Wingspan: European Expansion Board Game Review

By Christopher Guyton | January 2nd, 2020 | Categories: Board Game Reviews, Board Games, Product Review

A beautiful new expansion to an award-winning game is exactly what your new year of board games needs! Check out Wingspan: European Expansion!

Last February Elizabeth Hargrave burst into the board game scene with an interestingly themed board game. Little would anyone know how huge this game about birds would soon be. Wingspan was an overnight success, not only was the game gorgeous, the gameplay was phenomenal and addictive.

Wingspan: European Expansion: $25

Get It For Less At Miniature Market

In this first expansion to Wingspan, we increase the scope of the world to include the regal, beautiful, and varied birds of Europe. These birds feature a variety of new abilities, including a number of birds with round end abilities, abilities that increase interaction between players, and birds that benefit from excess cards/food. Along with the new bonus cards, they’re designed to be shuffled into the original decks of cards (and cards from future expansions).

The European Expansion also includes an additional tray for storing the growing collection of birds (past, present, and future), as well as 15 purple eggs, extra food tokens, and a colorful new scorepad designed for both multi-player and single-player scoring.

Contents:
81 Bird Cards (all unique, all new)
15 Egg Miniatures (Purple)
5 Bonus Cards
4 Automa Cards
1 Custom Tray with Lid
1 Scorepad (multi-player on one side, solo on the other)
1 Rulebook
5 Goal Tiles
38 Food Tokens
1 Reference Tile

Ages: 10+
Players: 1-5
Game Length: 40-70 minutes

This is not a stand-alone game. A copy of Wingspan is required to play.

Wingspan: European Expansion Board Game Review

Surprising no one, Wingspan has spawned an expansion from designer Elizabeth Hargrave and the art team of Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, and Beth Sobel. Stonemaier Games is once again the publisher of this amazing add on. This time, instead of all the birds hailing from North America as seen in the base game, we get to observe some of the European avian varieties. Wingspan: European Expansion is just that, more birds from the European regions.

The European expansion adds just around 100 new birds to join your games. There are also brand new end of round goals and even new cards for the Automa solo game. The expansion also includes some extra food tokens if needed as well as another set of eggs in purple. Of course, the color of the eggs is purely aesthetic, removing any complications for color-blind players needing to know which egg is which.

You also get another bird tray that’s purple instead of blue to interchange as you please.

The biggest feature for this Wingspan expansion would definitely have to be a new type of power. Some birds have a teal color band instead of the familiar brown and pink. These are typically very powerful abilities that only trigger at the end of each round prior to the end of round bonuses. My experience has been that even picking up these abilities in the third or fourth rounds are worthwhile.

One thing I’ve heard players comment on about Wingspan is the lack of player interaction. There are now a few birds that simulate this. Some have an activation power that allows the player to steal food from someone else. The victim, however, is able to take any food from the bird feeder as compensation, although if the food that was stolen was sorely needed and that exact food type isn’t in the feeder, well, that could potentially hurt.

The European expansion also adds a few end game bonus cards as well. Oddly enough the percentage rates on the old cards are not ruined by the additional bird cards. Evidently they crunched the numbers to where this would not be affected. If this is accurate, then that is some amazing foresight.

Overall I enjoy what the expansion brings to the table. The additional birds bring a fresh feeling to the game. The artwork is what we’ve come to expect and is beautiful. Plus the new teal powers add a new aspect of the strategy to an already fantastic engine-building game.

If you love and own the original Wingspan, then you definitely should go ahead and pick this expansion to add to your game. It doesn’t over complicate the gameplay at all and adds a great deal of variety to your sessions. I hope you check out this set and spice up your Wingspan games.