Everdell

It’s fair to say many of us became spellbound by Everdell’s aesthetics. “Oooh, look… A humongous 3D tree!” Photos alone don’t paint the entire picture, though. From a distance – and even upon closer inspection – Andrew Bosley’s art makes jaws drop in amazement. Yes: the game looks phenomenal. But do you know how to play Everdell? Do you know how the mechanisms work and link together? How it lets you fine-tune an environmental engine, down among the fallen leaves and roots?

At its core, Everdell is a worker placement game for 2-4 players, set in a lush, woodland valley. Elements of hand- and resource-management play their part, too. Over the course of four seasons, you’ll compete to create a tableau of gorgeous cards. Which Constructions will you place in your greenwood city? Which cute Critters will work in the businesses you build? Which events will you race to host, first?

Tie up your walking boots, but tread with care over the twigs, toadstools and babbling brooks. This place is home to all manner of delightful forest fauna. We’re going to talk a stroll through James A. Wilson’s beloved game. Let’s learn how to play Everdell!

Setting Up The Main Board (And The Ever Tree)

Before you learn how to play Everdell, you’ll need to set up your board. Place the main board on your table. Slot the 3D Ever Tree together and sit it on the stump graphic. Consider rotating the board so the Ever Tree doesn’t block anyone’s view of the main board, itself. (Note: The tree adds oodles of table presence, but it’s not essential for gameplay. While it’d be a shame to play without it, it’s more important that players can see the board.)

Divide the four resources left-to-right in their corresponding spots along the riverbank. These are twigs, resin, pebbles and berries. On the other side of the river, place the four Basic Event tiles. Shuffle the 16 Special Event cards and pick four. Place them on the lower foliage of the Ever Tree. (They can sit off the board if you’re playing without the structure). Place the yellow points tokens and the ‘Occupied’ doors within arm’s reach.

Shuffle the 11 Forest cards and draw four (three in a two-player game). These sit face-up on the left- and right-hand side of the main board, in the forest ‘clearings’. Then, shuffle the enormous main deck (128 cards!). Deal eight cards face-up into the Meadow.

Everybody Picks An Animeeple

Everyone picks a player colour. Or rather, what type of animeeple silhouette do you want? White mice, red squirrels, brown hedgehogs, or teal turtles? (I’m a squirrel man, myself!) You start with two of your workers, while your other four sit on the upper branches of the Ever Tree. (Turtles climbing trees? Whatever next…?)

Pick a Start Player. They receive five cards into their hand from the main deck. The second player gets six cards, third gets seven, and fourth gets eight. Slide the remaining deck between the ‘roots’ of the Ever Tree. Now you’re ready to play Everdell!

Errr, Before We Start… How Do I Win?

Once setup is complete, it’s time to start learning how to play Everdell! On your turn, you can perform one of three actions. These are: placing one of your workers; playing a card from your hand or the Meadow; or ‘prepare for season’. You do one of these actions, then the next player takes their turn. Play continues clockwise around the table. Before I explain these though, we should first discuss: how do you win? What’s your aim in Everdell?

Over the course of four ‘seasons’, you’re all competing to build your own woodland city. This can comprise of up to 15 cards. (There’s a couple of ways to break this rule, involving actions on certain cards. But in general, it’s 15 cards, maximum). Cards provide their own action(s), but for end-game scores, they’re worth varying points, too. If you can race to complete Events, they’re worth precious points as well. Once everyone’s run out of turns in the fourth season, the most points wins.

Worker Placement: Location, Location, Location

Let’s break down those three actions you could take on your turn, then, starting with ‘place a worker’. This is quintessential worker placement. Place your worker in a vacant location, and perform the action there. Locations are ovals with a paw print icon inside them. Basic Locations pay out stated quantities of resources: twigs, resin, pebbles and berries. Some spots get you a card(s) from the deck, too. Your hand limit is eight cards. You can draw more than eight, but you then have then discard back down.

