The endgame

Round 4 is five cubes, under 20% of the game, and the only part where resources turn into score. Get one number before your first turn and almost every decision falls out of it.

Find your number first

Count the birds in your grassland row:

Birds in grassland	One cube gives
2	3 eggs
3	3 eggs, plus 1 more for a food
4	4 eggs
5 (full row)	4 eggs, plus 1 more for a food

So a mature row is 4 eggs a turn, 5 with the food conversion, before any brown powers fire on the way back across the row. Five turns of that is 20 points off bare actions, and nothing else in the base game converts a cube into points at that rate. That number is the bar now. Everything else has to beat it.

Almost no bird beats it

A bird played in round 4 nets its face value minus its column egg cost, which is 2 eggs in columns 4 and 5. Against a 4-egg grassland:

What it takes	Must net more than	In practice
Card and food in hand	4 points	A 7-point bird in column 4 or 5 nets 5, so yes. A 5-point bird nets 3, so no.
One food action first	8 points	Essentially nothing in the base deck qualifies on face value.
Draw the card too	12 points	Never. The highest printed value in the core set is 9.

In round 4 you are comparing points per action, always. “It’s worth 7 points” is not an argument until you subtract the eggs and compare it to laying.

Three legitimate overrides, all step functions rather than face value:

1. It flips a round-4 goal. Worth 3 points of margin, or the full 7 if he is on zero. A 4-point bird that wins “total birds” nets 4 − 2 + 3 = 5, which beats laying.
2. It crosses a bonus threshold. Fishery Manager going from 3 fish eaters to 4 is +5 on one card, and Prairie Manager and Forester share that 8-point top tier. See Bonus cards.
3. It is a tuck engine. A strong flocking bird can produce 5 to 7 points per activation, and tucked cards have no cap the way eggs do.

The conversion rules

At scoring, food in supply is 0 and cards in hand are 0. Eggs, tucked cards and cached food are 1 each. So the last round has three fixed answers:

• Take the food-to-egg conversion every single time you use a grassland conversion slot. It turns 0 points into 1 point. Free.
• Never trade an egg for a card. The wetland conversion in round 4 is a 1-point egg for a 0-point card, a straight −1.
• Do not end the game on a wetland or forest action unless it fires a power that scores. Drawing and gaining on the final turn is gaining nothing.

And respect capacity. Average egg limit across the core set is 2.85 per bird, and excess beyond a bird’s printed limit is lost. Count the empty spaces before you commit a cube. That ceiling is why big-nest birds have to be played before the row gets deep.

Use the last action properly

The first-player token alternates, so whoever started round 1 acts second in round 4 and takes the final action of the game. If that is you, hold your last cube open for the goal. You will see his finished board and can count the round-4 goal exactly, and 3 points of margin often sit on a single egg.

One timing note: a pink “once between turns” power still fires on your opponent’s turns after your own last turn.

The tiebreak nobody should play for

If the scores are level, the win goes to whoever has the most unused food tokens in their supply. Cached food on cards does not count; it already scored.

Here is the trap. Winners finish with less food than losers, around 1.3 tokens against 1.6 for the players behind them, because winners converted theirs. Every food turned into an egg is a guaranteed point, which beats a tiebreak you probably will not need.

Spend everything. The only food worth keeping is the token you are still holding on the genuine last action of a game you already believe is level.

The two-minute checklist

Run this at the start of round 3, so round 4 is already decided when it arrives:

1. Read all four goal cubes. Where do you stand on rounds 3 and 4, by how much?
2. Check the zero rule both ways. Do you have one of each item? Does he?
3. Count your bonus card. Next tier more than 2 birds away, stop chasing it.
4. Count your grassland row. That number is the benchmark for everything else.
5. Name your last bird now and bank its food. A bird you gather food for in round 4 is almost never worth playing.