Wingspan Pocket
- Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave
- Publisher: Stonemaier Games
- Players: 1-5
- Age: 8+
- Time: 30 minutes
- Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4xjB5uo
- Played with review copy provided by publisher
Wingspan Pocket distills the Wingspan experience down to a lighter, shorter, card-driven game that has each player activate a single row of cards on each of their turns. The cards are all double sided: a food side and a bird side. Bird powers are primarily indicated by icons instead of text, and they include a new type of power, ongoing (green) benefits. Wingspan Pocket is designed to be accessible to novice players yet also compelling for more experienced gamers. This is a standalone game in a small box, not an expansion (the birds in it are not compatible with Wingspan). Wingspan Pocket features birds from around the world.
The Asmodee train keeps on going. Let’s talk about Maestro Media and their base-building-attacking Clash of Clans, soon to be followed by a Clash Royal lane battler. They have a (sorta Unmatched-like) Disney themed battle game, Sky Arena Duel, a new TCG based on the Korean Summoners War app. Finally, they are rereleasing the fast-reaction Ghost Blitz with slighter friendlier graphics. Captain Games SRL has Tea and Rum, a worker placement/removal game where players specialize but still have to balance out which type of victory points they want to pursue. Office Dog is releasing a popular Japanese trick taking game as Schadenfreude where players are trying to be second in everything. They also were showing off a roll & write, The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict, where players take on both factions (good & bad) and have a war with their left and right hand neighbors (good side vs bad side.) Atomic Mass Games has a boardgame intro to their Marvel: Crisis Protocol minis game entitled Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances that can play a co-op or verses mode. Libellud has the expansion Harmonies: Crescendo, with some higher scoring cards and a couple of new play boards. Days of Wonder showed off an upcoming Rocket Rollout – a racing game with bag building with dice but also a good measure of card upgrades as well. Lookout Games had the new stand-alone Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains that adds water and fish while Dragon Overload has players playing cards to control central areas. Play a card and your opponent gets to draw one from that area – but don’t double your opponent’s power or you will Overload and automatically lose that battle. Fantasy Flight Games had another Star Wars Unlimited release but will have the ICONS release next year as a friendlier intro to the card game. They also have a pirate-themed, Fantasy Zombicide: Dead Men Tales releasing in the spring. Bezzerwizzer Studio was showing the party game, That Tracks, where teams try to guess a topic based on the historical Google search frequencies. Neuroscape, from Neuroscape LLC, is a new TCG where players have separate decks (one for resources, one for cards to play) and two different health pools (you lose if either goes to zero…) Finally, I spotted The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth – Allies expansion by Repos Production, a small package expansion that gives each player a few selected faction-unique cards playable once per game.
