Incline Stonemaier Games' Wingspan is a massive incline

[Blaine]

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan

In short, this is a medium-complexity engine-building game that can be completed in an hour or two. It's ideal with 3 players, but supports 1-5. It has an interesting theme: gather food, lay eggs, play birds, and build the best aviary (acquire the most VPs).

It features ~170 unique bird cards, all beautifully illustrated, and all including facts about each bird: common name, scientific classification, average wingspan, habitat, geographical distribution, eating habits, nesting habits, proportionately accurate (not precise, for gameplay purposes) size of egg clutches, and a short paragraph relaying a fact or two. Even the card powers are based loosely upon the bird's taxonomy and behaviors.

I'm on vacation right now and have so far played two five-player games with normie friends and family. They all love it and everyone is looking forward to the next game. I love it, too.

I specifically selected it because I wanted a board game that was satisfying to play for game-obsessed people like us, but not too difficult to learn and play and that doesn't take hours and hours to finish, which almost always puts friends and family off. "Ideal for 3 players" is another huge plus (for playing with my Mom and sister). The bird theme, too, can appeal to all ages and both sexes.

Absolutely a five-star game, and probably my favorite game in my collection right now.

 

[Dickie]

I've been playing the Steam version that came out last week. I like all the little touches like the realistic bird noises and the narrator reading the bird trivia on the cards. I don't have any friends to play the real version.

 

[pakoito]

The game is weird. It's less deep than it looks once you're a handful of games in. What tends to happen is that one player slips away after a good starting hand or first couple of turns, and by the late game their whole fourth phase is "All Eggs". The expansions try to mitigate this with new scoring mechanics.

It's one of the best gateway games for more complex stuff on the same style tho. It's a good game just because of that.

 

[Catacombs]

The game is weird. It's less deep than it looks once you're a handful of games in. What tends to happen is that one player slips away after a good starting hand or first couple of turns, and by the late game their whole fourth phase is "All Eggs". The expansions try to mitigate this with new scoring mechanics.

It's one of the best gateway games for more complex stuff on the same style tho. It's a good game just because of that.

Scythe is another Stonemaier game that's worth learning after Wingspan.

 

[pakoito]

In Wingspan at least we have some shared resources to go over, although not many. Scythe in my opinion is a fancy solitaire game, the interactions necessary boil down to a checkbox of "have two fights". I'd rather play another, much shorter, engine building game such as Res Arcana. Or a proper "dudes on a map" game.

 

[Alex]

What is an "engine building" game?

 

[pakoito]

What is an "engine building" game?

The game requires you to either reach a target score first, or the highest score within a number of turns. The game lays out a puzzle where you have to build the best and fastest way of generating points from multiple possible paths. Say, you get an early "get points for industry" card, then your startegy revolves around making the best industrial faction. Or you get points for achieving certain board states, or having the most of a resource.

In some engine building games you're acquiring points through colored mana, or rare spices, or farm animals, or slain monsters. Or even sacrificing your own troops to Valhalla :D

 

[DraQ]

What is an "engine building" game?

The game requires you to either reach a target score first, or the highest score within a number of turns. The game lays out a puzzle where you have to build the best and fastest way of generating points from multiple possible paths. Say, you get an early "get points for industry" card, then your startegy revolves around making the best industrial faction. Or you get points for achieving certain board states, or having the most of a resource.

In some engine building games you're acquiring colored mana, or rare spices, or farm animals, or slain monsters. Or even sacrificing your own troops to Valhalla :D

Meanwhile in a better universe:

Engine building game

 

[Blaine]

Yes, it's true that "lay eggs" is often the best strategy by round 4 (each round consists of many turns). However, there are a huge variety of ways to arrive at that point, and you do need to build up enough nest capacity to hold them all.

Simply not counting eggs as VP at all, or reducing the amount awarded to 1 VP per 2 or 3 eggs rather than 1:1, would probably suffice. Very easy to house rule. Players can easily shit out 4-6 eggs per turn by round 4, and there are very few other ways to achieve that many VP in a single turn.

Also, the reality is that engine-building games must be very complex in order to be fully nuanced for advanced players. A medium-complexity engine-building game WILL fall short in various ways and often reveal imbalances and easy strategies, simply because they aren't complex enough to be more perfect.

What is an "engine building" game?

The game requires you to either reach a target score first, or the highest score within a number of turns. The game lays out a puzzle where you have to build the best and fastest way of generating points from multiple possible paths. Say, you get an early "get points for industry" card, then your startegy revolves around making the best industrial faction. Or you get points for achieving certain board states, or having the most of a resource.

In some engine building games you're acquiring points through colored mana, or rare spices, or farm animals, or slain monsters. Or even sacrificing your own troops to Valhalla :D

Not quite. You've described the goal (acquire the most points), the general means to reach that goal (generate points most efficiently, considering your particular restrictions and goals), and additionally have pointed out that there are multiple paths to achieve those things—but you haven't properly described the actual, mechanical reason for calling them "engine-building" games.

An engine has moving parts that synergize to perform work (classical mechanics sense of the term "work"). In an engine-building board game, you collect engine parts (tokens, cards, or what-have-you) that form synergies, generally building in complexity and potency throughout the course of the game. There are always many ways to build said engines, and many focuses available, as you've pointed out.

For example, in Wingspan, placing bird cards in the "Lay Eggs" row slowly increases the egg yield when performing that action. However, the bird cards may also grant additional effects activated whenever you perform that action, such as placing a bonus egg on a certain type of nest, drawing a card and discarding from your hand, etc. Building these up into powerful sub-engines (your entire play field is the holistic engine) that perform work for you each turn is why the genre is called "engine-building."

Also, in Wingspan, the sub-engines all follow one template (rows of cards with tokens on them). In more complex engine-building games, sub-engines will often follow a variety of less uniform templates, such as stacks of cards that all behave differently and contextually (and perhaps move to different portions of the play field at different times), pools of tokens that deplete and replenish in unique ways, pools of chess men that can be deployed and moved about, combinations of all of the above (cards modified by other cards with chess men AND tokens on them... or not), rules that come into play for the duration of the game until cancelled, "faction" rules that are different for each player (like in SMAC), etc.

 

[Snorkack]

In Wingspan at least we have some shared resources to go over, although not many. Scythe in my opinion is a fancy solitaire game, the interactions necessary boil down to a checkbox of "have two fights". I'd rather play another, much shorter, engine building game such as Res Arcana. Or a proper "dudes on a map" game.

Sorry for OT, but...
While I totally get where you're coming from with that opinion on Scythe (although I actually enjoy the concept that gameplay revolves more about the threat of player interaction than actual interaction), I just had a weekend with the Rise Of Fenris expansion and we binged through the whole campaign in a single day. That catapulted Scythe to the top of my list of favourite BGs.
Not gonna spoil what's in it, as it contains lots of sealed boxes and "do not read/open until X", but it greatly enhances interaction vs. players in different ways (not just more combat). Most of the Box's contents and rules can also be mixed and matched for a one-shot outside the Fenris campaign. Plus, the scenarios come with plenty of backstory and actually good writing (unlike for example the beverly hills 90210 tier story of Gloomhaven).
If the solitary playstyle of the base game was your main issue and you otherwise liked it mechanically, you should absolutely give the expansion a shot.

 

[pakoito]

I have to admit I didn't even know the expansion was a legacy campaign. I'll reconsider it

beverly hills 90210 tier story of Gloomhaven

Completely agreed. Jaws of the Lion is marginally better, and I'm using the narration app to spice it up a little. I expect a lot more from Frosthaven.