Wingspan

Today's review is of the 2019 release, Wingspan. For 1-5 players, it takes 40-70 minutes.

Overview

You are a bird enthusiast, seeking to attract the best (or most synergistic) birds to your wildlife preserves. To do so, you need to balance playing bird cards, obtaining food, laying eggs, and drawing cards. You have four rounds to do so . . . can you finish with the most points?

In the first round of Wingspan, each player has eight actions, taken one at a time in clockwise order. The possible [simplified] actions are:

• play a bird: play a bird card from your hand to leftmost available slot in the appropriate habitat (woodlands, meadow, wetlands) of your tableau by paying the appropriate cost(s). Costs are some type and number of food (seeds, grains, fish, mice, invertebrates) and potentially eggs, depending on the column.
• gain food: choose the leftmost available slot in your woodlands row and choose the shown number of dice from the birdfeeder, trading them in for the equivalent food tokens. If the birdfeeder is empty, re-roll the dice in it. Then, go down the row (from right to left) and activate any "brown" powers of the birds in that row.
• lay eggs: choose the leftmost available slot in your meadow row and place the shown number of eggs distributed across any number of your birds. Then, go down the row (from right to left) and activate any "brown" powers of the birds in that row.
• draw cards: choose the leftmost available slot in your wetlands row and draw the shown number of cards. Then, go down the row (from right to left) and activate any "brown" powers of the birds in that row.

Each round has some bonus (randomly selected at game start). Once all players have activated all of their actions for a round, rank the players by the bonus indicated, then take one action cube from each to place in the corresponding rank slot. These will earn points at game's end.

game in progress; image from here

Rounds 2-4 proceed in similar fashion, but each time, players will have one fewer action. Final points are tallied after round 4. Players earn points for the total value of bird cards played, eggs they have, cards placed under or food tokens placed on birds in the tableau (some abilities enable this), end-of-round bonus rankings, and one or more personal bonus cards that can be drawn throughout the game. Highest point total wins! (You can learn more about how to play by watching this video.)

Review

This game is highly touted by friends and critics alike, so I was excited to finally try it. It is solid. Described by the publisher as a "competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game," it reminded me of Everdell or even Splendor in that you need to balance the four actions, as each requires one or more elements of the others. (You need birds in each habitat to be successful, as each provides resources you will need.) The art is wonderful and variety (170+ bird cards) impressive. And it is even educational, teaching some basic facts about each bird on the cards. While it seems less immersive than Everdell, I suspect its educational component is the reason people go crazy for this game; it is rare indeed to have a mechanically solid offering in the 'educational' games category.

Rating: A-