How to play Wingspan

How to play

Setup: Shuffle the birds and put 3 face up in the bird tray. Put the food and eggs in the supply and toss the 5 dice into the birdfeeder. Pick a side of the goal board, green for ranked goals or blue for 1 point per item, and put a random goal tile on each round's space. Each player takes a mat, 8 action cubes, 2 bonus cards, 5 birds and 5 food tokens, one of each type. Keep up to 5 birds, discarding one food for each bird you keep, and keep 1 bonus card. For a first game, the Swift-Start guides tell each player what to start with.

Your turn: Take one action by placing an action cube: play a bird, or use a habitat row. The forest gains food, the grassland lays eggs and the wetland draws cards, and each row gives more as birds fill it. Put the cube in the leftmost open slot of the row, take what it shows (some slots let you trade a card, food or egg for one more), then slide the cube to the left, using each brown power in that row from right to left.

Playing a bird: Put a cube above the column and pay its egg cost from any of your birds: none in column 1, 1 egg in columns 2–3, 2 eggs in columns 4–5. Pay the food on the card; any 2 food can stand in for 1. Place the bird in the leftmost empty space of a habitat it lives in (5 spaces each) and use its white "when played" power, if it has one.

Gain food: Take one die from the birdfeeder for each food you gain, and a matching token from the supply. When the feeder is empty, throw all five dice back in. If every die left in it shows the same face, even a single die, you may reroll all five before you take one.

Lay eggs: Put eggs from the supply on any of your birds, up to each bird's egg limit. Egg colour doesn't matter.

Draw cards: Take from the three face-up birds or the top of the deck. Gaps refill at the end of your turn, and there's no hand limit.

Bird powers: Brown powers work when you activate their row. Pink powers work once between your turns, when something happens on another player's turn. Some birds cache food or tuck cards under themselves for points. All powers are optional.

End of round: When everyone has used all their cubes, clear your mats and place one cube on the goal board to score the round's goal. That cube stays there, so you get 8, 7, 6 and then 5 turns. Refresh the bird tray and pass the first-player token clockwise.

Scoring: After round 4, add the points on your birds, your bonus cards and round goals, plus 1 point for each egg, cached food and tucked card. Most points wins; a tie goes to the most unused food.

Strategy

Build early: You get 8 turns in round 1 but only 5 in round 4, and each bird makes its row stronger for the rest of the game. Birds played early activate more often, so spend the first round getting birds down, even cheap ones, and save big-point birds with no powers for later. Right to left: When you use a row, the newest bird, on the right, activates first and your first bird activates last. Put birds that gain food or eggs where they fire before the birds that spend them, and remember that a bird stays where you played it. Eggs pay twice: Birds in columns 2–3 cost 1 egg and in columns 4–5 cost 2, and every egg left on a bird at the end scores a point. A strong grassland lets you pay those costs and still end with eggs to score; lay before you need them, not on the turn you want to play a bird. Food and the feeder: Before you gain food, look at what the dice show and at what your hand needs. If every die left shows the same face, you may reroll all five first. Any two food can pay for one when you play a bird, which rescues a turn but costs you twice. Round goals: The green side ranks players each round, worth more as the game goes on (up to 7 points for first in round 4). You need at least one of the targeted item to score, and tied players share the points. Look at all four goals at the start; several often reward the same habitat or nest type. Your bonus card: It is secret and can be worth as much as several birds. Choose it together with your opening hand, and let it tip close choices between birds. Quiet points: Cached food and tucked cards are worth a point each, and birds that do this every activation can outscore a high-value bird over a game. Pink powers pay out on other players' turns, so they earn most when played early.

Tips

- Discard one food for each bird you keep at setup, so keep the birds you can afford to play soon. - The newest bird in a row activates first, because powers run right to left. - Lay eggs ahead of time: birds in columns 2–3 cost 1 egg and in columns 4–5 cost 2. - If every die in the birdfeeder shows the same face, even a single die, you may reroll all five before gaining food. - Any 2 food can pay for 1 when you play a bird, but only then. - Face-up birds are replaced only at the end of your turn, and all three are swapped out at the end of each round. - On the green goal side you need at least one of the targeted item to score anything. - Unused food breaks ties, so keep that in mind on your last turns.

Player count & time

1–5 players in about 40–70 minutes. The solo game uses the Automa, a deck of 16 cards that plays a rival birder. There's little direct conflict: you compete for round goals, face-up birds and dice in the feeder rather than attacking one another, so turns stay short and friendly. Wingspan Asia's Flock mode takes the game to 6 or 7 players, with two players taking turns at once.

Expansions

The European Expansion adds 81 birds, including round-end powers that trigger at the end of each round. The Oceania Expansion adds 95 birds from Australia and New Zealand, a new food, nectar, new player mats and yellow game-end powers. Wingspan Asia is a standalone game for 1–2 players with a Duet mode, and its 90 birds also work as an expansion. The Americas Expansion (March 2026) adds 111 birds from Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, plus a hummingbird module with a shared garden board. The Nesting Box stores everything but adds no gameplay. Two related standalones followed: Wingspan Pocket (2026), a lighter 25–35 minute version for 1–5, and Finspan, a separate aquatic game for 1–5 developed with Hargrave's help.

Why it shines

Every bird is a real species, illustrated by Natalia Rojas, Ana María Martínez Jaramillo and Beth Sobel, with information drawn from sources such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds. Even the egg limits are scaled down from how many eggs each species really lays. The dice-tower birdfeeder, the marbled eggs and the Swift-Start cards make it easy to teach, and your engine visibly grows from one or two birds to rows that trigger each other.

Common beginner mistake

Keeping all five birds at setup. Each bird you keep costs one of your five starting food, so a full hand leaves you nothing to play them with, and your first turns go on gathering food. Keep the two or three birds you can play soon, with the food they need. A close second is forgetting egg costs: plan a Lay Eggs turn before you want a bird in column 2 or beyond.