Wingspan :: Quick Overview
Publisher: Stonemaier Games || Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave || Ages: 10+
In Wingspan (@stonemaiergames) you are bird aficionados discovering and attracting birds to your aviary. Placing them in their proper habitat creates a synergy as they activate each others abilities to showcase their true potential.
On your turn you either place a bird to your player mat or activate one of the three habitats. Playing a bird from your hand costs the food shown on the card and must be placed in it’s correct habitat (forest, grassland, wetland). In the photos I say meadows and lakes.
When activating a habitat, you pay the egg cost (listed at the top of each column), gain the benefit in the first (leftmost) spot not covered by a bird, then activate any abilities listed on all birds previously played in that habitat row.
The different habitats gain you food, eggs, or more bird cards. You gain points for your birds and any eggs, food, or tucked cards associated with them. There are also achievement goals at the end of each round to strive for in order to gain more points. Examples include number of birds in a habitat, or number of eggs in a type of nest. Lastly you have secret goal cards that gain you points based on the birds you have played.
This tableau builder gets tighter as rounds go on as your number of actions decrease, but also ramps up as you activate more cards and chain more abilities per turn. A strategic game with a beautiful theme and presence.
Wingspan contains 170 beautifully illustrated unique bird cards each with a little fact about it written at the bottom of the card. You can’t help but stare at the bird and read the informational tidbit every time you collect a card. Sometimes to the point where someone says “hey, it’s your turn!”. With spring starting to show itself we find our school lessons focus a lot on nature and a unit on birds is always a fun one. we love the way they incorporate educational facts on each bird card, all 170 different real bird cards (a feat in itself). This makes Wingspan great for gameschooling, where games are used to supplement schooling material. In this case subject material regarding nature (perfect for this time of the year!). Although this game isn’t one for young kids due to it’s gameplay complexity, it’s a nice supplement to nature lessons for kids 10+.
Wingspan has been acclaimed for it’s theme and visual design, as well as praised for what it’s done for the growth of the industry as it has been used to bring in new people to the modern board game hobby. It is an interesting tableau builder where you have cards in display that can trigger and create multiple chain reactions (part of the strategic fun of tableau builders). The basic actions are simple. Play cards (paying cost) or activate a row action (gaining resources and cards) and then triggering all card abilities in that row. Although the actions are simple the connections between cards is a bit difficult to grasp because cards have multiple facets to consider – type of nest, wingspan length, eggs capacity, and the multitude of various action triggers. This makes the game much heavier than it’s appearance and harder for us to play with kids unless they have experience with tableau builders (even young teens higher than the 10+ age recommendation not familiar with the style of game may have trouble). Even for myself, grasping the subtle synergies between cards was difficult, but mind you tableau building is not my strongest suit. And with 170 cards, finding those ability synergies can be difficult.
I think individuals who love tableau builders will love Wingspan. Getting a good chain of actions to trigger feels so good. However for me, the connections weren’t as apparent as I get with some other tableau builders I love, like Terraforming Mars and Underwater Cities. We feel like it’s a game that’s hard for a novice board gamer, but we could be wrong considering how well it’s done cultivating new gamers.
Thank you @jameystegmaier for giving us the opportunity to try it by providing this review copy.
Note: We got these beautiful custom food wooden tokens from @momomonsterco
These are some of the most beautiful tokens I have seen. I’m a sucker for good art design so I usually prefer a well made wooden token over a molded mini. Definitely check out their online store, you can find the link in their account.