The Everdell Midgame: Summer, Discounts, and the Meadow

By summer, every city at the table has a shape. Some players have green cards humming. Others have a pile of resources and a plan. The opening was about investing. The midgame is about making each card you play do two jobs, and about watching what everyone else is about to do.

What summer gives you

Preparing for summer brings all your workers home, adds 1 more (4 in all), and lets you draw up to 2 cards from the Meadow. Nothing produces.

Those 2 Meadow cards are a quiet gift. You choose them, they are face up, and they can be exactly the cards your city needs next. Two habits help:

• Leave room in your hand. With 8 cards already, you draw nothing. With 7, you draw 1.
• Look before you prepare. The Meadow changes every turn. Prepare for summer on a turn when it holds cards you want.

Blue cards: rewards and discounts

Blue Governance cards come in two flavors.

Rewards. Some pay you each time you play a certain kind of card. The Courthouse gives a twig, resin, or pebble after you play a Construction. The Shopkeeper gives a berry after you play a Critter. The Historian draws you a card after you play either. In summer, when you play several cards a season, these add up fast.

Discounts. Others make cards cheaper. The Crane can be discarded from your city to take 3 resources off a Construction. The Innkeeper does the same for a Critter’s berries. The Judge lets you swap one resource in a cost for another. Crane and Innkeeper can’t be combined with other card-playing abilities, so use each one on its own big play.

A city with two or three reward cards turns every summer play into a small bonus. That is what an Everdell engine looks like.

Destinations: spaces only you control

Red Destination cards are worker spaces in your own city. Nobody else can use them unless the card shows an Open sign. A few examples from the base game:

• Inn: play a Meadow card for 3 fewer resources.
• Post Office: give an opponent 2 cards, discard any number, then draw back up to your hand limit.
• Lookout: copy any basic or Forest location, even one where one of your own workers already sits.
• University: discard a card from your city, get its cost back, plus 1 resource and 1 point.

Cards with an Open sign let opponents visit too, and you gain a point token every time they do. If an opponent’s Open card is the best space on the board this turn, use it. They gain a point; you gain the action.

The Meadow is everyone’s hand

Eight face-up cards, refilled the moment one leaves. Everyone at the table is shopping from the same shelf.

Watch what each opponent would want. A player with two Farms might want a Barge Toad or a General Store. A player one red card short of Grand Tour wants almost any Destination. Playing the card they need, when it also fits your city, is a normal and fair move.

One rule from the consolidated rulebook in the Complete Collection matters here: you cannot place a worker only to block a space. You must be able to use some or all of what it gives.

Reading the table

Before each turn in summer, ask three questions:

1. Which Events is each player close to? Count colors in their cities. Only one player gets each Event.
2. Who is about to prepare? A player with every worker out is about to free up the spaces they hold.
3. How many spaces does each city have left? A player with three open spaces is choosing their final cards. One with eight is still building.

Making room in a full city

Summer is when cities fill. If yours is crowded with cheap spring cards, two cards help:

• Ruins: discard a Construction from your city, get its cost back, draw 2 cards, and put the Ruins in its place.
• University: the Destination above, which removes a card and refunds it.

Trading a 1-point card for its cost back, then playing a better card in that space, is often worth a turn.

Cards versus workers

You always have a choice between placing a worker and playing a card. In summer, both are strong, so ask which one can wait. A worker space you need that is about to be taken cannot wait. A card in your hand usually can. A card in the Meadow that someone else wants cannot.

For a wider look at how a card city grows, our explainer on what a tableau is covers the idea behind Everdell and its cousins.