Top 5 How To Win Wingspan The 81 Correct Answer

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With that said, most normal scores are in between 70-90, depending if there’s any “all players gain” or pink powers. The more players the more chance of a higher score because of positive interaction. If you score lower than 70, you might have to think about your engine a little bit more.Wingspan is a relaxing, award-winning strategy card game about birds for 1 to 5 players. Each bird you play extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your three habitats.It’s not an overly competitive game in that each player plays for the most victory points and there is no combat. As for complexity, it’s a mid weight game – more complex than Ticket to Ride, but simpler than Agricola.

11 Wingspan Strategy Tips: How to Win!
  1. Focus on one or two habitats. …
  2. Birds that can move, move you forward. …
  3. Ravens get you a good deal. …
  4. Be careful with pink cards. …
  5. Tuck cards for points. …
  6. Maximise final round points. …
  7. Get a couple of high victory point birds. …
  8. Get extra bonus objectives.

What is a good score on Wingspan?

With that said, most normal scores are in between 70-90, depending if there’s any “all players gain” or pink powers. The more players the more chance of a higher score because of positive interaction. If you score lower than 70, you might have to think about your engine a little bit more.

Is Wingspan a strategy game?

Wingspan is a relaxing, award-winning strategy card game about birds for 1 to 5 players. Each bird you play extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your three habitats.

Is Wingspan a difficult game?

It’s not an overly competitive game in that each player plays for the most victory points and there is no combat. As for complexity, it’s a mid weight game – more complex than Ticket to Ride, but simpler than Agricola.

How competitive is Wingspan?

So while Wingspan is indeed a “competitive” game, it’s strictly you, maximizing your score on your player board. This will definitely appeal to some people in the gaming sphere, but for me in a game like this, it’s a negative. I want to be able to force you to adapt and change your plans through actions I take.

How do you score the most points on a Wingspan?

  1. Wingspan Strategy Tips for Winning. …
  2. Evaluate Potential Points per Play. …
  3. Play Point-Scoring Birds in the Grasslands. …
  4. Play Mass Tucking Cards. …
  5. Play More Birds Per Turn. …
  6. Acquire Bonus Cards Later in the Game. …
  7. Take Advantage of Birds That Lay a Lot of Eggs in One Action. …
  8. Play Birds in the Forest Habitat That Also Generate Points.

Is Wingspan balanced?

Wingspan: it’s not balanced, but it’s still heaps of fun | BoardGameGeek.

How good is Wingspan solo?

I enjoy Wingspan every time I play it and I can highly recommend it to any one who is into light engine and tableau building games looking for a relaxing game that can be played in less than an hour. To make things easier for myself, I use the same scoring categories Board Game Geek uses.

How long does Wingspan take to play?

Wingspan is a board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games in 2019. It is a card-driven, engine-building board game in which one to five players compete to attract birds to their wildlife reserves.

Wingspan (board game)
Designers Elizabeth Hargrave
Playing time 40-70 minutes
Website www.stonemaiergames.com

Why is Wingspan so popular?

Wingspan is what’s known among serious gamers as an “engine-building game,” which means that as the game goes on, the combination of birds you play becomes more and more efficient at generating points each turn, like an engine running faster and faster.

What is the most complicated board game?

Google artificial intelligence beats champion at world’s most complicated board game. An artificial intelligence program developed by researchers at Google can beat a human at the board game Go, which some consider to be the most complicated board game in existence.

How many turns in a round of Wingspan?

Use 1 of your action cubes to mark your score on the end-of- round goal. As a result, you will have 1 fewer action cube to use each round: Round 1: 8 turns per player. Round 2: 7 turns per player.

What is the object of the game Wingspan?

Wingspan puts you and your friends in the role of bird enthusiasts trying to attract birds to your individual aviaries. Birds are represented by cards, which slot into one of three rows on your personal player board; the rows represent the three different habitats in your preserve—forest, grassland, and wetland.

Is Wingspan worker placement?

Wingspan is most certainly not a worker placement game as worker placement means you are drafting actions from a common pool of actions, not actions on your personal board. Also, Wingspan certainly does have card drafting. If you can select cards from a pool of available cards, that is indeed card drafting.

Is Wingspan same as height?

An example of a human body ratio is a person’s arm span—the distance from the middle fingertip of the left hand to that of the right hand when stretching out both arms horizontally—to their height. This ratio is approximately a one to one ratio, meaning that a person’s arm span is about equal to their height.

How many copies Wingspan sold?

