Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Wingspan is one of the most popular games in the world. As of this writing, BoardGameGeek has the base game listed as #27. It is interesting to note then, that if you look at the average rating for Wingspan Asia, it is actually higher than the base game. The Geek Rating, which is used to rank the games, is lower. I cannot speak with any authority as to why these are related like this. What I can say is that Wingspan and each of its expansions have been quite popular.
In each expansion (including this one) the core game remains untouched; the basic gameplay of Wingspan is as it has always been. Thus, I will not be going into detail when it comes to how the game is played. If you want a primer on the mechanics and such, I suggest reading Mark Iradian’s review of Wingspan, or Tom Franklin’s review of the digital implementation.I will say that I am more of a fan of the game than either of them. That said, their criticisms are quite valid.
Each expansion has added new bird cards, goal cards, end-of-round bonuses, and mechanics. The Oceana expansion was the one that went further in altering the game than any other (adding a new food type and altering the player boards rather significantly). Still, Asia does two things never done before: it operates as a stand-alone two-player game, and it adds two new modes of play (Duet and Flock modes).
The front of the box tells you what to expect:
So let’s take a look at each of these elements.
Duet Mode
Wingspan has always been more than capable of being played with two players. In many ways, that is my favorite player count. The base game can, by default, handle as many as five players. The problem is that once you get more than three players, downtime between turns starts to grow into the ‘annoyingly long’ zone. So two-player Wingspan is nothing new.
What Duet mode does is add an area control element to the game, and slightly alter the way the end-of-round goals are scored.
Each time a player plays a bird, they will place a special duet marker on the duet board (above). The duet marker must go into the same environment as the played bird (i.e., forest, grasslands, wetlands). Additionally, the space where the duet marker goes must match the same quality on the played bird. Thus, if you play a bird in the forest with a bowl nest, your duet marker could go onto a bowl nest space in the forest. If you play a bird in the grasslands and paid a rodent as part of its cost, your duet marker could go onto a rodent space in the grasslands.
Only one duet marker is allowed in each space. This is an odd one because the duet markers are black/white halves of a Yin-Yang, making it appear as though they could share a space.
Some of the spaces on the duet board include a bonus: food, egg, or bird card. When a duet marker is placed on one of these spaces, the player gains that bonus immediately. The bonuses, however, are not the main attraction. Notice that the various spaces are arranged in a hex grid. At the end of the game, players get a number of points equal to the number of their duet markers in the largest contiguous area on the board.
If there is no available space for the duet token to go (or the player does not want to place it on an available space), the duet token can go into the box at the lower left. Duet tokens in this box can, on any future turn and any point during that turn, be spent to either refresh the bird feeder or the bird tray.
On the duet board, there are spaces for the four end-of-round goals. The player who best achieved the goal gets bonus points (as shown above the space for the goal), the other player gets zero points and takes the first player token for the next round. Ties result in each player getting the bonus points and the first player token going to the player that did not have it last round.
As with most of Stonemaier Games’ products, there is a solo version that uses an Automa. The Automa plays fairly well and with little effort. If you are alone and want to play Wingspan, this is certainly a viable option.
That’s it. That is all there is to Duet mode.
Pros: The area control element is fun. The rules overhead is very low (not much new to keep track of). The way the first player token passes is nice.
Cons: The end-of-round goals included all relate to the duet board, meaning that the range of values for each goal are quite limited. This results in far more ties than I like. We tend to use the end-of-round goals from other sets to correct this. The ones provided are kind of pointless (pun intended).
Card Expansion
As a card expansion for Wingspan, Asia is amazing. The birds are different enough to let you know you have some new options without adding any complexity to the game. Some of the innovations I like in this set include:
- Birds that roll dice from anywhere—in previous sets, when a bird allowed you to roll dice (e.g., predators), the player rolled all of the dice outside the bird feeder. This could be zero dice (no chance of success) all the way up to that rare occasion when you could roll four dice. Birds in Asia tell you how many dice to roll, but allow you to decide if those will be inside or outside of the bird feeder. Once rolled and the results dealt with, those dice are all placed outside the bird feeder.
- Birds that let you play Yahtzee—there are a couple of birds that allow you to use the Yahtzee rule of rolling all five dice, then getting two additional rolls where you can keep or reroll any number of the dice. Typically, you are trying to get three of some food source (e.g., rodents). If you can get three, then you get a pretty cool bonus!
