How to play Everdell, a charming woodland worker placement game.
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Read the Rules
The aim of the game
To win, score the most points, by developing your forest town, filling it with complimentary critters and scoring end game bonuses.
To set up
- Layout the board, build the tree and place it on the stump.
- Place the twigs, resin, pebbles and berries on their spots along the river.
- Put the points and occupied tokens in easy reach
- Shuffle the forest cards and place them in the clearings at the sides. Use 3 for 2 players and 4 for more. Put the rest away.
- Place the 4 basic event tiles along the river, shuffle the special event cards, place 4 on the lower tree branches and put the rest away.
- Shuffle the main deck and place 8 cards face up in the central meadow and the rest face down in the trunk
- Each player picks a colour, takes 2 of their workers, puts them in front of them and places the other 4 on the top of the tree; 1 on spring, 1 on summer and 2 on autumn.
- The most humble player goes first, they draw 5 cards from the deck, the second player draws 6, the third 7 and the fourth draws 8.
- Play proceeds clockwise with the first season being winter.
To play the game
On your turn you can perform 1 of 3 actions.
Option 1: Place a worker
Option 1 is to place a worker on a location and perform its action immediately.
Locations are marked by a paw print. If the circle around it is closed, it’s exclusive - only 1 meeple may occupy it, if it’s open, multiple can visit.
Some forest locations have multiple spaces. Additional spaces are only usable at certain player counts, marked by the mouse in the corner. A single player cannot occupy more than 1.
Once placed a worker is deployed and cannot be moved until a season ends.
- Basic and forest locations will gain you resources or cards immediately.
- Event locations score end game points, and can only be used when your town meets their criteria. Once you claim them, place them in front of you, no one else can use them. If, for whatever reason, your town no longer meets the criteria of an event you’ve claimed, you don’t need to return it.
- The haven lets you discard cards from your hand face down for resources. There’s no limit to the number or colour of meeples that may occupy it.
- You can only place workers on the journey in autumn and must discard the number of cards from your hand equal to the location you visit. One player may occupy multiple journey locations.
- Finally, some cards have locations on too. You may place workers in any location in your own town, or locations in your opponent’s towns that have an ‘open’ sign next to them. If someone places their worker in your town, you gain 1 point from the supply.
Option 2: Play a card
Option 2 is to play a card, either from your hand or from the meadow.
If you play a meadow card, immediately replace it with one from the deck.
There’s 2 types of cards, critters and constructions. To play them, you’ll need to pay the cost, depicted on the left hand side.
Both have a resource cost, however critters may be played for free, if you have the relevant construction in your town. If you pay for them this way, cover their icon in the bottom right of the construction with an occupied token, to show this building cannot be used to pay again. Even if that critter leaves your city, the occupied token remains.
Each card has a type and a point value, while their effect is in the box below. They also show how many copies of each are in the deck.
- Traveler cards activate just once, immediately after they’re played.
- Production cards activate when played and at the start of your spring and autumn phases.
- Destination cards activate only when a worker is placed on them.
- Governance cards activate whenever their effect is triggered
- And prosperity cards score you end game points in addition to their point value.
Place cards you play in front of you to form your town. Your town may have a maximum of 15 cards in it. Event cards do not count towards this. You can’t discard a card from your town unless an effect lets you do so.
You can have a maximum of 8 cards in your hand. Whenever you draw cards, draw them from the deck, unless directed otherwise.
- If anything makes you draw more than 8 cards, draw up to 8 and stop.
- If a card makes you give cards to an opponent, choose one with room in their hand. If there isn’t, give as many as possible and discard the rest.
- The discard pile is in front of the board.
Option 3: Prepare for a new season
Option 3 is to prepare for a new season.
You start in winter, then move to spring, then summer, then autumn
- First, return all your deployed workers to your town in front of you.
- Then take additional workers from the tree, under the season you’re moving into.
- Finally, perform that season’s bonus. In spring and autumn, activate all your productivity cards again in any order you wish. In summer you can draw 2 cards from the meadow.
After preparing for a new season your turn ends.
Note, players do not have to prepare for season at the same time. You usually do this when you have no other actions to take.
Game end and scoring
Keep placing workers, playing cards and changing seasons until each player has entered autumn and either cannot or does not want to take any more actions.
Total the points on the cards in your play area, the events you’ve claimed, the tokens you own, the journeys you’ve gone on and your prosperity card bonuses. Whoever has the most points wins!
In the case of a tie, whoever completed the most events wins. If that’s tied, whoever has the most resources wins.
There’s also a solo mode, you can find how that works in the rulebook.
That’s Everdell, a cute, cosy game about collecting critters and crafting constructions.
Enjoy!