In a tweet from the tabletop title’s creator, Elizabeth Hargrave, it was confirmed that Wingspan – which won the Kennerspiel des Jahres, one of the most prestigious prizes in the tabletop industry – has shifted over 1 million copies since its release in 2019.

Is there a hand limit in Wingspan?

It is important to remember that there is no hand limit in Wingspan. Players can have any number of bird cards in their hand. Unlike in the beginning of the game, players do not have to discard a food token each time they draw a new card.

How long does Wingspan take to play?

Wingspan is a board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games in 2019. It is a card-driven, engine-building board game in which one to five players compete to attract birds to their wildlife reserves.

Wingspan (board game)
Designers Elizabeth Hargrave
Playing time 40-70 minutes
Website www.stonemaiergames.com

What bird is on the cover of Wingspan?

The stunning Scissor-tailed Flycatcher in flight that graces the cover of Wingspan is based on one of Murphy’s photographs and captures the spirit of the game as the bird soars toward new ground.

Does Steam have Wingspan?

A full-AI version of Wingspan is available from Monster Couch (Steam, Switch, Xbox, iOS, and Android).


Wingspan STRATEGY GUIDE / How to win at Wingspan / Wingspan boardgame tips, tricks, and tactics
Wingspan STRATEGY GUIDE / How to win at Wingspan / Wingspan boardgame tips, tricks, and tactics


11 Wingspan Strategy Tips: How to Win!

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  • Summary of article content: Articles about 11 Wingspan Strategy Tips: How to Win! Updating …
  • Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for 11 Wingspan Strategy Tips: How to Win! Updating The goals for Wingspan change in every game. So what strategy can you use to win Wingspan? Use these Wingspan strategy tips to soar your way to victory!
  • Table of Contents:

1 Focus on one or two habitats

2 Birds that can move move you forward

3 Ravens get you a good deal

4 Be careful with pink cards

5 Tuck cards for points

6 Maximise final round points

7 Get a couple of high victory point birds

8 Get extra bonus objectives

9 Avoid helping other players

10 Don’t prioritize re-roll abilities

11 Cycle through bird cards

Conclusion – Wingspan Strategy How to Win

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What is a good score? | Wingspan

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  • Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for What is a good score? | Wingspan Updating My wife has beaten me at it four times so far. Our scores are in the 65-85 range.

    What is a good score? I’m guessing our scores are on the low side, since we’re still figuring out what all the game has to offer.board game, boardgames, boardgame, board, games, game, hobby, boardgamegeek, geek, geekdo

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What is a good score? | Wingspan
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Wingspan on Steam

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  • Summary of article content: Articles about Wingspan on Steam Updating …
  • Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for Wingspan on Steam Updating Wingspan is a relaxing, award-winning strategy card game about birds for 1 to 5 players. Each bird you play extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your three habitats. Your goal is to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves.
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Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf) | The Opinionated Gamers

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    Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf) | The Opinionated Gamers Updating …
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    Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf) | The Opinionated Gamers Updating Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave Publisher: Stonemaier Games Artists: Anna Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Beth Sobel Players: 1-5 (While Wingspan does have a solo mode, as most Stonemaier games do, I will be focusing on the multi-player experience) Time: 40-70 Minutes Times Played: 5 Every day, more and more games are released into the wild, both…
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Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf) | The Opinionated Gamers
Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf) | The Opinionated Gamers

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  • Summary of article content: Articles about Error 403 (Forbidden) You will generally rack up a big score in one of two ways: Getting together an engine that lets you break the economy of the game and draw and play lots of big … …
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5 Best Wingspan Strategies – The Board Game Guide

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1 Ravens Are Gas In The Engine

2 Catch Birds That Move

3 Build Out 2 Habitats

4 Round Goals Can Ruin Strategy

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Focus On Two Habitats At The Most

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11 Wingspan Strategy Tips: How to Win!

Wingspan is a wonderful board game about birds published by Stonemaier Games. Every game feels different thanks to the variety of cards, round objectives, and bonus objectives. With so many ways to win, what is the best Wingspan strategy and how do you win Wingspan every time?

Well, while there isn’t one strategy to use every single game, there are several strategies that I use regularly to win my fair share of games!

These 11 Wingspan strategy tips range from: ideas on opportunities to get ahead, abilities to avoid, and extra bits of game information that can give you the edge over other players!

Hi! This post may contain affiliate links to online stores. If you use a link and buy something, I may get a commission at no extra cost to you. See my affiliate disclosure.

