Wingspan is a wildly popular board game that was released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games. It was designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and features beautiful illustrations by Ana Maria Martinez, Natalia Rojas, and Beth Sobel. Wingspan has received critical acclaim and won several major board game awards, including the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres. But what makes Wingspan so beloved by gamers? Here are some of the key reasons why Wingspan has achieved such success.
Gorgeous Artistic Style
One of the most immediately striking things about Wingspan is its artistic style. The game features 170 unique bird cards illustrated with beautiful watercolor artwork. Each bird feels distinctive with charming character designs full of personality. The overall visual design is clean and minimalist, with intuitive iconography and appealing fonts. This makes the game highly approachable and pleasurable to look at during play. The vibrant bird art engages players and draws them into the theme.
Innovative Card-Driven Engine Building Gameplay
Wingspan’s gameplay centers around engine building mechanics focused on card combos. On their turn, players take actions like gathering food tokens, drawing cards, or playing birds from their hand to their own personal player board. The bird cards have abilities that let you chain combos, such as getting more food to play more cards. As you build your engine, your card combos become more powerful. This creates a satisfying gameplay loop of taking actions, expanding your possibilities, and chaining bigger combos turn after turn. The mechanics have an ingenious card-driven design.
Appealing Birdwatching Theme
Wingspan’s theme revolves around attracting birds to wildlife preserves. This nature theme has wide appeal as an uplifting subject. Birds also make for fun and colorful characters to populate the game. The 170 unique bird cards are based on real-life bird species, complete with scientific name, habitat info, and bird facts. This gives the game an educational angle. The theme integrates closely with mechanics through bird food types, nesting rewards, eggs, tucked cards, and end-of-round goals related to birds. Overall, it’s just a charming theme that is family-friendly.
Strategic Depth Despite Simple Rules
Wingspan is easy to learn, thanks to the simple core rules. But within the straightforward gameplay framework lies compelling strategic depth. As an engine builder, it offers many satisfying optimization puzzles. Key actions like playing bird cards or gaining food tokens offer tough choices. You need to sequence plays properly, set up combos, take advantage of end-of-round goals, and balance short versus long-term value. Despite the family-weight rules, there are many bird card synergies and combo lines to discover. This makes Wingspan strategically engaging for experienced gamers while remaining accessible.
Colorful Player Boards for Table Presence
Wingspan makes great use of visually striking individual player boards. These boards prominently organize your bird cards, food tokens, and eggs. The large boards have helpful bird habitats marked with silhouettes to plan your card combos. They provide satisfying table presence and visual appeal. Seeing your player board fill up with colorfully illustrated bird cards feels rewarding. The boards also keep components well organized during gameplay, with clear spaces for food types and card playing. This functional board design contributes greatly to the gameplay experience.
Variety in Set Collection
Collecting sets of birds is a core part of the satisfying engine building loop. The 170 unique bird cards provide great variety and discovery potential across games. Birds are grouped into categories like waterfowl or songbirds that combo well together. The rarer powerful birds require specific habitats and food costs, incentivizing building your engine towards getting those cards. Between common birds, rare birds, and food types, there are many viable paths and set collection strategies to pursue. This makes set collection engaging throughout multiple plays.
Conclusion
In summary, Wingspan succeeds through an appealing blend of artwork, theme, accessibility, strategic gameplay, and satisfying mechanics. The gorgeous artistic presentation pulls you into a relaxing nature theme. The card-driven engine building strikes a perfect balance between simple rules and strategic depth. Smoothly interlocking mechanisms like feeding birds, playing bird cards, combos, and end-round goals create a fulfilling optimization puzzle. For both casual gamers and seasoned hobbyists, Wingspan offers a thoroughly enjoyable experience showcasing excellence in board game design. It is no surprise that Wingspan has taken flight to become one of the most acclaimed board games in recent years. With so many well-executed elements seamlessly integrated together into a beautiful package, Wingspan fully deserves its widespread acclaim and success.
