Wingspan: European Expansion Board Game Review

Title: Wingspan: European Expansion
Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Type: Strategy
Players: 1 – 5 players
Recommended Age: 10+
Time to Play: 40 – 70 minutes 
BGG Ranking: 8.4
My Ranking: 9/10
Game Level: Intermediate

In the European expansion of Wingspan, you compete against other players to collect the best birds for your three different habitats: forest, grassland, and wetland. The birds introduced in the European expansion have new abilities that can be used when playing the card, activating the card or at the end of a round. You also get additional bonus cards, purple eggs, and new round objectives. The rules stay the same with the added step of activating any end-of-round bird cards that you’ve played. The player with the most points wins! 

Pros:

Improved engine-building 
The new bird cards introduced in the European expansion can give you extremely useful abilities like gaining extra food from the supply, tucking cards to gain new ones, and rerolling the birdfeeder for food selection. The right combination of cards can really help your point accumulation. The new bonus cards introduced are also easier to obtain. 

Multiple ways to win and strategy changes game to game
Wingspan’s European expansion provides additional ways to gain points and the new cards and objectives can completely change your strategy game-to-game. Based on the cards that you pull and the objectives you need to achieve, you can tailor your strategy. 

Cons:

Too many cards…? 
Wingspan already had 170 bird cards. The European expansion introduces 81 new cards bringing the total up to 251 total bird cards. This allows for a new game experience each time you play because you’ll regularly see new cards. But it’s also a bit frustrating when you look forward to a few particular cards and you may not see them in the game multiple times in a row. 

Overall…

I highly recommend Wingspan: European Expansion! It adds to the game by fixing some of the areas of opportunity of the main game. It is a great engine-building game with lots of variety and ways to win. Plus, it is simply beautiful. The game materials are well-designed and well-made. I do wish there were more rounds in each game… but that just means you need to play twice each time you bring it out.