Use the combination of strategies that make the most sense for each game to win!

Wingspan board game box in my apple tree

Watch my video summary of all the tips!

1. Focus on one or two habitats

You want to get a decent engine going on your tableau and it can help to focus on one or two locations to get this going rather than spreading your bird cards evenly between all three.

To help you choose which habitats to focus on, it can help to think about which ones match the round objectives and your personal bonuses. As a guide, here are some notes about the nest types and food costs for each habitat.

Forest

Cavity (tree) nests are the most common, followed by bowl (cup) nests.

Birds usually cost worms, wheat, and berries to play.

Grassland

Ground (eggs) nests are the most common followed by bowl (cup) nests.

Birds usually cost wheat and worms to play.

Wetland

Platform (sticks) nests are the most common closely followed by ground (eggs) nests.

Birds usually cost fish and worms to play. Rodents are very rarely needed.

2. Birds that can move, move you forward

If you’re focusing on a couple of habitats at a time, it can really help to have birds like the Chimney Swift and Berwick’s Wren. They both have the same brown ability:

WHEN ACTIVATED: If this bird is to the right of all other birds in its habitat, move it to another habitat.

This means that you can send the bird back and forth between your habitats and effectively play as though you were one more bird card along in each track for the higher-level abilities.

Or, you can send the bird to the habitat you aren’t focusing on in preparation for your next turn where you can also take advantage of a higher-level ability.

3. Ravens get you a good deal

Chihuahuan Raven and Common Raven cards in grass in my garden

It’s official. Ravens are overpowered. Well, according to me and several people I’ve played with, they are!

The Common Raven and the Chihuahuan Raven say:

WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard 1 egg from any of your other birds to gain any 2 food from the supply.

Now, that’s a pretty good deal if you ask me! The Ravens are two of the best cards in Wingspan.

Their ability is so incredibly useful. With the right kind of food, you can get the birds into play that you really want!

Crows like the American Crow and the Fish Crow can also help with this. They are like the ravens but only allow you to take 1 food from the supply per egg rather than 2.

4. Be careful with pink cards

Pink abilities are great at getting bonuses between turns. However, be careful with which pink cards you play and when you play them!

After you’ve put that pink card in play, other players will see it. Do you think they will want to play birds will help you when they activate their ability?

No! They’ll take a different strategy so that you don’t benefit from their actions!

However, this is not a hard and fast rule…

If you have a card with the ability that means you gain an egg every time another player uses the lay eggs action, then they are going to do that at some point for sure! Plus, you’ll only gain 1 egg, while they stand to gain many more! So they still end up better off than you.

That’s not to say that you should never play any of the other pink cards. They can be great after you’ve figured out another player’s strategy! But by that point in the game, you may be better off playing other cards whose abilities are directly under your control, rather than being dependent on someone else’s actions.

5. Tuck cards for points

Something that works out really well for me is playing the birds like the Common Grackle where you can tuck cards behind them. Its brown ability says:

WHEN ACTIVATED: Tuck a bird card from your hand behind this bird. If you do, also lay 1 egg on this bird.

I like this strategy for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, when you tuck cards behind a bird it’s quite hard for other players to see how many cards are there! You can build up a decent stash and they won’t realize until it’s too late! Plus, with bird cards like the Common Grackle you also get an egg too!

Secondly, this strategy works really nicely with the card cycling tactic (see Tip 11). With some cards, you can get rid of a bird card and pick up a new one, yet still get a point for the bird you don’t want!

6. Maximise final round points

Wingspan eggs

In the final round, it’s all about maths. Yep. Sorry. You need to work out what is going to give you the most points on your final few turns. In my experience, this comes down to three main approaches.

1. Lay all the eggs!

Lay as many eggs as you can because each one is worth a victory point.

This works great if you’ve played birds with nests that can hold a lot of eggs. Otherwise, you may find yourself running out of space!

2. Play high victory point birds

By now, your engine can likely generate a lot of food per turn to get extra birds into play.

High victory point birds will either be cheaper than other birds but offer no ability or an ability that benefits everyone when they are activated, like everyone gains food (that’s fine in the final round). Or, they will be expensive but offer an ability that only benefits you.

3. Play birds for bonus objectives

If you’re close to completing a bonus objective or two, a couple of bird cards can add a decent amount to your end score. Definitely worth calculating this option.

7. Get a couple of high victory point birds

A couple of high victory point birds will serve you really well in the end game scoring. They are a nice way to bank some points.