You dealt out four Forest Location cards during set-up, remember? These are worker placement spots, too. They’re all modular, and often pay out handy combos of resources. You’ll get different worker placement options each time you play Everdell.

Many locations are first-come, first-served. Need pebbles? Better head to that spot now, while you still can. Some locations show an incomplete oval ring around the paw print. Any number of workers (even multiples from the same player) can visit these at once. One such example is the Haven. This lets you gain any one resource for every two cards you discard.

The ‘Journey’ location spots also allow you to discard cards. You earn end-game points equal to the number of cards you give away. Three, four and five (cards/points) are exclusive spots. Everyone, meanwhile, can visit the ‘two cards’ place. You can only send workers to the Journey in autumn, the final round.

Playing a Card: The Heart and Soul of Everdell

Throwing cards away? Are they a mere form of currency, then? Nothing could be further from the truth. Cards are the heart and soul of Everdell. Instead of performing a worker placement action, you can play a card into your tableau. This could either be one from your hand, or one from the public flop in the Meadow.

The anatomy of the cards might appear complex, but don’t panic. I’m here to explain them to you! Straight away, the number in the yellow circle is how much this card’s worth, in points. Half of the cards are Constructions, and the other half are Critters. Their layout remains structured, either way. For every Construction in the deck, there’s a matching Critter. There’s a Twig Barge, for example, and then a Barge Toad. There’s a Clock Tower, and a Historian (who’s a bat – in the belfry, of course), and so on.

In the top-left sit the required resources you need to pay to play this card into your tableau. (Hence why you dabble in worker placement shenanigans.) Constructions always cost a combination of twigs, resin and pebbles. Critters are a little different. You can pay for them in berries, but there’s a far more efficient way to get them into your tableau. If you’ve already built a Critter’s correlated Construction, you don’t have to pay their berry cost. Instead, you can play them for free!

This is akin to how you can play upgraded cards gratis in 7 Wonders. Constructions have their matching Critter listed in the bottom-right. Critters have their matching Construction listed top-left, alongside/instead of the berry cost. You can only claim one free Critter per Construction. If you activate this, place an Occupied token on the Construction, to remind yourself.

What Do These Card Types Mean?

Underneath the name of the card, it states whether it’s Common or Unique. You can build multiple Common cards of a specific type in your tableau, but only one if it’s Unique. (So for example, you could build more than one Inn, but only one Palace.) Each card has text on it, describing its action or benefit. Constructions and Critters are also broken down into five types:

• Brown cards (Traveller) trigger once, as soon as you play them.
• Green cards (Production) trigger as you play them, but also when you prepare for spring and autumn seasons. (More on preparing later.)
• Red cards (Destinations) act as their own appealing worker placement spots. Some are Open, meaning you’ll earn points if other players visit them. Closed ones mean you alone can visit them.
• Blue cards (Governance) feature passive, ongoing traits. These include discounts off certain card types, or rewards every time you perform certain actions.
• Purple cards (Prosperity) earn you extra end-game points in various set collection fashions.

As the game progresses, then, so does the effectiveness of your tableau. Build up wonderful businesses and animal employees, and they’ll start to generate benefits and actions for you. With some smart planning and good timing, you’ll discover you don’t need to rely on the worker placement spots. You’ve built a woodland engine, of sorts.

You can play cards from your hand, or play one from the Meadow. But remember, the Meadow cards are public. Got your eye on one? Careful, because someone else could build it before you, if they have the right resources. (Or if it’s a Critter that they can play for free, because they’ve already built the matching Construction!) The Meadow always gets filled back up to eight if a card gets claimed.

Meeting the Requirements to Throw an Ever-Event

Now you know about the cards, the Events will make more sense. Remember the four Basic Events you placed along the river bank during set-up? Those have worker placement spots on them too. You can visit these spots to complete an Event – worth points – if you meet their requirements. The City Monument requires you have three Governance cards in your city tableau. The Grand Tour requires you to have three Destination cards. The Harvest Festival requires four Production cards. The Cartographer’s Expedition requires three Traveller cards. Complete an Event and receive the token. These are first-come, first-served.

