Wingspan Asia Review: 2 in the hand is better than 7 in the bush!

[Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] hey everybody I'm Tom vassell I'm Chris Yee and today we're taking a look at the third expansion for wingspan wingspan Asia as they continue to go through the different continents oh but I I don't think wingspan Antarctica will be I want the Penguins time promo pack of penguins I'm okay with that actually that's what it should be called promo Pekka penguins um you call me call me Jamie we'll talk about Peter Piper primed a pack of promo pack of penguins so this is unusual for that each expansion has had something about it well Europa was a more birds had some new new birds and new types of birds good first expansion right yeah age uh then uh your uh Oceana added a wild resource which really changed the game up this one does not do that except this one is playable by itself as a two-player game right and it also can expand the game to six and seven players Tom but more importantly pretty much everything we're talking about um so Chris is going to show you some of what's new in this expansion if you're looking at to play it as a two-player game check out our review of wingspan because it plays almost the same with some differences um which I think you might be talking about the yeah just a little extra board and so yeah we're operating Under The Simpson you know how to play wingspan for this review right so here's how what's in this set and we'll be right back [Music] he was kind of a simplified setup of wingspan Asia I'm operating under the assumption that you are familiar with wingspan and I'm going to teach you a little bit of the differences here the rulebook is going to highlight that this is both a standalone two-player version of wingspan which I'll talk about some of that or it's an expansion to wingspan in which case you just added new cards and new boards and stuff or you can play The Flock mode which is a six and seven Player version I am not going to set this monstrosity up where you can have seven boards two halves of the table and use a dial here to kind of simulate two players playing simultaneously so if you had six players the blue and the white player would take turns at the same time once they are done then the red and the yellow player would take turns at the same time and then there's a seven player side of the dial over here so that there's always two people taking turns simultaneously and that's the most we're going to discuss about that you have new player colors you have white and you have black as the two new player colors now let's talk about this as a standalone two-player game there's a few differences here first you'll notice that the main boards here which by the way are double-sided to be regular and then this also works with the nectar expansion so the in the regular version here of playing just the duet mode the two-player mode players are going to seed their board here with these half yin yang symbols and they're going to put those onto every spot of the board where you can put cards onto and that is because as you build out cards onto this board here from hand you will then take this marker here and place it somewhere onto the duet board this duet board replaces the scoring objectives so there are four different scoring objectives here that you're trying to have majority on at the end of each round the first round through the fourth uh when you take this token off of the board you place it onto a space here that represents something that matches what you've done so I've built into the the yellow area here kind of the the grassy area so I have to place this marker somewhere here under the yellow grassy area if the food that I paid for the cost of this bird has a bug or a grain or a berry I could choose to put this onto that spot right there if it has a specific type of Nest then I can as this one here matches this type of Nest I could choose to put this over here some of these spaces will give you bonus eggs bonus card draw bonus food but you just are trying to put these out here the purpose for this is that you are trying to have the most yin yang symbols here of your player color that match the end around objectives and also at the end of the game the more of these that you have in a connected group are going to score you points one per each piece that is in your largest connected group here now both players are going to be doing this and unfortunately even though these are yin yang symbols and they fit together very nicely only one player can build on a spot and so the fact that these pieces fit together so nicely is purely aesthetic uh and it's allegedly so that you can still see what the symbol is underneath there because that might matter for different scoring purposes at the end of the round so that's going to be the main difference here with two players also there's a few rules if you can't legally play something from your board out here this becomes a little wild resource that you can use later the objectives you see here are going to score for your markers for example the most in the Green Forest Area Whoever has the most there is going to earn points and then the other player will put theirs underneath here this is going to help reduce the number of action cubes that you have on a turn and then also this is going to determine who is going to be the new first player this person up here gets points and then the person on the bottom will get the first player token so you basically can see at that point here that that's going to be the main differences from the original wingspan it comes with a Score Pad here for both sides the regular side as well as the solo mode here against the atoma there are Solo atoma cards speaking of the atoma it will come with more atoma cards here that will play the two player duet mode so that they will put markers out onto this duet board and simulate your opponent that way there are individual the private goals here that are going to some of them are going to be new some of them are going to be familiar from pre previous expansions see if I can't get the camera to focus up a bit here so you can see some of them have consecutive birds and ascending or descending order in a row birds with different body parts in their names colors in their names some of these even have beaks