Of Birds, Board Games, and Balance
If you’re not a board game enthusiast or if you mostly stick to classics like Scrabble, you may not have heard of the board game Wingspan.
And while I’d consider myself a casual board game player, the game—released in 2019—has become a go-to for me and my partner.
The award-winning game works on a couple of levels for me. It’s a relaxing strategy game that offers enough challenge to keep you interested while also having a unique conceit: birds.
In short, the goal of the game is simple: attract birds to your wildlife preserve, lay eggs, gather food, and build a strategy using the abilities of the birds in your preserve to rack up points.
Game designer Elizabeth Hargrave came up with the idea after birdwatching near Lake Artemesia in Maryland. According to interviews, she was tired of board games that focused only on castles, trains, or space battles. She wanted something that reflected her real-life interests.
The result was a game that uses expertly designed cards featuring actual bird species, with data pulled from ornithological sources like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society.
While the inclusion of true-to-life bird facts might seem overly educational or nerdy, the conceit doesn’t get in the way of a good time.
You don’t have to be a birder to like or play the game. Nor does your knowledge of birds broadly impact your ability to win. It’s merely additive to the enjoyment. But it’s a feature I like a lot. And apparently a lot of other people like it as well.
Since its release, Wingspan has sold more than two million copies worldwide for Stonemaier Games and has become one of the most successful board games of its kind. It even won the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres award in 2019, one of the highest honors in board gaming.
I’ll give it another honor—that doesn’t mean much other than to me. It’s my current favorite board game.
I’ve had a number of favorite board games over the years. As a kid, it was The Game of Life or cribbage at my grandparents’ house. In college, it was hard-fought Scrabble games in the evenings with my friend Chris.
Now it’s Wingspan with my girlfriend. I’ve realized the best games are the ones that fit the people you play them with. It has to speak to you both.
For us, that’s Wingspan.
Unlike the chaotic competitiveness of Settlers of Catan, or the trivia that grows stale too quickly in Trivial Pursuit, Wingspan works for us as a calm, engaging puzzle. It fits our dynamic. She doesn’t enjoy things that are overly competitive, while I get bored if the game doesn’t give me a chance to win and strategize.
We pull the game out on lazy weekends, or when we’re at the Olbrich Biergarten with a sunny afternoon stretching ahead, or while camping in a quiet spot far from distractions.
Mostly, the game is played against yourself. You’re racing to make your own strategy—or engine, in the common parlance of board games—hum. There’s some interaction, yes, but there’s little to provoke hurt feelings. No robber to steal your resources, no obscure trivia question to crush your ego. The competition is personal and gentle.
Set-up can be a little fussy. Cards, food tokens, eggs, trays, and pieces all demand attention. And the mechanics take a few rounds to grasp. But once you’re there, you can really start having fun with it by trying different strategies.
And then, of course, there are lots of interesting birds. Each bird card is illustrated and described with care. The art design is beautiful. And when you draw the card of a bird that you know—one you love or have encountered in the wild—you get an extra spark of joy.
For anyone who enjoys nature, strategy, or a quiet form of competition, it’s worth a look—and with expansions that bring in birds from around the world, it’s a game that keeps giving you new reasons to come back.
CRAIG SAUER is a writer, communicator and former journalist living in Fitchburg, Wis. He loves all animals, including birds. His two favorite birds are penguins and sandhill cranes.
