1-5 Players
Designer: Connie Vogelman
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Following both the big hit Wingspan, Stonemaier got together again with the designer of the fantastic Apiary to create a follow up based on dragons. Does it take flight or does it fail to scale well?
Gameplay
During 4 rounds, players first spend their coins to take one of three actions. You can play cabe cards to one of your three caves, play dragons on your caves, or explore each location, activating each space up until where you have dragons. At the end of each round players dispute in end of round criteria, like Dragons that are friendly, cave cards played, etc.
Exploring and lots of dragon and cave abilities will have players go around a guild. Most spaces have resources to get, but on top and bottom are spaces where you place a cube to either get a one time ability or end game points
Solo Gameplay
Well, I am a huge fan of Automa Factory, and my absolute favorites are Wingspan and Apiary. Well, to no one’s surprise, the solo mode is just as clean and elegant. With two modes, but basically the Automa focuses on going around the guild mat, and it does do it quite fast. At each brown location, it will either get some cards for endgame points or place a cube on the guild.
Components
Stonemaier went fairly minimalistic. All tokens are cardboard, and there is no fancy card tray or dice tower. What it does offer is a huge deck or unique dragons with gorgeous artwork and a lot more usability. And while Wingspan had factoids on the cards, Wyrmspan left that to a totally unnecessary but just as much awesome book with individual facts for each creature. I don’t mind the lack of storage, specially since expansions will come and all, and I very much appreciate the option to upgrade to premium components separately.
Wyrmspan or Wingspan
Of course this moment would come. Well, how close are they? I’d say 70%. They share the same DNA, but there is enough to differentiate to avoid redundancy.
But which is better? It’s a hard question. On one hand, Wyrmspan comes with a ton of adjustments based on feedback for Wingspan. On the other hand, Wingspan has so many cool expansions that add a lot.
Comparing base to base, it will come down to play style and preference. Wingspan has the idea of diminishing actions with increasingly explosive turns. Wyrmspan breaks down a lot of the habitats explosive capabilities between the exploration, caves and more dragons with played abilities. This means less explosions but more constant bursts.
Wingspan is also the tighter of the two games, being harder to make exactly the plays you need. Wyrmspan is more giving, with a variety of resources always coming your way. Also, Wyrmspan has a bigger interaction with the guild.
Conclusion
If you already have an opinion on Wingspan, the chances of having the same on Wyrmspan are quite big. That being said, for me it was love at first play. Each game I appreciate more the changes Connie Vogelman brought to the system created by Elizabeth Hargrave. It all feels familiar, yet novel. My only criticism is that the solo play felt a bit easier, specially when comparing the top difficulties.
Score: 9.5/10
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