Wingspan
Board games have never looked this good
What You Need to Know
Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from designer Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games. It can be played by anywhere from 2 to 5 players, or even on your own using a virtual opponent called the Automa. From the publisher’s site:
You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats (actions). These habitats focus on several key aspects of growth:
Gain food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower
Lay eggs using egg miniatures in a variety of colors
Draw from hundreds of unique bird cards and play them
The winner is the player with the most points after 4 rounds.
Wingspan has been very successful over the last few years, both in terms of units sold (so much so that it can often be difficult to buy), and award recognition. In 2019, it won the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award.
Why it’s a Recommendation
This is one of the prettiest and well-produced board games you will come across. The theme is unique and really well executed; there are 150+ individual bird cards, each with a gorgeous illustration and a fun fact, as well as egg tokens and a birdfeeder to roll dice through. The production quality is really high and you can tell a lot of time and attention went into making this game look and feel so good.
In addition, Wingspan succeeds at one of the hardest and most important tasks of a board game. Most people play casually with friends and family, and don’t have unlimited time to invest into playing these games; as a result, to be enjoyable a game has to be easy to learn, but hard to master. Wingspan definitely succeeds on this front. The gameplay is simple, and the game is very intentional about guiding beginners on what to do; however, after a game or two you will find yourself starting to wonder what the optimal strategy would have been, and finding that the answer is not at all obvious. The fact that there is such a variety of bird cards also helps to ensure the game feels different every time you play.
There are some valid criticisms of Wingspan and it is by no means perfect, but overall I think it is a real delight, and for a casual player who wants something new to try I highly recommend giving it a go.
One other thing that I’ve found about modern board games is they often have really solid digital versions (either on Steam for PC, or for your iOS/Android device) with nice presentation and (usually) good enough AI to not need to find another human player to keep you entertained. This is absolutely true for Wingspan as well; you can purchase versions of the digital game, which is just as pretty as the physical game, here.