Awards | Year |
---|---|
Kennerspiel des Jahres | 2019 |
Dice Tower Game of the Year | 2019 |
Tabletop Gaming Accessory of the Year | 2019 |
Detailed Overview of Wingspan Gameplay
Bird Cards
At the heart of Wingspan are the 170 unique bird cards, each illustrated with vibrant artwork and bird facts. Birds have food costs in the form of 1-3 food types: insect, seed, fish. Powerful birds require more specific costs like only fish. Birds provide powerful combo abilities like drawing more cards or getting more food. The abilities encourage chaining card plays in an engine building loop. Birds also provide end of round bonuses to eggs, cards, or food based on their nest type.
Player Boards and Bird Habitats
Player boards have bird habitats with card spaces organized into wetlands, grasslands, and forests. Each habitat matches certain bird types, incentivizing you to collect those sets. The boards keep your cards, food tokens, eggs, and end-of-round bonuses neatly organized. Seeing your engine fill up the board feels satisfying.
Actions
On your turn, you take one of four actions:
- Play a bird card: Pay its food cost to add it to a habitat on your board and use its abilities.
- Gain food tokens: Get 1-3 food tokens of insect, seed, fish types.
- Draw cards: Draw 1-3 cards from the deck, adding diversity to your hand.
- Lay eggs: Get free eggs by playing bird cards that lay eggs as bonuses.
Chaining the actions in a smart sequence lets you build powerful engines and card combos.
End of Round Scoring
After taking actions, end of round scoring happens. You gain:
- Points for birds in your habitats
- Eggs for birds that provide eggs as end-of-round bonuses
- Bonus cards for birds that let you draw extra cards
There are also public end-of-round goal bonuses for things like having the most birds of one type.
Flow of Gameplay
Gameplay follows this general flow:
- Take one of four actions to play birds, get food, draw cards, or lay eggs
- Use your new birds to combo abilities and chain bigger actions
- End of round scoring happens, gain points and bonuses
- New public goals are revealed, reset for next round
Over multiple rounds, your engine grows stronger through card combos, working towards the end-game bonuses.
Component | Purpose |
---|---|
Bird cards | Main card play with combos and engine building |
Food tokens | Currency to play bird cards |
Player boards | Spaces to organize cards, resources, bonuses |
End-of-round goals | Public goals that shape your strategy |
Tips and Strategies to Excel at Wingspan
Here are some top tips and strategies to master Wingspan’s engine building gameplay:
Combo Chaining is Key
The heart of Wingspan is chaining card abilities together in clever ways. Aim to sequence plays that let each bird unlock new possibilities. The key is combining birds that generate resources like food or card draw with birds that spend those resources. Time these combos well across rounds to build momentum.
Balance Short and Long-Term Goals
Maximize points not just from single-turn combos but sustained engine power over multiple rounds. Having a balanced engine with card draw, resources, and point generators is more valuable than quick bursts. Build foundations early that set up future combos.
Adapt to Public End-of-Round Goals
Keep an eye on upcoming public goals each round. If you see eggs or specific bird types will be valuable next round, work towards those goals with the birds you draft and play. Shifting tactics each round amplifies your engine’s scoring potential.
Card Advantage Wins Out
Engines stall without a steady influx of new bird cards. Prioritize drafting birds with card draw abilities or end-of-round card bonuses. Even small increments of extra card advantage add up. Use card management tactics like dumping weak cards before drawing.
Specialize Your Engine
Build synergies by specializing your engine around certain food types, habitats, card abilities, or end-of-round bonuses. For example, load up wetlands tocombo wetland bird effects. While diversifying helps with flexibility, specialization builds focused power.
Control the Food Supply
Starve opponents of key food resources they need to play powerful birds. For example, hoard fish tokens if opponents have ocean birds in hand. Also prevent others from utilizing public end-of-round food bonuses by consuming those foods first. Control the food and your engine will soar higher.
