Board Game Night: Wingspan

The MEGAforce was down to just two this week, but we ploughed on and tried Grim's latest game, Wingspan by Stonemaier Games.

The end game

How to Win

The aim of the game is to have the best collection of wild birds, measured by a value given on each bird card, plus a couple of personal goals drawn randomly at the beginning (one of mine was to try and get lots of birds with eggs on their cards at the end of the game, Grim was collecting birds with small wingspans, nominally passerines). There are also changing goals each round for extra points, and some birds have the ability to cache food or 'tuck' other bird cards - presumably they predate them or perhaps mob them and drive them off.

Game Play 

Each turn players take it in turns to either play a bird card in the relevant habitat (costing food, and potentially eggs), collect food (randomly rolled with special dice in the 'bird box/feeder' dice tower) from the forest, lay eggs from the grasslands or draw bird cards from the wetlands. Doing any of these last three actions also triggers abilities that any birds played in that habitat have.

The game is played over four rounds, each consisting of a number of turns, initially eight, reducing by one each round.

Stand outs 

The action economy system is great. Using small cubes to gain actions, but losing one each round really focuses you on your endgame.

The 'bird box/food tray' is a fun addition. Not completely necessary, although you do need to differentiate between food dice available and those which have been claimed, which it does admirably. Fortunately it does fit in the game box simply by separating the tower from the tray.

Minor grumbles

We found the starter deck, designed to help new players learn the game with four pre determined turns of the first round, more of a hinderance than a help. But we've learned that lesson, and we'll probably not use them with future new players.

For a game with an ecological focus, there's a lot of plastic. Plastic eggs, plastic trays for the various components.  There has been a move towards wooden or card components in many games recently, that would have been appropriate here.

And being an American game, the birds are all North American birds, though some birds do have a wider range than just North America. I'd like to see a more international supplement.

*EDIT* apparently there is a European supplement, along with several others.

Overall 

There's more to the game than my brief description, and initially it seemed rather complicated, but by round three we were pretty sure of play and were building strategies. 

I'm certainly looking forward to playing again, hopefully with the rest of MEGAforce, although it did play very well as a two player game.

I'll place this firmly in A Tier, with the understanding that this may move up or down slightly with repeated play.