The best way to use them, of course, is if they align with a round goal or a bonus objective. Then you get some sweet victory points on top!

The trade-off with high victory point birds is that they’ll take up one of your 15 bird spots and other than points they usually have: a small nest for eggs and a worse ability than other birds. For example, no ability at all, a one-off ability, or an ability that benefits all players.

8. Get extra bonus objectives

In Wingspan, there is no limit to the number of bonus cards you have. So you could try your luck at scooping up additional bonus points.

In the early game, if you find yourself with a bird card that can get you access to extra bonuses then give it a whirl. More bonus objectives give you more options on what you can play to get points.

Picking up more bonus cards isn’t really worth it in later rounds because you’ll likely not have time to achieve the bonus.

9. Avoid helping other players

Plenty of cards have abilities where other players will benefit when you activate them. For example, the Red Crossbill says:

WHEN ACTIVATED: All players gain 1 wheat from the supply.

This is on a forest bird which costs 2 wheat, 6 victory points, a bowl nest with a 2 egg capacity, and a wingspan of 28cm.

Now depending on the round objectives, your habitat layout, your bonus objectives, and where you are in the game, this could be a good card to play.

However, generally avoid these cards wherever possible. Every time you activate it, you help other players. Whenever I have had one of these birds in play it’s discouraged me from wanting to use it.

10. Don’t prioritize re-roll abilities

Wingspan dice roller in my apple tree

Bird cards like the Willet and Black Skimmer have a re-roll ability.

WHEN ACTIVATED: Roll all dice not in birdfeeder. If any are fish, gain 1 fish and cache it on this card.

There are two main issues with re-roll abilities.

One is the unreliable results. You could just end up rolling food that you don’t want so you can’t cache it.

Secondly, you may activate the ability when the birdfeeder is full or has very few dice not in it, which eliminates or further reduces your chances of rolling the food you want.

11. Cycle through bird cards

Once you’ve decided on your strategy, the type of birds you play are key to enacting it. That’s where card cycling comes in.

If you can quickly swap the cards you don’t want for the cards that you do, you’ll be much better placed to win.

There are a few really cool card cycling abilities. The Killdeer and Franklin’s Gull have this one:

WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard 1 egg to draw 2 bird cards.

And cards like the Pied-Billed Grebe and the Ruddy Duck have this ability:

WHEN ACTIVATED: Draw 2 bird cards. If you do, discard 1 bird card from your hand at the end of your turn.

So you can card cycle without even paying the cost of an egg!

By far my favorite way to card cycle is to combine this with card tucking (see Tip 5). Then, any card that you don’t want is not wasted, it’s going to provide you with a VP at the end of the game. Double win!

You can use this strategy by playing the birds like the Tree Swallow and the Barn Swallow with this ability:

WHEN ACTIVATED: Tuck a bird card from your hand behind this bird. If you do, draw 1 bird card.

Conclusion – Wingspan Strategy: How to Win

I hope this post has given you some fresh strategy ideas on how to win Wingspan!

It’s a board game that keeps me coming back for more. There’s no wonder it won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres for best connoisseur game of the year!

If you play Wingspan as often as I do, you know that the pieces scatter everywhere (even when stored in baggies!). This beautiful storage insert made from birch plywood with bird engravings on Etsy may be just the thing you need to save you time and hassle!

For more Wingspan upgrades and accessories ideas, see my article! Or for more eggcellent games like Wingspan, see my roundup in 11 Fun Games like Wingspan!

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Wingspan on Steam

About This Game

Features

Relaxing strategy card game where your goal is to discover and attract the best birds.

Single player and multiplayer modes for up to five players.

Based on award winning, competitive, card-driven, engine-building board game.

Hundreds of unique, animated birds with their real life sound recordings.

Multiple ways to accumulate points with birds, bonus cards and end-of-round goals.

The officially licensed digital adaptation of Wingspan, the winner of the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres board game award.You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats. Each habitat focuses on a key aspect of the growth of your preserves.In Wingspan up to 5 players compete to build up their nature preserves in a limited number of turns. Each beautiful bird that you add to your preserve makes you better at laying eggs, drawing cards, or gathering food. Many of the 170 unique birds have powers that echo real life: your hawks will hunt, your pelicans will fish, and your geese will form a flock.

