This week my wife and I got Wingspan + the Oceania expansion to the table! I had picked it up for her as a Christmas present, but this was the first time it made it to the table since then. This is our first Wingspan expansion: The European expansion looked fine, but I was a more interested in Oceania for a couple of reasons:
- The birds from the Oceania region are just more wacky than birds in North America (and I assume Europe.)
- The new player boards with their different economics really interested me.
- New food resource and end game scoring mechanism!
All in all, we really enjoyed the experience. I was surprised at how much the new player boards changed the feel of the game. With base Wingspan, I feel like there is a real struggle at the start of the game to get the food you need to play the birds you want.
In comparison, in Oceania the boards have been updated so you get access to two dice instead of just one almost immediately. Add to that you have another food source that acts as wild, and a lot of the restrictions that made the game so tight at the start go away. You can get straight to figuring out an economy without worrying as much about the cost of getting it in place.
On the flip side of the coin, the eggs row has been nerfed, so while an end-game egg blitz is still good for points, it's more on par with the other available strategies. In our game, I leaned into the egg strategy at the end but was beat out by my wife's food caching/card tucking engine.
Jamey mentioned in his weekly videos the new 'beak points left/beak points right' round objective, and I made sure to include it in our first game. I like that this objective draws your attention towards the art, rather than another mechanics-based objective. I did horribly with this one, with most of my birds awkwardly looking the wrong way.
We've only played it once, but I'd say that we'd both give it two thumbs up!
Did you know we sell (non-expansion) Wingspan shirts?
You can pick one up on our website!