Wingspan is one of the most popular games of 2019 and one of my personal favorites. Today we are going to be taking a look at the second expansion to the base game and see how it stacks up to the game and decide if it is worth the addition to your collection!
Wingspan Oceania Expansion is designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and illustrated by Natalia Rojas, Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Beth Sobel. It is published by Stonemaier Games.
First off, let’s talk about what is new in the box. The expansion includes 5 new player boards, 4 goal tiles, 5 bonus cards, 5 new food dice, 15 yellow eggs and 69 tokens of a new food type: nectar. The game also comes with 95 new Oceania birds cards that are designed to be shuffled into the rest of the cards already in the game.
Gameplay is the same is usual, players are set up with their starting tokens and cards. Once that is completed players are given one nectar token each as well. Play continues as normal with the new rules for nectar in effect which I will describe next.
Nectar is based around the idea of plant-based sugar that is important for the birds in Oceania. The dice in this game now feature some of this new food type as well. When paying for food tokens nectar is considered a “wild food” and can be used to replace any type. Nectar is unique in that it cannot be carted over from round to round and must be discarded at the end of that round you had gained it. Spent nectar is placed on the space in the habitat for it and players with the most and second most in each habitat are awarded bonus points.
There are also new player mats that have new actions in columns 2 and 4 in the forest and wetland rows. These add the action “reset” which will allow you to discard any one food to reset the bird tray or birdfeeder.
Also there are new game end powers that activate only at the end of the game and only once. These are great ways to build towards these powers to score the most points you can off of them at the end of the game.
Impressions
Wingspan continues to be one of my favorite games and one of the most beautiful games on the table laid out in all of its presentation. I love the base and the parts of the game all seem to flow well, I never really thought that the game needed more but Oceania shows me ways that it would benefit from more.
The new birds are great and the art is as well-the birds and player mat art by three creative artists behind it continue to be the showcase of this game. I love the new player mats and the detail on those is stunning. It adds a fun new aspect with the reset action that let’s you control what those areas are doing at a small cost to you. This game continues to be one of my favorite to just look at and take in the quality work done to produce it.
Oceania is not a necessary expansion but I did enjoy that it changes the game up with new resource and new players mats. This made it feel a little bit new instead of just adding in some new cards and goals. I really like the new options on the player board as well, but some others who knew Wingspan preferred the old board more. Either way it definitely makes it feel different than it did the first time.
Overall I would recommend this one to players who have Wingspan already and really enjoy the gameplay of it. The expansion will add into the parts you already enjoy which will give you variety and it also will give you new things to see from it that you have not experienced in the past. This combination makes it a win!
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