pointing in different directions so some of these are new that I I haven't seen in previous games but some of them are also going to be kind of familiar and then you also have different card effects here that some of them are going to be similar to previous expansions but some will also be fairly new there is more of this type of effect all players lay two eggs you get to lay two additional ones things that help all players but help you more lay an egg on this bird for each other bird in the same row when played steel a bug from each of your neighbors each neighbor from whom a bug was stolen can get any food from the supply that they wish when activated up to three times draw a card from the deck when you stop if the bird's total wingspan is less than 110 centimeters tuck them behind this bird if not discard them so a few more aspects of push your luck kind of put into these hunting type cards here roll any two dice if you roll at least one fish cash a fish from the supply onto this bird all players May discard a card from their hand to gain a fish from the supply so there's a couple of different ways to use the dice in new ways and to play some push your luck games here put yeah push your luck kind of things at the end of each round uh roll all five dice you can re-roll any of them up to two times if it lays if at least three of them show the rats uh when you stop draw two bonus cards and keep one then reset the bird feeder so you can see that these have just different effects a lot of the same Birds here the zebra Dove and of course if you just want more birds and you don't want to mess with the two player mode or the six to seven player mode there's just more birds more birds that do all sorts of different things game game end effects copy different scoring objectives uh end of round effect when activated when played affects so you just get to see here a little bit of the different types of birds that are in here and that's an overview of wingspan Asia [Music] foreign things I like wingspan a lot I want to be really clear and I really like wingspan and more cards for wingspan always makes me happy I never once in my life thought man I wish I could play it with six players in fact as a general rule of thumb I straight up refused to play it with five now to be fair this expansion I went over the rules of the six or seven player you're playing basically simultaneously which as a heads up you could also just do with two copies of wingspan um I'm sure some people out there want this I'm not trying to write in your prayer if you love it but I have no desire I didn't try it and I won't I never will I might refuse yeah so it it allows you to play basically two games simultaneously two people are the or the predicated players of the turn and then it rotates around and you even have separate Birds you're separate bird feeders you have separate bird boards uh just play two games of it but anyway right again if you like that so be it fantastic right um this is this can just serve as just an expansion more bird cards um some more eggs of a different color I like the new bird cards I especially like to push your luck ones I'm always a big fan of that it's small Pusher luck in fact sometimes I I I'll be like I got what I want it you know what I'm done no reason but just having that little bit of extra makes me happy I like the cards too where you can you can hunt you can flip over a certain number of cards you can flip up to three cards as long as the total wingspan is under a certain measure you can keep all of you can tuck them under there that's a really great mechanism because it's not very long it doesn't disrupt anything it's very quick boom boom two cards in you know I'm I'm good I scored two points feels really good there's also the cards that are kind of mutually beneficial to the whole table I was gonna say I like those because what they do is they actually bring it down sometimes the game can feel a little solitaire-age it's not because you're fighting over the not fighting but the food in the middle I'm fighting maybe the birds out there and you know the the goals this gives you one more thing someone else goes in and go hey Tom you get a food I'm like I do why thank you yeah I think they got two or three food you know but that's okay have some eggs I like those a lot I I agree I think for a game like this especially because this can function as a two-player Standalone game it means I give you a little bit I get more I'm I'm very fine with that but that mechanism works just as fine in a four to seven player game for example everybody gets a little bit oh cool now I have an egg that I can I can play out this bird I was gonna have to wait one more action cycle to do that I like I think all the new bird stuff in here I really like that um I want to come back to at the very end for final rating there's one one small caveat to that but I'm gonna talk about the two player game here so before we we get into the two-player game I am mind-boggled at the component Choice here there are yin yang symbols which as soon as I saw them and I saw that this version is called Duet mode I immediately thought this is a Cooperative game because that is what the yin yang symbol is all about balance togetherness it's also called Duet which is not usually two people fighting in the middle of a song it is not a duet it is wingspan duel and those yin yang tokens which look like they fit together so beautifully and they do they do right never do they are used to Mark spots on a board which would be much better marked with rings so you could see what's underneath them that was that was stonemeyer's justification was that the the yin yang symbol even though only one can go there you still can see underneath it uh again a cube would have been fine I'm really thrown off by that that I know it's not a big deal doesn't affect Gameplay at all much it just bugs me those two things that it's called Duet and it uses yin yang symbols and yet nah and it almost feels like it's Asia so we felt like we had to use these things and we want to say duet because that makes sense bird wise but I was I was actually a little disappointed because I was like oh a two-player Cooperative game that's interesting but it's not here it's it's a fight and what it it replaces those goals which is I'll say I'd rather play this