Flappy bird

In Wingspan there is a variety of bird that moves around from place to place.  Normally you have to build up your card, food, and egg rows separately, but this kind of bird can fly to another zone after you use it, which effectively gives you extra development in all 3 zones.  It does constrain your actions and plays some though, which is a downside.  I haven't ever played with flappy birds before because they always arrived too late to be good, but today I opened a starting hand with 2 of them.  Time to experiment!  I was especially excited because two of the round goals were 'number of birds in a zone' and flappy birds are fantastic at scooping those up with minimal effort.

I was optimistic.  Being able to always take actions at rank 3 is crucial, and I expected it to give me a huge early game advantage.  I slammed down my two flappy birds and got busy.

I ended up with my worst score ever at 78.  Ouch!

When you do this sort of experiment it pays to look at the other factors like how my bonus cards and end of round goals played out.  My score card looked great, except for one thing.  I had 26 points in eggs, just 2 shy of maxed out.  That is good.  I got 18 points in round goals with little invested in getting them, which is excellent.  My single bonus card got me 6 points, again with minimal investment.  I got 2 tuck points and 2 food points, which is fine, but the crushing failure was my 24 points in birds.  Normally I end up closer to 40 points in birds, which explains why most of my scores are in the mid 90s.

I made 2 errors that I know of, each of which cost me 1 point at endgame, though both were defensible in that they might not have been errors, depending on draws.  I also ended up with 5 bird cards in hand because I took a single draw action trying to get something good to play and whiffed completely.  

Overall my game looked strong, except for those extra bird cards and that terrible ending score.  I think the conclusion is that flappy birds, while they seem powerful, just aren't.  They have wretched point values on them so you pay a huge price to have them.  They also suck in the endgame where you just want to take eggs a bunch of times in a row because they don't have any ability to help those actions.  You do get rank 5-6 eggs, which is nice, but you don't get anything extra.

I thought that flying around the board would be a massive advantage, but it doesn't seem that way.  I have had consistently superior results going with normal birds that stay in place and keep on using their abilities to generate points or resources.  Flappy birds are exciting but the total advantage they bring just doesn't seem to add up.

I am curious to know if other people have had this same experience.  When other people have had flappy birds I have been worried about it, but I have never actually lost to someone using one, so maybe that was a sign.  In any case if you have used flappy birds and been really successful, please let me know, and explain why you think that is.  In my admittedly limited experience, flappy birds are weak indeed.

Big bird vs. little bird

When playing Wingspan I have found that playing lots of cheap birds early feels great.  Your engine purrs along, your actions feel powerful, and the game seems sweet.  However, I didn't know if that was just an illusion, and I wanted to figure out how good expensive, high point value birds were in comparison.  I also figured I should test out engine cards to see how they compare to point cards.  I designed the following experiment to test these theories out:

1.  Play Wingspan by myself, pretending the other players do nothing relevant.  Every bird is reduced to a 5 point bird that eats a single copy of any food and has no abilities otherwise.  I get 11 points from end of round goals and my bonus card.  Go!

This assumes some things.  Obviously the deck isn't full of birds like this, but this test can tell us if such birds are actually good.  It also assumes values for bonus points that are hard to rigourously defend.  While playing I won't have to actually work for any end of round goals, which helps a lot, but I also can't benefit from any opponents using abilities that give me stuff.  I will assume those two things cancel out since I don't know how to account for them properly.

The result was that I scored 77 points.  Not a great game certainly, but not a disaster either.  This score would come in 2nd or 3rd in most of the games I have played, which isn't too bad.  It won't win any tournaments though, that is for sure.  I have never personally scored below 77, so clearly this isn't a powerful strat.

2.  Do the same as 1. except play 5 point, 1 food birds until I have my basic 6 bird slots covered, then switch to 9 point, 3 food birds. 

The result here was a score of 81.  Better, largely because the expensive birds are more efficient to fill the later slots that are mostly points.  However, having less birds on the board means I would likely make less points from bonus cards and end of round goals, so the real difference is likely miniscule.