Wingspan Expansions Overview
Stonemaier Games has released two popular expansions for Wingspan that add variety and content:
Wingspan European Expansion
The Wingspan European Expansion includes new European bird cards, components, and some gameplay additions like birdfeeder dice and goals. Key features:
- 81 new European bird cards
- New player mats and eggs
- Birdfeeder dice for randomness
- New end-of-round goals
This expansion adds the most content and variety to mix up play. The new birds create fresh combo potential. Overall, it smoothly integrates with the base game to expand overall depth and replayability.
Wingspan Oceania Expansion
The oceania-themed expansion adds birds native to Australia and Oceania. It includes:
- 59 new bird cards
- New player mats
- Nectar as a new food type
- Ways to copy opponent abilities
This expansion has a smaller scope focused on the Oceania theme. The nectar food type and copying mechanics add neat twist to engine building tactics. Oceania harmonizes well with the base game and first expansion for even more variety.
Upcoming Titles
Stonemaier Games has announced some upcoming Wingspan projects:
- Wingspan Swift-Start Promo Pack – A small promo adding 20 new cards
- Wingspan Second Edition – Revised version of the base game
- Wingspan Digital App – Digital adaptation of the game
Wingspan fans have much to look forward to! The digital app in particular will make Wingspan more convenient to play remotely. Stonemaier continues supporting and expanding their hit game.
Expansion | Key Features |
---|---|
European Expansion | New birds, goals, birdfeeder dice |
Oceania Expansion | Oceania theme, new food, copying |
Upcoming | Swift promo, Second Edition, Digital app |
Wingspan Accessories and Merchandise
The popularity of Wingspan has led Stonemaier Games and others to produce many accessories, accessoriesories, and merchandise items for fans to buy:
Custom Trays and Tokens
Third party companies like Top Shelf Gamer make metal resource tokens and acrylic trays to organize pieces. These improve game aesthetics and component quality. Popular options include etched metal food tokens and acrylic bird trays.
Card Sleeves
Card sleeves from companies like Mayday and Sleeve Kings allow protecting your bird cards. These come in packs matching the game’s artwork. Sleeves prevent card wear from repeated plays.
Playmats
Playmats like the Wingspan Gaming Birdsong Player Mat provide nice table presence with art from the game. These rollup mats have spaces to organize cards and components. They also protect your table from spills or scratches during game nights.
Plush Birds
For fans who want some cuddly birds, Sanshee makes cute plush versions of the Blue Jay and House Finch from Wingspan’s card art. These display nicely on a shelf and capture the game’s appeal.
Apparel and Home Goods
The Stonemaier Games webshop sells various apparel like t-shirts, hoodies, and leggings featuring the Wingspan logo and art style. There are also home items like mugs, posters, phone cases, and pins. These extend the game’s theme and branding into everyday lifestyle products.
Upcoming Items
Fans can look forward to more Wingspan merchandise coming soon like playmats, metal coins, enamel pins, and an art book compiling the bird illustrations. The Digital app may also unlock digital avatars, backgrounds, and other microtransactions.
Accessory | Description |
---|---|
Resource tokens | Metal or acrylic food tokens |
Card sleeves | Protective sleeves for bird cards |
Playmats | Tabletop mats with game art |
Plush birds | Cute plush versions of in-game birds |
Apparel | Shirts, hoodies, leggings |
Home goods | Mugs, posters, pins |
Conclusion
In conclusion, Wingspan rightfully deserves its wild success and acclaim as one of the best new board games in recent years. The game excels in all areas including gorgeous artwork, smooth engine building gameplay, and a charming birdwatching theme. Clever card combos drive satisfying optimization puzzles with many paths to victory. Straightforward rules make Wingspan family-friendly and approachable while still offering strategic depth for hobbyists. Overall, Wingspan perfectly balances accessibility, visual presentation, theming, and engaging mechanics. The result is an instant classic board game managing to appeal to casual and experienced gamers alike. With continued expansions and accessories further enhancing replayability, it is clear Wingspan’s widespread popularity will continue taking flight for years to come. For any fans of engine building card games or lovely natural themes, Wingspan is sure to deliver a stellar gameplay experience.