Wingspan: The Board Game, Its Expansions and Wingspan Asia

What the Wingspan board game is

Wingspan is a card game with a board, about birds. Each player runs a wildlife preserve. You play bird cards into it, and every bird you add makes one of your habitats better at something. Gain more food. Lay more eggs. Draw more cards. Over 4 rounds, those small upgrades stack into a little machine, and the player with the most points at the end wins.

That stacking is what "engine-building" means. Your first turns are slow. Your last turns are busy, because every bird you played earlier now chips in.

Here's the table version of the box facts, from the base game listing and Stonemaier's own page:

• Players: 1 to 5, with a solo mode
• Play time: 70 minutes on the listing; Stonemaier says 40 to 70, plus about 5 minutes of setup
• Age: the listing in our data doesn't state one
• Cards: the listing names 170 bird cards, 26 bonus cards and 8 goal tiles
• Co-op or competitive: competitive
• Expansion needs base game: the base game doesn't; two of the four listings here do

Stonemaier lists Elizabeth Hargrave as the designer and calls it a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building game. The base game features mainly North American birds, per Stonemaier's rules page. The expansions take the birds to other continents.

The box itself is 30 × 30 × 7 cm and 2.4 kg, per Stonemaier. I converted it, because I can't help myself: about 11.8 inches square and 5.3 lb. Plan a shelf spot for a square box.

How Wingspan plays

A note on sources first. Stonemaier keeps the full Wingspan rulebooks in a download folder linked from its Rules & FAQ page. I didn't open that folder, so I'm not walking you through every step of a turn. What follows comes from Stonemaier's Wingspan page and its Rules & FAQ page, in my own words. For the full turn sequence, use the rulebook in the box or the one Stonemaier links.

The goal

Attract the best birds to your preserve and score the most points after 4 rounds. Stonemaier's page frames you as bird enthusiasts: researchers, bird watchers and collectors.

The three things your habitats do

Each bird you play goes into one of your habitats, and the habitats are your actions. Stonemaier sums up what they do:

• Gain food. Food comes from custom dice that you drop through a birdfeeder dice tower.
• Lay eggs. Eggs are small colored egg pieces that sit on your birds.
• Draw bird cards. You draw from the bird deck so you have more birds to play.

Playing a bird is its own step. Birds cost food, and many need eggs too, so the three actions feed each other. That loop is the whole game.

The birdfeeder is a dice tower. It's the only bird feeder I've seen where the food comes out rolling.

Details from the Rules & FAQ page

Stonemaier's FAQ answers a few questions that come up at most tables:

• Taking food from the feeder: you choose dice one at a time, so a reroll can happen between picks.
• Benefits and costs: you can turn down any benefit, but you can't skip a cost.
• Birds stay put: once a bird is on your player mat, you can't discard it. The game has no eviction notice.
• Optional powers: if you skip an optional bird power, you also skip its cost.
• Pink powers: a "once between turns" power can still trigger after your final turn.

Solo play

The base game includes a solo mode with an automated opponent Stonemaier calls the Automa. Per the FAQ, across the 4 rounds you always go first and the Automa always takes the last turn. Stonemaier says the Oceania expansion includes an additional Automa rulebook.

How it ends

After the fourth round, everyone adds up their points. Most points wins. The FAQ mentions end-of-round goals and bonus cards as part of scoring, and points on some cards. Stonemaier also offers a free scoring app, per its rules page.

Marisol's take: "Birds and stars have the same rule. Look up, write it down, don't guess." She keeps her bird list on label tape, of course.

Wingspan editions on Amazon US right now

Our data for this page lists 4 Wingspan boxes on Amazon US as of October 2026, all from Stonemaier Games. The table above shows the players and play time each listing states. Where a listing leaves a field out, the table shows a dash.

Wingspan, the base game

The listing says 1 to 5 players, 70 minutes and a solo mode. It names 170 bird cards, 26 bonus goal cards and 8 goal tiles, and lists engine building as the mechanic. It's marked as not an expansion, so it's the box everything else hangs on.

Stonemaier's page adds that newer printings include a swift-start pack: 10 extra birds and player guides meant for teaching a first game. The listing doesn't say which printing it ships, so I won't promise it.

