Wingspan was released in 2019 to almost immediate success winning the German Connoisseur’s Game of the Year award – a highly coveted award and well deserved. This prize is awarded to games that have more complex rules and gameplay to the typical board game and as such, games like Wingspan can develop distinct tactics and strategy over time. The amount of detail is incredible, but can be discouraging for beginners. The bird’s diet, their nesting type, their habitat, and their behaviour are all factors that Stonemaier Games considered while making this masterpiece. The following guide will try to introduce you to strategy, tips, and tricks to help you start winning!
Table of Contents
- Wingspan Rules and How to Play
- General Strategy for Beginners in Wingspan
- Which Bird Mechanics Are Good?
- Which Birds are Best?
- The Impact of Adding More Players
- Don’t be a Bird Brain! Concluding Wingspan Strategy for Beginners
Wingspan Rules and How to Play
As with most Stonemaier the rules for Wingspan can be found as a PDF here
And as usual Watch it Played has a great how to play video here
General Strategy for Beginners in Wingspan
Don’t focus too much on round goals.
Look, don’t get it wrong, the points for round goals are good and if the investment is minimal then certainly spend a turn or two trying to secure the objective. The most important thing to remember about the round bonuses is that they grow exponentially, with more time, the bonuses are bigger. In round 4 the bonus for second is 4 points, when you compare this to the winner of round 1 also getting 4 points its clear to see that later round goals pay better!
Focus on Habitats to Build an Engine
In Wingspan you will only want to focus your strategy on one or two habitats because it’s rarely possible to make substantial gains in all three. This means you will need to focus your playstyle around your aims for the game and the different habitats peak at different points of the game.
The Forest (Green top row) is very strong for the beginning of the game and advancing along it will bring you plentiful food. However, towards the late game, where food is more plentiful, its utility drops off a bit. The main idea here is to create a solid lead in the early game and capitalise as time goes on.
Grassland (Yellow middle row) is good at all periods of the game, but cannot sustain itself. Laying eggs is always worthwhile because they directly correlate to points and allow you to place other birds. It should be noted that it is difficult to start on Grassland as while you gain points from eggs, they are not as effective as getting food or drawing more cards.
Wetland (Blue bottom row) is the greatest utility habitat. The birds placed allow you to gain more cards. It gives you more options and flexibility. The downside to building an engine on this row is that if you don’t have cards that can make use of many cards in hand, like those that can tuck cards behind, then it can be quite hard to get points throughout the game.
Typical engines might go Forest/Grassland, Wetland/Grassland. While Forest/Wetland can be played in advanced strategies it is not always recommended for beginners.
Trading Food
A minor point, but one a lot of people forget, is that you can substitute 2 of any food type for 1 of another. This can be really helpful when you don’t want to waste a turn going to the birdfeeder, but want to play a bird as soon as possible.
Which Bird Mechanics Are Good?
There are 170 birds in Wingspan most with their own mechanics and each of these affect your strategy in different way. These abilities can roughly be split into food gaining powers, egg-laying powers, card drawing powers, flocking powers, and hunting powers. Within these categories we have various mechanics and below we will explain which are good and which are better left alone. We’ve tried to rank this as best mechanics to worst, but there can be some wiggle room depending on the situation.
Birds That Move
Birds that move are fantastic, these birds, such as the Song Sparrow can be moved to the far right of another habitat when activated. They allow you to advance further along a habitat at no egg or resource cost. As the best bonuses are further to the right of the habitat this allows you to get better bonuses earlier.
Caching
Caching can be both good and bad. If a card involves caching from the supply it is more often good as there is always that food type available. However, cards that stipulate “from the birdfeeder (if available)” are often bad because they require some luck.
Tucking
Tucking can vary from mediocre, to incredibly strong. The best type of tucking cards are ones that allow you to cycle through cards, i.e. tuck one card from your hand and draw from the deck. In this case you are keeping the same net number of cards, but it allows you to cycle out cards you don’t want or do not want to play and at the same point.
Slightly weaker tucking cards might be the ones belonging to the birds of prey. For example, tuck a card with a wingspan of less than 100cm – its incredibly frustrating to draw a bird with a wingspan larger than this and have a wasted opportunity at a bonus point.
Cards that Gain Each Player
These cards typically have a low play cost and so are quite attractive for the early game. The issue is that by playing them you are not only helping yourself, but your opponents too. By giving your opponent the same benefit as yourself (when the card is activated) you are effectively letting them play a card for free too!
Pink Cards
Pink cards in Wingspan are cards that activate between turns given certain criteria are fulfilled. An example might be the Brown-Headed Cowbird that allows you to lay an egg given one of your opponents takes the lay eggs action. These cards are situational because you as a player cannot directly use them. If you see that an opponent’s strategy revolves around laying eggs, it might be worth playing. Certainly, with more players the conditions to activate your card become more likely, so their effectiveness scales with the number of players in the game.
Re-roll Abilities
Re-roll abilities are awful. They entirely rely on luck and often you cannot re-roll enough dice to make it worth it. In the 5 dice birdfeeder, they max you may ever re-roll is 4 because when the birdfeeder is empty it must be restocked straight away. This, coupled with the fact that a low birdfeeder can encourage other players to gain food (with the chance they can re-roll the birdfeeder to something they want) makes these abilities hard to use effectively.
Which Birds are Best?
The next couple of birds should be played whether they fit into your strategy or not – they’re just that good!
Ravens
Ravens are incredibly strong birds in Wingspan for beginner and advanced strategy alike. The Common Raven and Chihuanhuan Raven have the following ability:
“WHEN ACTIVATED: Discard 1 egg from any of your other birds to gain any 2 food from the supply.”
The benefit of this is propelling your food supply into the stratosphere, it is so flexible by giving any food type and allows you place other birds at a lot faster rate with more freedom.
There are also lesser ravens: the American Crow and the Fish Crow and these give 1 food per egg rather than 2. Still very much worth playing in any case.
Birds that Move (again)
We’ve already touched on this, but we really want to hammer it home! Birds that move allow you to advance further down the habitat at a faster rates. This gives you the best benefit quicker! These birds include Bewik’s Wren, Blue Brosbeak, Chimney Swift, and more – there are 8 birds in this category . But be careful, you don’t want to place other birds to their right otherwise you will lose the use of their ability.
Killdeer/Franklin’s Gull
These birds allow you do discard 1 egg to draw two cards. The main strength of these are getting a drawing engine set-up as quickly as possible with the least amount of resources or time spent.
The Impact of Adding More Players
Wingspan can be played between 2 and 5 players and each game size changes the game and strategy with it; the difference between a game of 2 and a game of 5 is drastic. As such some tips suggested before can be bent or outright ignored altogether.
With more players we should make the following notes to our strategy:
Food is less scarce. First, the birdfeeder will cycle faster offering more food options in a round cycle. Second, the likelihood of other plays playing shared resource birds increases, giving all players more food from the supply. The key point to take from this is that you do not need to invest as many resources building a food engine in larger games because your opponents will help you with that!
Pink powers become stronger. Initially, we advised against pink powers such as the Eastern Kingbird. However, with more players in the game these are more likely to activate between turns, therefore becoming more effective.
Round bonuses become significantly harder the more players there are in game. To win them you will have to invest many resources and often the payoff is not worth the pain!
Don’t be a Bird Brain! Concluding Wingspan Strategy for Beginners
We know there is a lot to learn and you definitely will not get it first time, but that’s the joy of playing a game and getting better over time. Wingspan is for life, not just for Christmas and its important to walk before you can run. Master these tips and tricks and before long you can turn beginner strategy into advanced and leave your opponents in the dust!
