlKlaus]

Great video! We had such an amazing time playtesting the game. It warms my heart to finally see it out there ❤

[@RossEphgrave]

What little I have seen of this lends me to think Lord's of Waterdeep was a bit of an influencer as well. A forgotten classic...

[@lajeit]

Blown away. BIG WORDS! I may pick this up since I don’t own rftg

[@TheEricBooth]

I've yet to play this, but to me it kind of has an Imperial Settlers vibe to it with the placement of cards around the player board.

[@harris2181]

I'm so looking forward to this game and can't wait for it to be available in the US

[@rahdo]

here's some info about US release: boardgamegeek.com/thread/3160101/surfin-meeple-partnering-dlp-games-make-evenfall-e :)

[@tomlikeabomb6706]

Lol Pearl Jam is in my head now. Thanks Rahdo.

[@tomlikeabomb6706]

If this game arrives like butterflies hopefully he knows and doesn’t chase it away.

[@fleazapp]

did anything change lately or still a best game of the year? Spiel is close, and my budget is limited!

[@rahdo]

i always keep my rankings up to date at top.rahdo.com (sorted by hear) so you can always check there (you might have to refresh the page once or twice to get the data from bgg). but to save you the click following, it's currently #2, with earth in the top spot at the moment. but there are some heavy hitters i haven't played coming at essen... potential candidates to top it, at this point, would be planta nubo pirates of maracaibo kutna hora evaculation djinn but i think it's got a pretty good shot at holding on to #2 :)

[@fleazapp]

@@rahdo thank you

[@kurtwolffjr9727]

I see Wild Tiled West is on your wall of favorite games would you say it’s better or rank it higher than Planet Unknown and World Wonders as a polyomino game?

[@rahdo]

well you can see how i rank everything in my collection at games.rahdo.com or ranked.rahdo.com or top.rahdo.com :) but of the 3 you mentioned it's 1. planet unknown 2. wild tiled west 3. world wonders

[@kurtwolffjr9727]

@@rahdo Oh wow thank you so much! I didn’t know you had a website where you list your top games! I remembered you had Planet Unknown in your top 10 collaboration video with guests a while back. But that makes me feel better about backing Planet Unknowns reprint 🙏🏼. Have you happened to play the super moon expansion, I’m curious what your thoughts are on it?

[@rahdo]

i would love to try super moon, but i don't know much about specifics for it

[@thomasgawronski2464]

Evenfall comes around like butterflies 🙂

[@rahdo]

you know back in the 90s i couldn't understand a single thing being sung in that song! :)

[@tmcd5049]

Evenflow - the Pearl Jam song, IIRC.

[@rahdo]

i don't know, so i chase them away!

[@MD-et8kz]

it looks like imperial settlers with witches. Does it do anything more than imperial settlers

[@rahdo]

oh boy i must have done a bad job demonstrating how the game works if that's what you came away with. they both have cards and resources that you spend to play them, but that's where the similarities end i'd say!

[@sanderschippers2708]

Looks interesting. But only minor point i can see for now is that you are limited to what you draw.

[@rahdo]

well you do draw extras in the first round to mitigate that, and the reality is, half the cards you get you'll end up converting into resources so that you can play the other cards, so the multi-use nature of them offsets luck of the draw. and this is a game wereh everything combos well with other stuff... it's not an everdell sort of "oh, i can't activate X unless i find a Y" kind of thing :)

[@sanderschippers2708]

Just a little bit like Res Arcana?

[@rahdo]

certainly a similar setting, but very different gameplay i'd say :)

[@DaveHaenze]

I just played it at a con earlier today. You are limited to what you draw as you said, but you do draw a lot of them - in a 3p game, we drew 20(5+6+9) cards at the beginning of each round just from the player abilities. Then you have some action spaces that let you draw cards, card abilities, etc. We basically saw the entire deck during our game. On top of that, a lot of the cards are duplicated with minimal differences (e.g., specialists that have the same specialist ability, but different council member abilities). I didn't really feel that the cards I drew were a handicap, nor did any of the other players - unlike say Wingspan where what you draw at the start + what you're able to draw from the deck or tray really can impact your play.

