Wingspan: Asia (standalone expansion)

Where Our Story Begins

Wingspan has been tipped by many to be the biggest hit in board games in recent memory. Its beautiful birdies, satisfyingly smooth eggs and fantastic gameplay has made it Stonemaier Games’ biggest seller. There have been two expansions so far (European and Oceania) both adding more birds and some twists on gameplay.

Wingspan Asia – Basic Gameplay

Wingspan Asia is an expansion, it is also a stand-alone two player version of Wingspan too so I will first explain the basics and then get onto the differences introduced in this version, so if you wish to skip that then skip to the Advanced Gameplay section.

Wingspan is an engine-building game where you will be carefully managing your food and egg resources to play out bird cards into your habitat. The aim of the game is to build up an egg-producing, card-drawing, food-collecting mega engine to allow you to play birds out and maximise your victory points. Tricky thing is that you only get 4 short rounds to complete this, and as the rounds progress, you get fewer actions each round to add to the difficulty.

During the game, you have four actions you may choose from on your turn. The first of these is playing a bird card, where you pay the food and egg costs in order to place a bird card from your hand onto your board. These bird cards will be worth points but also will have abilities which will trigger throughout the game. As you add cards into your tableau, you will improve the power of the other three main actions.

In order to play birds you will need to collect food, and that is the segway into action number two; collect from the birdfeeder. In this game, there are five food resources; rats, wheat, berries, fish, and wiggly worms. There is no limit to how many food items you can have, but you will find yourself limited by what is available on the dice. Initially, you will only be able to take one or two pieces of food on a turn, but as you place bird cards into your woodland habitat, you will be able to take more each time.

Another way aside from playing birds to gain points is from eggs, these are also a resource required for playing birds and are often useful for bird powers as well. Initially you will find yourself getting only a couple of eggs on an action, but more birds into your grasslands and you’ll quickly develop an egg laying machine. At the end of the game, each egg will be worth one precious victory point.

The final action is the draw cards ability. We do need to get those birdies in hand to be able to play them! As you build up your engine with bird cards you will be adding powers which as you take each action you will be able to activate every card in the row.

You can really play any kind of game that you wish, with card-tucking birds, or food caching birds, simply high victory points birds, or powerful bird powers to get points. At the end of each round there are points up for grabs for those who achieved the objectives most splendidly. These can be towards the end worth big points so it pays to have one eye on these to help you stay ahead. There are bonus cards which you get at the start of the game that give you some kind of personal objectives to shoot for should you wish, although I do find that I make the best of what I have available instead of trying to force things to follow the objective.

Advance Gameplay

There are two main different modes that are introduced in this expansion, the duet two player mode and flock mode for 6-7 players. I’ll start with the slightly more straight forward mode which is the flock mode. This expansion offers you black and white player pieces to allow games for up to 7 players. Wingspan is generally not hugely interactive, you may have pink powers that work when other players do something but generally, your opponents behaviour isn’t hugely affected by the play of others. At higher player counts, the downtime can be slightly prohibitive to getting it to the table.

Flock mode can be used at those higher player counts to have two players playing simultaneously at all times to really cut down total gameplay time. This involves a small dial to split the group into two distinct groups that operate independently for the most part to even the playing field for both points and also for reducing gameplay time. For us this did make game play quicker, although I still think that I prefer Wingspan at lower player counts in general.

The Duet mode is really what this expansion brings to the die-hard fans. This is a two player specific version of Wingspan which includes an additional board where you and your opponent will be vying for area control and to create the largest contiguous group whilst also snagging the bonuses at the end of each round where possible. When playing in Duet mode, the end of round goals are based on the Duet board.

Each time that you play a bird card out into your habitat, you are also able to put out a ying-yang marker in your colour. The Duet board is split up into the three different habitat types; woodlands, grasslands and wetlands, and will also indicate a wingspan size, food costs, or egg nest types. This will really change up the way you think about the order you play your birds in, and adds in significantly more thinking than I expected.

Components

The components here are as good as we are used to from Stonemaier, but with the added twist of now being eco-conscious. Gone are the plastic trays for the cards, replaced by a simple beautifully illustrated cardboard. A vegware style tray replaces the plastic token trays, which for me is a big win. This tray has a lovely texture to it which puts it a cut above the plastic for me. My only gripe is that I would have liked to have two to spread my eggs and tokens out nicely. It is important to note that if you already have lots of Wingspan content, you will have quite a lot of duplicated content, although you will probably need these pieces to successfully play a 7 player game.

The infamous eggs have been switched from plastic to painted wooden tokens. For me, this is an improvement in the feel of the eggies in hand. These are lighter than their plastic counterparts, and the colours are significantly brighter too. In this set the eggs are a deep burgundy colour, which are definitely a welcome change for me versus the pretty pastels that were in the base game. The operation of the eggs functions exactly the same, although you may find if you go heavy on the egg game that you might need some substitute tokens even just for two players.

In the original wingspan, the dice were rolled through a very cool and slightly cumbersome cardboard birdfeeder tower. In this version, this is replaced by a simple but beautifully illustrated Beth Sobel artwork board. The dice are still as chunky as they were before, so that enjoyable rolling is still present. Similarly, the plastic bird tray is replaced with a pretty bird board too. Mostly these changes are environmentally friendly choices, but additionally, it means that the whole game can fit in a much smaller box which does allow us to keep this version as our holiday version too. We love Wingspan but the box can be a little prohibitive to travel for us but this version is much smaller and still contains all the stuff for two player Wingspan.

Replayability

If you are looking to just keep the Wingspan Asia box as a pure two player experience and to be the only Wingspan that you own, then you may find that there aren’t quite as many birdie cards as in other versions of Wingspan and you may go through the entire deck in a game and have to reshuffle. Whether you do will likely depend on the kind of engine you are building, myself and my partner are big fans of tucked card engines and so we burn through the deck pretty quickly.

However, if you, like us, have played a BUNCH of Wingspan, then you will enjoy the shake up that the new bird cards bring with a combination of white, brown, pink, blue and yellow powers. But most importantly it brings these two new modes which I think really improve the replayability and inject a bit of new excitement into the game. For us the Duet mode is pretty exciting and possibly might be our new default way to play now at least for the moment. We just love the interesting push and pull across the map trying to connect up contiguous groups and also placing tokens getting you a little boost sometimes in terms of eggs or cards.

Round Up

For me, Wingspan Asia was an instant-buy. We love Wingspan, and additionally, we are chiefly a 2-player household and often a 7 player game happens for us. So it really hit ALL the spots for us. If you want to get a copy of Wingspan specifically for two players then this is definitely a no-brainer, it improves the game significantly in my opinion. You need not buy the full set if you are just starting up, and in this smaller box there is still a quick start guide to teach you Wingspan Duet from scratch for new players.