Derek

Welcome to the First Player Token Podcast, a short podcast for folks who enjoy playing board games with family and friends. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. In this episode, I have another recommendation for a great game for couples, Wingspan.

Derek

Wingspan is a game about birds. Players take on the role of bird enthusiasts of some kind, birdwatchers, maybe ornithologists, trying to collect the best birds for their wildlife preserves. It has rapidly become a favorite late-night game for my wife Emily and me. Wingspan was published in 2019 by Stonemaier Games. It was designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and features art by Natalia Rojas, Ana Maria Martinez-Jaramillo, and Beth Sobel. Most board games you'll find on the shelves of Target or Barnes & Noble are designed and illustrated by men, but Wingspan is part of a much-needed shift toward diversity in the board game industry.

Derek

Back in 2014, Hargrave and her husband had recently started birdwatching. Around that time, she also started playing more board games and became interested in designing her own game. She's been quoted as saying, "...there were too many games about castles and space and not enough games about the things I'm interested in, so I decided to make a game about something I cared about." Wingspan was the result, and it's been a hit in the board game world, selling out three print runs in its first two months of release in 2019, and going on to win multiple awards, including the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres, Germany's Game of the Year award. A game about birdwatching is pretty unusual, and it garnered some mainstream press. I remember Elizabeth Hargrave's excited tweet when she and her game were covered in the New York Times.

Derek

To be clear, I am not a birdwatcher. All I really know about birds is that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world. Its attack dives can reach 242 miles per hour, straight down of course. I know this because I did a poster project on peregrine falcons back in elementary school. But thanks to Wingspan, I'm learning a lot more about birds these days.

Derek

So how does a board game about birds work? Well, the heart of the game is a deck of 170 cards, each featuring a different bird found in North America. You'll find a painting of the bird, a small map of the world showing its territory, its wingspan in centimeters, and an interesting fact about the bird, like that thing about peregrine falcons. The bird cards also contain some game mechanics, what food is required to collect the bird, which of the three habitats can house the bird, how many in-game points the bird is worth, how many eggs it can store, and finally, what special power the bird has.

Derek

If that sounds like a lot going on, well, it is. But Wingspan is actually fairly easy to learn. One reason is that everything in the game is really thematic. That is, all the mechanics of the game make sense in the context of birdwatching. You need food of certain types to collect specific birds. The belted kingfisher, for instance, requires fish. The yellow-bellied sapsucker eats berries and bugs. The peregrine falcon eats rodents. And the common raven eats just about anything. Similarly, each bird can live in one of three habitats, and those make sense too. The Carolina chickadee lives in forests. The great egret lives in wetlands. And the prairie chicken lives in grasslands.

Derek

Then there are those special bird powers. and each bird has a power that relates somehow to the bird's actual behavior. The common raven is known in real life for eating the eggs of other birds. In the game, its power lets you discard an egg from one of your birds to gain a food from the supply. The Carolina chickadee stores extra food to save for later, so in the game, its power lets you gain an extra wheat from the food supply worth a point at the end of the game. The peregrine falcon is a hunter in real life. In the game, when you activate it, you draw a random card from the bird deck, and if its wingspan is less than 100 centimeters, you tuck it away for a bonus point. The hunt was successful. That is totally my favorite bird power in the whole game.

Derek

The gameplay itself is thematic as well. On your turn, you can take one of four actions. Option one is to play a bird from your hand onto the playmat in front of you, paying its costs in food. Option two is to gain food to help pay for birds. Wingspan comes with this awesome cardboard bird feeder that doubles as a place to roll the food dice. You pop the dice in the top of the back of the bird feeder, and they tumble down into the tray at the bottom. It is the most satisfying way to roll dice. We have an upgraded bird feeder that you'll hear about later. Option three on your turn is to lay eggs, which are needed to add birds to your habitat as your collection grows. And option four is to draw bird cards to your hand, giving you more options for birds to collect.

Derek

Three of these actions, gaining food, laying eggs, and drawing birds, are associated with different habitats on your play mat. And this is where the game gets really interesting. Whenever you take one of those actions, you activate the special powers of all the birds you've collected so far in that habitat. So if you take the lay eggs action, you'll activate all your birds in the grassland. This means that you're not just collecting birds to score in-game points, but you're trying to find birds whose powers will play well with each other and give you resources or points along the way.

Derek

There's more to the game, but since I've covered the basics, let's hear some color commentary from my wife, Emily. She finds the game beautiful, and she has some thoughts on why this is such a great game for couples.

Derek

Welcome back to the podcast, Emily.

Emily

Thanks.

Derek

So we're looking at Wingspan, which is one of our favorite games.

Emily

Yes.

Derek

Tell me about the look of this

Emily

The birds are phenomenally illustrated.

Derek

Yes.

Emily

It looks like you have opened up a birder book. And there's all of these really neat, clever icons. It's one of my favorite things because a lot of the time icons in games will try to be clever, but they don't actually make a whole lot of sense and I have to talk myself into liking them. But these icons actually pertain to what... the bird eats. So it's super easy to learn and you learn something about nature. You know.

