It was a quiet afternoon during my retirement. I was relaxing with a glass of ice water, watching an episode of Star Trek, when a message popped up in our Discord group. Our leader had asked a simple question: “Any Wingspan fans?” What followed was a conversation that led me to write this review.

Me: “I am definitely a Wingspan fan.”

Tony: “You are also retired, right? ☺️”

Me: “I am retired, but you didn’t specify that you were looking for active workers. You just asked if I liked Wingspan.”

Tony: “That is fair. I was actually looking for someone to cover the next expansion.”

Me: “There is a new expansion coming? I must have missed the announcement.”

Tony: “It has not been announced yet. It is 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 expansions for Wingspan focused on specific geographical areas, and the Americas Expansion turns its attention to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. While it adds a significant number of new birds to the main deck, it really highlights the diversity of hummingbirds. It introduces a separate deck just for hummingbirds and new rules for how to collect and score them. The expansion also includes new components: an extra hummingbird board that covers part of your 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 flow as the base game. You select one of four main actions and 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 back and forth looking for nectar.

• If a player’s hummingbird space in that habitat is empty, they choose a hummingbird from the garden and take it. They then gain a benefit. These benefits include drawing a bird card, gaining nectar, laying an egg, moving up on a hummingbird track, or getting a variable bonus based on the habitat the hummingbird is in.
• If a player’s hummingbird space is already full, the new hummingbird is returned to the garden board. The player then moves up on one of the five hummingbird tracks. They can choose either the type of hummingbird that was returned or the type that was covered up in the garden. Moving up the hummingbird track can sometimes 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 the 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 where each of the five hummingbird tracks ends up.

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 the introduction of nectar. The hummingbird action fits into the flow of the game seamlessly. It is easy to add this extra action after all bird powers are finished, and there is a clever reminder on the player board overlay. It took us a few rounds—and checking the rulebook—to remember to take the benefit and move up the scoring track at the correct time, but it quickly became second nature.

Wingspan is one of those games where you often wish you had one more action. You might realize you are short an egg or some food, or you want 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 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. It lets players fill their bird habitats much faster. While it ostensibly makes it easier to meet goals, we still felt the pleasant 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 need 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 several plays, we did not see much variation between player scores coming from the hummingbird track. It is possible we did not uncover other ways to manipulate the scoring tracks to gain an advantage. In our plays, it only made a difference in a very close game. As far as the components of the track go, the pieces are a bit small and can be easily bumped during gameplay, so you have to be careful not to have a stray elbow knock them over.

Final Thoughts

Wingspan: Americas has everything we look for in a game expansion. It features new rules that integrate seamlessly while still evolving the gameplay. It takes an already elegant game and gives it a breath of fresh air with a host of new birds and a fresh set of hummingbirds. These new powers challenge players to reconsider their action economy while playing. 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.

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