Wingspan (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Artists: Anna Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Beth Sobel

Players: 1-5 (While Wingspan does have a solo mode, as most Stonemaier games do, I will be focusing on the multi-player experience)

Time: 40-70 Minutes

Times Played: 5

Every day, more and more games are released into the wild, both in idea and physical form. In order for one to stand out from the rest of the pack, more and more publishers are leaning on fantastic production and special values to their devoted fans for that bump, for that something extra to stand out from the rest.

One publisher that does this better than most is Stonemaier Games. Jamey Stegmaier has built a devoted following from his days of running Kickstarters to now selling via his own website directly. He even has a “Champion Program” that grants those who pay the yearly $12 fee, early free delivery of the newest Stonemaier titles as they become available. He produces beautiful games and supports his community of fans. So everytime there is a Stonemaier release, it will be the topic du jour for the weeks leading up to and after release. This cycle’s topic du jour is Wingspan, a competitive engine building, card game of bird watching and collecting.

Wingspan comes to us from designer Elizabeth Hargrave, whose only other design credit is for a small PnP game which won the 2018 Button Shy “Gen Can’t” design contest, Tussie-Mussie. Whereas that title was minimalist with only 18 cards, Wingspan is a lot more than that. It’s over 170 unique cards full of birds, the box is full of some cardboard, and then even more cardboard and even some wooden bird eggs to top it all off. Wingspan is definitely a big box production. If you want, you can even turn some of that cardboard into wood via a Meeple Source upgrade pack.

In the game, every player has a player board, and that player board has three rows for cards that are five columns wide, meaning each row can house five cards. These rows represent different habitats for your birds — forest, grassland and wetlands. Each of those habitats will hold birds, but they also will work as your action spaces as well. There are four actions that you can take in the game (the first action plays a bit differently than the second to fourth actions):

Play a bird card from your hand: It’s as simple as it sounds. If you have bird in hand that you would like to play out to your player board, you pay the food required to attract that bird and place it in the appropriate habitat. The spots furthest to the left are of no extra cost, but as you work your way to the right, there is an Egg cost to playing bird cards as well. Gain food: Food is represented by dice, there are five of them in the game that are rolled to start and will be re-rolled when the food supply runs out. To gain food, you place one of your action cubes on the left-most empty space on your player board and you do what it tells you. Far left you take one die worth of food from the supply and remove that die from the pool, the further right, your options increase. Lay eggs: Same as above, you place your action cube on the left most available space and gain that many eggs to place on birds on your player board. Two eggs at the far left, up to four at the far right. Draw bird cards: Also surprisingly the same as above, place your action cube on the left most available space and gain as many cards as shown, increasing in number the further right the space is.

The catch of this game is when doing actions 2-4, you also move your action cube left one space at a time after completing an action, you stop at any birds that are already on your board in the row you have chosen and you may activate any special actions on the cards that are in brown. Some birds don’t have any, they are usually high value cards points wise, some have pink actions, those are triggered when others take a specific action and some actions are taken when the bird is played and have no actions thereafter.

After everyone has completed all of their actions in a round, eight in that first round, there is a quick reset and a scoring. Each game has four random scoring opportunities that are revealed at the beginning of the game, one is scored at the end of each round. One side of the round scoring board allows for competitive scoring, where first is going to get more than second and on down the line. The other side of the board is for less competitive games, where how you do is in your control. To score these, each round you place an action cube where you score that round. This means that the next round, you will have fewer actions to take. The first round the players will have eight actions, second round seven, and then six in the third and five in the final round.

At the end of the game you are going to score several things — first off, the birds on your player board, then any bonus scoring cards you have (everyone gets one to keep at the beginning of the game) are scored, along with points for your end-of-round bonuses. After those, the players will gain one point each for any eggs still on their player board, any birds tucked under other birds on their player board, and any food that is stored on a bird card on their player board. Surprise! The player with the most points wins!

Wingspan is a game that does everything that it purports to do, it works smoothly and apart from about a dozen or so errors on the cards it’s a well put together production. The rulebook, while it seems to be organized to not be user friendly, has all the information present and it is spelled out clearly, I really don’t recall anything we questioned that wasn’t answered in the rule book or the Appendix. It even comes complete with a Quick Reference Guide to get you into the game and running even faster, but do yourself a favor and read the rule book as well, it will all make more sense.

