Wingspan European Birds Expansion Impressions

If you haven’t read our fantastic articles on How to Play Wingspan, as well as our complete review, definitely go check those out before diving into this one. These impressions of the first expansion for Wingspan – European Birds – will go with teh assumption that you either have played Wingspan before, or know how to play! Thanks again to Stonemaeir Games for sending over this expansion for us to review! Let’s dive in!

Wingspan is easily my favourite game I’ve played in 2020, and is easily in the Top 5 (may be even Top 3) board games of all time for my family right now. We’ve played game after game, and although the concepts remain the same, the sheer number of birds and strategic options make each game feel relatively new and different. Still, we all like new things in our games, and thankfully the developers have launched an expansion for Wingspan called European Birds.

If you are expecting something game changing, you are out of luck, as the European Birds expansion really just adds more birds. It’s not that simple though, as there are new abilities on the bird card – including end of round scoring options that are separate from the universal goals board. For some, this expansion might not be enough, but with the number of birds provided in the expansion, I’m pretty sure you could just use them without the standard birds and still have a great game.

But that really isn’t recommended. Mixing these birds into the massive deck already available will provide the best game experience. There are other enhancements for this game as well, including more end of round scoring goals, and a bunch of new eggs and feed to add into the games already impressive collection. More eggs (purple!) and more food is never a bad thing and it’s great to see these added in here (when they easily could not be).

The new birds and new abilities make getting the European Birds expansion an easy decision. If you’ve been enjoying Wingspan so far, this is an easy way to extend that game play experience.