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.

To start, each player starts with a Nest card with 1 egg in it.  Shuffle the deck of food cards (birds on the back) and deal 6 cards to each player.  Players will flip over 2 of these cards to the bird side and then lay out their 6 cards in a row to form their Reserve.

 Then divide the remaining cards in the food deck into 4 mostly equal piles and place them on the table. Flip over the top card of each deck and place it bird side up underneath.  Place 2 random goal cards in the goal display.  Someone is given the first player card. 

On a turn, players take a Nest action, then activate any brown powers on their cards and then refill the supply as needed.  Play continues until the end of a round when at least one player has played 6 birds into their Flock.

As mentioned, the turn starts with a Nest action – and there are three options:

• Play a Bird card from your reserve – pay its cost as shown in the upper right, noting that any 2 food cards can be used to pay for a specific food. Lay the new bird to the right end of your Flock. The left side card will tell you how many points it is worth, how many eggs it can hold as well as its wingspan.  At the bottom, some birds have a special power in the brown band.  Other birds have ongoing powers found in green bands.
• Draw 2 cards – take any combination of face up birds or the top of any food deck.  These cards go into your reserve, keeping the orientation of how you drew those cards
• Lay 3 eggs – place up to 3 eggs, each on a different bird card, making sure not to exceed each card’s limit for eggs.

Then, going from left to right, activate any special powers on your nest and birds – this is easily seen as these are always in brown bands. You are not obligated to use a power, you can skip a card in your Flock.  When you have finished this, replenish the bird supply if you had drawn any bird cards this turn.

Continue playing until there are 6 birds in someone’s Flock; finish the current round until all players have had the same number of turns.  Everyone now flips their nest card over to keep track of their points:

• Each bird card has a point value on the left hand side
• Egg tokens are worth 1 point each
• Tucked cards are worth 1 point each
• Goal cards are worth one point per egg on specific types of birds (specified on each goal card)

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with the most cards left in their Reserve.

My thoughts on the game

When I first heard about Wingspan Pocket, I thought that this would just be a travel version of the game – maybe tiny components so that you can bring your birding game on the go.  However, that is most definitely not the case.  Wingspan Pocket is its own game, which does obviously have some similarity to Wingspan – but it stands on its own two feet.

The game still has you playing bird cards to your area, but in this version, you are making a single row of birds and it’s sort of a race to six bird cards.  The player who gets to six cards isn’t guaranteed to win, but it triggers the end game, and it’s likely that the points from six birds will put you in the running to win.

The flow of every turn is quite simple – just read the bottom of all the cards in your nest and flock from left to right.  No decisions to be made on what to power or what order to do things in.  Just left to right, do it all, thanks.   No AP about where to place the bird or what actions to trigger.  

The three basic Nest actions are all simple, and there will always be the balance between trying to play birds to your Flock and gathering food and making eggs in order to play those birds.  You might need to take an extra turn to draw desirable Birds when they are available, and in Wingspan Pocket, this doesn’t necessarily slow down your tempo much as you will still do all the brown Bird powers in your Flock on each turn.

As you construct your Flock, you’ll try to find birds with actions that dovetail together to give you the most synergy.  In one recent game, my first two birds both looked for a Rat food card and tucked it if it was available.  Then, I was able to draft and play a green (always active) card that changed “rat food” in bird powers to “wild food”.  Thus, every turn for the rest of the game, my first two birds always drew and tucked a card.  That’s a nice combo.

For me, this is a nice streamlined game that gives me all the puzzle that I want out of Wingspan while still letting me learn a little about the birds included in the game and letting me enjoy all the wonderful art.  Though it’s called Wingspan Pocket, you’re still going to need a regular game table to play this one as the display and the player areas each take up a fair bit of space.  

The theme and the art evoke the parent Wingspan game, but I do think that there is enough difference here to possibly merit both games being in the same game collection.  Games definitely finish within the 30 minute time frame suggested on the box due to the fixed end condition of any player has 6 birds.  In fact, the brevity of the game actually adds a nice bit of time pressure to the end of the game as you try to predict how many turns you will have left (which in turn determines which birds you are trying to draft to get played into your Flock).

For me, due to both smaller box size and simpler/quicker gameplay – this is the Wingspan of choice for me and my game collection.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale Y
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4xjB5uo