Stonemaier Games: Wingspan (Base Game) by Elizabeth Hargrave | A Relaxing, Award-Winning Strategy Board Game About Birds for Adults and Family | 1-5 Players, 70 Mins, Ages 14+

I’m not typically a board game enthusiast, but after a coworkers recommendation, I decided to buy this game and after a initial startup, which required a YouTube video watch rather than the instructions inside because the instructions inside did not do a good job explaining it, it was fun. Within 24 hours of owning it we had played two games, one in the evening and then once again right in the morning, because my daughter had so much fun. 10 out of 10. fun game.

No idea how well it plays yet, but the quality is just beautiful! Love the texture of the instructional booklet, love the DICE TOWER OMG!!! And the extra space in the storage container for when I sleeve the cards!! It appears they've thought of everything.

One of the best board games out there. Great for couples’ nights in, great for parties of up to 5 (or 7 if you also buy the Asia expansion), and is also not a massive time investment like a lot of other indie board games.It’s easy to learn, its cards are beautiful, and despite looking complex, it really doesn’t require much more than a little simple math to play. A game takes between 20-60 minutes depending on the number of players and their competency.Ever since I was shown how to play this game I’m obsessed. Also, if you buy the board game, they come with a coupon in the box for %off buying the Digital version on Steam!

Real amazing game and well designed. The whole family can sit down and spend hours playing and learning a lot about birds. Highly recommended!!

I was able to get a copy of this game around Black Friday in 2019 for a good price. Shortly after, from what I remember, it was either sold out or the price was heavily inflated. I tend to wait for games to be more than 40% before purchasing, but I just had this feeling that this game would be worth it. And I was right.REWIND: Ever since I was young I loved playing board games even though I was an only child and I spent hours playing Sorry!, Jumanji, chess, Chinese checkers, Monopoly, etc. all by myself (I would call it research now). And the year culminated at Christmastime when my cousins would all come together and we would play board games together.FAST FORWARD: I played more computer games as I got older and then games on iOS. I found Ticket to Ride or Scotland Yard on iOS and I thought those games were great! Little did I know there were PHYSICAL board games of these games, until my neighborhood friend said he played Ticket to Ride too and brought over the real copy and my mind was blown away.I started sneaking into the toy section at Target and found Pandemic. I acquired some expansions on Amazon and that's where I was for 7 years. I played other games in the mean time but I didn't care to own them, because my friends owned them. I moved out of the country and was busy with school. I graduated and came back and low and behold it was Black Friday!I had to do research for prices for Black Friday and I stumbled on Ars Technica that mentioned Wingspan. I didn't care for birds...but the box was pretty...and what? All the cards had different art on them? That's what sold me.FAST FORWARD again! And here we are 6 months later down a rabbit hole with 80+ games, several game groups (mostly online now due to social distancing), and family who are stuck at home and have no other choice but to play games with me :) I also enjoy birding now and recognize the local birds. A silver lining with Covid is that it is during the Spring so I am able to see multiple different bird species flying around in my suburban backyard which fuels my newfound birding hobby.Pros:1. Wingspan is pretty to look at. Nothing ugly. Even the boring American crow starts to look pretty because it feeds the other birds in your bird "engine" - which is a combination of cards with birds on them that add on powers and help you on your way to victory.2. Even if I lose, I don't mind it because I enjoyed playing.3. It's fun to read the little info tidbit and learn something new on every single card.4. Information is from reputable sources.5. The game is pretty.6. It is relaxing...and at the same time NOT because there are so many possible combinations that could happen your brain cog wheels are always spinning. Or at least mine are.7. It has a solo mode.8. There is a Swift-Start pack - which are separate instruction mats for players with instructions to help everyone as a group learn how to play the game. This is a helpful tool for people who have no idea what they're doing or you want to teach this game to other people.Cons:1. This could potentially lead you to hobbies like board gaming or birding2. If you're a completionist/OCD and you buy this game, know that you're in for at least 5 more expansions3. If you love artsy craftsy stuff and find the fan-made things on Etsy...you might spend more money than what you thought you were going to spend4. The bird feeder dice tower is a cool gimmick. I say gimmick, because I let my dumb 12-year-old cousin put it together and it was frayed before I even played the game for the first time. However, my husband bought me a proper bird house dicetower from Etsy...and after you have one of those, why would you ever go back to that cardboard thing?5. The game tray. It's flimsy plastic...it looks nice...but when you start to plan on sleeving your cards (which I did after I had to hold back from saying anything while tearfully watching Frito fingers manhandle my cards) you end up spending a lot of time trying to figure out which sleeves to buy and if all the cards will fit in the tray...or do you buy a new tray...and the cycle continues.Apparently these cards are American standard card size, because there is a European standard card size. I got the cheapest Mayday sleeves which are also the thinnest, so all the cards still fit in the trays. BUT they feel so thin...and plasticky...They aren't like the NICE sleeves my husband got for Terraforming Mars. ROLL EYES. The cards from Terraforming Mars are wearing out though on the edges and the Wingspan cards are way nicer in quality.SO good luck to you if you choose this dark path toward pretty birds and board game nights.Seriously though, if you think you might like a pretty card game about pretty birds that isn't cartoony and has real information you can learn from, try out Wingspan!

