Wingspan Asia was the third expansion for Stonemaier Games' breakout hit game Wingspan, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave. It introduces of course a flock of new birds from the Asian continent that you can use on their own or mix and match with those from the core game or the previous Europe and Oceania expansions. However, Wingspan Asia isn't just an expansion: it's also playable on its own as a standalone solo and two-player game.
The 90 new birds in Wingspan Asia feature art from Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Natalia Rojas, and they incorporate some new not previously seen effects. We've especially appreciated the push-your-luck hunting effects on some of the birds of prey cards. You can use Wingspan Asia to expand the player count for Wingspan to seven players! Even at four and five players, Wingspan can involve excessive down time while players wait for their next turn, so we certainly wouldn't be eager to play at even higher play counts but, to be fair, the six- and seven-player rules attempt to tackle the downtime issue by splitting the game into two parallel games where pairs of players take turns simultaneously. It's an interesting idea but we continue to prefer limiting our plays of the original game and expansions to three players.
The big plus and USP for Wingspan Asia is that you can play it as a two-player standalone game. It differs from the core game in that you start off with a marker on every card space on your individual player board. When you place a bird card on any of those spaces, you remove the marker and place it out on a space on a shared 'duet' board (or, for this competitive game, should that have more properly have been designated a 'duel' board?). Your placement on the duet board has to match the environment and one other characteristic of the card you placed on your board, and you'll score bonus points from the duet board for having the majority of each round's scoring objectives on that board and for the number of contiguous markers at the end of the game. Some of the duet board spaces also incentivise you with a bonus egg, card or food resource. It's a neat design and it makes for a great two-player game. And, as in the other Wingspan titles, Wingspan Asia comes with an automata to play against solo using the new two-player set up and rules.
Wingspan Asia is a great addition to the Stonemaier Games' aviary. And because it's playable as a standalone game, you can start with this game as a relatively inexpensive entry point to the Wingspan universe.