Unboxing: First Impressions of Everdell, Dune and Detective: L.A. Crimes Expansion
- boredgameologist
- Nov 3, 2019
- 2 min read
Yesterday, Daniel and I set out to buy one game, ONE game and yet we came back with three. I can’t say I regret it, but it definitely won’t make paying rent this week any easier hahaha
Everdell
Let’s start off with a strong one for our first unboxing post.
We stumbled across this game in-store and were immediately drawn to it. We’re a sucker for cute games and we could not walk past this Beatrix Potter style tableau-building/worker placement game. Across every element, the design has amazing attention to detail. From the beautiful card illustrations to the box itself you could really tell there was a lot of thought and effort put into Everdell’s design. And the tree! We could not get over how cool this tree was. Despite its complete lack of purpose, it really changes the look and feel of the game when some components are elevated. It truly did feel like walking into some children’s fairy tale picture book.
Also, the jewel-toned resource tokens also provided a very satisfying tactile experience; the berries being delightfully squishy!
However, we did find that our board had not been correctly cut and so we had to whip out the X-Acto knife to construct the tree. Aside from this minor problem, all-in-all, Everdell has stuck out to me this year as one of the most exciting board game unboxings. We can’t wait to give it a go and see if it lives up to its design.
Dune
Daniel has been waiting for this game for a while, so we were really excited to hear that our local board game shop had 2 copies left in stock!
Compared to the original (see below), Dune has been giving a much-needed revamping which has kept true to its classic sci-fi, inter-galactic style, but just been given a lacquer of new paint. It is reinvigorated by the rich blues and contrasting yellows that decorate the entire box. The different moving parts (battle wheel), and unique board is still there and we can’t wait to give it all a go. We did, however, experience minor printing problems near the creases of the board where some scratches were left white. I’m aware of the difficulty of printing dark for board games but still, I suppose, a slightly imperfect board is still a slightly imperfect board.
Detective: L.A. Crimes Expansion
As an expansion I know I must keep in mind that this is not the base game and costs almost half the price, but this was a disappointing unboxing. The box is very cheaply made, and inside is simply 3 decks and a very thin-looking board. Whilst the design of the cards are nice and a refreshing direction to take the Detective game after we opened it Daniel and I both looked at each other and thought “is that it?”. Compared to the T.I.M.E. story expansions that go for roughly the same price, I feel that L.A. Crimes could have been presented better.
- Kat
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