Wingspan has been one of my top games since its original release in 2019. At that time, I wasn’t incredibly familiar with the publisher, Stonemaier Games. I was aware of games like Viticulture and Scythe but I just hadn’t gotten around to playing them. I also had never heard of the designer, Elisabeth Hargrave, but to be fair, even the most hardcore board gamers had never heard of her either, as Wingspan was her first major game going into production.
I decided Wingspan was a must-buy on artwork alone. One look at the box and I said “yep… that’s a buy.” When I show it to friends who don’t play a lot of board games they’re immediately attracted to it. Once I open the box and they see the colorful eggs the excitement grows. The player boards look like field notebooks when folded and when you open them up you’re hit with some bright colors and more delightful artwork. Then the bird house gets built and that’s where we hit maximum levels of excitement. Look at all this stuff! Colorful eggs, colorful board, cute little bird house… and then the cards come out and a sense of dread hits. “Wait a second, how many cards are there?” 170 I say. “170!?” Yes, I say. Well, 170 in the base game with an additional 255 with all the expansions. With that bombshell, a dark cloud looms over the table. You have nothing to fear, I say, we won’t be using all of the cards. You only need to know what a few symbols and colors mean and you can play the game. “Ok” they say “that’s not a big deal.” Then it comes time to explain how to play and the dread returns…
On your turn, you place a cube onto your player board in the left most empty space of the biome you wish to activate. This can be confusing for new players, especially players that don’t play a lot of board games. “Left most empty space? How do I know which one is most empty?” No no, left-most space that is empty, as in, there’s no bird in that spot. “Ok…” once you take that action your cube slides to the left. If it enters a space occupied by a bird, you activate the power of that bird, if it has a power, and you continue sliding your cube left activating birds until you reach the end and your turn is over! It’s easy! Faces sometimes glaze over with this explanation. But the combination of the colorful eggs and birds and boards and every other inviting aspect of the game usually gets people to push forward and try to play.
And thank the lord the artwork is so inviting because there is a really fun game behind it. Sometimes, games with great artwork and cool minis make me think - “What are you hiding behind all of this?” I got burned one time on a game that I won’t name that came with really cool minis and neat artwork. It was an instant buy for me on look alone. Unfortunately, when I finally got to play it, it was a really bland game. It was far too random for what the game wanted you to do. It was billed as a strategic combat/adventure game but in the end it was just a random number generator where you win or lose at the end, regardless of your strategic prowess. Ever since then, I typically research a game quite a bit before pulling the trigger. However; Wingspan made me break that rule, and I’m glad it did, because it introduced me to the rest of the games in the Stonemaier catalog.
Viticulture
Since getting Wingspan I have since added a number of Stonemaier games to my collection. Scythe, Viticulture, Charterstone, Between Two Cities, Tapestry, and the recently released games Apiary and Expeditions. Scythe and Viticulture are two of my top games of all time and most of the others would probably be rated that high if they were the only ones I’ve played. However; there is one dud, in my opinion, in that list and it’s Tapestry. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t mind a good point salad but this is the most point salad game I’ve ever seen. The scoreboard goes up over 400. But the scores are wildly variable from game-to-game. I have won scoring less than 100 and I’ve lost scoring 300 because the variables between games are just too much. There are 4 basic actions you can take during the game and none of them feel really satisfying. Honestly, the only thing Tapestry has going for it is… get this… the minis. Once again, excellent minis are a wall built around a mediocre game.
Thankfully, Wingspan is not one of these games. The excellent artwork isn’t there to distract you from a bad game, it’s there to draw you into a great game. Yes, there are a lot of variable factors between games and the scores can be variable because of it, it is not 100+ point swings. Each game has its own internal strategy that you have to develop. And even if you can’t get your engine going to score big points, look at those birds! At least you got some excellent artwork staring back at you.