The cost of a bird

I have been doing some analysis of bird cards in Wingspan.  The game is fairly balanced by and large, but I was curious how the designers valued various types of abilities and what they thought things were worth.

Baseline, birds have points on them based on their cost. 

1 cost - 5 points
2 cost - 7 points
3 cost - 9 points.

Additional egg capacity on a bird seems to be costed at 2 eggs for 1 point, with a base value of 2 eggs.  So if a bird has a 4 egg capacity, it has 1 less point on it.

Bonus cards are costed at 3 points.  I was often disappointed to play a bonus card bird because they regularly gave me only a couple points, but it seems that this is actually just fine.  Getting the big scores of 6-8 points on a bonus card is rare and challenging - mostly you can expect that one of your two bonus card choices will give you 2-4 points, and that works out.

Birds that lay eggs on every nest of a specific type when they are played are worth 4 less points for that ability.  They always hit themselves, so you need to have 3 other nests for them to be on par.  That won't usually be the case until the last couple of actions, but at game end they are solid.

Flying around from one habitat to another costs 3-4 points.  This seems reasonable.  It has to work for you 4 times to pay for itself, which is a lot, but it can also let you score up goals pretty easily.  Weak in the late game, but extremely strong at the outset.

Getting to play another bird is worth 2 points.  This seems extremely good.  Your actions are worth 4 points each over the course of the game, so getting an extra action and giving up only 2 points is excellent.  Of course it is tricky to save up all the resources to play multiple birds at once, and you have to have the second bird and the room to play it.  If the play a second bird card fits into your strategy nicely it is great, but if you really have to work for it it isn't exciting.

The birds that have a random 'when played' ability are all fair.  The costs to get the stuff range from 1 to 2, and all of the stuff you get is reasonable.  There are a few high rollers that get you a lot of a single food type, but that is often hard to use up efficiently, so they are normally going to be okay but not broken.

There are a ton of birds with 'when activated' abilities and the abilities vary wildly in power.  Some of those abilities are symmetrical, like giving every player a fish, or all players drawing a card from the deck.  You will want to use those sometimes so they are better than nothing, but they aren't great.  All of these abilities are costed between 0-1 points, which looks appropriate to me.  The more powerful activated abilities I grouped up based on how many uses you would need in order for them to be as good as a pure points bird.  They fell about equally into 3 groups - 2 uses, 3 uses, and 4 uses.  4 uses abilities are really only worth doing right at the outset of the game.  You usually will do each row 6.5 times per game, so unless you get the 4 uses abilities in quite quickly they are low value.  The 2 uses abilities are obviously superb at the start, and even worth setting up midgame.

One thing that became clear when I looked at the activated abilities was that certain ones were consistently bad.  Hunting abilities all seemed to be costed the same, usually about 2 points, but the conditions on which you actually get the points are not the same at all.  Some of them involve drawing a bird of <100cm wingspan, which is highly likely to hit, but some involved drawing birds of <50cm wingspan, which is drastically worse.  Also the abilities that give you stuff by rolling the dice are all terrible.  You will end up rolling 1 die too often and get nothing for your investment.

Activated abilities that do the same thing that their row is already doing also seem like a trap.  You might get lots of resources, but you can't effectively spam that button.  In particular the draw cards row has a bunch of birds in it that are worth hardly any points but give you tons of card draw, and these are awful.  You want consistent card draw to collect the good stuff that pops up.  Drawing a ton of cards all at once is just a big pile of random crap, and having a giant mitt of cards isn't the way to win.

The last group of cards to evaluate is the pink cards that work on your opponent's turn.  They are all costed from 1-3 points, and all of them seem powerful.  Mostly they need to go off 3 times to be worth using, and they rate to go off far more than that, even if played in the midgame.  This is the only group of birds that changes in value based on how many players are playing, and it is clear that in 4-5 person groups they are ridiculous, absolutely the best.  In 3 or 2 they are merely fair.

My final, general conclusions are that birds that get you bonus cards, fly around, give you bonus turns or have 'when played' abilities are good and fair.  However, birds that have activated abilities are all over the place.  Many abilities are bad because they rely too much on luck or specific resources.  If a thing gives you a ton of berries, you will have too many berries.  If it relies on you having grain, you will not have enough.  They is not enough weight given to how powerful selection is, or how punishing restrictions are.  This extends to nest types, where the star nest type seems to have no cost at all, despite it being excellent for goals, bonus cards, and egg laying interactions.  The cards that interact with dice consistently assume the dice will be favourable, when in fact you can assume the opposite because your opponents hate you and want you to suffer.

Take the cards that give you wild resources, not specific ones.  Take star nests.  Avoid hunting abilities unless they are the premium ones.  These are the key takeaways for me.