Wingspan Game Rules

Introduction

Welcome to the world of Wingspan! In this game, you’ll have the opportunity to build and manage your very own bird sanctuary. As you gather a diverse collection of birds, you’ll need to strategize and make choices that will earn you points and maximize your chances of victory. With its beautiful artwork and immersive gameplay, Wingspan is a game that will captivate both bird enthusiasts and casual gamers alike.

Game Setup

To begin the game, each player will receive a player mat, a set of action cubes, and a hand of bird cards. The bird cards are divided into three different habitats: forest, grassland, and wetland. These habitats represent the types of birds you can attract to your sanctuary. Each player will also set aside a few cubes to track their score and food supply.

Gameplay

On your turn, you have a choice of four different actions: playing a bird card, gaining food, laying eggs, or drawing new bird cards. Each action comes with its own set of benefits and considerations. For example, playing a bird card will allow you to add a new bird to your sanctuary, but you’ll need to have the necessary food to support it. Similarly, laying eggs will help increase your bird population, but you’ll need to allocate enough cubes to the action to make it happen.

Bird Abilities and Goals

Each bird card in Wingspan has its own unique set of abilities and goals. Some birds may allow you to draw extra cards, while others may earn you additional points at the end of the game. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each bird will be crucial to developing a winning strategy. You’ll also want to pay attention to the goals listed on the cards and adjust your gameplay accordingly.

End of Game

The game ends after four rounds, at which point players will tally up their scores. Points are awarded for various achievements, such as the number of birds in your sanctuary, the variety of birds you’ve attracted, and the goals you’ve accomplished. The player with the highest score is declared the winner and is praised for their dedication to the birds.

Conclusion

Wingspan is not just a game about birds, it’s a game about strategy and decision-making. You’ll need to carefully balance your actions and make the most of the birds and resources available to you. So spread your wings and get ready for an exciting adventure in the world of Wingspan!

Hey there! If you’re a bird enthusiast like me, then you’re in for a treat. We’re a group of researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors who are on a mission to attract the most amazing birds to our network of wildlife preserves. And let me tell you, each bird brings something special to the table.

In our preserves, we have different habitats that cater to different aspects of our birds’ growth. Imagine a custom dice tower shaped like a bird feeder, where you can roll the dice to gain food tokens. We also have these beautiful marbled egg miniatures in various colors, which you can use to lay eggs. And the best part? We have hundreds of unique bird cards that you can draw from to expand your bird collection.

Now, here’s the exciting part. Points! The winner is the player who accumulates the most points. And you can earn points from all sorts of things: birds, bonus cards, end-of-round goals, eggs, cached food, and even tucked birds.

I know what you’re thinking, “How do I get started?” Well, let me tell you about the amazing components that come with this game. Trust me, you’ll be blown away!

• I will need the following components to play the game:
• 1 goal board
• 1 scorepad
• 40 wooden action cubes
• 170 bird cards
• 103 food tokens
• 1 bird tray
• 26 bonus cards
• 8 goal tiles
• 5 player mats
• 75 egg miniatures
• 1 first player token
• 1 birdfeeder dice tower
• 5 custom wooden dice
• 1 rulebook
• 1 Appendix

Let’s Get Set Up!

What You’ll Need:

1. Bird Cards: Mix up the bird cards and create a deck. Put the deck next to the bird tray and put 3 bird cards face-up on the tray.
2. Supply: Put all the food and egg tokens in the supply. These tokens are available to all players.
3. Birdfeeder: Drop the food dice into the birdfeeder dice tower.
4. Goal Board: Decide which type of goals you want to play with and put the corresponding goal board on the table, facing up. You have two options:
   1. Green: Choose this side if you want more direct competition for goals. It has 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place rankings for each goal. This is the default option.
   2. Blue: Choose this side if you want less direct competition between players. It awards 1 point for each targeted item. This is a good option for new players.

Goal tiles: Let’s start by shuffling the goal tiles, but don’t peek at them – they have two sides! Now, place one goal tile (random side up) on each of the four empty spaces on the goal board. Any extra goal tiles can go back in the box for now. Bonus cards: Take the bonus cards and give them a good shuffle. Once they’re mixed up nicely, form a deck with them and place it on the table.

Player Setup

When you play this game, you’ll receive a few things: a player mat, 8 action cubes of one color, 2 random bonus cards, 5 random bird cards, and 5 food tokens (1 of each type). You can choose to keep your hand of cards private or show them to everyone during the game.

Hey there! Let me walk you through the steps of playing this game. It’s pretty simple, but super fun!

1. Start by keeping up to 5 bird cards. If you decide to keep a card, you’ll have to discard a food token. Look at the bird cards and see which ones you like. You might want to keep the ones with food tokens shown in the upper left. For example, you can keep 2 bird cards and 3 food tokens, or keep 4 bird cards and 1 food token.
2. Next, choose 1 bonus card to keep and discard the others. You can take a look at your bonus cards while deciding which bird cards to keep, and vice versa.
3. Now, it’s time to randomly select the first player. Give them the first-player token and get ready to start the game!

Tip: When you’re selecting bird cards, think about how they can help you get more cards or food at the beginning of the game. Brown powers can be really useful too!

