How to Play Everdell: Complete Rules for New Players
The three actions, the four seasons, and the fifteen-card city limit that shapes everything.
Everdell looks intimidating on the table — there's a three-dimensional tree,
a board covered in locations, and a hand of cards with five different colours.
The actual rules are simpler than the components suggest. On your turn you do
exactly one of three things.
🎯
Quick Answer
Place a worker, play a card into your city, or prepare for the next season. Build the highest-scoring fifteen-card city by the end of Autumn and you win.
👥Players1–4
⏱️Time40–80 min
🏘️City limit15 cards
🍂Seasons4
The Four Resources
Everything in Everdell is bought with some combination of four resources, plus
cards themselves as a kind of fifth currency.
🪵 The materials
• Twigs — the common building material
• Resin — mid-tier, sticky and useful
• Pebbles — the scarcest and most valuable
🫐 The rest
• Berries — what critters eat
• Cards — your options, always in short supply
• Points — tokens gained from various effects
Your Three Possible Actions
On your turn, do exactly one
1
Place a worker
Put one of your workers on an open location — a forest space, a basic
location on the board, a Journey space, or another player's open Destination
card — and take what it offers. Most spaces hold only one worker.
2
Play a card into your city
Pay its cost in resources and add it to your city. Your city holds a maximum
of fifteen cards, and that limit is the central constraint
of the whole game.
3
Prepare for the next season
Retrieve every worker you've placed, advance to the next season, and take
that season's benefit. You choose when to do this — and it's the most
important decision in Everdell.
Constructions and Critters
Every card is either a Construction (a building) or a
Critter (an animal). Many Constructions name a specific
Critter, and building that Construction lets you play that Critter later for
free, ignoring its cost entirely.
This is the core engine of Everdell. A Farm lets you play a Husband or Wife
for nothing; a Ruins lets you discard a Construction and get a card back.
Spotting these pairs in the Meadow is most of what strong play looks like.
The Seasons
The game runs Winter → Spring → Summer → Autumn. You start in Winter with two
workers and gain more as you advance.
WINTER
Two workers, and not much else
A short, tight season. You have very few actions, so use them to set up rather than to score.
SPRING
An extra worker, and your green cards activate
Preparing for Spring triggers every Production card already in your city — so the more green you built in Winter, the bigger this payout.
SUMMER
Another worker, and cards from the Meadow
Summer hands you extra cards, easing the hand-size squeeze that defines the early game.
AUTUMN
The big season — and the last one
You gain more workers and your Production cards fire again. When your workers run out in Autumn, you're finished for good.
Two side objectives round out the scoring. Events are claimed
by placing a worker once your city meets a requirement — usually owning a
certain number of cards of particular colours. Journey spaces,
available in Autumn, let you discard cards from your hand to score points.
Ending the Game and Scoring
A player is done when they've used all their workers in Autumn and choose not
to continue. Once everyone is finished, score:
Card values — the number printed on each card in your city
Point tokens — gained from card effects during play
Events — basic and special events you claimed
Journey — points from Journey spaces
Prosperity cards — purple cards that score based on your finished city