Wing It

The board game Wingspan was only released this year, yet it has already soared (ha!) to the Top 50 on BoardGameGeek. Fortunately, this is a fact I was unaware of before playing it for the first time. Fortunately, because while it is a decent game (and very good looking), I'm not sure it would have lived up to those sky-high (ha!) expectations, had I brought them with me to the game table.

In Wingspan, each player is cultivating a nature preserve, trying to attract a variety of birds to score points. In mechanics, it's an engine-building game that revolves around gathering resources and drafting cards. You use each of your turns to take one action -- selecting from an array of face-up bird cards to add to your hand, gathering food (in five different types) that you'll ultimately need to play a new bird card, or taking egg tokens (also needed to "hatch" new birds).

Each player has a tableau in front of them, three rows by five columns. Each row relates to one of those three core actions, and gets filled by cards from one of three different categories of bird (though some birds belong to more than one category). Columns are filled left to right, and as you play birds, you unlock better versions of the game's core actions: you'll collect more food with one type of bird, draw more cards with another, or hatch more eggs with the third.

Bird cards themselves also have game text. Some trigger effects when you play them. Others have reusable powers that occur each time you take the action tied to their row. Still others are triggered once each round when an opponent takes a specified action. It's the last two categories that gives Wingspan its engine-like gameplay -- piling on free bonuses to basic actions allows you to get much more done, much more quickly.

There are a large number of bird cards with a wide variety of abilities that play around within the game's core rules set. From this huge deck, you can create a number of satisfying card combos -- to an extent that you get a sensation not unlike a deck-building game when you play. But it's also a game that requires advanced planning. With one action on each of your turns, and a fixed number of turns across four phases of the game, you need to plan in advance. You'll take exactly 26 actions before the game is over, and you must maximize them to keep your engine running, score end-of-phase points, and outpace your opponents.

Still, because you only have one thing to do each turn, individual turns pass quickly. Even with the need to look ahead, the choices feel fairly easy to make. Even when you play with 5 players, the game keeps a fairly brisk pace.

Now, is it Top 50 material, as BoardGameGeek would have you believe? I'd need to play it several more times to be convinced of that. Which leads me back to where I started: I'm sure glad I wasn't expecting that good a game when I first played it. But I would say it merits at least a B+, and maybe better. (I'll see if my opinion rises as I play it more.) With every turn coming down to just three possible actions (or playing a new bird), I do wonder how the strategy will hold up over repeated play. But only time will tell.

From what I hear, Wingspan is tough to get your hands on. The publishers failed to anticipate demand and printed a short first run. (Some people online theorize this was done intentionally to create buzz; you decide.) But if you can pick up a copy from somewhere (at a regular price), you might want to consider it.