Round goals

Four goal tiles sit face up from setup, one per round. At the end of each round you place a cube showing where you finished, which is why your turn count drops from 8 to 7 to 6 to 5.

The green side, and the number 3

Green is the official default: first, second and third each score. Two players means only first and second exist.

Round	1st	2nd	Tie
1	4	1	2
2	5	2	3
3	6	3	4
4	7	4	5

Read down the first two columns. The gap is 4−1, 5−2, 6−3, 7−4. Always exactly 3, every round. Winning a goal instead of losing it gains you 3 and denies him 3, so 6 points of margin.

Ties pay half: the tie value is the average of first and second rounded down, 2 / 3 / 4 / 5. Tying instead of losing gains you 1 and costs him 2, a 3-point margin swing, exactly half of a win. Against a stronger player, matching his count is a real defensive play, not a consolation prize.

Sweep all four goals and you score 22. Lose all four and you still score 10.

Except when you have zero

You must have at least 1 of the targeted item to score anything. With zero you put your cube on the 0 space and take nothing, even though second place was sitting right there. That turns the schedule upside down:

• Second to first is worth 3.
• Zero to one is worth the whole 1 / 2 / 3 / 4.
• And if he has zero, one unit gives you full first place against nothing. In round 4 that is 7 points for a single egg or a single bird.

Don’t race, never take a zero. Flipping second to first is 3 points and usually costs more than 3 points of tempo. Flipping zero to one is often free.

Which goals are cheap to fight

The question is never “can I win this.” It is “does closing the gap cost less than 3 points of value elsewhere.”

• Egg goals are cheap. A mature grassland lays 3 or 4 eggs on one action. Two eggs behind, one cube usually wins the goal outright and puts 3 or 4 points of raw egg score on your board. Almost always fight these.
• Bird goals are expensive. An extra bird costs food, 1 or 2 eggs, a card and a whole turn. Two turns for a 3-point margin is a bad trade. Only chase bird goals you were going to satisfy anyway.
• Round 1 is the cheapest to write off. It pays the least.

How much is enough? As target shape rather than a two-player number: about 7 eggs in the target habitat or nest type by the end of round 4, or 3 birds in a habitat, or 11 total birds.

Twelve of sixteen goal faces need eggs

There are 8 double-sided goal tiles, 16 faces, and every tile pairs a bird side against an egg side of the same theme: three habitats, four nest types, and a totals tile (total birds / sets of eggs). Eight faces count eggs directly, four more count birds carrying at least one egg. Only four ignore eggs.

So before a tile is revealed, the prior says an egg engine contests three of your four goals. That is why the grassland is quietly the points row, and the argument laid out on Eggs: the quiet engine.

Two faces to know by name. Sets of eggs scores the smallest of your three habitat egg counts, not the sum, so it punishes a lopsided board. And star nests are wild, counting toward every nest goal, which makes star-nest birds quietly excellent whenever nest tiles are out.

Plan all four at setup

All four tiles are face up before you choose your opening hand. Run this while you are still holding five cards:

1. How many point the same direction? Two tiles aimed at one habitat or nest type is a strategy, not a coincidence.
2. How many are egg-flavoured? Three or four means grassland engine, and prioritise big egg limits over point value.
3. Read the round-4 goal. It pays 7, and you have the whole game to steer toward it.
4. Is round 1 reachable in eight turns? If not, drop it on purpose.

The blue side is a real choice

Blue scores 1 point per item to a maximum of 5, no competition, up to 20 across four rounds. Both of you can max the same round.

Folk wisdom calls blue the gentle side. The numbers make that less obvious. Green guarantees you second-place points as long as you hold one of the item; blue has no consolation second, so blue punishes a zero harder. For a newer player green is arguably the kinder side: you cannot be shut out by being outraced, only by holding none of the thing. That is an argument from the printed values rather than gospel, and blue is still the honest handicap for a closer game.