The game gives you tools to mitigate some of this randomness-rev up your card-draw or resource-gathering engines to dig for what you need, for example-but players who want to decide on a strategy at the start of the game and stick to it inflexibly are likely to have a bad time. There’s randomness in the dice and cards you can choose from, and the private “objective cards” that give you an end-game goal to shoot for may or may not align with your starting hand-or with any of your session's end-of-round bonuses. Like Viticulture, another Stonemaier game, Wingspan asks you to roll with the punches. Gaming vets will probably school newbies, but everyone can build something to take pride in. This is an approachable, “gateway-plus” game that provides an accessible entry point into engine-building games while offering fun decisions for seasoned gamers. Early comparisons to other games skewed my expectations a bit, but when I recalibrated and played the game for what it is, I really fell in love with it. My favorite part of engine-building games is the sense of accomplishment you feel when you piece together a particularly clever point-generating machine, with parts that feed into each other and explode in combos that shower you with well-earned rewards. Because of its “medium-weight” designation, I was expecting a little more crunch in the decision-making, a little more complexity in running my three engines. With so many good things going for it, I was surprised that I felt a bit let down by my first play of Wingspan. In the above example, I’d get upwards of eight cards and four points for that same action. So while my first “draw bird card” action of the game might be simply “draw one card,” once my wetlands fill with birds, that action will be much more powerful. But the habitats also cleverly double as action spaces.Įnlarge“Engine building” is a staple mechanic in Euro-style board games-essentially, you start with nothing, but as you build up a collection of different pieces (cards, in this case), your “machine” starts to churn out stuff for free. Birds are represented by cards, which slot into one of three rows on your personal player board the rows represent the three different habitats in your preserve-forest, grassland, and wetland. Wingspan puts you and your friends in the role of bird enthusiasts trying to attract birds to your individual aviaries. How does the game actually play? Bird in the hand Looks can be deceiving, though, and hype is a fickle beast. Even the rulebook has an indulgently sturdy linen finish to it that seems to say, “Sure, we didn’t need to do this, but it’s really nice, right?”

It’s like Easter Sunday threw up on your table and you couldn’t be happier about it. Colorful player boards, a stack of 170 cards with unique (and beautiful) illustrations, pastel plastic eggs so pretty you wish you could eat them, custom wooden dice that nest in an adorable birdfeeder-style dice tower-the game is almost aggressively lovely.

Stonemaier is known for its lavishly produced board games, and Wingspan is a Stonemaier game through and through.

Wingspan game