What could I have done better in this game?

[Ceaseless]

I think Tree Swallow is a subpar card, but would have kept it because wetland bird.

I always thought of the Tree Swallow as a good starter bird for the wetland (or a second wetland bird). 3 points, strong brown power. I am curious why it would be considered subpar.

It costs 2 food, and tuck and draw is not nearly as good in the wetland as it is in the forest or grassland due to quantity and alternate use. That you have to toss the card before seeing your next draw is an awkward drawback for starting out, it gets smoothed over easier as the game progresses, but you can't take advantage of those constant uses in the wetland like you can in more commonly used areas. Getting a point per pick is nice, but the first several uses are just playing catch-up to what more vanilla birds deliver immediately. I would rather a 1 food vanilla for escaping the early game and devoting my commitment to other cards.

[FrankJones]

I think Tree Swallow is a subpar card, but would have kept it because wetland bird.

I always thought of the Tree Swallow as a good starter bird for the wetland (or a second wetland bird). 3 points, strong brown power. I am curious why it would be considered subpar.

It costs 2 food, and tuck and draw is not nearly as good in the wetland as it is in the forest or grassland due to quantity and alternate use. That you have to toss the card before seeing your next draw is an awkward drawback for starting out, it gets smoothed over easier as the game progresses, but you can't take advantage of those constant uses in the wetland like you can in more commonly used areas. Getting a point per pick is nice, but the first several uses are just playing catch-up to what more vanilla birds deliver immediately. I would rather a 1 food vanilla for escaping the early game and devoting my commitment to other cards.

Oh, definitely. I mean, a tuck and draw in the grassland is huge. But, I've had many games with a much worse starting card in the wetland than the Tree Swallow

[Florrible]

After a good winning streak where I managed to get myself above 200 ELO, I’m back to always losing now. I started playing some games outside of arena to see what happens if I include the powerful bird cards and it’s not going well! I won my last game only through the tie breaker of having 2 food tokens when my opponent had 0, and that was with a powerful bird as my first play!

I also played a couple of games against opponents that built up their grassland really early and didn’t play anything in wetland until like round 3 or 4 which goes against everything I was learning on here.

Would you say Franklin’s gull works better in the grassland or wetland? I assumed grassland because you can lay eggs and straight away use one to get cards but now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s best to have it in the wetland so whenever I want to draw cards I can get 4 instead of 2. I don’t know, I think both work well. Would you say to make the choice based on EOR goals?

[Kakapogoglu]

After a good winning streak where I managed to get myself above 200 ELO, I’m back to always losing now. I started playing some games outside of arena to see what happens if I include the powerful bird cards and it’s not going well! I won my last game only through the tie breaker of having 2 food tokens when my opponent had 0, and that was with a powerful bird as my first play!

I also played a couple of games against opponents that built up their grassland really early and didn’t play anything in wetland until like round 3 or 4 which goes against everything I was learning on here.

Would you say Franklin’s gull works better in the grassland or wetland? I assumed grassland because you can lay eggs and straight away use one to get cards but now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s best to have it in the wetland so whenever I want to draw cards I can get 4 instead of 2. I don’t know, I think both work well. Would you say to make the choice based on EOR goals?

Franklin's gull must always be in the grassland, that's one of the 3 most powerful birds in the game (better than killdeer imo because of the star nest). If you get it at the beginning of the game, try to build a strong grassland as soon as possible, with food supply on forest and egg space. You will never have to draw cards from the wetland line, it will be either food or eggs. If you draw powerful wetland birds, play them at the late game and you're good for a big end score

[FrankJones]

After a good winning streak where I managed to get myself above 200 ELO, I’m back to always losing now. I started playing some games outside of arena to see what happens if I include the powerful bird cards and it’s not going well! I won my last game only through the tie breaker of having 2 food tokens when my opponent had 0, and that was with a powerful bird as my first play!

I also played a couple of games against opponents that built up their grassland really early and didn’t play anything in wetland until like round 3 or 4 which goes against everything I was learning on here.

Would you say Franklin’s gull works better in the grassland or wetland? I assumed grassland because you can lay eggs and straight away use one to get cards but now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s best to have it in the wetland so whenever I want to draw cards I can get 4 instead of 2. I don’t know, I think both work well. Would you say to make the choice based on EOR goals?

Franklin's Gull / killdeer in grassland. Likewise the ravens. Wood Duck in the forest, which is basically gg, which is why it's banned. Especially if you get an egg laying bird in the forest. Wood Duck + Pileated Woodpecker is insane. Draw 2 Keep 1 is such a strong ability. TO be able to do that in the forest is difficult to lose with.

[Ceaseless]

After a good winning streak where I managed to get myself above 200 ELO, I’m back to always losing now. I started playing some games outside of arena to see what happens if I include the powerful bird cards and it’s not going well! I won my last game only through the tie breaker of having 2 food tokens when my opponent had 0, and that was with a powerful bird as my first play!

I also played a couple of games against opponents that built up their grassland really early and didn’t play anything in wetland until like round 3 or 4 which goes against everything I was learning on here.

Would you say Franklin’s gull works better in the grassland or wetland? I assumed grassland because you can lay eggs and straight away use one to get cards but now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s best to have it in the wetland so whenever I want to draw cards I can get 4 instead of 2. I don’t know, I think both work well. Would you say to make the choice based on EOR goals?

You'd have to give an example of what they were actually doing with their Grassland. Replays show us exactly what happened.