In set-up you also picked four random Special Events. You can claim these too, by sending a worker to them if you meet the requirements. These demand a combination of specific Critters and Constructions in your city. Sometimes Special Events pay out extra points in the form of set collection or resources.

Preparing for the Next Season – What Freebies Do I Get?

The key to success in Everdell is squeezing out actions for as long as possible. Can you play a worker, to then afford a card, which then gains you resources? So that you can then play another card? And then play a Critter into a matching Construction for free? To begin the game, remember, you have a mere two workers, so you need to stretch their worth to the extreme…

At some point, it’s inevitable that you’ll run out of options. That’s okay! You always have a third action you can take: prepare for the new season. This means, in a nutshell, passing. You retrieve all your workers back from their Locations. The first time you ‘prepare’, you also gain an extra worker. (Remember you placed them on top of the Ever Tree?) You also then trigger any of your green (Production) cards again. This means you might get a windfall of extra resources to help you on your way in the next season.

Everdell is different to other games with regards to passing and waiting for rounds to end. You might have prepared and gone into the next ‘season’, but you don’t have to wait for your opponents. On your next turn, you keep going! Some time later, you’ll pass into summer. Your Production cards don’t activate here, but you do get a fourth worker to add to your ranks. You also get to take up to two cards from the public Meadow into your hand. When you prepare for autumn (going into your fourth and final season) you get your last two workers. Plus, your Production cards pay out once again.

End-Game Scoring: Add ‘Em Up!

And that’s how to play Everdell! All that remains now is the final scoring. You’ll find that one or two players could finish before the others. Those players have to wait for the others to end their fourth season before final scoring occurs. You’ll score points based on the cards’ core values in your tableau. Add this to any yellow points tokens you might have amassed during the game. Then work out any end-game points from Prosperity (purple) cards, and Events. Don’t forget to include points from the Journey worker placement spots! Most points wins. Then give the winner a pat on the back or a nod in approval. If that’s you, then it’s time to bust out your very own victory dance…

Now you know how to play Everdell, why not take a look at its awesome expansions? Bellfaire, Spirecrest, and Pearlbrook are all available here on Zatu Games.

You know all about Everdell. It’s the one with the cardboard tree. My job here isn’t to talk to you about Everdell as a regular board game review. Instead, I’m going to look at it from a pure solo point of view. Is it enjoyable? Does it replicate the multiplayer experience? Does it scratch the itch? How much ‘admin’ is there, to make it work?

Quick Reminder: What Is Everdell?

Everdell is a worker placement game for 2-4 players, where you compete to build a tableau of cards. The setting is the charming valley of Everdell, under the watchful eye of the Ever Tree. Over the course of four seasons, you’ll aim to score the most points by creating the best 15-card display. Constructions need building, and, likewise, corresponding critters to work in them.

As a multiplayer game, Everdell is a stunning experience by Starling Games. Plenty of approving nods go toward artist Andrew Bosley. Designer James A. Wilson is the brains behind the operation, no doubt, but the enchanting Wind In The Willows art tingles you right in the feels.

The anthropomorphic animals carry oodles of character. The fact that certain critters work in particular constructions appeals to the max. Of course, the historian is a spectacled bat, hanging upside-down, reading a book. Of course, it conducts its duties in the clock tower by the babbling brook.

What’s New With Set-Up? Are There New Rules?

As a solo experience, you set up Everdell as you would a two-player game. This means shuffling and dealing out three Forest Cards. These are modular worker placement spots, meaning you’ll pick a random three (of 11) each time you play. Considering you pick four Special Event cards too; you’ll play with a near-unique board set-up every time.

Your opponent is Rugwort, the rat, a “cantankerous old rodent”. Rugwort has returned to Everdell and takes on the role of an AI woodland tyrant, of sorts. Your aim is to outscore him, like a two-player game. He is your sole opponent. Like you, Rugwort begins with two workers at the start of the game.