[@robertgronewold3326]

I mean, this game has me at witches. I have a weakness for anything witches.

[@rcmr1990]

Which is the other new game designer and which game he/she made?

[@rahdo]

dani garcia who had arborea and barcelona

[@rcmr1990]

@@rahdo thank you! Keep enjoying Mexico (I'm from Monterrey, Mx)

[@dankelly]

Where and when can we get it?

[@rahdo]

it's going to be available at essen spiel in october, but i've asked the publisher for more details beyond that and will report back when i hear :)

[@rahdo]

so you can order from dlp here: www.dlp-games.de/shop/spiele and they've also got a publishing partnership with matagot, but they'll be later on that it comes to fruition

[@tomlikeabomb6706]

When and how can we get this?

[@rahdo]

they were able to send me an early pre-release copy, and afaik the game will hit retail in time for Essen Spiel in October. I'll ask the publisher to comment with a more concrete answer though :)

[@rahdo]

so you can order from dlp here: www.dlp-games.de/shop/spiele and they've also got a publishing partnership with matagot, but they'll be later on that it comes to fruition

[@tomlikeabomb6706]

It comes to $133 to get it shipped to the US. Unfortunately that’s too expensive for me. Hopefully it makes it into retail over here quickly.

[@philomorph7]

Where do I buy this? Take my money please, Nanox :)

[@rahdo]

i know they're taking pre-orderers for essen spiel, but not sure beyond that. but i'll ask publisher and report back :)

[@rahdo]

so you can order from dlp here: www.dlp-games.de/shop/spiele and they've also got a publishing partnership with matagot, but they'll be later on that it comes to fruition

[@ROOKTABULA]

Just picked up an open but unplayed copy for $5.50 cdn.

[@rahdo]

wow that's a real score!

[@GlennDeBlock]

Sometimes I have the feeling you rate all the games the same. Always "amazing". Maybe you implement something like score from 1-10 or stars out of 5 or something because I get mixed up when all games are just "amazing" and "impressive".

[@rahdo]

i rank every game i keep in my collection on a 1-10 point scale. you can find this at ranked.rahdo.com (with box art) or games.rahdo.com (with overall # ranking and link to runthrough) or top.rahdo.com (with the list broken down by year). note those last two URLs draw data from the bgg database which can be slow to respond, so you might have to refresh the page once or twice to get the list to actually show up. also check faq.rahdo.com #23 for a breakdown of how i rank games also, i only keep about half the games i cover, and i always explain why games aren't for me and why i might get rid of them (see faq.rahdo.com #7 for more details) for instance, of my last 15 runthroughs i've filmed, 8 of them we probably won't be keeping, and in each final thoughst, i went into detail what our problems with them were: • 3 ring circus • my island • amsterdam • oranienburger kanal • motor city • tribes of the wind • dom pierre • atiwa in addition to that, in every monthly roundup, i talk about a bunch of games i don't runthrough that we had issues with, like in the most recent roundup, I criticized issues I had with: • Time Stories Cavendish • Findorff • After Us • The Gardens • Space Explorers: Age of Ambition • Arnak: Missing Expeditions

[@Zilong09]

Yeah I was just about to comment thus

[@rahdo]

well, while it's a fairly common perspective that people have, the actual data of what i do doesn't support the observation :) again, of the last 15 games i ran through, over half of them i articulated why i was getting rid of them in my final thoughts. and as well, on any given month, there's usually around a half dozen additional games i play which i don't runthrough at all because i don't like them enough (though these often get talked about in the monthly rahdo roundup, where again i point out why the games weren't for me and my wife)

[@matsie3134]

I honestly was thinking the same while watching this video. Love your content, but maybe you could actually rate games in your video's. "Keep" or "get rid of" isn't enough for the average consumer who can't afford all the games you keep due to money, time or space . Just my 2 cents.

[@kevinsmith9899]

@@matsie3134 A big part of the value of runthroughs is that the viewer can decide for themselves what they would rate it. Nobody has exactly the same tastes, so I think Richard has a great formula: Show the game in detail, and then explain what they liked, and what they didn't.