If you played a powerful bird first turn (I assume you mean one of the banned ones), then you should have dominated. A quick glance at one of your tied games and I found https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=93357955; You didn't play Gull first turn, even though you opened with it, but instead drew a wetland bird that did nothing. You even threw away a decent Grassland bird and kept more useless wetland birds. I didn't look too much further. A first turn power bird means that even scoring over 100 points is not unexpected for a normal game.

Franklin Gull goes in the Grassland, no contest. In fact, you can forget the Wetland exists for drawing cards at that point, it's just for containing high point value birds. Gull will draw all of your cards while giving you eggs and points, there's no need to use the wetland when you won't even get points for it. Franklin Gull is so good so good it redefines how the game is played. You want to fill your Grassland as much as possible so you can maximize your gains from spamming the wetland. You'll have lots of throwaway cards in hand for when you use the forest, make sure to maximize how much food you can get to play the floor of birds coming your way. Conventional resource management is turned on its head because you're drawing cards and laying eggs so much more than a conventional player can.

[Florrible]

Thanks everyone for the confirmation, even though it wasn’t a resounding victory I’m glad I made the right reasoning that Franklin’s gull had to be in the grassland. I don’t think I had ever had that bird in my hand before as I always played with them off, at least until I got a bit better.

When I’ve played against opponents that had basically no wetland set up though, I don’t recall them playing Franklin’s gull, although one of these opponents did have Chihuauan raven as their first play.

I’ve also never had Wood duck either but the recommendation that it should always be played in forest is noted!

[Florrible]

Franklin's Gull / killdeer in grassland. Likewise the ravens. Wood Duck in the forest, which is basically gg, which is why it's banned. Especially if you get an egg laying bird in the forest. Wood Duck + Pileated Woodpecker is insane. Draw 2 Keep 1 is such a strong ability. TO be able to do that in the forest is difficult to lose with.

I quite like Pileated Woodpecker but I’ve not picked it up in games where there were no EOR goals or bonus cards that related to cavity nests. Would you say that this is a good bird to have in any scenario? If it was in my starting hand I would definitely keep it 100%, but in the situation I described just now, I think it came out face up on the tray and we were already halfway through the game by that point.

[Ceaseless]

Thanks everyone for the confirmation, even though it wasn’t a resounding victory I’m glad I made the right reasoning that Franklin’s gull had to be in the grassland. I don’t think I had ever had that bird in my hand before as I always played with them off, at least until I got a bit better.

When I’ve played against opponents that had basically no wetland set up though, I don’t recall them playing Franklin’s gull, although one of these opponents did have Chihuauan raven as their first play.

I’ve also never had Wood duck either but the recommendation that it should always be played in forest is noted!

As players improve, it's actually even better to avoid using those cards. Whoever draws one early basically wins short of a comparable miracle/flop overturning it.

For your wetland claim, give examples. We've got to check the obvious stuff. Maybe you overlooked them drawing those birds, maybe they had something else drawing birds. Maybe you used a draw effect for both players. Maybe they drew incredibly elsewhere, and it helped tide them longer than average. Maybe it actually backfired on them, but your hand was even worse, so they got away with it. There's a lot of things that could have happened.

A player that keeps only Wood Duck and 4 food in their opening hand to turn 1 play Wood Duck is probably still winning that game. Card's so insane that hand is considered excellent.

Franklin's Gull / killdeer in grassland. Likewise the ravens. Wood Duck in the forest, which is basically gg, which is why it's banned. Especially if you get an egg laying bird in the forest. Wood Duck + Pileated Woodpecker is insane. Draw 2 Keep 1 is such a strong ability. TO be able to do that in the forest is difficult to lose with.

I quite like Pileated Woodpecker but I’ve not picked it up in games where there were no EOR goals or bonus cards that related to cavity nests. Would you say that this is a good bird to have in any scenario? If it was in my starting hand I would definitely keep it 100%, but in the situation I described just now, I think it came out face up on the tray and we were already halfway through the game by that point.

No card is good in every scenario, though some are far more flexible than others. For its 2-food cost Woodpecker's 4 points is fairly low. Its value is generally decided by its effect. How well can each player utilize the eggs granted? How often will you gain food to be able to activate its effect? The card shines in the early game because it lets you skip turns where you'd just lay 2 eggs and you'll gain food so many times it generates an absurd amount of resources. The further along you go the more you'll have to calculate just how often you'll set it off and how key it is, as well as how valuable its role is as an additional forest bird for gaining food. Again, exact examples are important, because information like how many turns you have, what other stuff do you plan to do, what other options are on the table all factor into this.

[Florrible]

As players improve, it's actually even better to avoid using those cards. Whoever draws one early basically wins short of a comparable miracle/flop overturning it.

For your wetland claim, give examples. We've got to check the obvious stuff. Maybe you overlooked them drawing those birds, maybe they had something else drawing birds. Maybe you used a draw effect for both players. Maybe they drew incredibly elsewhere, and it helped tide them longer than average. Maybe it actually backfired on them, but your hand was even worse, so they got away with it. There's a lot of things that could have happened.

I have looked at all my games from yesterday and I cannot find any evidence of this… either it only happened in my head, or it was on a different day and I thought it was more recent. But now you mention it, it’s quite likely that I used a draw effect for both players as I do tend to keep Spotted Sandpiper if I have it in my starting hand as it’s worth 5 points for only 1 food.

I’ve also made a number of really stupid mistakes that couldn’t be undone in recent games - for example today I misclicked a migratory bird and accidentally sent it to the wetland instead of grassland. I was absolutely gutted. I’d hate for someone to watch that replay and think that I’d done that by choice. Another time I’m pretty sure I took an egg off the wrong bird in a recent game which brought me even with my opponent in the EOR goal when I had actually been ahead.