Game Play

In Wingspan, we play for 4 rounds. Each round involves taking turns clockwise until everyone has used up their action cubes.

When it’s your turn, you have 4 options. These actions are on the left side of your player mat:

1. Play a bird from your hand

2. Get food and activate forest bird powers

3. Lay eggs and activate grassland bird powers

4. Draw bird cards and activate wetland bird powers

During your first few turns, things will be simple. You’ll focus on attracting birds to your wildlife preserves. It’s even okay to choose the same action multiple times. Don’t worry, you’re allowed to! If you want more detailed explanations of the actions, you can find them on pages 6-9.

When you want to transfer a bird from your hand to a habitat, all you have to do is place an action cube on the Play a Bird spot that corresponds to the habitat you want to place the bird in. Then, you’ll need to pay the bird’s food and egg cost, and finally, you can place the bird on your mat. This will activate the bird’s special power, if it has one, right when you play it.

Now, let’s talk about the steps for the Gain Food, Lay Eggs, and Draw Bird Cards actions. These actions follow a simple 3-step process, which you can see on the player mat image below:

1. First, pick a habitat from the options on your game board and put a colored cube on the leftmost spot in that row. This will give you a special advantage.
2. Slide your cube from right to left and if there are any birds in that row with a brown power that activates “when activated“, you can choose whether or not to activate those powers.
3. When your cube reaches the far left, keep it there and end your turn.

How a Round Works

Once every player has used all their action cubes, the round comes to an end. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of what happens:

1. I take back all the action cubes from my player mat.
2. We score points based on the end-of-round goal for the round that just finished.
3. We get rid of all the bird cards on the bird tray and replace them with new cards from the deck.
4. The first player token moves clockwise to the next player.

Just so you know: As the game goes on, we’ll have fewer action cubes. But here’s the exciting part – the birds we collect in each row of our player mats will give us awesome powers that we can combine in super cool ways!

Oh, and by the way, to mark our score on the end-of-round goal, we only have to use 1 action cube. But keep in mind that means we’ll have 1 less cube to use in each round:

• Round 1: 8 turns per player
• Round 2: 7 turns per player
• Round 3: 6 turns per player
• Round 4: 5 turns per player

End of the Round

When we’ve used all our action cubes (1 cube per turn), the round is over. Here’s what happens at the end of the round:

1. Take off all action cubes from our player mat.
2. Get points for the goal you just finished.
3. Throw away all bird cards showing on the bird tray and add new ones.
4. Move the first player token one player forward, clockwise.

Scoring Goals at the End of the Round

The goals at the end of the round are about how many birds or eggs you have in a certain place or nest type. To show how many points you get from each goal, each player puts a cube on it (even if you get 0 points).

There are two sides to the board, and each side has a different way of keeping score. The default side is green, but if you’re new to the game, you might want to try the blue side instead.

Green: Focus on Getting More of the Targeted Item

This is how it works:

First, we use the side of the goal board that has spaces for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.

At the end of the round, you have to count how many of the targeted item you have. Once you have your count, you can compare it with the other players. Based on your rank order, you will place your action cube.

Now, if two or more players tie, things get a little tricky. In that case, both players will place their cubes on the tied place, without awarding the next place. But here’s the twist: at the end of the game, you will add up the points for that place and the next place(s). Then, you will divide the total score by the number of players who tied and round down. For example, if two players tie for 1st place and the goal awards 5, 2, or 1 points, each player will get 3 points (5 + 2 divided by 2 players, rounded down). No other player will be awarded 2nd place in this situation.

So, when playing the game, remember this method. It’s important to understand how ties are handled and how points are calculated. By following these rules, you can strategize and make the most out of your tie situations.

If you want to earn points for a goal, make sure you have at least one of the items required. For instance, if you want to score points for the “most birds in the grassland habitat” goal, you must have at least one grassland bird.

Even if you finish in 4th or 5th place, you still need to place an action cube on the goal board in the space labeled 0.

Blue: Get one point for each targeted item

Here’s how this method works: on the goal board, you’ll find spaces labeled 5-4-3-2-1-0 next to each goal. Focus on the quantity of the item you’re targeting, then count how many you have at the end of the round. For each item, you’ll score 1 point, up to a maximum of 5 points. Take an action cube and place it on the corresponding space on the goal board to mark your score. Even if you don’t have any of the item, you still need to place an action cube on the space marked 0.

Let’s talk about Bonus Cards.

During setup, each player starts the game with 1 bonus card, which is selected from 2 random cards. In the deck, there are also birds that allow you to gain additional bonus cards.

At the end of the game, all bonus cards are scored.

Now, let me explain how the game ends.

The game wraps up at the end of Round 4. To determine your final score, use the scorepad to add together the following:

In the world of bird-watching, there are many ways to rack up points. Let me break it down for you:

• Each bird card has a specific number of points listed on it.
• There are bonus cards that also have points listed on them.
• End-of-round goals on the goal board are worth points too.
• In addition, you get 1 point for each:
• egg on a bird card
• food token stored on a bird card
• card tucked under a bird card

The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. But what happens if there’s a tie? Well, in that case, the player with the most unused food tokens takes the crown. And if there’s still a tie after that, then victory is shared among the tied players. Exciting, huh?