Wingspan: European Expansion
Players: 1-5
Playing Time: 40-70 minutes
Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
When the birds appear in Wingspan: European Expansion they bring interesting new ideas and abilities allowing for greater engine-building opportunities. But they never appeared as often as I wanted.
Pros
- More birds! As always it’s interesting to see wildlife from different parts of the world.
- These birds have interesting abilities not seen in the base game. Keeping the game feeling fresh.
Cons
- Too many birds? With the bird deck as big as it is, you don’t see these European birds as much as you want.
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There are two inevitabilities in the world: death and taxes. After the release of Wingspan, there were three inevitabilities in the world: death, taxes, and a bird-based expansion.
Winspan European Expansion is a small addon that includes a set of 81 European birds to the base game. These birds introduce new end-of-round abilities and more interactions with eggs and other players.
This post breaks down what’s new in this expansion, and how well it plays with the base game.
What’s inside Wingspan European Expansion?
The European Expansion is mostly a card-based expansion adding 81 new and unique birds from the European region. Some of these birds introduce a new type of blue power, whose ability is activated at the end of each round.
But along with these birds comes:
- 81 bird cards
- 5 bonus cards
- 5 goal tiles
- 4 Automa cards
- 15 purple eggs
- 38 food tokens
- 1 custom tray with lid, rulebook, and scorepad for both multiplayer and solo
All these new components can be mixed in with the base game without fuss or learning any new rules.
Just like bird-watching
Where in the original game, the bird powers were a bit blase. These new bird powers add conditions to their abilities, meaning after you place you can’t just ignore them until you run their row. Now, you must work with the bird to get the most out of it.
For example, the Red-Legged Partridge’s ability allows you to lay an egg on every bird in the same habitat. Another example is the Mute Sawn. Their power is to choose 1-3 birds in your water habitat and tuck 1 card from hand behind each.
Both birds are strong by themselves, but stronger if you work to meet their conditions.
Not all birds are about habitats, but these two examples show the conditional effects birds in this expansion have. Letting you create more interesting combinations of birds, and build bigger and more interconnected bird sanctuaries than in the original.
While these new cards breathe new life into Wingspan, the European birds are outnumbered two to one by the base game birds.
With the market only ever showing three birds at a time, European birds are seen as rare as the Black-naped pheasant-pigeon. So while there’s potential to make Wingspan an even better board game, it’s fleeting and doesn’t happen enough.
Just like real bird watching I suppose.
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