3.  Do the same as 1. except every bird I play is a 9 point, 3 food bird. 

This style felt awful with weak early plays and a terrible engine.  I was expecting a terrible result.  I scored 84, which is the highest so far with these tests.  Again though, with only 7 birds on the board I would actually do worse on the goals and bonus scores, so it probably is just about as good as the other two strats.

I was quite surprised at how tight it was.  Expensive birds score more, but get less goals, and the numbers seem like they should be tight.  Well done on balance!

This does tell me some useful things.  First is that even if a strategy feels bad because you are pumping out points in the beginning instead of engine building it isn't necessarily a problem.  You can still get a strong result from high point birds early on, definitely in part because filling your board with cheap bad birds means that the late game birds require two eggs to play, which is awful.  Playing expensive stuff means you never have to pay that price.

However, playing birds that just have raw points is not going to win you games against good players.  Scoring 80 just isn't enough.  It will beat people who have a bad game or newbies, but it won't be a dominant strat.  To score a lot of points you need cards that can consistently generate value and hit them over and over.  There are lots of ways to do this from tucking cards to cacheing food to generating eggs, but the key to scoring 90+ is to get a powerful engine and run it.  You probably want to stop building an engine halfway through round 2 though, and just punch the good buttons and play points from then on out.  This is a good way to have an engine builder work though - figuring out when to stop building the engine and switch to points works as a core concept, and is certainly dead common in this style of game.

I do like that my simple tests support a style of play that the game is clearly striving for.  You *need* to build an engine, and you *need* to stop partway through and focus on points.  The cards absolutely enforce that, as engine cards are trash in the last two turns of the game, and you clearly can't generate a big score without playing them.  The numbers conclusively support playing the game in a way that is both intended and generally fun.  Yay!  Game not broken!

The cost of a bird

I have been doing some analysis of bird cards in Wingspan.  The game is fairly balanced by and large, but I was curious how the designers valued various types of abilities and what they thought things were worth.

Baseline, birds have points on them based on their cost. 

1 cost - 5 points
2 cost - 7 points
3 cost - 9 points.

Additional egg capacity on a bird seems to be costed at 2 eggs for 1 point, with a base value of 2 eggs.  So if a bird has a 4 egg capacity, it has 1 less point on it.

Bonus cards are costed at 3 points.  I was often disappointed to play a bonus card bird because they regularly gave me only a couple points, but it seems that this is actually just fine.  Getting the big scores of 6-8 points on a bonus card is rare and challenging - mostly you can expect that one of your two bonus card choices will give you 2-4 points, and that works out.

Birds that lay eggs on every nest of a specific type when they are played are worth 4 less points for that ability.  They always hit themselves, so you need to have 3 other nests for them to be on par.  That won't usually be the case until the last couple of actions, but at game end they are solid.

Flying around from one habitat to another costs 3-4 points.  This seems reasonable.  It has to work for you 4 times to pay for itself, which is a lot, but it can also let you score up goals pretty easily.  Weak in the late game, but extremely strong at the outset.

Getting to play another bird is worth 2 points.  This seems extremely good.  Your actions are worth 4 points each over the course of the game, so getting an extra action and giving up only 2 points is excellent.  Of course it is tricky to save up all the resources to play multiple birds at once, and you have to have the second bird and the room to play it.  If the play a second bird card fits into your strategy nicely it is great, but if you really have to work for it it isn't exciting.

The birds that have a random 'when played' ability are all fair.  The costs to get the stuff range from 1 to 2, and all of the stuff you get is reasonable.  There are a few high rollers that get you a lot of a single food type, but that is often hard to use up efficiently, so they are normally going to be okay but not broken.

