Our second monthly meet-up since club gaming sessions started back up happened last night.
Earlier it looked in doubt whether Jonathan or I could make it! For me it was dependent on whether mum felt up to dog sitting. She had been looking after them for most of the day while I was at work. Oh yeah I have a part time job that I started this week.
Luckily things worked out for both of us to be able to attend. Unusually for me I was the last one to arrive at The Luxe. Despite being on time. I’d been caught up with phone calls with family and friends, plus catching up with a neighbour after delivering a parcel that had been left with mum for them. So I wasn’t late, just not my usual early self.
There were 5 at the table and it was decided to play Wingspan “fully loaded” (all the expansions). I know Jonathan and I had both said we’d never play Wingspan at its full player count again. But here we were setting up for 5 players.
After a rules rundown for Colin who hadn’t played the game before, we started play.
I’d forgotten how long a max player count of Wingspan can take. I think including setup (which is pretty quick), rules explanation, the total time playing was a tad over 3 hours.
To be fair it didn’t seem that long.
But it’s funny to think it was only the previous Friday that we did a 4 player Civilization A New Dawn game in less time than this fully loaded 5 player game of Wingspan. I think Tapestry was around this play time as well. However Jonathan won’t play those games. The theme, and type of game aren’t ones he enjoys. And the duration of last nights game I suspect pushed the limits for Jonathan.
It certainly did for me, but for other reasons. I’d told mum I’d only be a couple hours! So I did have to apologise when I got home. The saving grace was she could have an easy day to day and not get up early.
The final scores are below. As you can see it was a very comprehensive win for Diego. And done in such style by achieving the holy grail of our two achievements for playing Wingspan of filling up all the spaces on the player board. But not only that Diego got the other achievement as well of getting a score over a hundred. And I think this was also the first physical game to break that barrier. So bravo Diego.
And finally we finish with Jonathan’s photos of the evening.
It was a great evening of gaming, great banter, great fun, with great hosts.
Yeah, I personally feel that 4 players is the absolute limit for Wingspan. Not only does the game run on far too long with 5 players, it also has the slight handicap of one player never getting the first turn. While I enjoy Wingspan with 2 players, its sweet spot, for me, is 3 players (but adding the caveat that one of those players will get two turns at being first – not a big deal, but it is a small wrinkle). One of the problems in a maxed out game (that I’ve mentioned before) is following what is going on around the table, especially if you have pink powers on your board (this is a reason I prefer to have a marker to show who’s activated their pink power and who hasn’t, so a second activation between turns is not inadvertently made. I missed a couple of pink power activations on my board because I simply couldn’t keep up or see what was being activated as other players took their turns (my fault entirely, I acknowledge, but this is far easier to manage the lower the player count, although there are less chances to activate those pink powers the lower the player count). This is a game that relies on players telling each other what they are doing on their turn.
A good game, full of banter and laughter, but just too long for my liking :)
It really was a great mix last night for banter.