In the beginning of this month I traveled to California for an early holiday visit to see friends and family. It was a nice break from Winnipeg’s winter weather, and refreshing to see green grass, feel rainfall, and hear choruses of birds in the mornings. Returning to Winterpeg, I brought back Wingspan, a unique board game that incorporates bird life histories into a fun competition to collect points. Thank you to Tez & Melissa for this great gift!

This game can play between 1-5 players, and takes about an hour or so for one sitting. The objective of the game is to accumulate the most points after multiple rounds, through items like bird cards, eggs, and bonus goal cards. During play, we take turns to do one action: 1) obtain food tokens, 2) lay eggs, 3) draw more bird cards, or 4) play a bird card on the board (which uses food and eggs). My favorite part of the game is the bird cards, with 170 different species covering a great diversity and reflecting life history traits such as diet, habitat preference, and nesting style! In addition, many birds have special abilities that can be activated, also related to the species’ behavior (i.e. Brown-headed Cowbird lets you lay an egg when another player lays an egg). I like how the combinations of birds can influence people’s strategies, and also make every game unique. The nest-box dice tower is a fun touch, and the artwork is really amazing. I appreciate the level of detail put in this game, while maintaining a clean and beautiful presentation.

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There’s an expansion with European birds to the game, which I hope to add sometime. This would bring in another 80+ species with new abilities! I think for bird lovers, and non-birders, Wingspan is a great game to have.

I measured my own wingspan, and looks like at 160cm I match the wingspan of an Osprey. 😆

-Evelien