The art is subjectively beautiful, if maybe a bit disjointed, as the cards don’t really match the player boards and it can be someone jarring to cover up part of your player board with a card that stands out quite a bit, but maybe that’s the point, you don’t want the cards to blend in with the player board environment, since in theory you are going to want to remember the cards are there when you activate a row, but aesthetically it can be a bit jarring. The production throughout is fantastic, the rule books are linen finish, the cards surprisingly aren’t though. The dice are nice wooden dice with distinctive graphic design on them to easily tell what they grant. The extras are nice as well, some custom Stonemaier bit trays, only four when five would have been nice, but I get it. There is a nice plastic tray for all of the cards to rest safely in while being stored and that tray also doubles as a display for the cards during the game, There is a nice cardboard dice tower that looks like a bird feeder. All of this really makes the game stand out on the table.

So why is it that gameplay doesn’t stand out as much as physical production? Most of the actions of the birds are going to just be different variations of other cards, so while there are 170 distinct and unique cards, after a bit they will seem only unique in art and bird type. Sure they grant different things, one may grant seeds or one may grant rodents, but they start to feel a bit same-y after a couple plays. There is very little interaction here among the players. The pink powers that can be activated once in between your turns are about the only things that can affect anyone else, other than possibly hate drafting a bird or two if you figure out a goal card or what a player is trying to do, or taking the food dice that are either/or options to leave fewer choices. Everything seems to be a positive reinforcement here, who knew competitive bird collectors were so friendly. The rule book even tells you that “Players should help each other notice when a bird with a pink power should be activated”. So really, there is no sense of urgency, no way to thwart your opponents whose Chickadees and Nuthatches are gathering four seed each time they take the gather food action. So while Wingspan is indeed a “competitive” game, it’s strictly you, maximizing your score on your player board. This will definitely appeal to some people in the gaming sphere, but for me in a game like this, it’s a negative. I want to be able to force you to adapt and change your plans through actions I take.

Those pink action birds are also kind of a gamble, your opponents don’t have to trigger any cards, it’s optional to do so, so there have been games where we’ve played a couple of those birds and then no one triggers them. Now, most of the time it would give a benefit to both players to trigger, but they don’t have to, so you’ve played what is usually a low scoring bird that offers very little benefit to you in hopes of certain cards coming out, or your opponents even triggering them. 170 cards may not seem like a lot, but you only see a fraction of them each game, even with 4-5 players.

Speaking of player counts, Wingspan plays and feels exactly the same at two player, as it does at three, four or five. There is nothing different about how they play other than in the higher player counts, you are going to have more downtime between your turns. Your Pink Bird actions will still only activate one time in between your turns, no matter how many players may trigger them in between.

Wingspan can really suffer from “card digging”. You have certain goals to attain, both public and private, but with only three cards showing in the offer, you more than likely will have to top deck, or keep drawing cards until you find ones that work for what you are going for. There are reasons to have a lot of cards in hand, and there is no hand limit, but still, card digging is one of my biggest pet peeves in these types of games. The wetlands are made for this action and lots of Water type birds will grant you more cards as you go. But if you are looking for that specific type to fulfill something and they never come out for you, it can be awfully frustrating. I understand that’s the nature of these engine building games that use cards, you can’t just always get what you want and you have to adapt at times, but when a game has specific goals for scoring at the end of each round and points are always tight, it can make for very unsatisfying situations in game.

In our game group, we throw the word “fine” out to describe a lot of games, sometimes in jest and other times as kind of one of those damning words. Wingspan is really just “fine,” there is nothing inherently wrong with it. I almost wish there was some kind of glaring mistake in design, that would at least give it some uniqueness. But what you end up getting from Wingspan in that hour or so of playing is a lighter “engine-builder” than Terraforming Mars and a heavier “engine-builder” than Gizmos, but that’s where the comparisons stop as those two games have managed to make themselves stand out in their weight class. Wingspan almost seems to revel in its middle of the roadness, its lack of anything that makes it distinct from anything else, other than the fact that it’s a grand production for a game about collecting birds.

Thoughts from the Opinionated Gamers

Alan H: I have played about 6 times now with different groups, as it is the game in demand. Part of this the publisher – it’s the new Stonemaier- while the gameplay is easy to teach and pickup, so new players absorb the rules and options quickly. Finally, there’s the bird and the images, which are a great selling point for the game. It’s not the best game of 2019, even published to date, but it is an easy game to introduce and people who like lightweight games will enjoy it.

In my groups in England, the birdie puns have been flying (oops, another one) around. This enlivens the interaction and so far the game has been enjoyed but not loved in my groups. Even better would be a British birds set, but perhaps there are other areas of the world that may be explored next.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

I Love It!

I Like it. Alan H

Neutral. Brandon K

Not for me…

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