A little history from the same page: Stonemaier says Wingspan reached stores worldwide on March 8, 2019, and has been translated into 27 languages. The English box is the one in our data. If you're buying for a family that plays in another language, check the listing's language line before you check anything else.

Wingspan Asia

The listing says 1 to 2 players, 70 minutes and a solo mode, and marks it as not an expansion. That matches Stonemaier, which calls Asia three things at once:

• A standalone game for 1 or 2 players, using a Duet mode with its own map and goal tiles
• A card expansion, with 90 new bird cards and 14 bonus cards, 11 of them new
• A player-count expansion, with a flock mode for 6 to 7 players that needs the base game's components

If you play mostly as a couple, Asia is the one box here built for exactly two. If you already own the base game, it's also how you get to 6 or 7 players.

Wingspan: Americas Expansion

The listing says 1 to 5 players, 90 minutes and a solo mode. It's marked as an expansion and names Wingspan as the base game. It lists 111 bird cards, 40 hummingbird cards and a hummingbird garden board.

Stonemaier's page says this expansion covers the birds of Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. It adds hummingbirds as a new kind of card, smaller than the regular birds, and a tray that fits both card sizes. Per Stonemaier, you need either the base game for 1 to 5 players or Wingspan Asia played as a 1 to 2 player game.

Stonemaier also mentions an optional set of 111 vision-friendly bird cards sold alongside the expansion. That set isn't a separate listing in our data, so it's not in the table.

One FAQ answer is worth knowing before game one: when you activate a habitat row, the hummingbird action at the end of it is required, not optional.

Wingspan Fan-Designed Bird Promo Packs

The listing names 150 bird cards in 6 packs of 25, marks it as an expansion and names Wingspan or Wingspan Asia as the base game.

Stonemaier's announcement explains where these came from. Fans had been designing their own Wingspan birds for years. Stonemaier worked with the designer and a fan-creation coordinator to vet and print 6 packs, each focused on a region: Canada, continental Europe, Asia, New Zealand, Britain and the U.S.A. The rules for the packs keep to the existing bird power types, so no new kind of power enters your game.

The Wingspan European expansion and the Oceania expansion are listed on Stonemaier's site, but neither is on Amazon US in our data right now.

Which Wingspan box to start with

Start with the base game unless you play only as two. Two of the four listings here need it, and it's the box with the most birds.

Quick matches, from the listings:

• A first copy for 1 to 5 players: Wingspan, the base game
• A couple who plays at home: Wingspan Asia, 1 to 2, standalone
• A base-game owner who wants more variety: the Americas expansion or a fan-designed pack
• A base-game owner with a big group: Wingspan Asia, for its 6 to 7 player flock mode
• Solo players: the base game, Asia or Americas, all listed with a solo mode

Gift tip: if the person already owns Wingspan, ask which expansions are on their shelf. An expansion they own twice gets a polite thank-you and a trip back to the store.

A few house rules for a first game

These are house rules, not Stonemaier's.

1. Open hands for the teacher. The person teaching plays with their cards face up for the first round and explains each choice out loud.
2. No end-of-round goals in game one. Play the first game with points from birds, eggs and bonus cards only, then add the goals next time.
3. Read one bird aloud. Each time you play a bird, read its name and power out loud. New players learn the powers faster, and nobody misses a pink power trigger.

Who should skip Wingspan

Skip it if your group wants a short game. The listing says 70 minutes for the base game and 90 with Americas. That's an evening, not a warm-up.

Skip it if your group wants to play together. Wingspan is competitive, and while players don't attack each other, they do compete for the same food dice and the same face-up birds.

Skip it if you want a game the youngest kid can teach. The base game listing doesn't state an age, and there's a lot of card text to read. Check the age on the box before buying for a child.

If you like Wingspan, look at these

Pages chosen by what they share with Wingspan: engine building, card play, about an hour, a small table.

• Everdell: worker placement and a woodland city, 1 to 4 players
• Azul: a calm tile-drafting game for a small table
• Terraforming Mars: a bigger engine-building game
• Strategy board games: the wider shelf

Fill the feeder, then play your first bird.