Does Wingspan really spread its wings?

After playing for the first time at my local game group this past week, it was not surprising Wingspan won Spiel award. But should it have Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2019? Let’s take a look at the game and you decide.

player board

Let me start by talking about the first things that really drew me to the game, the art and the components. Artists Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas and, Beth Sobel really bring this game to life. The realism found in the bird illustrations, and the amount of unique drawings is unreal. That, combined with the clean symbols and sleek layout, really make the game a pleasure to look at. Quickly touching on the iconography, the game is almost completely language independent, and all iconography is easy to read and understand. Next, let’s take a look at the player boards, which are made from very robust cardboard, with extremely vibrant and high quality printing.  Did somebody say dice tower? Yes, included is a dice tower! It’s good quality, totally not necessary, but a really nice touch and works well with the theme. This game uses quite a few different bits. There are different tokens representing various foods, wooden eggs used for hatching new birds, and nice wooden cubes used to represent actions taken each turn. All the bits are super high quality and the eggs are a really nice touch. Finally, let’s talk about how all this is stored. Game trayz provides outstanding containers for the bits and cards. They neatly organize all the components and double as the market place tableau during the game. As always, Stonemaier Games really knocked the production out of the park with this game.

As I mentioned before, there is a reason this game is a Spiel winner. It was extremely easy to learn to play. You have four options on your turn, get food, lay eggs, draft cards, or hatch a bird to your player board. From there you can start Hatching birds to your aviary. The real meat of this game is the engine you create with all the birds you are hatching. Finding unique combinations to min-max your turn makes the game really fun, and adds to replay-ability. There are many paths to victory, VP for birds, eggs, hidden goals, and meeting the round’s objective. My only complaint with gameplay is that you feel like you are playing alone a lot of the time. It’s not very imperative to pay attention to other people’s turns. Besides someone taking a piece of food or a bird you were looking at, other player’s turns really have no effect on you. The bird feeder, “food pool”, is refreshed so frequently it’s almost never a problem. Overall the gameplay is wonderful and suprisingly relaxing.

components

So is it deserving of the Kennerspiel des Jahres? First, let’s take a look at the definition of the Kennerspiel. The award is meant to recognize the “connoisseur/expert game of the year”. Do I think this is a connoisseur or expert game? No, I don’t. For me, the weight is somewhere between intro game to middleweight hobby game. It is extremely easy to learn but has room to grow with the group as people start seeing the engine building and combos available. Don’t get me wrong, the game is great, the art is beautiful, and the mechanics are very polished. In my opinion, I think this game is more deserving of the Spiel des Jahres, the award for the best family/intro game of the year; but that award seems to be going to more party games as of late.

Mike Hill

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