There are a ton of birds with 'when activated' abilities and the abilities vary wildly in power.  Some of those abilities are symmetrical, like giving every player a fish, or all players drawing a card from the deck.  You will want to use those sometimes so they are better than nothing, but they aren't great.  All of these abilities are costed between 0-1 points, which looks appropriate to me.  The more powerful activated abilities I grouped up based on how many uses you would need in order for them to be as good as a pure points bird.  They fell about equally into 3 groups - 2 uses, 3 uses, and 4 uses.  4 uses abilities are really only worth doing right at the outset of the game.  You usually will do each row 6.5 times per game, so unless you get the 4 uses abilities in quite quickly they are low value.  The 2 uses abilities are obviously superb at the start, and even worth setting up midgame.

One thing that became clear when I looked at the activated abilities was that certain ones were consistently bad.  Hunting abilities all seemed to be costed the same, usually about 2 points, but the conditions on which you actually get the points are not the same at all.  Some of them involve drawing a bird of <100cm wingspan, which is highly likely to hit, but some involved drawing birds of <50cm wingspan, which is drastically worse.  Also the abilities that give you stuff by rolling the dice are all terrible.  You will end up rolling 1 die too often and get nothing for your investment.

Activated abilities that do the same thing that their row is already doing also seem like a trap.  You might get lots of resources, but you can't effectively spam that button.  In particular the draw cards row has a bunch of birds in it that are worth hardly any points but give you tons of card draw, and these are awful.  You want consistent card draw to collect the good stuff that pops up.  Drawing a ton of cards all at once is just a big pile of random crap, and having a giant mitt of cards isn't the way to win.

The last group of cards to evaluate is the pink cards that work on your opponent's turn.  They are all costed from 1-3 points, and all of them seem powerful.  Mostly they need to go off 3 times to be worth using, and they rate to go off far more than that, even if played in the midgame.  This is the only group of birds that changes in value based on how many players are playing, and it is clear that in 4-5 person groups they are ridiculous, absolutely the best.  In 3 or 2 they are merely fair.

My final, general conclusions are that birds that get you bonus cards, fly around, give you bonus turns or have 'when played' abilities are good and fair.  However, birds that have activated abilities are all over the place.  Many abilities are bad because they rely too much on luck or specific resources.  If a thing gives you a ton of berries, you will have too many berries.  If it relies on you having grain, you will not have enough.  They is not enough weight given to how powerful selection is, or how punishing restrictions are.  This extends to nest types, where the star nest type seems to have no cost at all, despite it being excellent for goals, bonus cards, and egg laying interactions.  The cards that interact with dice consistently assume the dice will be favourable, when in fact you can assume the opposite because your opponents hate you and want you to suffer.

Take the cards that give you wild resources, not specific ones.  Take star nests.  Avoid hunting abilities unless they are the premium ones.  These are the key takeaways for me.

Make a button

I acquired Wingspan for Christmas and I have been playing a bunch.  I enjoy the game a lot, as the design is both pretty and generally well balanced.  I don't know what other people manage in terms of high scores, but I managed a collection of results in the 103-107 range that seemed really solid, and several of them happened the same way. 

I built an egg button and hit it over and over until I won.

Basically my strategy was to play a bird on the egg row that let me turn eggs into cards, and then another bird that let me turn eggs into food.  This way I could just hit the egg button nearly every turn and get all the resources I needed, freeing me to play pure points into my other two rows.  Normally you get too much of one thing if you hit a button all the time, but because I could toss away the main resource I was gathering it was fantastic.  I generally hit the food and cards buttons only about 3 times over the entire game combined.

Question is, can you rely on this strategy?  Answer:  Hell no!  I went through the bird deck and there are only 2 good cards to turn eggs into food, and 2 cards to turn eggs into cards.  I just got stupid lucky to put together this same engine three times.  You can't do this sort of thing with the food or card rows either, because there aren't things that let you efficiently trade away your cards or food for stuff so you can pound that button all game.  You can make those rows good in a variety of ways but you are still going to have to hit your other rows, which dilutes the power of the button a great deal.

My first try at the game awhile ago led me to think that it is not great with five players, and maybe not even that good at four.  The pink cards that activate on opponent's turns are nuts with high player counts and they make the game feel quite random.  However I have been playing a bunch of two player Wingspan and at two players the pink cards aren't great, which isn't as much of a problem but isn't ideal either.  A few weak cards you can just discard to discard effects, but a few overpowered cards can erase the skill element of the game too much.