- Birds that migrate out of your sanctuary—migratory birds are those that, when activated, if no birds are to the right of them, can move into a different habitat. These are among my favorite birds, allowing you to beef up egg production, or food gathering, or card draws in the next turn. Whatever you need! In Asia, there are migratory birds that you can send into the next player’s sanctuary. You generally get a beefy bonus for doing this because there is no guarantee that the bird is ever coming back.
- And so on.
The bonuses are interesting and unique. I like the Ranger bonus cards (based on the number of consecutive birds in a habitat with ascending or descending scores) and the Population Monitor bonus cards (based on the number of different types of nests in a habitat). Very cool stuff.
Pros: excellent expansion overall. Integrates very well with the base game and/or any of the other expansions.
Cons: I do not recommend using the end-of-round goals provided. They will only cause frustration.
Flock Mode
This product is designed, first and foremost, to be a stand-alone game. This means that the player boards needed to be included. They are double-sided so that you can use them as you would with the base game and Europe, or you can add in some Oceania expansion elements and use nectar and/or the updated amounts of resources gained in each habitat. What this means is that you will have seven copies of each version of the player boards. Stonemaier Games anticipated that someone out there was going to want to have a giant game of Wingspan with six or seven players.
Not me. Please go back and re-read my comments at the start of Duet Mode, above. I do not like the downtime that exists when the game exceeds three players. I have attempted the Flock Mode with six players once. I will never do this to myself or my game group again.
The way Flock mode works is that you have a dial that indicates which two players are going at the same time. There are guidelines for handling anything that happens that might be impacted by the timing of events. Such interrupt collisions can happen if both active players are trying to gather food, or roll the dice, draw cards from the bird tray or the deck, or when two birds simultaneously cause all players to have to perform an action, and so on. In my experience, it is not worth it. At all.
Pros: if you were looking for a way to add more players to Wingspan, the answer has arrived.
Cons: you have just added more people to a game of Wingspan than it can comfortably handle. IMVHO, YMMV, yadda yadda yadda.
Production
Beyond what I have covered above, let’s look at some other elements of the production. The eggs are standard. The ones in this expansion are a dark red color. The action cubes and the duet markers are good quality. The cubes are the same as those in other sets (only black and white) and the duet markers feel nice when you are using them.
In other words everything is what you would expect from Stonemaier Games. My only complaint is the artwork used on the primary side of the player boards.
The game keys off of color a lot. Especially the Duet Mode game. Go back up and look at the colors used for the habitats on the Duet board. You will see that the forest is green, the grasslands yellow, and the wetlands blue. Now look again at this player board. The forest is mostly brown, the grasslands are green and the wetlands are blue.
I love the beauty of this artwork. Don’t get me wrong, it is gorgeous! But when you are playing and you are about to place your duet token, and you pull it off of a green area on this board your natural inclination is to want to put it into the green area of the duet board. And you would be wrong. I think my wife and I each did this a dozen times or so. We finally stopped doing it after a while. It was annoying while it lasted.
Final Thoughts
Wingspan and its family of expansions are amazing. The game is fun, thoughtful, and engaging. Each expansion adds to the experience. If you want this for…
- …a two-player, stand-alone game: this is an excellent choice! I would recommend looking to get some alternate end-of-round goal tokens, but otherwise this is a fine addition.
- …a two-player mode for the game you already have: this is an excellent choice! The game already handles two-player games well, but with the addition of the duet board, how the end-of-round goals are scored, and how the first player token passes, this adds a lot to an already solid game.
- …more cards for the game you already have: this is an excellent choice! The bird cards and the bonus cards are wonderful in their unique takes on abilities from earlier sets, but their own individual abilities as well. You cannot go wrong with this one.
- …more player boards and rules for more than five players: this is not my cup o’ tea. That said, I am not you. If you enjoy five player games of Wingspan over the table now, and you have more than five players who want to join in, this is a serviceable way to do that. If the chaos can be tamped down and the downtime tolerated, this is certainly an opportunity to ratchet up the player count.
Wingspan Asia is a must have for Wingspan fans!
Wingspan Asia details
- Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave
- Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas
- Publishers: 999 Games, Arclight Games, Delta Vision Publishing, Divercentro, Feuerland Spiele, Ghenos Games, Kaissa Chess & Games, Korea Boardgames, Lautapelit.fi, Maldito Games, Matagot, MINDOK, Rebel Sp. z o.o., Regatul Jocurilor, Siam Board Games, Stonemaier Games, Ігромаг
- Release Date: 2022
- Player count : 1 - 2
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 40 - 70 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Dice Rolling, End Game Bonuses, Hand Management, Open Drafting, Set Collection, Solo / Solitaire Game
- More articles about Wingspan Asia.
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