Wingspan: European Expansion

1-5 players, Competitive, Bird Expansion

Purpose of Expansion

This new expansion for Wingspan introduces European birds into the fray and generally just adds MORE to just about everything from the base game. There is nothing particularly game changing here but if you already love the core game and crave more of it, well, this is the perfect expansion for you.

The Additions

There are quite a few additions included as I touched on above. You get more of those nice little candy-looking egg tokens but this time in the color purple which goes to add an even more Easter-like appearance to the game. There are more of the basic food tokens which for me is a godsend as you can just never have enough of those little babes. OH! And a few more of those nice little plastic token holders are included which is a really great surprise because now I can store all the tokens in separate containers!

There is also another complete plastic card holder box, this one in purple to match the eggs. Now you can easily store all the cards from the core game and expansion and heck, even future expansions in both of these. Lots and lots of space. There is also a new scoring pad and some new end of round objective tokens and cards to mix in with the core games batch to add a bit more replayability to the game. Oh, and let’s not forget the plethora of new bird cards. All European birds this time around with a few new abilities which I’ll speak more on below.

The Changes

There really are not many changes with this expansion save for the new bird powers. These new powers boil down to “end of round” abilities that only kick in once at the very end of the round. That doesn’t seem like much but from what I’ve seen these powers can be very powerful indeed. It’s up to you to determine how well they will synergize up with your current bird engine. There are also a couple changes with the solo gameplay with how the automa calculate points at round end based around some new automa cards.

Positive Final Thoughts

I was already a pretty big fan of Wingspan before I grabbed up this expansion so coming into it I was excited. It basically just offers more of what I already loved about the core game and adds another new bird ability and honestly it does it really well as not to bog the game down any. However, my favorite part of the expansion is not the new bird abilities, it’s the extra components! I had found myself running out of eggs on occasion, especially towards the last couple rounds in the core game and sorely needed more eggs and this takes care of that. Also more token holders was a super excellent surprise!

Negative Final Thoughts

It would be nice to be able to store all of the stuff in a single box without having to disassemble the cool birdhouse from the core game. That’s basically my biggest personal gripe about the expansion. Other than that, those looking for some game changing newness in here will surely be disappointed as the game will play exactly the same just with more stuff. This is far and away an “Add-on” expansion and not a “variant” expansion.

The Bottom Line

I recommend it if you already love Wingspan if nothing else just for the additional tokens and eggs and storage pieces. It’s always nice to see new birds but once you mix up the new birds with the large assortment of core game birds, they kinda start to blur together. Now that I have the extra pieces I was craving, I’m looking forward to a more “variant” oriented expansion sometime in the future.

The Fuzzy Llama Bronze Seal of Prevalence