Wingspan
Format: markdownScore: 10Link: https://stonemaiergames.com
Wingspan
Designer
Elizabeth Hargrave
Artists
Natalia Rojas & Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo
Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game.
Base Game
40-70 mins
Game Length
5 mins
Setup Time
1-5 Players
Medium
Game Weight
Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from designer Elizabeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games. It is the 2019 winner of the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award.
You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats (actions). These habitats focus on several key aspects of growth:
Gain food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower
Lay eggs using egg miniatures in a variety of colors
Draw from hundreds of unique bird cards and play them
The winner is the player with the most points after 4 rounds.
If you enjoy Terraforming Mars and Gizmos, we think this game will take flight at your table. Please join us in the Wingspan Facebook group to discuss the game!
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Name updates to birds (November 2023 and beyond)
The American Ornithological Society’s announced that some birds names will officially change so that no birds are named after people and that no names that are deemed offensive or exclusionary (e.g., to indigenous people and various cultures). This process will start with North American birds and will eventually apply to birds worldwide (for their English names). Stonemaier Games supports this effort.
As for the impact on Wingspan, we’re discussing how to proceed. We prefer to use the official names for birds, and we love the idea of celebrating birds for their unique qualities, traits, and habitats (opposed to any implied ownership or ties to a person). Given that these names are officially changing, when the AOS finalizes their name selections for sets released so far, it’s likely that we’ll make a pack of the renamed birds and offer them on our webstore. At that time we will also likely change the names of those birds in the game, rendering the historian bonus card an artifact of the past.
This isn’t a matter of erasing the past or pretending that some of it never happened–the past isn’t changing. Rather, it’s using the information we have in the present to not celebrate or honor those who committed atrocious acts in the past and to simply not be derogatory to various cultures. (Note that this is a general commentary that does not apply to all birds named after people–per the article, there are a variety of reasons that the names of people are being separated from the names of the birds, and by making a universal change, it avoids subjectivity.)
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Featured Components:
170 unique bird cards (57x87mm) + 10 unique bird cards in the swift-start teaching guide
26 bonus cards (57x87mm)
16 Automa cards (57x87mm)
103 food tokens
75 egg miniatures
5 custom wooden dice
5 player mats (400 x 280mm)
1 birdfeeder dice tower
2 eco-friendly food/egg trays*
1 goal mat
8 goal tiles
1 first-player token
40 action cubes (8 per player)
1 scorepad (50 sheets; 1 sheet used for all players each game)
3 rulebooks
*If you prefer sealable plastic containers, here are some options on our webstore: here, here, and here
Featured Accessories and Expansions:
European expansion
Oceania expansion
Wingspan Asia
neoprene playmat
extra scorepad
Nesting Box
speckled eggs
jigsaw puzzles
fan art pack
other accessories
Rules & FAQ
Media & Reviews
Digital Versions
Fan Creations
BoardGameGeek
Facebook Group
Buyer’s guide from Board of It.
Wingspan’s box measures 30x30x7cm, and it weighs 2.4 kg.
Updates
January 2025
November 2024
September 2024
July 2024
June 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
Release Details
Wingspan was released to retailers worldwide on March 8, 2019 (SKU: STM910).
digital versions
Tower Rex wooden dice tower
Meeplesource-created goal board
Barnes & Noble
Natalia’s website is found here, and Ana’s is here–they’ve illustrated all birds in Wingspan. Beth Sobel also contributed art for the player mats and the birdfeeder dice tower.
To propose a bird for a future expansion or promo pack, please fill out this form. The plan has always been to feature the birds of each continent in a different expansion (North America for the core game, followed by Europe, Oceania, Asia, and then later by the remaining three continents).
Copyright 2019 Stonemaier LLC. Wingspan is a trademark of Stonemaier LLC. All Rights Reserved. This content is not authorized for posting on Steam.
Photos courtesy of Kim Euker and Tim Chuon. Typeface Cardenio Modern designed by Nils Cordes, nilscordes.com. For media requests (interviews), please contact Jamey at contact@stonemaier.com or Elizabeth (the game designer) at eliz.hargrave@gmail.com.