Wingspan

Happy boxing day everyone. Today Hector, Amanda and I sat down to play a game of Wingspan, with the European expansion. Wingspan is one of those games which I had played at a convention when it was released and then was unable to find for months because initial demand (and currently, for the expansions) vastly exceeded supply. It’s also one of our most frequently played games over the past year.

Wingspan is a Stonemaier game and is typical of their games, it manages to be extremely overproduced without driving costs through the roof. I assume their extremely slow production schedule is what allows them to do this, as every game I’ve played from them has outstanding components but doesn’t cost more, and often costs less, than similar sized games with inferior components. The art is excellent, the cards are top notch stock, the round goals card is textured, the rulebook is amazing, the eggs look way to much like Cadbury mini eggs and I want to eat them, and so on.

Despite the production value, this is also probably one of the most popular games to “pimp out”, with various deluxe components and upgrades from around the internet. We use several custom bird tokens in our own set, but I have seen ridiculous things, up to and including full on bird’s nests to store the eggs. The only exception to the great components is the “bird feeder” dice tower, which although gorgeous to look at, was obviously designed by someone who had never tried to toss dice into a tower before, it’s way too small. Apart from that the components are absolutely outstanding, and it includes something that ought to be mandatory in games; an illustration on the side showing you how to neatly place all the components back in the box.

Wingspan is probably the quintessential engine building game, players use actions to gain food, use it to play birds, as well as lay eggs and draw more birds. Each bird in a habitat increases the effectiveness of that habitat’s action, allowing players to specialize or diversify as suits their strategy. Most birds provide some sort of bonus, each unique, and have a number of eggs they can hold in their nest. This is repeated for four rounds, with bonus scoring each round, and each player losing an action each round. Final scoring includes the value of played birds, eggs in nests, cached food, tucked cards behind birds and bonus cards.

I like engine builders a great deal and although Wingspan is absolutely stellar in both components and a blast to play, it has a some flaws that keep it from dethroning the king of engine builders; Terraforming Mars. The biggest flaw is the luck factor. For a game based on optimizing your engine, there is simply too much randomness in the birds. Where in theory each card is useful and there are no objectively bad birds to draw, there are just so many with such varying abilities that it’s possible to just end up with nothing that is suitable for the round goals or your engine. Because the action economy is so tight in this game, it’s not easy to recover from wasted actions on a strategy that you invested in but then don’t end up with the right cards for. I’ve had a dozen games at least where I’ve gone all in on trying to score my bonus cards and not gotten a single point from any of them, only to be trampled by an opponent who happened to draw birds that match the “round goals”. The massive amount of unique birds only compounds this, by making it impossible to know if a strategy will pan out or not.

With that being said, Wingspan also has some qualities that will make it hit the table more often than other engine builders, even if I like them more. The first is the timing, it has a much shorter playtime than many other games of it’s caliber, and the tight action economy and limited rounds make it fairly consistent in it’s length. The second is the theme. It’s a lot easier to get a younger gamer or casual gamer to try out a deeper game when it doesn’t have the typical fantasy or sci-fi theme that is usually deep in the realm of the nerds. The gorgeous art and components help with this, with the hundreds of bird pictures looking like something out of an old “guide to North American birds” or something similar. This is the type of game people walk past and stop to ask about. I actually missed out on Terraforming Mars for months after it’s release because I thought the board looked so bland, there was no danger of that here.

As far as the two player game goes, it is my preferred way to play. It’s fast and tight with the turns, the pacing is good and turns flow easily into each other. With the exception of a couple cards in the expansions, there is very little player interaction, so while it’s perfectly functional with more players, it adds very little to the game experience.

Overall I give Wingspan a recommendation to pretty much everyone, with the exception of hardcore engine builder fans who want a deep strategy. The vast variety of unique cards, without predetermined goals in wingspan limits strategy and puts the focus on tactics, and you will just occasionally be buggered by not getting the right cards. On the other hand, as an introduction or engine builders, a deeper than average family game or just a fun way to attract people to your table, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Wingspan.

Note: The Canadian geese and owl meeples seen in this particular review were purchased from Meeple Source and do not come standard with the game. I do enjoy this game, but as Kage said, it is a quick game that has a lot of luck around it. I too have lost countless games trying to meet expectations on my goal cards that I simply should have ignored and tried to score in another manner. I do think this would be a great beginner game for people looking to break out of the Monopoly/Life mindset.

The Teal Deer

Game: Wingspan
Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave
Price: $55
Players: 2-4
2 player Scaling: Excellent, my preferred way to play
Playtime: 30 minutes per player
Estimated Lifespan: This one’s a keeper
Average Play Frequency: Multiple times per month
Complexity: 3.5
Components: 5
Bang for Buck: 6!
Value for Time: 4.5
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 5