CuBirds Card Game: Rules for How to Play

Setup

Choose a player to be the dealer. They will shuffle all of the cards.

The dealer creates four rows of cards in the middle of the table. They will place three cards face up in each row. Look at the cards in each row. Each row must have three different types of birds in it. Should a row have multiple birds of the same type, discard all of the duplicate birds. Add additional cards to each row that you discarded cards from until each row has three different types of birds.

Setting up the four rows of cards — Here are the four rows of cards for the start of the game. The bottom row has two of the same species of bird. A player discards one of the cards, and draws a new card until a third species of bird is in the row.

Take the rest of the cards and shuffle them again. Deal eight cards facedown to each player. These cards form each players’ hand. Players can look at their own cards, but they shouldn’t let the other players see them. Each player is also receives a card that they will place face up in front of themselves. This starts their “collection”. This card remains face up in front of each player for the rest of the game.

Place the rest of the cards facedown on the table to create the draw pile.

The dealer starts the game. Play moves clockwise/left during the game.

How to Play CuBirds

On each of your turns you will take two actions:

Lay down Birds (mandatory)
Complete a Flock (optional)

After you complete both action, your turn ends. Play passed to the next player clockwise/left.

Lay Down Birds

Look at the cards in your hand and choose one species of Bird. You must play all of the cards from your hand that match the species of Bird you chose.

Choosing a card to play — The current player has to choose a species of birds to play from their hand. If they choose to play the blue bird, they have to play both cards. If they choose the small bird in the bottom row, they have to play all three cards of the same species.

Then look at the four rows on the table. You will have to play the Bird cards you chose to one of the four rows. You can either add them to the left or right side of one of the rows. If you are playing multiple cards, you must play all of them next to one another. There are no rules about what row you have to choose. You can pick either side of any of the four rows.

You don’t have to place your Birds in a row that already has a Bird of the species you are playing. There is a benefit of doing so though. Whenever you add a Bird species to a row that already has that type of Bird, you will pick up all of the cards placed between the Birds you played and the other Bird that matches its type. You will add all of these cards to your hand. After you remove the cards from the row, you will slide the remaining cards together to create a continuous row.

Playing a CuBirds card — The current player played the card on the left of the top row. As the far left and far right cards are the same bird species, the current player takes the flamingo, and blue bird cards and adds them to their hand.

Should you remove cards from a row, you will look at the cards remaining in that row. If there is only one species of Bird in the row, the dealer adds cards to the row from the draw pile. They will keep adding cards to the row (one at a time) until there is a second species of bird in the row. The dealer can either add the new cards to the left or right side of the row.

Add a second species to a row — As the two cards left in the top row are both the same species of bird, the top card from the draw pile is added to the right side of the top row. Since the bird is a different species, no other cards are added to the row.

If you play Birds but play them in a row that doesn’t already have a bird of that species, you will take no cards from the table. In this case you have the option of taking the top two cards from the draw pile and adding them to your hand.

Play a different species card — The current player added the blue bird card to the left side of the middle row. Since there are no other blue bird cards in the row, the player doesn’t get to take any cards from the row. They have the option of drawing two cards from the draw pile though.

Complete a Flock

The objective of CuBirds is to create Flocks. In the top right corner of each card is a series of two numbers. The left number is smaller and is the number of cards needed to form a small Flock. The right number is the number of cards needed to form a big Flock.

Example of CuBirds card — This parrot card can be used for either a small or big Flock. You need to collect four parrots to create a small Flock. Six parrots are required for a big Flock.

After playing a card(s) you should look at the cards in your hand. You are looking for a set of cards of the same species. To create a Flock with a species of Birds you need a number of cards equal to or greater than either the small or big Flock number. If you have enough cards to create a Flock, you can choose to form one. You will reveal all of the cards in your hand of one species. You cannot reveal any cards from your hand if you don’t have enough to create at least a small Flock.

Should you have a number of cards equal to or higher than the small Flock number, you create a small Flock. Take one of the cards from the Flock and place it face up in front of yourself in your collection. The remaining cards from the Flock are added to the discard pile.

Create small Flock — This player has two flamingos. This is enough to create a small Flock. They will add one of the cards to their collection, and they will add the other card to the discard pile.

If you have a number of cards that are equal to or larger than the big Flock number, you create a big Flock. Take two of the cards from the Flock and place them face up in front of yourself in your collection. Add the remaining cards from the Flock to the discard pile.

Creating a big Flock — This player acquired nine cards of this species of birds. They can turn the cards in to create a big Flock. They will add two of the cards to their collection. The remaining cards are added to the discard pile.

Once a card is added to a player’s collection, it remains there for the rest of the game.

Even if you have enough cards in your hand to create a Flock, you can choose not to. You can only create one Flock each turn though.

End of Round

The players will keep taking turns. A round ends as soon as one of the players has no cards left in their hand at the end of their turn.

When a round ends all of the players discard all of the cards left in their hand. Players keep the cards that were added to their collection. The cards in the rows in the middle of the table stay where they are.

The player that ended the round becomes the dealer. They will deal eight new cards to each player from the draw pile. If the draw pile ever runs out of cards, the discard pile is shuffled to form a new draw pile. The new dealer starts the next round.

Winning CuBirds

CuBirds can end in two different ways.

During the game the players will be trying to add cards to their collection. A player can win the game if they have enough cards in their collection to meet one of two criteria.

Collect cards of seven different species.
Collect three or more Birds of two different species.

Whenever a player meets one of these two criteria, the game immediately ends. The player that met one of the two criteria wins the game.

Winning CuBirds — Pictured are the two different ways you can win CuBirds. The player on the left would win because they added a card from seven different species to their collection. The player on the right would win because they collected three cards of two different species.

Otherwise the game could potentially end if it is impossible for the dealer to deal eight cards to each player at the start of a new round. If there are cards in the discard pile, these cards are shuffled and dealt out before the end game is triggered. If there is still not enough cards, the game immediately ends. All of the players count up how many Bird cards they have in their collection. The player with the most Bird cards in their collection, wins the game. If there is a tie, the tied players share the victory.

Components

110 Cards
Instructions

Year: 2018 | Publisher: Pandasaurus | Designer: Stefan Alexander | Artist: Kristiaan der Nederlanden, Clément Milker, Peter Wocken

Genres: Card, Family, Set Collection

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2-5 | Length of Game: 20 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light-Moderate | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.