Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Here at Meeple Mountain, we’ve written a lot about Wingspan. Since its inception in 2019, Elizabeth Hargrave’s Spiel des Jahres winning masterpiece has inspired and captured the hearts of gamers worldwide. I’m not going to go into detail about how to play the game here. If you’re unfamiliar with Wingspan, then I suggest you familiarize yourself with the base game before reading any further.
It’s been four years since the Wingspan: Asia expansion (2022) was released. Unlike that expansion, the subject of this review, Wingspan: Americas is not a standalone expansion. To play Wingspan: Americas, you must have the base game or the Wingspan: Asia expansion in order to do so.
Something Old
Americas introduces a whole host of new birds, each featuring new and interesting abilities. A couple of standouts for me are the White-Throated Magpie-Jay which lets you tuck cards behind its neighbours, replacing the tucked cards with newly drawn ones, or the Firewood-Gatherer which steals eggs from other birds in your tableau and dispenses eggs of its own to other birds in your tableau.
A user on BoardGameGeek has compiled a list of all the new birds and their abilities that you can go check out if you’re interested. Many of these birds’ abilities interact with the game’s existing mechanisms in various new (yet familiar) ways, creating new paths to gaining resources or points. A significant portion of them, though, interact with the Americas expansion’s newest mechanism: the hummingbirds.
Something New
The Hummingbirds module introduces several new elements to the game: a central Hummingbird Garden board; one Hummingbird track, one Player Mat overlay, and a set of Hummingbird tokens for each player; and a deck of Hummingbird mini-cards. During setup, the deck of Hummingbird cards is shuffled, and the Hummingbird Garden board is laid out and seeded with cards drawn from this deck. Each player receives a Hummingbird track and a set of Hummingbird tokens. The tokens are set at the bottom of their associated tracks. Each player places a Player Mat overlay on top of the left side of their Player mats. These overlays are double-sided, and players should agree on which side to use. This is because of nectar.
Nectar
Nectar was first introduced to Wingspan in 2020’s Oceania expansion. Functioning as a wild resource, nectar (obtained from an alternate set of food dice) can be used as a replacement for a food resource you may not have when performing various actions in the game.
The reason the overlays are double-sided is players can play with the Hummingbird module with or without using Oceania rules. In Oceania, unused nectar is removed from a player’s supply at the end of each round. And, used nectar is stored in a special holding area on the player board of the habitat in which it was used. At the end of the game, the players compare the amount of nectar they’ve stored in each habitat and, depending on how much they’ve stored, they may score some additional victory points at the end of the game.
If the players opt to play without Oceania rules, nothing happens to a player’s nectar at the end of the round, and spent nectar is returned to the supply.
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds begin their lives in the Hummingbird Garden. When a player performs an action in one of the three habitats on their player mat, the last thing that happens is that the Hummingbird space on the overlay is considered. If this space is empty, the player attracts a Hummingbird from the Garden, placing it onto the empty overlay space and gaining the benefit the Hummingbird imparts: a bird card drawn from the deck, a nectar from the supply, a free egg, one benefit from the row the Hummingbird is in (a food from the supply, an egg, or a card), or an advancement on one of the player’s Hummingbird tracks.
The other way to advance on these tracks is by returning Hummingbirds to the Garden. This happens when the overlay space that is considered already has a Hummingbird present. In this case, the Hummingbird is returned to the Garden to an empty space or covering another Hummingbird that is already there. Each Hummingbird has an icon printed on it which corresponds to one of the five tracks on the player’s Hummingbird track. The player selects one of the Hummingbirds involved in the ‘returning’ process (either the returned one or the one covered up) and advances on the track corresponding to the symbol on the bird.
Advancement on these tracks may allow the player to perform additional Hummingbird actions. If a player is cleverly prepared, they may actually be able to chain a series of Hummingbird actions together, resulting in one very satisfying turn! Additionally, the higher a player has advanced on any given track, the more points they’ll earn at the end of the game.
Alongside the addition of the Hummingbirds, nectar, and the Hummingbird tracks, the Americas expansion also provides the players with new goal cards and end-of-round scoring goals which reward players for how well they interact with the new elements. For instance, there is an end-of-round goal for each Hummingbird track type that rewards the players based on how far they’ve advanced on a given track.
Thoughts
In the rulebook, Elizabeth Hargraves has this to say about how this expansion works: “Hummingbirds are one of my favorite parts of birding in Central America, but figuring out how to include a significant number of them in Wingspan was tricky—they all have similar sizes, nests, and food. This hummingbird module is my answer! I imagine them zipping back and forth in the search for nectar, flashing their bright colors in the sun.”
I’m not going to mince words here. She nailed it. The Hummingbirds are delightful and the attraction/returning mechanism is highly thematic. The introduction of nectar takes a lot of the pressure off the need to generate food, allowing players to focus more on building their engines and less on figuring out how to get birds from their hand into their tableau. It’s the perfect expansion: very easy to integrate, adding complexity to a proven formula without adding a lot of overhead.
The Americas expansion is so good in fact that going forward I doubt I will ever play Wingspan without it.
