My new series
Today, I would like to talk about the cooperative variant for Wingspan. I’ve played it a couple of times now and have a few thoughts I would like to share.
This is a new series I am trying out on my blog. It was inspired by the hashtag #FirstImpressionsFriday on Instagram. For the past several weeks on Instagram, I have been sharing my initial thoughts on new games I have been playing. I thought I would post these first impressions on my blog as well for those of you who don’t use Instagram. These posts will be shorter and perhaps a little more rough around the edges compared to my Peaceful Game Series. Keep in mind these are just my first impressions!
Wingspan cooperative variant first impressions
Wingspan is super popular and a lot of people have heard of it, but I’m not so sure if the cooperative variant is well known. The rules for it are in the Automa rulebook of the Oceania expansion. However, you don’t need any special components to play, so you could play it with the base game.
The cooperative variant uses the solo Automa as an opponent for multiple players to compete against. You win by having the average score of all of the players be higher than the Automa’s. If you know the rules for the Automa, you already know most of the rules to play. There are just a few more minor things to know such as how to give birds, eggs, etc.
I had such a good time with my first couple of plays of this variant! Wingspan is already a relaxing game and this makes it even more relaxing because you don’t have the competitive aspect. It works really well because there are already a lot of cards in the game that give stuff to other players, so you can focus on those cards. It’s also fun to be able to coordinate who takes which food from the bird feeder and who takes which birds when drawing cards.
Playing this variant made me think it would be easy to create simple cooperative variants for other games using Automas. I’ve been really digging cooperative games lately so this is exciting for me to think about.
What are some other competitive games you would like to see cooperative variants for?
This post is part of my First Impressions series where I discuss my initial thoughts for new tabletop games I have been playing.