Three players seems great though.  The pink 'on opponent's turn' cards are good, but not absurd.  Unfortunately I suspect that at WBC next year we will see Wingspan played, and it will end up at four players just because of the lack of copies of the game.  I would hope to see it at three players for the finals though, as that seems like the superior format to me.

I know now what cards I want to see in my opening hand though.  Common Raven (pitch egg for 2 food) and Franklin's Gull (pitch egg for 2 cards).  Those two together are a powerhouse, giving you an amazing button to push over and over by your third action!  Mix in a Common Grackle (tuck a card for an egg) later in round 1 and you can hammer that egg button the entire game long, never once needing to hit the food or card rows.  Delicious.

Flap flap

Wingspan is a new game I just ran into last night.  It was the sort of game that I needed to play a second time right away because I had to know if my thoughts about strategy were correct.  This is a good sign.

The easiest comparison I have to it is Terraforming Mars.  However, I think Wingspan actually does it better, and that is saying a lot since I have been playing a ton of TM and I want to play more.  The main points of comparison are that they are both engine building games with a mix of group and solitaire elements, and they both have extremely strong thematic elements that speak to a lot of research.

Wingspan is a game about running a bird sanctuary.  You collect types of birds, and then have to put them in your sanctuary by collecting food that they like.  Each bird has a bunch of different attributes that interact with point generation but they also have a special ability of some sort, and these special abilities form your engine.  You can set it up so you have specific actions that are extremely powerful, and then use them to generate a ton of points.

The cards are beautiful and show great attention to scientific detail.  Birds have habitats, nest types, wingspans, and other attributes to keep them unique, and the pictures and flavour text really bring it all in.  It also does a great job making the mechanics fit the theme, which I appreciate.  I think the numbers in the game are quite well done too, as we consistently ended up building engines that did powerful stuff, but the game ended just a touch before we could do everything we wanted to.  There was always a sense of urgency and desperation on the last few turns trying to squeeze out every last point, and I quite liked that.

There were a couple of issues.  The first is the readability of text and icons.  Black text on dark brown is tough to read at a distance, and the icons are small.  There was a lot of people picking up bird cards and staring at them to make out what the card did and its attributes.  While I do like the pictures of the birds on the cards, I would really appreciate the designers shrinking the pictures by 30% and increasing the size of the font and icons to help people see the cards from further away.

The second issue was a balance issue.  Most of the cards work equally at any number of players.  They do stuff on your turn, so whether it is 2p or 5p is irrelevant.  However, there are a few cards that do stuff on your opponent's turns, so when there are a lot of players those cards are extremely powerful.  Certain ones seemed completely crazy powerful in large games, especially when dropped on turn 1.  A normal good card might generate 5 resources over the course of a game, and you would be happy to play that card.  One of these 'on opponent's turn' cards could handily generate 15 resources over a game, and that seems completely out of line.

I like the theme of these cards, and I am sure there is a player count where they are completely fine.  Unfortunately if you play with a lot of players the game looks like it will hugely favour the person who gets one of these power cards in their opening hand.  I am not so much a fan of that.

Still, this balance concern is just a fact of life in games like this.  Just as a TM player can choose Interplanetary Cinematics and drop down Advanced Alloys, Aquifer Pumping, Nuclear Power, and Strip Mine on their first turn and waltz to victory, some bird draws in Wingspan are a huge engine right out of the gate. 

Wingspan is a ton of fun.  I am sure bird enthusiasts will enjoy the flavour, and even someone like me who pays no attention to that stuff generally can enjoy how well the fluff is baked into the crunch.  Also I can't stress enough how important it is that the engine building have an appropriate investment and payoff timeline in this sort of game and Wingspan does that to perfection.  There might not be a lot of variance in the general way the game plays out, but there are tons of small decisions and little tweaks you can make that will be different each time, so I suspect this game has a lot of plays in it for me.