FrankJones wrote: ↑26 May 2025, 14:42
Ceaseless has the recipe here:
"
After you know you can make the grassland, you should make sure you can make your forest. I would say the order of priority goes something like this.
1. Have wetland bird #1
2. Have forest birds #1 and #2
3. Play forest birds #1 and #2
4. Play wetland bird #1 (move to 2. if you don't have the forest birds for 2. and 3.)
"
Ashas been discussed, you need cards to win this game. Without a wetland bird, it's not realistically possible to win. Actually playing the wetland bird does not need to be the priority though - as noted by the above sequence and by what UnexpectedKea wrote. In a 2-player game, a stagnant bird feeder with the wrong food can be a major hazard. Getting those two forest birds down early will set up a strong forest food draw, allowing you to get 2 food without giving up a card (which you likely will not yet have to spare anyway), ideally getting 2 useful food, but if not, one useful food and a second food to be used later. And activating (we hope) at least one good brown power, maybe 2.
Then you can get your wetland bird down, and lay eggs, preparing for 2 turns of drawing 2 cards. If you get a good second wetland bird, excellent. You can play it and save one of your eggs.
Laying eggs with an empty grassland isn't too bad in this version without expansions and without the modified player board. You still get 2 eggs.
At that point, I try to transition to setting up my grassland for points. This is the only habitat that inherently scores points, and again, since we are playing the base game, it's difficult to set up a scoring engine in the other habitats. It's also difficult to convert extra food and cards into points. No chiffchaff, chaffinch, No Eagles that eat cards, and no board activations to easily convert cards and food into points.
I always try to get a tuck-and-draw bird in the grassland so I can lay eggs while swapping a bad card for a good one in the tray, gaining that card without taking a mostly empty wetlands turn. I also like to get a "tuck-and-lay-egg" bird in the grassland so convert those extra cards into 2 points each.
The end-round goals are usually more important than your bonus card. As has been noted, each one is potentially a 6-point swing. That's a lot better than putting down 2 mediocre birds just to add 3 points to your starting bonus card.
I will say, I'm not a big fan of playing this game without expansions. For me it gets boring rather quickly. I find the early game very frustrating and highly dependent on the starting hand. The limited number of end-round goals starts to get repetitive too. These concerns might not apply to anyone who has only played the base game. But after so many plays with the expansions, I find this version very limited. 2 forest birds, 2 wetland birds, fill the grassland row, and spam it for points.
And sometimes, the bird feeder will not cooperate, or, you'll draw garbage cards and at some point you'll just have to start playing what you have.
