Because of everyone’s busy schedules, life events, etc, my friends and I haven’t really gotten together like we use to for some board games. While Monopoly is always a solid choice…I always like trying out a new game!
Using the fact that we haven’t gotten together for quite some time, I hosted a game night over the long weekend and decided to play Everdell with the Bellfaire expansion.
Although we had other options…I think I ended up pushing for Everdell for a couple of reasons.
- One of a few games that allowed up to 6 players (though I ended up being the “game master” since we had 7 people)
- I figured this one might be a bit easier for new players to learn as compared to other games (it helps that I already knew how to play to help speed things along)
This last point was pretty important. I have a few games that require an hour or so of set up and I also don’t know how to play them 100%…so the set up time becomes even longer. While I do want to get to those games, I figured no one wants to wait around on Friday night, after work, for a game to start.
Everdell is probably one of the favorites that my girlfriend and I like playing when we get the chance. Playing the game with 2 people is just long enough to be able to enjoy the game, come up with strategies, apply them quickly, and potentially play a second game in one sitting. I would say the average time it takes us to finish a game is perhaps about an hour or so.
This was not the case with 6 people… >.>. It took us around 4 hours? I would say it was still fun and something people enjoyed but 6 people is definitely pushing it. Considering you can only do one action a turn, it takes a while before you are able to carry out any original plan…or worse, you might forget what it was since the other 5 took so long to take their turn.
Still, I think everyone picked up the game fairly quickly. If we were to play a second time, I suspect it would go by a little faster (I would also put a 30 second timer per turn or something to really move things along ^.^ ).