Overview
This guide will lead you through the basics of wingspan, and how to play. Not super detailed, please play tutorial in-game for more help.
What is Wingspan?
Wingspan, as said on the trailer for the game, is a relaxing strategy game about birds for 1 – 5 players. You need to place bird cards to lvl up different actions, while using these actions to get points. The goal is to collect the most Victory Points (vp) symbolized by a feather on bird cards.
How to navigate the main menu
When you start up the game, it looks like any other game’s main screen. But there are two different ways to play the game, online, or local. Online is played by clicking the big button that says, you guessed it: Online. The other button to play the game is marked as: Play. When you click play, you will be navigated to another screen. On this screen, you will see custom game, Automa, or tutorial. You should go through the tutorial, it leads you through playing the game and explains different parts of the game I cannot explain here. Then you have custom game and Automa. What do they do? Automa is to play against an automated bot. However, this bot just plays by what it can do according to the rules. It plays like a bot, and not a human. When you choose custom game however, you may bring in different difficulties of AI’s, which do play like humans do, coming up with strategies. Or, you may choose human, which means you and a friend can play the game from the same computer. In the top left corner, you can find games that you have ongoing. On the online screen, you will find a screen similar to the local screen, except you have 2 choices for a matchmaking game, or you have your custom game button which will let you invite online friends to play, and also let you bring AI’s into your game. The 5 min matchmaking button will bring you into a game with a 5 min turn timer, and the 24 hr matchmaking screen to a 24 hr turn timer game. When you first start the game, your preserve archive and birds will be empty. As you play birds, they will be registered into your bird catalog accessible from the home screen. When you finish a game, you may choose to save a game to your preserve archive, which means that game is now saved and you can view the game, the points and birds after the fact whenever you want to from the archive. Credits and Settings are self-explanatory.
Kinds of food
When you take the gain food action, then you will be able to gain food. You need this food to be able to play birds, by gaining the food specified in their food cost.
Here is the list of food:
Berries
Mouse
Invertebrate
Seed
Fish
How to take a turn
You may take one action a round. Each action takes one turn. There are 8 turns, in the 1st round, 7 in the 2nd, 6 in the 3rd, and 5 in the 4th. There are 4 actions you can take. Take a food from the birdfeeder, lay eggs, draw a bird, or play a bird. At the beginning of the game before this happens, you will need to choose 5 things from 5 birds and 5 food. One of each type. So you may be able to place a bird to start off with, or you may want to take some more food to play more birds. When you want to take an action, switch to the biome the action is in. The forest is the take food action, the grassland the lay eggs action, and the wetland the draw bird action. Then, click on the leftmost exposed action tile to take the action. When you place down birds, they will cover up the leftmost exposed action, therefor “upgrading” the action to make it more powerful by letting you use the next most exposed action tile.
Bird actions
There are 3 different kinds of bird actions. When Played, When Activated, and Once Between Turns. The when played action is activated when the bird is played, and the bird will not be able use this action again. The when activated action is activated when you take the action of the biome the bird with the when activated action is in. So for example, if a bird with a when activated action is in the grassland, and you take the lay eggs action, then after this the bird will take its action. This action can be used multiple times. The once between turns action is activated in-between player turns. This action can be taken multiple times.
More on player actions
The take food action in the forest just lets you choose a food from the birdfeeder at basic, but when “upgraded” it can provide more food. If there is only one kind of food inside the birdfeeder, or one die at any time, then you may re-roll the food inside the birdfeeder, but if you do this, you must choose food. There is no going back. The lay eggs action is in the grassland, and allows you to lay 2 eggs at basic, and more when “upgraded.” However, birds have a limited number of egg spots, as seen in the pic below.
That’s all!
Go through the tutorial in-game, and paired with this you now know how to play! Have fun!