You pick another set of animeeples to represent Rugwort’s “rowdy, rambunctious, rat ruffians”. You place one of these on the ‘take three twigs’ action space. The other starts on the top-left Forest card.

The purpose of these dummy workers being on locations represents a second player. Rugwort’s workers have blocked you from gaining these spots for the first season of the game.

Rugwort The Rascal

You’re the starting player in this solo mode, so you begin with a hand of five cards. You go first, and the actions you take on your turn are like regular Everdell. Place a worker, play a card, or prepare for the next season. Rugwort, however, does not take turns, per se. There is no automa deck to obey ‘on Rugwort’s turn’. He springs into life when you play a card into your tableau.

When you do this, trigger your card’s action as per usual (if it’s a Traveler or Production card). If you bought/took it from the Meadow, replenish it, first. Then Rugwort gets to play a card. The game comes with a d8 die, numbered 1-8. Roll it, and whatever the result, the nettlesome rat takes a card from the Meadow. (The cards get given numbers; top row, left-to-right being 1-4, and bottom row left-to-right being 5-8.)

Rugwort takes the card and it sits face-up in his tableau. (You’re still restricted to not building duplicate Unique Critters and Constructions. But Rugwort can collect doubles.)

Any actions on the cards that Rugwort claims don’t trigger the same way they would for human players. Instead, you sit them in piles, in accordance with their colour. Rugwort won’t score these for

their face-value points either, nor end-game bonuses. He will, however, earn a more standard accumulation of points for cards gained, come the game-end. (I’ll explain how this works, later on.)

Minimal Admin: Running Rugwort Is Relatively Relaxing…

This means that if you’re not playing cards, there’s no interruption in your turns. Rugwort does nothing when you place workers. This does feel a little jarring compared to playing multiplayer Euro-style games. Usually, you spend the downtime between turns planning your next move. That, or wincing as your opponents’ plans unfold. ‘Dammit! They’ve blocked my preferred worker placement locations again…’ None of that, here.

Rugwort’s two workers remain static during the season. At the end of this phase, these workers move to new locations for the next season. One now blocks the get-two-resin location. The other moves counter-clockwise onto another Forest location.

In the third season, one now blocks the pebbles, and the other blocks the final Forest location. In the final season, one blocks the berries, and the other moves onto the ‘3VP Journey’ space. (This latter location is somewhere you go to throw away cards for points in autumn.)

Sure, they block two of the locations for you, but this is but a mild irritation. You can plan your entire season knowing you can guarantee the remaining vacancies. In this regard, Rugwort’s predictability results in this element of the solo experience losing a tad of drama and urgency.

…Until He Makes His Move On The Meadow

There is, however, real buttock-clenching with regards to the manner in which Rugwort collects cards. That roll of the d8 die has a habit of falling on the one card you had your eye on, scuppering your plans! You’ll soon come to resent Rugwort, because you’re jumping through hoops to ensure you can afford cards. Meanwhile, he’s snaffling one up ‘for free’ every time you play one. It’s rubbing salt in the wound! This also starts to amplify when it comes to preparing for the next season…

Preparing for the next season is what you do when you run out of actions to take. When you do this, you also check Rugwort’s current card tableau. If he’s acquired enough cards to earn a Basic Event, he claims it. (Such as collecting three Governance card to claim the City Monument, for example.) You, meanwhile, have to send a worker here as an action to accomplish this. As the rapscallion rat prepares for the next season, he too earns more workers, equal to you. These extra workers don’t block locations, though. These ones block cards in the Meadow…

The first extra worker he earns sits on ‘card one’ of the Meadow (top row, far-left). Rugwort can still claim this card via the d8 die roll, but you can’t. Now you only have 7/8 cards to play with in the Meadow. As the seasons pass, Rugwort blocks more and more of these cards. In the final round you have a mere four out of eight cards available!