Derek

Can you give me an example?

Emily

I'm trying to find one that I can say. White-faced ibis? Is that how you say that? Ibis? Ibis? well this guy has a really long beak beautiful wings long neck long legs and apparently he eats fish and worms because that's the tokens that you have to get in order to get that particular card and there's an illustration of the world on every card and it highlights where the bird is from and it has a little illustration of wings with how many centimeters the wingspan is, hence, you know, the game is called Wingspan. And then there's all of these beautiful wooden eggs, which are so colorful and fun. But I do have one little complaint about the color scheme. You almost think that you're on an Easter egg hunt with these. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. And while I love the teal color of the eggs, I feel like it was a hugely missed opportunity. Why, if you're gonna have blue eggs in the bird game, do you not have robin's egg blue? This is like a bright teal right in the middle of white and pale yellow and pale green and pale pink. It makes no sense.

Derek

You would have done a paler version of blue.

Emily

A paler blue. But frankly, Wingspan people, I would have done the speckled robin's egg. Come on, man. That would have been my favorite. That would have been so great. And I realize it was probably more expensive, but I would have paid for that upgrade. But at the very least, you could have gone in the same value family. But that's my only beef with this game. The rest of it's very pretty.

Derek

What about this bird feeder we have in front of us?

Emily

This bird feeder is the best, and everyone listening will be super jealous. Because our friend, Jeff Leegonn, made it just for us. And it's wooden, and it's beautiful, and it has an imprint of the Wingspan logo on it. It's incredible. He has one of those laser... machines i'm sorry, Jeff, i don't know what that thing is called.

Derek

Laser machine.

Emily

This doubles as the dice roller so you get to stick your dice in the back which is so much fun and they all come out and then you have your fish or your mice or your berries or your wheat or your worms Or bugs, like you call them. But they're clearly worms, so I don't know why you call them bugs. So.

Derek

Why is this a good game for couples?

Emily

I don't know a lot about birds. And so it's really fun to kind of learn about birds. And then I love hiking. And so I've actually learned a lot about birds. Going out hiking with you is one of my favorite things to do. And so sometimes it actually makes me feel like we've been on a hike looking at birds. It's that transporting piece, where I get to explore with you even when we're not able to leave the house or go exploring because, you know, the kids are asleep or whatever. ... Right. Also, I learned what a blue heron was from my birder friends, but first I recognized it from this game, and then I was able to WhatsApp my friend the birders, and they told me what the name of it was, and then when we played it again, I was like, yep, that was the guy we saw.

Derek

That's the blue heron. You've also mentioned that... the powers that the birds have, the actions they can take, are nicely thematic. Yes. It makes sense given what the bird actually does in their life, and that helps the game make sense.

Emily

Yes. I really hate arbitrary rules. It's the worst. Yes. I have a terrible memory, but if it makes sense and if it's thematic enough that it tells a story, even if it's a nature story... You know, it's really fun. Also, if I might say, one of my favorite memories of this game is packing it in a duffel bag to carry to Africa to my friends, the birders, who live in Africa, in Angola. It was really great.

Derek

Thank you so much.

Emily

You're welcome.

Derek

Those friends of ours that Emily mentioned, the birders we know in Angola, who asked Emily to bring them a copy of Wingspan, well, I figure they might have some unique insight into the game. Their names are Robert and Teague, and I called them up to ask them what they like about Wingspan and what it's like to play the game as a birdwatcher. Robert, Teague, it's good to see you. Good to have you on the podcast.

Robert

Yeah, thanks.

Teague

Thanks.

Derek

thanks for thanks for calling in from Angola.

Robert

glad to

Derek

so you guys You guys live very far away from me, and I understand that getting new board games in Angola is a bit of a challenge.

Robert

Yeah, someone has to carry them in a suitcase to us.

Derek

Right, right. And my wife and your friend Emily did that with Wingspan.

Robert

She did.

Derek

So why did you ask for Wingspan? You could have asked for a lot of different board games. Why did you ask for Wingspan?

Teague

So one reason why we are interested in Wingspan is because... We like to go birding and so here in Angola we can see lots of different birds and wildlife and we've also gotten into it a little bit in other places that we've traveled to so we like the idea of a game based on a hobby that we enjoy.

Robert

It comes with the added bonus of having gotten such great reviews so it kind of blended two of our worlds. Our two big hobbies are board games and bird watching and wow here they both are in a box

Derek

right yes in a game as you say that was very well reviewed yeah um how many times do you think you've played wingspan since you got it?

Teague

i just looked it up on the board game geek app and it was it's 84 times

Derek

84 times! wow Wow. I don't know that I have any game I've played that much. That's impressive. What keeps you coming back to Wingspan?

