Wingspan

Wingspan is pleasant, light on its feet, and quick to get moving. I cannot take it terribly seriously, which is not automatically a charge: some evenings need a game that gets on with things rather than convening a strategy committee.

At its core, you assemble a small engine from bird cards and trigger their powers. The engine building is there, but it stops early; this is more an engine-shaped promise than an engine with time to become a monster.

Cards and their powers provide the game’s main arena, while player-to-player friction remains limited. The result is brisk and clean, but much of a session’s texture rests on what appears rather than on how cleverly you can put someone else under pressure.

That lightness still makes it something I will happily play again. It is not a substantial engine builder; it is a pleasant short game wearing engine-building clothes, and at least it does not claim to be heavier than it is.

Updated session

The European birds contain several genuinely interesting cards and very clever powers. The designer’s solution of putting everything in one pile and shuffling, however, lets some games sing and others merely make noise: the added entropy produces too much arbitrary stuff, with no way to cycle or filter cards into something a little more strategic. Repeated sessions confirmed the same conclusion: I like Wingspan less with the expansion than I do the base game on its own.