Did you know that birds aren’t real? But for some reason, game designer Elizabeth Hargrave continues to try and convince us that they are! In 2020, Hargrave and publisher Stonemaier Games released the second expansion to the excellent Wingspan...
Did you know that birds aren’t real?
But for some reason, game designer Elizabeth Hargrave continues to try and convince us that they are!
In 2020, Hargrave and publisher Stonemaier Games released the second expansion to the excellent Wingspan game, still one of my favourites.
Wingspan: Oceania is an expansion that adds a bunch of new birds from Australia and New Zealand, along with new powers, new player boards and a new food type!
The reason this is relevant right now (ok, it’s always relevant, but the reason I’m writing this post) is that app developer Monster Couch has now released this expansion for their digital Wingspan app!
I already explained how to play Wingspan in my review of the base game app, so I won’t do that here.
However, I will go into detail on what this excellent expansion brings.
Hold on to your hat. This one’s a doozy!
The biggest change that Oceania brings to the game is a redesigned player board and the addition of the wild Nectar food type.
The new boards rejig the actions you can do, slowing down the “egg spam” ending of the game.
They also give you a place to store Nectar that is used to play birds in each habitat (the little diamonds with numbers at the left side of the row).
Nectar is a wild resource and can be used as any food type when playing a bird.
Or sometimes it’s actually required to play a bird.
When you use Nectar to play a bird, it gets stored on that habitat for endgame scoring.
The player board actually shows not just the number of Nectar you have on each habitat, but also whether you are leading or tied for the lead (gold star or half a gold star).
That’s really nifty!
Or you can click on the Goals and then choose the Nectar board to see how you’re doing.
Each habitat is scored at the end of the game for who has the most Nectar on it. Whoever’s first gets 5 points and whoever’s second gets 2.
There are also new food dice that have Nectar on them, always with another choice as well.
Why wouldn’t you just choose Nectar all the time?
The only thing I can think of is that some birds require you to pay a certain food type to do something, and Nectar is not wild for those.
The other thing about Nectar is that any excess Nectar you have goes away at the end of the round.
So make sure you use it!
There was a huge debate over on BGG about Nectar when this game came out, and I think it’s probably still going on to some extent.
Many people think Nectar makes things too easy and it leads to some runaway games when one person gets a bunch of Nectar and other players can’t. It becomes almost an automatic “oh, there’s Nectar in the food tray? I’d better do the Gain Food action so I can get it” result.
Having played with it a few times now, I don’t see what the big deal is. It does make things easier to do sometimes, and yeah, you might not be able to get as much of it as you want.
But the food tray dice was always the worst luck-induced part of the game anyway, especially in a 2-player game where the food tray would take forever to reset.
Anyway, you may find you agree with them, or you may agree with me. Just keep that in mind when you try this out.
Unfortunately there’s no way to play the app without Nectar if you include the Oceania expansion.
If you play it on the table, you could always just remove any birds that mention or require Nectar and play with the original boards and the new birds that don’t require it.
Another cool new addition is End of Game bird powers.
These are really cool and if you get the right birds, you could score a bunch of points at the end really easily!
You still get one point per egg at the end of the game. If you’ve concentrated on this type of nest, you could get a lot of points, especially if you have birds with the star nest (which is wild, of course).
Put this together with the European expansion that has end of round powers, and things are pretty fun.
As usual, Oceania also adds a few new bonus card options, and these are actually interesting.
It’s a cool way to guide you on how to build your habitats, though of course how well you do with them depends on how your bird draws go.
The Grassland Data Analyst card requires you to place the birds in your grasslands habitat in either descending or ascending wingspan order.
That’s a bit harder to do than the “birds that eat fish” bonus!
They can be quite lucrative, though, if you can manage them.
You will also notice the bird cards have shadowy beaks on them.
This is for the digital game only (you can’t update your old cards on the table, unfortunately).
If you play this on the table, you just have to determine which direction the beak is facing. Which is pretty easy, usually.
Some new end of round goals look at which direction the birds in a habitat (or just in general) face: left or right.
Going back to the player boards, I like how they have adjusted the actions on the board.
You’ll notice that it’s not quite as easy to get a bunch of eggs out (though there are also more birds with “lay an egg” actions, either when activated or at the end of the game).
It requires cards and or food to lay a bunch of them at once, unless you fill the habitat.
It’s also easier to draw cards, as you’re already drawing 2 cards with the card action if you have a bird there.
Nectar can also help with the card draw once you have a couple of birds there, which is nice.
Finally, I just find the new birds very cool, both in powers but also just fascinating in general.
I love how educational this game can be!
As for the app implementation, it is top notch.
In addition to adding the expansion, Monster Couch has made some modifications to the online play, moving it to a new system which runs pretty well.
You still don’t create an account, so you can’t use the same username across multiple platforms, which is really annoying!
But cross-platform play is still there, if your friend is on Steam but you’re on Android, for example.
And it’s a lot more stable.
I’m not sure, but I think they also removed the 72-hour timer, maybe just for games where you invite specific people?
I know the time remaining no longer shows in games where it’s not your turn, and it used to.
They either removed the timer, or they made it so the timer doesn’t show (which would actually be bad!).
Asynchronous online play is still a breeze, with that really irritating account caveat.
(I guess that means you could play yourself, since it’s two different usernames, which might be a fun experiment).
They also added the ability to remove a couple of birds from the game that are really overpowered. You can check off whether or not you want to include the Chihuahuan Raven and the Common Raven from the game when you set it up.
Ultimately, the Oceania expansion for Wingspan is excellent, with the caveat that you may not like the Nectar aspect.
The rest of it?
Wonderful.
Wingspan: Oceania is available on Steam, iOS and Android as an in-app purchase
