Flocking together!

During yesterday there was a discussion on the Wingspan Facebook group about pinks powers and when they triggered. A kind soul in the group posted the following extract from the rule book.

Jonathan responded with the following:

Which sparked a bit of friendly banter in the comments for yesterday’s post.

But let’s be honest and raw here. This is badly written, or not thought out, the rule book that is. I don’t care how well your eyesight is, you can not read the pink card from across the table. And I think it’s unreasonable to pass the responsibility of remembering on to the other players. If the player who has the ability forgets it, or misses it, tough. However I do think that a better solution would be that each player announces the action they are taking, and when they are taking any when activated abilities, and the outcome. Then the responsibility is put back on the player with the triggered ability. The other players have done their bit to help, by making sure everyone knows what they are doing. If then a player doesn’t announce their actions and when activated abilities, then I would agree with Jonathan you could assume that player is trying to cheat.

And yes there was more banter later that evening. Naturally this part of the post will spark more banter and discussion.

Last night saw five members of Fenland Gamers meet up at The Luxe to play Wingspan.

I wasn’t going to ever play at the full player count. But here we were about to play the game with five players. For the evening Ice Blast drinks were banned from the table. They drip everywhere. It’s the ice that forms on the outside. It melts and drips everywhere.

The Luxe are currently doing the branded/themed drinks for the Spider-man into the Spider-verse movie they are currently showing. Jonathan and I both had one, and I got a couple of the character toppers. I wasn’t going to get any, I knew I’d want to get them all. Katie arrived, I paid the extra to upgrade her drink, and get myself a third character topper. So from having zero, I’d got three in a single evening. Later in the evening near the end I had another drink, and got a fourth. I’m so weak willed sometimes. But now I just need the final one to finish the set.

Back to Wingspan. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked really well at the maximum player count. I’d like to say there was a lot more downtime between actions. But I try and use that productively planning my turns, adjusting plans. Plus once engines were starting to work, even on others turns you got to do stuff sometimes, like collect food, get a card. And turns are fairly quick.

In this game there was more group hug cards out. Which meant that I hardly had to do a draw card action, because I was getting enough cards from other people’s turns. Jonathan has an activated ability that gave everyone a worm token from the supply, plus The Usual Suspect also had a bird that gave people a resource.

Ollie grabbed the win by five points. But more importantly I was first loser, and beat Jonathan by a whole point.

It was a great evening. A great hosts. Let’s do it again in two weeks.

4 thoughts on “Flocking together!

  1. Basically what we’re trying to say in the rulebook is: Be clear and vocal about what you’re doing. It’s not your responsibility to read or remember other players’ triggered mechanisms, not in the least. But at the same time, don’t hide what you’re doing. Not that you can really hide anything in Wingspan, but if you silently run through your turn when other players aren’t looking, they could miss things that they need to know.

  2. I’ve mentioned it before; I do think that Darren takes his turns rather quickly, which does sometimes cause a problem for others to react to what’s going on and to follow how the turn is being played. I certainly got a little lost when Darren was taking his turns during our first game of Heaven and Ale.

    However, what I did notice on Friday evening, after all the day’s banter regarding this rule, is that Darren pointed out to others when their pink powers should be activated (even those sitting at the top end of the table, furthest away from him), but decided not to point it out to me on our inaugral game when I was sitting right next to him! To be consistent, Darren should not have pointed it out to others on Friday evening if his interpretation of the rule is correct; in doing this he has unwittingly gone along with my interpretation of the rule ;)

    However, arguing what the word ‘should’ means and saying that it is not a ‘must’ is arguing semantics. I can’t wait for the games where the word ‘should’ in the rules actually means ‘must’. Will I be free to interpret that the word ‘should’ does not actually mean ‘must’ in those cases? :D

    1. We can’t all live life in slo-mo! Plus in Heaven and Ale is there stuff that triggers on other players goes?
      Friday, we had new players, and the discussion/banter during the day.
      Plus as we now know the intent of the rule, which I have been following in the game of announcing what I am doing was correct. Unlike your nanny state interruption.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.