Have you had enough of the fanboying over a game that hasn’t been released yet? I haven’t. The latest spoiler looks at the player mats, and sheds some light on what a turn looks like for a player. Followed by a look at bonus cards within the game. Just like the previous posts looking at Wingspan I’ll be copying and pasting the words typed by Jamey on the Facebook group, and adding some commentary, and wildly incorrect speculation.

So let’s start with them there player mats.

“…On your turn, you select one of the four actions on your player mat. You take the action, and play progresses clockwise.

Like in other Stonemaier Games, we like to keep the core action system very simple. However, Wingspan adds several layers of complexity that increase throughout the game as you build your engine, as each habitat on your player mat is linked to a specific action.

Both layers are linked to the bird cards and where you play them. The more birds you play in a habitat, the more powerful that habitat becomes for you on future actions (though there are egg costs to playing bird cards in columns 2-5). Also, many of the birds in Wingspan have “when activated” abilities that I get to use every time I choose the habitat in which I played those birds.

This adds up to a huge amount of progression over the course of the game, with players chaining together birds and improving their core actions as they play…

The player mats are huge and sturdy, and they each fold down the middle (the outside is designed to look like a leather field guide).”

So my guess about the action selection and the cards was partially correct. I got the obvious part right, but was way way off on the use of the cards.

I have to admit some games have that wow factor when you look at them on the table. Doesn’t matter what you thought of that pyramid in Camel Up! and it’s practicality, you couldn’t deny that it caught the eye and made you go wow. The same for Colt Express, it’s physical presence of the 3D train and carriages wow. I like to sometimes refer to it as table theatrics. Before you even know anything about the game, it has your attention and interest already. The photos of the table with the bird table dice tower and the eggs for me add that wow factor for Wingspan.

Ok time to look at those bonus cards within the game.

“With such a wealth of options in Wingspan, we wanted to give players a few beacons to help guide them as they make choices about which birds to draw and play (and where to play them). One example of this is the set of 26 bonus cards.

Each player gets 2 bonus cards at the beginning of the game; they choose 1 to keep, and they discard the other. There are also some birds with “when played” abilities that let you draw 2 more bonus cards (keep 1, discard 1).“

An interesting idea for the game. I’m assuming that the other beacon they will be using within the game will be the goals. I can see some interesting choices having to be made between cards that boost the bonus scoring and ones that drive your engine forward. I like those kind of decisions.

Oh and yes I nearly forgot the photos are copyright Stegmaier Games and I’ve used them without permission once again.