Board Games
Wingspan-A Game that Opened the Door to Hobbyist Games
“Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from Stonemaier Games.”
by Stonemaier Games, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave, art by Beth Sobel, Natalia Rojas, and Ana Maria Martinez.
Whether you love it or hate it, Wingspan has had an undeniably positive effect on the board game community. It’s been said that the internet is half … inappropriate content and half references to everyone’s grandparents playing Wingspan. I jest, but the point still stands. The popularity of Wingspan has broken away from the realm of hobbyist board gamers and out into the mainstream.
If we measure Wingspan’s success from BGG metrics alone, it ranks as the #22 Overall board game, the #22 Strategy game, and impressively, the #1 Family game. Digging a bit deeper, it has over 52K ratings & 7.3K comments. Both are amazing statistics for a game released as recently as 2019.
To put those numbers into perspective, The Castles of Burgundy (currently ranked #15 Overall) has been one of the most popular and well-regarded board games since its release in 2011, but has only gathered 49K+ ratings.
Of any game ranked in the Top 100 and released since 2019, the next most highly ranked game is the acclaimed The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. That’s well behind Wingspan with less than 23K ratings.
According to TechRaptor, Wingspan sold 447K copies in 2020 and another 299K copies in 2019. Staggering figures for a non-Hasbro game company.
Putting aside data for a moment, I can personally attest to the number of pleasantly surprising photos I continue to see of players of all ages, nationalities, languages, etc. enjoying Wingspan together. It’s become a regular habit to see photos of grandparents playing with their families or other senior friends. Photos of Wingspan “on vacation” are common as well. Travelers post photos of themselves playing Wingspan in various natural settings, more often than not on camping trips.
The Facebook Wingspan Group boasts more than 18K members and the group remains very active. From rules questions, screenshots of personal best scores, pictures of groups enjoying their gaming sessions, and even to pictures of beautiful birds in the wild, this group has it all.
How do we unpack the phenomenon that is Wingspan?
Well, let’s start with an overview of the theme and game mechanics.
Thematically, the players represent various types of “bird enthusiasts” trying to find and attract various species of birds to their respective wildlife preserves.
Mechanically, the game incorporates card-drafting, dice-rolling, end game goals, hand management, set collection, engine-building, and action selection. In Wingspan, the 4 actions include playing a bird card, gaining food, laying eggs, and drawing cards. And that is it! That’s Wingspan!
The game is easy to teach and learn, plays relatively fast, seats up to 5 players, has a well-received Solo mode, has beautiful art and components, and fits into many board game collections as a “go-to game”.
Wingspan was designed by one of the rising stars of board game design — Elizabeth Hargrave who has since gone on to design Mariposa
The art of Beth Sobel, Natalia Rojas, and Ana Maria Martinez is well-loved for the naturalistic and sparse style employed. I have purchased many prints and am the proud owner of the original art for the Carolina Wren card! That cute little guy is all mine.
I was going to list the awards Wingspan has racked up but there are too many to mention. On BGG there are about 20 awards listed!
With all this in mind, this article seeks not to convince you to like Wingspan. In fact, I find it perfectly reasonable that many gamers fail to see the appeal of such a game. Many players have remarked they find it overhyped — which is a fair point, but consider a lot of the excitement comes from people entering our hobby for the first time. A sort of childlike joy that I find very endearing. It reminds me of the first time I discovered games like Ticket to Ride and Dominion.
Wingspan is certainly not for everyone, nor does it seem designed with that intention. It’s a fairly light 2.43 out of 5 in terms of complexity, but all of its parts integrated together have led to something special. Several generations of new gamers are now interested in the hobby!
Stonemaier Games plans to release an expansion for each continent. That means we still have Africa, South America, Asia, and the Antarctic to look forward to! And if some of us get our wish granted, an expansion pack featuring Extinct Birds of the world so that their likeness may live on in Wingspan and be enjoyed for years to come.
Happy Birding, my friends!
— the BoardGameNerd
