Wingspan Board Game Expansion Reviews and Custom Components

I’m not sure I can say it enough, but I absolutely love Wingspan. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the base game of Wingspan which stands all on its own. The feel of being a bird enthusiast attracting birds to habitats where they can get food and lay eggs is a stark contrast to a lot of board games which are space, monster or medieval–themed. 

Wingspan checks so many boxes for me that it is one of those board games that gets me excited to preach about the beauty of board games. You’ve got a coherent theme, replayability, beautiful design (thank you Beth Sobel), tactile pieces, logical goals, a bit of luck, rational decision making, nerdy flavor text, and a box that my cat can sit in all in one great package.

The base game stands alone but when you add in the two expansions the variability reaches new levels and the difficulty increases but in a magical, yet manageable way.

Wingspan: European Expansion Short Review

Board game expansions bring mixed feelings for me. Some feel poorly integrated to the theme; some are more of the same (Azul); and others feel hell-bent on adding a level of complexity to the game that isn’t always welcome (Root and Everdell).

The European Expansion to Wingspan manages to strike just the right balance of being more than the base game of Wingspan without being too much. The new cards feature, pardon the statement of the obvious, European birds. Each card features the bird’s preferred living habitat(s), food needs, nesting style, and egg laying pattern.  There are a few additional Bonus Cards and now you’ve got some birds with blue colored end of round goals so you can try those options out and ease into understanding how they add to you scoring totals across the 4 rounds of the game.

Favorite New Cards:

Wingspan European Expansion card, the red-legged partridge

Red-Legged Partridge — 3 wheats might be hard to come but so much egg laying power — I love it.

Little bustard bird card from Wingspan board game European Expansion

Little Bustard — our household just likes saying Little Bustard. That is one gorgeous bird.

Wingspan: Oceania Expansion Short Review

The Oceania Expansion for Wingspan is pretty wild if you want to see and read about birds from the other side of the world. In addition to all of the new bird cards, you get some new game mats. And the game has an additional food type, nectar — which comes in handy for feeding all of the brightly colored birds in this expansion. The Oceania Expansion mats allow you to acquire food more easily and eggs a bit less easily so there is a small change to the base game rules.

Overall, this expansion does increase the setup and difficulty of play so it might not be the way to go if you lured some bird–loving friend of yours over to your place to play their first board game in a decade. However, if you’ve already got some Wingspan fans in your flock, the Oceania Expansion is sure to please.

Wingspan Board Game Components and Apparel

The base game of Wingspan has decent components — wood dice, a heavy cardboard dice tower, heavy cardboard food tokens, nice player mats, a card tray that doubles as storage, and plastic bins for the tokens that you’ll need to double up on to store and set everything out for the base game. After many, many plays the only real wear is to the dice tower which has to be set up and taken down for storage. So while custom add-ons aren’t essential, 3–d printers have sure made for some fun options if this a game you love.

Wingspan Board Game Token Storage, Dice Towers, and Organizers

I purchased a 3–d printed storage box off of ETSY and it works great. This was a couple of years ago and there are even more options now that look good for storing the base game tokens with the items from the expansions. I have my doubts that the magnetic top would hold if the game were tipped over but the lazy-susan style piece looks really nice and is well reviewed.

3-d printed Wingspan Extension organizer

Looking to level up your Wingspan board game dice tower? Also look no further than ETSY! Again, lots of choices but I thought the additional touch of the bird house with the pileated woodpecker was the best.

Wingspan birdfeeder dice tower from ETSY

Since the internet has everything, you can also upgrade the cardboard food tokens and purchase custom bird meeples (beeples?) from Meeple Source

Custom bird meeples…

Wingspan board game custom bird meeples from Meeple Source

Custom food tokens…

Wingspan board game custom food tokens from Meeple Source

Wingspan Board Game Swag — Mugs, T-shirts, and Sweatshirts

If you are a bird enthusiast and a board game lover, then you might consider going all-in on additional Wingspan items. You can get anything from a coffee mug that shows the egg-laying powers of some of the games birds to a t–shirt featuring an imaginary bird that flips the game table over if they lose at Wingspan. Meeple Sourse sells a Wingspan hoodie featuring the scissor-tailed flycatcher so if the cover art from the original game makes you happy, there is a gift you can give yourself!

More About the Base Wingspan Board Game

See where the base Wingspan game fares when it battles against other board games in the Board Game Matrix

Check out current Wingspan pricing from Board Game Atlas

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