Verdant

The team behind Calico and Cascadia returns with Verdant, a related design carrying a distinct Wingspan flavour, except that the collection is made of houseplants rather than birds and eggs. It is an agreeable subject for the table; the more striking point is how familiar the design’s outline remains.

At its centre is continuous drafting, as in Cascadia: plants, rooms and objects replace animals and habitats, and the selections gradually fill a 5x3 house. The family resemblance is not subtle; it is Cascadia’s hand, wearing gardening gloves.

This is not entirely gentle. At several points, the scoring choices have enough bite to singe a more casual player who arrived for the theme and illustration alone. The interesting decision is whether to take the thing that immediately suits your house or let a useful option travel on; that modest drafting pressure makes the game sharper than its calm presentation suggests.

Even so, I prefer Cascadia quite decisively, chiefly because its many different scoring cards give it noticeably stronger replayability. For a follow-up, I expected a bolder design turn rather than such a pleasant variation on an established formula. Verdant will plainly find its audience, but this is the point at which I would like this team to make something genuinely different, perhaps with a more Euro-minded bent.