Stonemaier Games Wingspan Game 2018 Version

🎲 Wingspan (2019)🤓 Elizabeth Hargrave🏭 Stonemaier Games.📝Spark Notes:⚡️Bird collecting⚡️Engine building, resource management⚡️Gather food, attract birds⚡️Lay eggs, achieve objectives.💼Brief Review:🟢Fun, fresh theme🟢Quality components🟢Easy to learn and to teach🟢Good variety and replay-ability🟢Well designed engine-building tracks🟡Bonus card objectives can be unreliable🔴Diminishing action count makes progress unrewarding.🎬Final Take:Wingspan is an approachable entry-level take on the engine-building genre. Players take a variety of actions to attract different birds to their forests, fields, and wetlands, and each bird adds new player abilities or bonuses. You’ll forage for food in the birdhouse, lay eggs in bird nests, and tuck birds under others to create flocks. Each player will have unique bonus cards that will guide which birds they may attempt to attract, and each round has an end-of-round bonus that may guide certain objectives you attempt in order to score points. Beginning actions are slow and unproductive, but as you build your engine your actions create combos that produce significantly more. Each round you lose an action cube, so by the time you’ve built an exciting engine you won’t have many opportunities to cash in on it, unfortunately. Points are scored for each bird attracted, bird tucked in a flock, egg laid, and bonus objective you’ve earned by the end of the game. Overall, Wingspan is a solid light-weight engine builder that requires a certain depth of strategy and thinking ahead, as every move you make can be critical to your performance.

COMPONENTSThis is where this game shines above any other board game.+ The Outer Storage Box is Pretty Solid and Sturdy+ The player mats fold nicely. They're thick and give feel of leather finish.+ The storage tray for cards and smaller storage compartments for food tokens, and eggs is good bonus+ Little eggs are pretty and look like small candies!++ The bird house and wooden dice are awesome! They didn't have to include the card-board dice tower but I'm so glad they did!+ The illustrations on the player mat and all the bird cards is pretty and beautifully done. I do enjoy the little bird trivia for each bird that's included on the bird cards.* The card-board bird tokens are okay.- Now I'm nit-picking but since everything else is so good, if the player cubs could be little birds, that would be amazing!- The play a bird row is pretty narrow. That could have a little width added to it. (but that'd just lead to bigger player mat and then bigger storage box, so may be the reason they didn't do it)GAMEPLAYThis is an engine building game where your actions become stronger as you move to later stages in the game.The game is played over 4 rounds where players take turns placing their tokens on one of the action spaces. These actions are 1) play a bird (in Tree / Grass / Wetland habitat), 2) Gain Food, 3) Lay Egg, 4) Draw Cards. As you take these actions repeatedly the later 3 actions become stronger and stronger as the birds that you play give you special powers which become activated. These powers could be gain additional food, cache food, lay additional eggs, draw additional cards etc.The game also has end of round goals. Which is the only thing to make you pay attention to your opponents as you directly compete for these goals for end of round bonuses. At the end of round you use one of your player cube to mark your position. Thus subsequent rounds give you less turns. In the beginning you have 8 cubes, 2nd round has 7 cubes, then 6 and then 5.The game is equal fun with 2-5 players. Sometimes in worker placement games it happens that player wait for their turn and don't pay attention when other players are playing. But in this game, the turns are fast. You do pay attention to your opponents for end of round goals and also certain bird powers that you have. You may have a bird which gives you extra eggs when the opponent lays eggs. Or opponets themselves could activate some powers where each opponets gains a food token or bird card or an egg. So it's not that you just wait for your turn.GAME DURATIONThe game plays pretty fast. A 2 player game can be completed in 60 mins. And a 4-5 player game can be completed under 2 hours. Both including setup and tear down time.AUTOMA (SINGLE PLAYER)I have tried automa few times. It's pretty good and competitive. You can adjust the automa difficulty level to normal, medium, hard and legendary.CONCLUSION* The game is fairly easy to teach. All the people that I played this game with, loved it and immediately wanted their own copy.* The game is a great gateway to board games, worker placement category, engine building category or Euro games.* The game design is thoroughly play-tested and competitive.* The luck factor is minimal and most of games are very competitive. The first time we played the 2 player game the scores were 70-72. The multiplayer game had scores of 91, 94, 97, and 100.* I highly recommend this game for all levels of experiences, expertise and groups.

Wingspan is a engine building board game that is 1-5 players. Players use cards to attract birds to 1 of 3 habitats. Whoever is able to acquire the highest score in 4 rounds wins the game. There is an Automa (1 player mode) built into the game, but I have not played it.This review is for 2-5 players.If you are seeking a review for Automa, I am sorry, but it will not be here.I haven't bought the European expansion, so this review is only off the base game.Pros-Easy to learn-Geared for both casual and competitive players alike-Beautiful art-Every turn counts-Very skill based. There is very little luck involved.-Friendly game. This games doesn't ruin friendships. Let there will be table talk!-Card synergies-High replay value!Cons-Not enough plastic eggs-Bird feeder dice tower is cheap (still a nice touch).-Every round 4 has a chance to end in the same way. That is everyone laying eggs for easy points.If you like getting around the table with friends and family, look no further and pick yourself up a copy. Yes, it is about birds. Yes, I understand that birds is a "meh" topic to some. Yes, you will run out of plastic eggs to lay. But this game is an amazing game to add to your library of games that will bring you and your friends together to cram some more games in. Seriously, if you are even considering buying this, then buy it. I am glad I did.Note: I bought this game for $54.99 back in Sept. 2019. Keep in mind the price may be high due to high demand. Unless you really want to play the game, do what I did and wait for the next print run.