It Feels Like That Dirty Rat Is Hate-Drafting You

This element of the game adds major nail-biting into the mixer. Rugwort doesn’t have a mini, nor does he sit opposite you and cackle. Yet you’ll find yourself cursing his name as this system saunters into the gameplay, claiming cards you had your eye on.

A big part of Everdell is aiming to build specific cards to get the Special Events. Rugwort doesn’t need cards to complete these. So when his d8 claims one, it feels like the rat’s hate-drafted you! But when the luck of the die favours you and Rugwort builds a card you don’t care about, you make a little fist-pump. It’s all about the little victories!

Part of me wishes there was a Rugwort mini or standee that came in the box, which could lord over this rival tableau. I usually keep the rulebook open on the solo spread of rules. Why? It has Bosley’s

artistic interpretation of Rugwort on it. A slack-jawed, grizzled rat; a one-eyed, scarred, sneering menace, leaning on a cane. When playing Everdell solo, I often find myself like Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway. I snap and gripe at this picture of Rugwort, the same way Hanks did to Wilson the volleyball. (You know the scene, where the two of them ‘argue’ on the island.)

When it comes to end-game scoring, Rugwort scores two points per card in his tableau; three points per Prosperity card. He gains another three (guaranteed) points for his worker on the Journey. Three points for each Basic Event he completes. Plus he gets three points for every Special Event that you fail to complete!

The Three Years Of Rugwort: Rascal > Rotten > Rapscallion

There’s three varying levels of difficulty you can apply to Rugwort with regards to this solo mode. It’s meant to represent three years of the rat trying to sink his grubby claws into the heart of the Everdell valley. The easiest starting variant – ‘Rugwort The Rascal’ – is the one I mentioned above. The second sees Ruggers blocking the four-point spot in the Journey in autumn. Plus, he earns six points per Special Event you fail to achieve, instead of three.

The hardest variant starts to make you despise the little tyrant! Six points for failed Special Events, and he also blocks the five-point spot in the Journey. But the real kicker is in the final season. He kidnaps one of your workers! This means you have five – not six – workers for the all-important final phase of the game.

Seeing a variety of difficulties present is a delight. If you’re a seasoned Euro-gamer, and you’ve played Everdell before, you should be able to beat the easier variant. It’s a much tighter affair with the medium and challenging difficulty settings. Those failed Special Events being worth six points to Rugwort? The punishments start to amplify the need for absolute efficiency.

You need to build a strong tableau in other areas to combat this. Or, you need to find a way to cycle through cards from a hand-management point of view. Because if the certain Special Event requirements aren’t in the Meadow nor your hand, you have to force the issue.

Final Thoughts On… Everdell: The Solo Mode

All the rules you need to learn the solo mode are on one double-page spread of the rulebook. (Only one, if you ignore the medium and hard difficulties.) The level of admin needed to run Rugwort is minimal. Whenever you play a card, roll the d8 and take one from the Meadow for him. Because of this, the solo mode means it’s a decent way to learn how to play Everdell in itself. There are next to no clunky, extra rules required.

So how does this compare to playing it with real gamers? Rugwort’s worker placement aspect is bland, in comparison to games with an ‘automa’ deck. (Where you draw a card and it tells you what the bot player does.) While there’s a lot less admin involved here – so less distractions between your turns – this element is too predictable for me. Human players throw confusing spanners in the works, and that’s what makes strategy games enjoyable. Alas, the lack of that in the worker placement element makes it the weakest part of the solo experience.

But the way in which Rugwort takes cards from the Meadow is infuriating, in the best possible way. And in doing so, you can tell when he’s about to trigger Basic Events, which forces your hand. This feels like playing against a real player, and it’s tense. If the worker placement aspect of it were like this in equal parallels, then this would be one heck of a rip-roaring ride.

Want to play Everdell at a multiplayer count? Click here to read my How To Play guide for the game at 2-4 players!