Great game, also considering expansion packs now — but not necessary.

Great expansion. Makes the game a lot more fun with more bird cards!

If that sounds like a game you'd enjoy, then perhaps Wingspan is for you.This game gets major props for it's design: The game pieces are substantial. The cards are nicely coated and won't whither away. The art is beautiful. The multiple instruction books/guidebooks/helper materials are heavy and coated and nicer than magazine quality.But what about the GAME PLAY? Ask yourself if these are the types of things you like in a game:Complicated: The rules are complicated enough that the game includes these very nice starter cards for each player to use the first time you play an open-handed game, they show you how to set up the game and dictate/explain your first several moves. This is a really nice touch, but it speaks to how confusing the game can be. There are 10 different ways to earn points, and you have a LOT of options on every turn, so to get good at the game, you have to be thinking many, many moves ahead and considering a lot of possibilities. To play well, you have to map out of a lot of things in your head. And there are far too many bird cards to learn them all.Not Very Competitive or Interactive. Every player has a limited number of turns in which to build out a thriving bird habitat. The things you put in your habitat earn you points, and those points are tallied at the end to determine the winner. Some of the things you do can affect the other players' scores and resources, but that is by no means a major driver of your behavior. This is definitely not a game where you can screw over your opponent. In my experience, planning your moves gives you so much to think about that there's it's hard to even pay attention to what the other players are doing, let alone chat with them (of course, if you're able to process and keep track of all that, you'll have a slight advantage).Limited Engine-Building: What does this mean? The beauty of the game is the fun you may have building "engines", which means you've constructed a bird sanctuary that sustains itself beautifully (and earns you points without much additional work). But each game of Wingspan is exactly 26 moves. This keeps games manageable, length-wise, but can be frustrating in two ways: 1) you will inevitably have choices to make that limit what you can build, and 2) if you've done a really great job, then your final 25% of the game will be pretty boring -- you'll stop building and just collect points on your turn. This is satisfying points-wise, but pretty unsatisfying if you like the building part of the game.UPDATE: Get the Oceania expansion pack (often on sale for under $20 here) and the game becomes much more balanced, interesting, and forgiving, with loads of new end-of-game strategy options. Highly recommended.Impossible to conquer: I like games like poker that are impossible to truly conquer, but this one has me really mystified. I've played a dozen times and the only conclusion I've made about strategy is that I need to study the 200 available cards a little better to understand how to best combine them in future games. I guess the limited number of moves per game makes for a really long learning curve, because I feel like I don't have enough turns every time I play, or I need to do better with the math part of the game (and I'm pretty good at math). The final score always surprises me, whether I came in first or last.