Robert

It is simple. We love the simplicity of the game, but at the same time, there are multiple paths to victory, which is one of the things that I really appreciate in any game. So you can start out thinking that you're going to shoot for one type of victory and then you go a completely different direction which keeps it interesting so we find it doesn't ever feel like it's getting stale

Teague

I also like it because it doesn't feel super competitive so it's a pretty good couple game so we don't have to end the night with a big loss. You can just as much as you can compete in each game with the person you're playing with or the people you're playing with, you can also kind of compete against your previous high score and feel like you're succeeding in that way too.

Robert

We avoid the cutthroat games. We just figured out early on in our marriage that those are a little bit more difficult with two players for everybody to go to bed happy.

Derek

Because are you two fairly competitive people in general?

Teague

I am.

Robert

Teague is.

Derek

Teague is, okay.

Robert

Something else that we like about it is once you learn the basic mechanics of the game, we can play three games in an hour. And so, you know...

Derek

Wow, that's pretty speedy.

Robert

Yeah, we come home tired like everybody, and it's easier to turn on the TV, but with Wingspan, it's like, well, we could play a game of Wingspan in 20-ish minutes or a couple games in about the time of a TV show. So it ends up meaning we know we don't want to turn the TV on, but we don't have a whole lot of energy for one of the games that takes 30 minutes to set up. So we get out Wingspan.

Derek

Emily and I are not quite that fast, but we are, we are pretty leisurely game players as we've found. There's lots of conversation and getting up to get coffee and such.

Robert

Okay.

Derek

So you mentioned you guys are birders. What does that mean for you guys? And how does that. How does that kind of color your playing of Wingspan?

Robert

So any chance that we get, we like to get out into nature. So we go hiking and we go camping. And we don't drive... we know some people who will drive absurd distances to see that one rare bird. Birding just ends up being a hobby for us that we can take anywhere we go. But we've learned to appreciate the variety that we see. in nature and so for us it's fun to find some of the cards in Wingspan that are birds that we've seen before or you know it's something familiar and the artwork is very well done. We appreciate the artwork and all of that so it just kind of gives it a wrinkle that just adds a layer of enjoyment for us.

Teague

Our enjoyment of birding and our knowledge of birds we can also see that in how the cards work together or why they would pick a certain ability for a certain bird in the game, which makes it kind of fun. You kind of understand why they would put a certain bird in a certain habitat or why that bird would lay eggs on other birds' cards or something like that. Our friend even used the game with her kids after doing a bird unit in homeschool. So like they could even talk about how the bird cards interact, but that game lasted three hours, and they didn't finish, so that would be a big undertaking for younger children.

Derek

We kind of touched on this, but are there other reasons you would recommend Wingspan for couples?

Teague

I do think it's nice to be able to see what the other person is doing on their board. So it helps you kind of keep up with the game and see how their cards are interacting. If you're playing with four people, I think things tend to get lost in the process of the game. You're focusing more on what you're doing than what the other people are doing.

Derek

I hadn't thought about this, but, you know, the fact that you are keeping an eye on your opponent and what they're playing and that that might really change your strategy and that pretty much almost everything is out in the open. Yeah. As a kind of date night activity, it's actually you're paying attention to your partner.

Robert

Yeah, that's true.

Derek

It's not a game where you kind of live in your own world. And that's, I don't know, that's some version of romantic, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So Wingspan has an expansion. I haven't tried it yet. It has European birds, right? The birds in the base game are they're all North American birds, although some of them live on other continents as well. And I can imagine that you two might be interested in an expansion with African birds.

Robert

Oh, we are. We can't wait.

Derek

So my question, though, is if there were an African expansion, what are a couple of birds you would love to see in Wingspan?

Robert

Oh, good question. One of the birds that we really enjoy watching here is called a Turaco. And they are, they may have five or six different bright, brilliant colors somewhere on their plumage. So they're just fun to watch. And the kind of bird that if you hear it calling from a long way away, you'll go running in that direction. So there's a lot of beautiful birds that would just make attractive cards that would be fun to play with.

Teague

I would pick the African Harrier Hawk, which has a nickname called Gymnogene. And it is a bird of prey, a very large bird of prey that has a really flexible head and neck and can like get his head and neck into other birds' nests, even if they're shaped kind of funky. And so I think that could add an interesting ability to the, to the cards, a bird that can eat other birds' eggs.

Derek

Those are fantastic answers. Thank you. Well, those are all my questions. Thanks for being on the podcast and sharing a little bit about Wingspan.

Teague

Thanks for inviting us.

Robert

Yeah, glad to do it.

Derek

I am looking at photos of the Turaco right now, and they are adorable. And those African Harrier hawks are pretty cool, too. Elizabeth Hargrave, if you're listening, Teague and Robert have some great ideas for an African expansion.

Derek

That's it for this episode of the First Player Token Podcast. See the show notes for a link to my website, where you can find past episodes, see photos of Wingspan and that bird feeder that my friend Jeff made, and find me on Instagram and Twitter. If you have a minute, please rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. I've been your host, Derek Bruff. Thanks for listening. Now it's time to play some games.