My dad, an avid birder, completely "bounced off" Wingspan. Disappointing but not unexpected. It was a gift from a fellow bird enthusiast. They didn't know what kind of game it was. He kept laughing ruefully and saying "it's all so arbitrary" and it was honestly hard disagreeing with him! - ThreadSky

carterlodwick.bsky.social • 56 days ago

My dad, an avid birder, completely "bounced off" Wingspan. Disappointing but not unexpected. It was a gift from a fellow bird enthusiast. They didn't know what kind of game it was.
He kept laughing ruefully and saying "it's all so arbitrary" and it was honestly hard disagreeing with him!

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carterlodwick.bsky.social•56 days ago

Wingspan has an audience, but there are many bird people i know who both like board games and would not engage with WS, so presumably there's a need for a different kind of bird game out there. Feels strange that WS is the defacto choice..

lizwalcher.bsky.social•55 days ago

I enjoy wingspan but feel it has to be played with people who are excited about their strategy but simultaneously aren’t TOO concerned about winning or losing. (But maybe that’s most board games??) Curious what aspects you feel are arbitrary!

carterlodwick.bsky.social•54 days ago

I think it's stuff like the per-round bonuses- systems that seem to exist purely to add complexity but don't really express much about the themes of the game (to my adimedly casual knowledge of bird science).

carterlodwick.bsky.social•54 days ago

I agree completely with what you said though. Ultimately I just feel like Wingspan is made for a certain kind of player: somebody who wants to spend (a lot of) time familiarizing themselves with all of the cards and thinking about long term, complex strategies.

carterlodwick.bsky.social•54 days ago

It's unfriendly, I think, to somebody who just wants to jump in and have fun with it a couple times a year (at christmas with family, for example). We tend to gravitate toward games with more intuitive, spatial systems.

carterlodwick.bsky.social•54 days ago

I've done basically zero research on other birding-themed games, so maybe there's something out there that my family would grab onto. Something with shorter rounds, or with more of a social aspect? I would love to see a TTG that is themed around bird identification!

carterlodwick.bsky.social•54 days ago

My favorite part of WS is the bird cards themselves, and the sort-of silly conceit of building out a "team of birds". I took great pleasure in reading out the flavor text of each card I played, but pretty quickly this started eliciting groans once everybody realized that the text didn't have any-

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