Wingspan Pocket
- Board's Eye View
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games, Wingspan Pocket is a standalone game that's really more Wingspan-adjacent than a cutdown version of the original and now much-expanded Wingspan. Like its predecessor it makes use of appealing ornithological art (from Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Natalia Rojas), with bird cards that give us both the common and Latin names of each of the featured species, along with a short fun fact. Appropiately, each card shows us that bird's wingspan tho' we're not shown where in the world it comes from; whereas the original edition of Wingspan and the subsequent expansions all focused on the birds of a single continent, the birds in Wingspan Pocket are drawn from across the globe.
The 1–5 players start off with a hand of six cards that have a bird on one side and food icons on the other. You choose two of the cards to flip to their bird side and leave the others for their food value. On your turn you get to take one of three actions: either play a bird card from your hand to your tableau, draw cards from the market display of face-up birds and food, or collect 1–3 eggs to lay on 1–3 different cards. You also get to take the action shown on the bottom of all the bird cards in your tableau, which can be especially satisfying if you're able to get out a serviceable combo of bird actions.
Unlike the original version of Wingspan, which can run to well over two hours at higher player counts, Wingspan Pocket is super-quick. The end is triggered as soon as a player has six birds in their tableau, so it's unlikely that plays will run much over 30 minutes. Points at the end are totted up for feathers on cards, eggs and any cards that have been tucked away as a result of an action on any of your bird cards. In addition, there are extra points to be scored for meeting the requirements of the two goal cards randomly selected for display at the start of your game. We liked the fact that all of the goal cards show as a percentage how many Wingspan Pocket cards can potentially satisfy them.
Wingspan Pocket is a great little family-friendly filler. It's easy to play, with rules and card action icons that are mostly intuitive. It means you can be up and running (or should that be flying?) with the game without a heavy rules overhead. It's a game with a relatively high luck factor but for many Wingspan devotees, Wingspan Pocket will serve as a primer for the original game: a way of easing new players into its more demanding predecessor.
