Wingspan

Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from designer Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games. It is the 2019 winner of the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award.

You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats (actions). These habitats focus on several key aspects of growth:

• Gain food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower
• Lay eggs using egg miniatures in a variety of colors
• Draw from hundreds of unique bird cards and play them

The winner is the player with the most points after 4 rounds.

If you enjoy Terraforming Mars and Gizmos, we think this game will take flight at your table. Please join us in the Wingspan Facebook group to discuss the game!

***

Name updates to birds (November 2023 and beyond)

The American Ornithological Society’s announced that some birds names will officially change so that no birds are named after people and that no names that are deemed offensive or exclusionary (e.g., to indigenous people and various cultures). This process will start with North American birds and will eventually apply to birds worldwide (for their English names). Stonemaier Games supports this effort.

As for the impact on Wingspan, we’re discussing how to proceed. We prefer to use the official names for birds, and we love the idea of celebrating birds for their unique qualities, traits, and habitats (opposed to any implied ownership or ties to a person). Given that these names are officially changing, when the AOS finalizes their name selections for sets released so far, it’s likely that we’ll make a pack of the renamed birds and offer them on our webstore. At that time we will also likely change the names of those birds in the game, rendering the historian bonus card an artifact of the past.

This isn’t a matter of erasing the past or pretending that some of it never happened–the past isn’t changing. Rather, it’s using the information we have in the present to not celebrate or honor those who committed atrocious acts in the past and to simply not be derogatory to various cultures. (Note that this is a general commentary that does not apply to all birds named after people–per the article, there are a variety of reasons that the names of people are being separated from the names of the birds, and by making a universal change, it avoids subjectivity.)

Players: 1-5
Duration: 40-70 minutes
Age: 14+