WINGSPAN Strategy Guide Tips for beginners

"Today I am going to teach you my 5 best Strategy Tips for beginners in Wingspan! This is a game with a lot of depth and strategy and I hope by the end of this video you will have grown into a professional Birdwatcher! Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game from Stonemaier Games. It's designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and features over 170 birds illustrated by Natalia Rojas and Ana Maria Martinez. 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."

-Description from publisher

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[LordoftheBoard]

What bird would win in a 1v1 fight? Crow, or Duck?

[bootsasses]

Great video really helpful, that last tip about using birds to perform opposite actions in slots on the board is amazing!

[BenjaminH_]

Great video. Tip number 5 is definitely the most important one imo. What I try the most in my games is to put "food powers" birds in my eggs and cards row. This way, I barely ever need to use the food row. Egg row is so important since the eggs are worth points and the cards row is good if you have solid "tuck cards" engine.

Pink powers can be bad or powerful depending of three things : Player number, the action probability and at which stage of the game you play it. Don't use these cards in 2-3 player games, but in 4-5 player games it is really good. Use the one with popular actions like "everytime someone lay eggs" v.s. the ones that are more rare (hunting birds for example). Also, it is good to play these in the first two rounds and less exciting at round 3 and 4.

[helokitty]

I really like those birbs who can switch between habitats. Gives you great options to adjust your gameplay and strategy, especially at the beginning of the game when you want that extra food token and you can save egg costs! You have to plan at least 1-2 moves in advance tho. I also love the Europe expansion with the blueish ability birds for the end of round. Will definitely get the Oceania expansion soon!

[Calmituron]

Nice video.

I agree with some of your tips but also disagree with others.
E.g. regarding your tip 4 "stay away from pink ability cards": Obviously pink ability cards are way stronger in high player count than in low player count. I would totally agree on not picking them up in a two player game. However if you are playing a 4-5 player game there are some pink ability cards that are just insanely strong. For example "get an egg when someone else takes eggs" is insanely strong in the midgame when you are not planning on taking a lot of eggs yourself.

Also here some tips from my side:
Try to build an actual engine in one row of your board that you can abuse in the lategame. In theory every row can be used for this however in the basegame specifically the egg-laying-row is by far the strongest.

This engine should have brown abilities only that grant you points and you can abuse in the lategame for a ton of free points per turn. Keep in mind that eggs give points but food and cards usually dont. Hence placing the engine in the middle row (eggs) is strong. Engine in top is usually super bad (because there arent a lot of options how to generate points with your food), but an engine in the bottom can be insanely good as well. Last week I cracked my highscore (132pts) with an engine in the wetlands that gave me the option to tuck 8 cards per turn alongside two pink birds in other habitats that gave me free eggs when other players take eggs - average of 9-10 pts per turn for the last 6 turns is just broken.

I totally agree that bonus cards (as well as round end bonus) should not be overrated. In my highscore game I had 4 points in round end bonus and 3 points in bonus cards.

[DarktanUnicorn]

I just got Wingspan but I’ve only played the solo mode and was beat everytime against the Automa. I was heavily focused on End-of-Round Goals and Bonus Cards. But after watching this video I switched up my focus on building my engine (using your tips on card placement) and now I could beat the Automa, while still reaching Goals and fulfilling Bonus cards (and that was super satisfying).

[drewholloway]

I've been learning some of these strategies through repeated play. I think that the ramping strategy makes a lot of sense but I've noticed that some small cost birds have very different victory points, so make sure you're ramping up the victory points by the end of the game!
Also I can vouch for the Raven/Crow strategy. I put these guys in my prairie and was able to create eggs and food at the same time allowing me to play some great cards that came into my hand. I got almost ninety points that game!
Appreciate all the tips!

[sneville]

This was great. I've played about 10 games so far and didn't know about the crows and ravens.

[lisasahlie]

I am a beginner and these are the types of tips I was looking for. Thank you so much! Can’t wait to play again using my new strategies.

[jwinte]

Great tips, great humor and cute to look at. 😀

[baronvonschnellenstein]

Handy tips, esp putting birds with abilities from a habitat different to where they're placed.

[sherryr]

Thanks, LOTB!! I really need these tips because I have one friend who ALWAYS beats me at Wingspan and now I’m going to try your tips. Love them.

[sableknight]

People overlook pink abilities a lot imo. I'm one of those players that used to have a full stack of brown powers to build the most powerful engine for myself.

But I've realized (especially with more players playing, even with only 2 or 3 players playing though some are very useful) that these pink powers CAN be very useful, especially the 'when another player lays eggs' archetypes. Everyone is going to be laying eggs intermittently, as they require them for playing birds and taking other actions, and especially end of game people tend to start activating their grasslands engines more and more.

The great benefit? Passive income of eggs (or others things based on other pink powers). This can really save a lot of actions, especially early game and allow you to spend more time playing birds etc, especially if you're collecting a crucial dice or saving a turn on playing an egg to play more birds, and gets your engine going that much faster. Of course this strategy, like most in wingspan, is situational. It will vary in results every time based on everyone else's boards and cards. But I often overlooked pinks for browns when I first started playing, and think they've gotten more potent with newer expansions as well.

[DrewParks]

Bit late to this one, but so glad I watched! Good tips for this game and it’s my wife and I’s favorite game to play together

[JasonPuckettNY]

great video. also quality quarantine haircut, all around impressive stuff

[evancampbell]

I really want to play wingspan it looks so fun I saw you playing on your twitch stream and it looked so fun

[matthewevans]

Thank you. These tips will help a lot.

[garyfaust]

As usual very good understanding of the games you talk about evidenced by the strategy tips. Keep up the great work! Thank you!

[andrewabraham]

Thanks, LOTB, for the Wingspan tips for beginners - looking forward to the game-playing success. happy holidays.

[mythotic]

This helped me out a lot!! Thank you! I have subbed.