How to play Everdell

Everdell is a worker placement and tableau-building game set in a sun-dappled forest valley where woodland critters are building the cities of tomorrow. Over four seasons you deploy animal workers to gather resources and use those resources to construct buildings and recruit critters into your personal city — a tableau of up to fifteen cards, each adding points, abilities, or both.

The game has a satisfying physical centerpiece: a tall cardboard Ever Tree from which worker pieces hang at the start, tumbling down into play as the seasons change. Beneath the spectacle is a tight decision space where your card combinations snowball, and knowing when to "Prepare for Season" — trading your workers for fresh ones and a bonus — is the central tempo puzzle.

New to worker placement? Every turn is exactly one simple action: put a worker on a spot and take what it offers, play a card into your city, or — when your workers are all deployed — Prepare for Season to call them home, gain new ones, and collect a bonus. The whole game is choosing among those three at the right moment; the seasons are a personal clock, and each player runs theirs at their own pace.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

• 1 game board — the shared valley: basic action spaces along the river hand out resources and cards, the Haven converts unwanted cards into resources, and the Journey turns leftover cards into points in autumn.
• 1 Ever Tree — the 3-D cardboard tree is working furniture, not just decoration: your future workers wait on its upper branches (they come down as seasons change), the 4 special events of this game sit on its lower branches, and the draw deck lives inside its trunk.
• 128 Critter & Construction cards — the main deck, and the heart of the game. These are what you build your city from: brown/gray Constructions are paid with twigs, resin, and pebbles; tan Critters are paid with berries — or join for free when their matching Construction is already in your city.
• 11 Forest cards — powerful worker locations, shuffled each game so the valley plays differently (you use 3 with 2 players, 4 with 3–4).
• 4 basic event tiles + 16 special event cards — one-per-customer achievements. Meeting an event's requirements isn't enough: you must also spend a worker to claim it, and only the first claimant gets it.
• 24 workers (6 per player) — your action pieces. You start with just 2; spring and summer each bring 1 more, autumn brings the last 2, for 6 in the end.
• Resources: 30 twigs, 25 resin, 20 pebbles, 30 berries — the building materials. There's no limit on how many you may hold.
• Point tokens (20 one-point, 10 three-point) — banked points earned mid-game by abilities, destinations, and events; they hide your exact score from casual counting.
• 20 occupied tokens — placed on a Construction when it hosts its matching Critter for free; each Construction grants that discount only once.
• 1 eight-sided die — solo mode only; it runs your rodent rival, and never appears in multiplayer games.
• 1 Victory card — a keepsake trophy handed to the winner.

Play proceeds clockwise, and your turn is always exactly one of three actions:

1. Place a worker. Put one of your available workers on an open paw-print space and take what it gives. Basic spaces yield resources or cards; Forest locations give bigger hauls; Destination cards (in your city, or in a rival's city if marked OPEN — the owner earns a point token) are actions you built yourself; the Haven trades discards for resources; in autumn the Journey converts discarded cards straight into points. Spaces with a closed ring hold one worker at a time; open rings are shared. The worker stays there until you next Prepare for Season.
2. Play a card. Pay a card's cost from your hand or from the shared Meadow and add it to your city (maximum 15 cards; events don't count). Constructions cost twigs/resin/pebbles; Critters cost berries — or enter free if their matching Construction is already in your city (cover its icon with an occupied token; once per Construction). You may own any number of copies of a Common card but only one of each Unique.
3. Prepare for Season. Only possible once all your workers are deployed — and this is the clever bit: you alone take everything back. Recall all your workers, take the new ones from the Ever Tree, and collect the season's bonus: spring (+1 worker) and autumn (+2 workers) re-trigger every green Production card in your city; summer (+1 worker) lets you draw up to 2 cards from the Meadow. Autumn is your final season.

The card colors teach the rhythm: green Production cards fire when played and again each spring and autumn — they're your engine; red Destinations are worker spots you own; blue Governance discounts and rewards future plays; tan Travelers fire once; purple Prosperity pays bonus points at the end. Mind the strict 8-card hand limit, and remember events: any worker you spare can claim one before a rival does.

A turn in practice. Ana places a worker on a twig space and picks up 2 twigs and a card. Beto pays 2 berries to play the Wife from the Meadow — his Farm is already built, and a Husband in hand will now come in free. Carla, all three workers committed, Prepares for Season: everyone comes home, a fourth worker joins from the tree, and both of her green Farms produce again — for free.

There is no shared final round: when you can't — or don't wish to — take any more actions, you pass and are finished (a passed player can no longer be given cards or resources). The others keep playing until everyone has passed, so a patient engine can keep churning long after a rival stops.

Then add up five sources: points printed on your city's cards, point tokens banked during play, purple Prosperity bonuses, Journey points, and claimed events. Ties go to the most events, then the most leftover resources. Most winning cities land around 50–70 points.

The best strategies combine a consistent resource engine to play cards cheaply, a handful of powerful synergy pairs (such as cards that trigger other cards for free), and at least one or two events. Because the Meadow, the Forest, and the special events are randomized every game, no two games reward exactly the same city — adaptability and opportunism matter as much as a fixed plan.