I was relaxing in my retirement, enjoying a cold drink and watching some Star Trek, when our team leader posted a mysterious message in our group chat: “Any Wingspan fans?” What followed was a conversation that led me to this review.
Me: “I am a Wingspan fan.”
Tony: “You are also retired, right? ☺️”
Me: “I am retired, but you didn’t specify that fans had to be active players. You just asked if I liked Wingspan.”
Tony: “That’s fair. I was looking for someone to cover the next expansion.”
Me: “There’s a new expansion coming? I missed the announcement?”
Tony: “It hasn’t been announced yet. It’s a secret.”
Me: <heavy_breathing_cat.gif> “I would absolutely come out of retirement to write a review just to get my hands on it.”
And that is exactly how I ended up with a copy of the Wingspan: Americas Expansion to review.
Expansion Overview
Previous Wingspan expansions focused on specific geographical areas, and the Americas Expansion targets Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. While it adds many new birds to the main deck, it puts the vibrant diversity of hummingbirds front and center. There is a separate hummingbird card deck and new rules for how to collect and score these birds. The expansion includes new components: an extra hummingbird board that covers part of the player board, a personal scoring track to keep track of the types of hummingbirds you have collected, and a garden board that displays all the available hummingbirds.
Gameplay follows the same basic flow as the base game. You select one of four main actions, then activate bird powers as needed. After all bird powers are used for the Gain Food, Lay Eggs, and Draw Cards actions, a new “hummingbird action” is taken. This action represents the quick, frantic flight of these birds as they dart around searching for nectar.
- If a player’s hummingbird space for that habitat is empty, they choose a hummingbird from the garden and take it, then gain a benefit. These benefits include drawing a bird card, gaining nectar, laying an egg, moving up on a hummingbird track, or a variable bonus based on the habitat the hummingbird is in.
- If a player’s hummingbird space is full, the hummingbird is returned to the garden board. The player then moves up on one of the five hummingbird tracks, choosing either the type of hummingbird that was returned or the type that was covered up in the garden. Moving up the hummingbird track can also trigger an extra hummingbird action.
The new standard bird cards included in this expansion interact with the hummingbird cards, scoring tracks, and garden in various ways, but they follow standard Wingspan rules. There are also new private objective cards and scoring objectives that involve hummingbirds and the hummingbird track. At the end of the game, extra points are added or lost based on the position of each of the five hummingbird tracks.
Game Experience with the Expansion
Expansions can be tricky, especially for a game as elegantly simple as Wingspan. However, the Americas Expansion handles new rules as gracefully as the Oceania Expansion did with nectar. The hummingbird action fits into the game flow seamlessly, easily adding an extra step after bird powers are finished, with a clever reminder on the player board overlay. It took us several plays and a few checks of the rulebook to get the timing right—taking the benefit and moving up the scoring track at the correct moment—but after a round of play, it became second nature.
Wingspan is a game that often leaves you wanting one more action, whether you need an egg, more food, or an extra card in hand to perform a tuck action efficiently. The Americas Expansion gives players the ability to add some economy to their actions through the hummingbird card effects. Need an egg? Grab a hummingbird that provides one as a benefit. Want to play a bird next turn but need both eggs and food? Take a Lay Eggs action but then grab a nectar using a hummingbird action.
Planning for and gaining the ability to get an action effect “out of phase” adds a pleasant level of extra thinking to your turn and lets players fill their bird habitats faster. While it makes meeting some goals easier, we still felt the satisfying crunch of limited action in the last round of play.
Keeping track of hummingbirds is also important for scoring at the end of the round and the game, as hummingbirds count as birds in your layout. Perhaps you need one more right-facing bird to outscore your opponent at the end of the round, or another color-named bird at the end of the game to get more points? Choosing the right hummingbird at the right time can give your score a boost depending on the bird and the situation.
We also liked the added strategy of choosing which hummingbird track to move up on. It was fun to string together multiple hummingbird actions on a single turn by moving up the right tracks at the right time. However, looking at our final scores over various plays, we did not see much variation between player scores from the hummingbird track. It could be that we did not uncover other ways to manipulate the scoring tracks to gain an advantage, and in our plays, we found it only made a difference in a very close game. As far as the components of the track, the bits are a bit small and easily bumped during gameplay, so be careful not to have a stray elbow.
Final Thoughts
Wingspan: Americas has everything we look for in a game expansion: new rules that integrate seamlessly while evolving the gameplay. It takes an already elegant game and gives it a breath of fresh air with a host of new birds, a fresh set of hummingbirds with powers that challenge players to reconsider their action economy. This is a must-buy expansion in our estimation, as all Wingspan expansions have proven to be. I am glad I came out of retirement for this one.
Hits:
- Little bloat – rules are easy to integrate.
- Improved action economy.
- More strategic thinking for bird nerds.
Misses:
- Hummingbird scoring track (apparently) doesn’t mean much for final scoring.
- Be careful not to bump your hummingbird tracks.
