The first turns

Round 1 is eight turns, 30% of your whole game, and the round beginners waste. The good news: the correct opening is boring, repeatable, and does not depend much on what you were dealt.

Cheap birds early

The 2022 World Series of Board Gaming champion’s single tip was this: play the cheap, boring, one-food birds early.

The reason is arithmetic. A brown power is worth what it gives you multiplied by how many times you will still activate that row. A bird that just gains one worm or lays one egg, played on turn 1, might fire seven to nine more times. The same bird in round 4 fires once. A 6-point bird is 6 points whenever you play it.

So round 1 wants engine pieces even at 0 to 2 printed points, and round 4 wants printed points. Hold the expensive pretty card. It will be worth exactly what it says in round 3.

Two habitats, deep. Not three, shallow

The most expensive beginner mistake is two birds in every row.

Each habitat row has six action slots, and here is the part almost never taught properly. The base number only goes up on the 2nd and 4th bird you add. The 1st, 3rd and 5th move you to a slot with the same number plus an optional conversion.

Birds in the row	Forest	Grassland	Wetland
0	1 food	2 eggs	1 card
1	1 + convert	2 + convert	1 + convert
2	2 food	3 eggs	2 cards
3	2 + convert	3 + convert	2 + convert
4	3 food	4 eggs	3 cards
5	3 + convert	4 + convert	3 + convert

Birds are worth playing in pairs. Stopping a row on an odd number leaves the upgrade you paid for sitting on the table.

Six birds spread 2/2/2 gives 2 food, 3 eggs and 2 cards. The same six put 4 into one row and 2 into another gives a maxed row plus a working one. Go deep.

Forest first, with an expiry date

The convention is real and the table above is why. You start with at most 3 food, and an empty forest gives 1 food per cube, a miserable rate. Until you clear that bar, every bird you want is gated behind a bad action.

But food scores zero points. The forest is scaffolding, not an engine. Build it, use it, stop investing the moment you can afford the birds you want. The default two-player shape: forest for two birds to reach 2 food a cube, wetland alongside it so you can find cards, then grassland deep from round 2 onward.

The real rule underneath the convention: get one engine row to two birds, fast. Which row depends on your hand.

The free slots, and the egg tax

Column 1 in each habitat is free. Columns 2 and 3 cost 1 egg, columns 4 and 5 cost 2. Your first three birds, one per row, are the only free real estate in the game. Spend them on engine pieces, never on a point bomb.

From your fourth bird onward you pay eggs, and an egg is a point. Do not start paying column costs before you have egg income, which means one grassland run around bird 3 or 4. Not for the score: eggs laid in round 1 for their points are wasted, because those points are still there in round 4. Early, an egg is currency. Late, an egg is just a point.

One ordering detail that pays all game: brown powers fire right to left, and you fill the row left to right, so the bird you play later resolves earlier. If one bird produces what another consumes, play the producer second.

A round 1 you can follow

Assume you kept 2 birds and 3 food, per the setup page.

1. Turn 1. Cheapest bird into a free column-1 slot, in the row you intend to make your engine.
2. Turn 2. The second cheap bird into the same row if you can. That is the bird that upgrades the action.
3. Turns 3-5. Run that row. It gives 2 food or 2 cards a cube now instead of
   1. Take food for the birds in hand, or dig for a cheap producer.
4. Turn 6. One grassland run for egg currency, if you are about to start paying column costs.
5. Turns 7-8. Spend what you gathered on one or two more birds. Before the last cube, check the round-1 goal: if one bird or two eggs takes you off zero, that is 4 points for almost nothing.

Where you want to be at the end of round 1, a rule of thumb rather than measured data: 3 to 5 birds down, one row holding two birds, no more than one wasted turn. Two birds and a hand of expensive ones is tempo you will not get back.

The four-round arc picks up from here.