Timing the Seasons in Everdell: When to Prepare

Every Everdell player prepares for season three times. Strong players take those three turns at chosen moments. Because players change seasons on their own clocks, the timing of your prepare affects which spaces are free, which Meadow cards you get, and who reaches autumn’s best spaces first.

What a prepare does, and what it costs

From the rulebook: you may prepare only when all of your workers are deployed. You bring them all home, gain the new workers from the tree, take that season’s bonus, and your turn ends.

So a prepare costs a whole turn. It also does three things to the board at once:

1. It frees every space your workers held, for everyone, including you. (Workers placed permanently, like those on a Cemetery or Monastery, stay put.)
2. It gives you the season’s bonus: Production in spring and autumn, 2 Meadow cards in summer.
3. It moves you one season ahead of anyone who has not prepared yet.

Each of those can be a reason to prepare now, or a reason to wait.

Waiting: play cards while your workers hold the board

All your workers being out does not force you to prepare. If you can afford a card and want it, you may play it. While you do, your workers stay on their spaces, and the exclusive ones stay blocked.

That is often the right order. If your workers hold 3 twigs and a strong Forest card, every turn you spend playing cards is a turn those spaces stay closed to the table. Play what you can afford, then prepare.

The exception is green cards. A green card played before your spring prepare pays at that prepare. One played just after it waits for autumn. So in winter, the openings lesson’s rule still wins: play the green card first, then prepare.

Preparing early: free a space you need

The other side: if you want a space your own worker is sitting on, the only way to get it back is to prepare. When a Forest card that fits your next season perfectly is under your own worker, an early prepare lets you take it again on your next turn, before others react.

Watch the opponent’s side too. When a player has every worker out, they are about to prepare, and every space they hold is about to open. If you want one of those spaces, keep a worker ready for when it frees up.

Summer: time the Meadow draw

When you prepare for summer, you must draw up to 2 cards from the Meadow, if you have room. That draw is a choice of two face-up cards, which is unusual and strong. Two habits:

• Prepare when the Meadow is good. If two cards you want are showing, preparing now takes both for free. Next turn they may be gone.
• Make room first. With 8 cards in hand you draw nothing; with 7, you draw 1. Play or discard down before you prepare.

Autumn: the race to the trail

The autumn trail opens only in autumn, and its 5, 4, and 3 point spaces hold one worker each. The first player into autumn gets first choice. A worker on the 5 space, paid with 5 cards from your hand, is 5 points for one placement and turns spare cards into points.

That makes the autumn prepare the most contested timing in the game. If you plan to use the trail, keep enough cards in hand to pay for it, and watch who else is close to autumn. Reaching autumn one turn earlier can be worth 2 points or more on the trail alone.

Autumn is also when green cards produce for the last time. Prepare with the resources your converters need already in hand, so a Woodcarver or Doctor can turn them into points at once.

Late in the game: who finishes first

In autumn, players start to pass. Once a player passes, nobody can give them cards or resources. And the players still going have fewer rivals for the open spaces, the Meadow, and the last Events.

So in autumn, ahead is not always better. A player who rushed through spring and summer might finish autumn with fewer good choices left, while a slower player picks over what remains. Think about your pace as a whole: arrive at autumn with cards to spend and workers to place, not just early.

Two cards that bend the timing

• Ranger: when played, move one of your deployed workers to a new space, following normal placement rules. It is a free re-placement without a prepare.
• Clock Tower: starts with 3 point tokens. Each time you prepare, you may return 1 to the supply to activate a basic or Forest location where you have a worker. It lets your prepare take one more reward on the way home.

A timing check

Before every prepare, ask:

1. Is there a card I can afford and want, especially a green one in winter?
2. Is a space I need held by my own worker, or about to be freed by someone else?
3. In summer: is the Meadow good, and do I have hand room?
4. Before autumn: who else is close, and do I have cards for the trail?

These questions matter even more under a tournament clock, and they come back in the four-player lesson at Level 4.