Wyrmspan Board Game Review

When Wyrmspan was announced, and some called it a more strategic Wingspan, I’m going to admit that my desire to play the game was pretty low. Afterall, I have Wingspan, so I don’t need this, right? When Stonemaier reached out to see if we wanted to review Wyrmspan, I agreed as it was something the gaming group wanted to try anyways. After getting it all unboxed and reading the rules, I knew that Wyrmspan might actually replace Wingspan in my collection. Let’s dive in and find out why.

In Wyrmspan, players will be taking turns taking a variety of actions, either playing a cave onto their boards, playing a dragon onto a cave, or exploring one of their caves. Exploring caves will provide resources, cards, and different bonuses, while playing dragon will generally earn you points and sometimes get you one-time bonuses, end of round bonuses, etc. Caves always provide something instantly, which will continue to drive the engine you are building.

A lof of the key concepts here are based on Wingspan, but don’t be fooled – this is still very much a different game using similar mechanics. We are not going to do a deep dive into how to play the game – there are plenty of YouTube videos for that – but I did want to provide my reasons for why this is actually a better game than Wingspan.

First, let’s get this right – there is nothing wrong with Wingspan, and it is a fantastic game. I personally own all the expansions, and we love playing them. But for those that want a more predictable game, Wyrmspan is going to be the game you want to play. Gone is the random bird feeder that use to provide resources. Instead, players seem to have more agency over which resources they get, whether from their boards, cards they play, or the central dragon guild board.

For me, this opportunity to somewhat decide which resources I get when is a MUCH better way than taking random resources from a birdfeeder. I felt like I had a lot more choice, and could tailor what dragons I wanted to play based on the resources I KNEW I could obtain. There was no guessing, no “Hey, if I take this card I HOPE I get what I need to play it.” Instead, I could look at the board, look at my position on the dragon guild tile, and know exactly where I could get what I needed.

That makes all the difference to me. There are other differences between the games, of course. I love the central dragon guild board where players compete to move around it and earn points and other bonuses. This sort of replaces the hidden objectives from Wingspan, which again, as a strategic player I love.

And the best aspects of Wingspan are here as well. Cache resources and tuck cards, earn points, lay eggs to use later in the game, and so much more. There is enough extra here to keep me coming back, and moving forward this will be the game I suggest if people want to play an engine builder, tableau building sort of game.

Wyrmspan is a fantastic experience, and the choice to go with dragons and caves is very thematic and works really well. The bird theming in Wingspan is fine, but there are tons of people who just don’t like birds, and that might be a turnoff. This will draw in hundreds of thousands of people, and while it might not be as commercially successful as Wingspan, I do believe it is a better game in my opinion.

Are you ready to fill your caverns with dragons?