You Played a Game About Birds? - Wingspan, Reviewed

I had an opportunity to teach the game Wingspan to 4 new people last night, and it was, as usual, a confusing delight.

It is a rare game that marries innovative mechanics with top-notch visuals and good production values, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the latter is so good that surely they must have scrimped on the former, but this is not so.

The cornerstone of the game is a beautifully illustrated deck of 170 cards, each depicting a different bird and containing a tremendous amount of information about them - where they live, the type of nest they have, and of course, their wingspan.

The cardboard dice tower included in the game is crafted to look like a wooden birdhouse or feeder, with wooden cubes depicting five different food types - this is the currency you will need to acquire in order to put the birds into play. 

Each player gets an equally exquisite board depicting a pastoral scene raging from trees at the top through grasslands in the middle and then wetlands at the bottom. This is the sanctuary each player is attracting an assortment of birds to, with room for five different avians in each habitat. Each row is associated with a different aspect of play, either gathering food, laying eggs or drawing more cards so you have an assortment to choose from. 

Most of the birds played have some sort of additional rule so that after a few turns, nearly every action you take will have other effects cascading off of it, which a cunning player can turn to their advantage. 

In addition to the points you get for adding birds to your sanctuary, you are also rewarded for having those birds lay eggs, and other birds may have special rules that let them cache food, take food from the feeder when it is not their turn. There are even predators who can feed upon random birds drawn from the deck, eating them if their intended victim's wingspan is below a certain threshold. (And then there are scavengers who are rewarded whenever this happens.)

And lastly, there is a bonus objective in each of the 4 rounds of play, rewarding players who perhaps have the most eggs in a certain type of nest, or birds in a certain habitat.

It is not a difficult game to play - there are only four actions to choose from on your turn - but it can be a tricky game to understand, and even the smartest of folks can take a while to come around to truly grokking it in a Heinleinian sense. Strange then, that the last two times I have taught the game, the players who lamented their lack of understanding the most went on to win it on both occasions...

There is not a lot of direct competition in the game, although there can be a certain amount of  'poaching' from the face-up birds that are up for grabs. Each player though is largely responsible for their own fate, and sometimes the order in which they choose to do things can be as critical as the actions themselves. There are even "Automa" rules included to enable solitaire play.

Looking at the birds and their powers and the goals for this and upcoming rounds, you plan and scheme and concoct, aligning your birds with the best possible combinations, like a sort of puzzle or Rube Goldberg machine. Wingspan is sometimes called an 'engine building' game, as each player seeks to combine actions in an efficient way. It sounds more like work than a game when I say it that way, but thankfully it is entertaining too.

Considering that even abstracted, non-violent games are often structured around direct competition or player elimination (I'm looking at you, Monopoly), and how much of my personal game collection is battle-oriented, I can't say enough about how refreshing it was to sit down with friends and take turns perusing and collecting bird cards for - good grief, almost three hours?!

Well, if that isn't an endorsement, what is? I can heartily recommend Wingspan for both lovers of birds and those who appreciate unique game mechanics, and evenings of gentle gaming.