Wingspan

To set up, shuffle the bird cards and place the deck face-down next to the bird tray, then reveal three bird cards face-up onto the tray. Shuffle the bonus cards and place them next to the bird cards. Create a general supply for the 75 eggs and 103 food tokens. Assemble the dice tower and roll the five food dice through it. Choose the type of objective to play with (competitive green side or casual blue side) and place the corresponding side of the objective board face-up. Shuffle the eight objective tokens and randomly place four of them onto the objective board, returning the rest to the box. Each player receives a player board, two bonus cards, five bird cards, eight action cubes in their chosen color, and five food tokens (one of each type). Players choose which bird cards and one bonus card to keep, discarding one food token for each bird card kept.

Players take on the role of ornithologists, striving to attract the best and most beautiful birds to their aviaries. The goal is to accumulate the most victory points by the end of the game. Points are primarily gained through playing bird cards, completing private and public objectives, laying eggs, caching food, and tucking cards under birds, all contributing to a diverse and thriving bird sanctuary.

The game is played over four rounds. In each round, players take turns performing one of four main actions: playing a bird card, gaining food, laying eggs, or drawing bird cards. To perform an action, a player places one of their action cubes on the leftmost available space in the corresponding row of their player board. Playing a bird card involves paying its food and egg cost and placing it in an appropriate habitat (forest, grassland, or wetland). Gaining food involves taking food tokens from the dice tower based on the habitat's benefits. Laying eggs involves taking eggs from the general supply and placing them on bird cards, up to their capacity. Drawing bird cards involves taking cards from the face-up display or the face-down deck. After performing an action, the action cube is moved to the left, and any activated 'when activated' powers of birds in that row are triggered from right to left.

At the end of the game, points are tallied from several sources. Each bird card has a point value indicated on it. Bonus cards provide points based on specific criteria met by the player's birds. End-of-round objectives, tracked on the objective board, award points to players who best meet the round's criteria. Each egg on a bird card is worth one point. Cached food tokens on bird cards also contribute to the final score. Finally, any cards tucked under birds (due to certain bird powers) are also worth one point each. The player with the highest total score wins.

The game concludes after the fourth round. Once all players have used their action cubes for the final round, the round-end procedure is followed: all action cubes are removed from player boards, end-of-round objectives are scored, face-up bird cards on the tray are discarded and replaced, and the first player token is passed to the left. After the fourth round's scoring, players use the scorepad to calculate their total points from all categories. The player with the highest total score is the winner.