two-player version than the goal version I agree so obvious you know a lot of times people say oh you shouldn't complain about what you were hoping for but when it sounds so obvious and when you see things that so obviously look like they fit together yeah yeah yeah right but as a two-player game I really like this and I'm gonna explain my little background on this I don't particularly like wingspan that much ah I've had a lot of very boring and bad four-player five-player games of it because every time someone says hey if you want to try a wingspan oh sure I haven't played it for a little about give it a try it's a five player game all of a sudden it's too slow it's too long uh just kind of chopping this down to two players specifically having that little side board with a mechanism that's specifically for two players I think it's a great idea for this because I do like the wingspan systems when it's quicker of a game sure I also like that this version these these scoring methods encourages you to get more birds out on the board which I'm a big fan of I mean the egg strategy is still a legit one although they're trying to calm that down with cards you can tell they're trying to push you into doing other strategies than just put a bunch of eggs but getting more birds out can really help you win those goals and as dumb as it is the rows and cons or whatever the goals might be it feels more interactive rather than in the base game occasionally we'd be finished and I'd be like so oh what was the goal again you know because I'd given up on it halfway through in this two player one you you don't have to give up you can literally do everything that's there the goals themselves might say birds with this nest and you just don't draw the right kind or whatever but if the board says put them in this row I can do that yes I agree I think that there's a little bit more fun Choice there I will change which bird I want to build out or put out into My Sanctuary first based on an objective and I feel that I I have more of that drive in this version than in previous ones I really want to put up this water one but I really want to try and get the majority in grassland scoring so it's it's ever so slightly less efficient in my engine so I will make that decision to try and snipe those three points from you I like that I like the little compensation of if I get the objective on the top you get the first player token for the next round little decisions like that make this feel like a good all-around package and you can buy just this you could give this to someone as a gift even if you want to play get them into wingspan this is not a bad way to do that because again it contains everything you need although I've run out of eggs but again you could use anything you want I suppose I I like this game I'm giving this expansion but I'm giving it a seven and you might wonder I mean again that's still liking I think this expansion is fine but there's a couple reasons for that one to two player is good but the six seven player stuff I don't need so that's extra stuff I don't need but the birds the bird abilities are cool and I don't want bird lovers to get upset with me I just don't find the Asian Birds to be particularly interesting there's a couple I'm out there's a couple in there I want my Sab app I mean my South American birds and my African birds I'm so excited because there's just the wide cool variety these birds there's a lot of similarities of many of them to the European Boards of North American boards which we saw when we got to the ocean I was like wow look at all these weird Birds I'm very excited about the next two continents I don't want the bird people angry look at these weirdos and again that's a very personal thing but other than that it's more stuff but here's the deal if you have wingspan and you're not looking to play it two player right I would probably get this after Europa I would get this maybe even after like because the Oceana adds in the things I think this is good I think it's fine I think it's cool that it's a two-player game and it's a two-player game I'd give it an eight you know it's kind of weird I'm mixing it so I'll do that it's an eight is a two player game but it's a seven as an expansion because it's fine it's cool okay so so your your score I think on week's been basically we spends a little higher than that right it's like 8.5 or 9. I really like wings right my rating for base wingspan is like a five uh well uh now everyone just turned off the video right yeah yeah so that's why I saved that at the end I'm giving this one a 7.5 okay this is a huge Improvement for me because I like the two-player focused uh designs the the design decisions around this making a two-player game for me is a huge boom I still have some core problems from the base game I think the food market is one of my biggest Hang-Ups I don't like and that's more of a core wingspan issue sure so I like the food market but yes I get I get it but I think there's more ways to get food in this one I think so I think that this that the bird abilities are more interesting you know I might steal something from you and then immediately you get your choice of any food from the market because I stole a food from you yeah there's nothing that I like that's that's a cool interaction which is better than most games yeah it's not just straight up steel you actually get a really good compensation from there's little things like that that I think make it a bit more flexible I like the two-player Focus I I like the little area majority kind of a feeling thing with all of it this is a huge Improvement for me and it also cuts down the opportunity of me having having this out and also five people gather around and me being stuck that's what I'm getting at no I think this is a great two-player package so 7.5 from me a major Improvement I think and this is the one that I would personally play all right now bring on those South American birds I really want to see them that's true anyway until next time I'm Tom vassel I'm Chris Yee and we're not playing wingspan at seven foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Dice Tower

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Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, juegosdemesa, Brettspiele, ボードゲーム, brädspel, jeuxdesociété, משחקילוח, 보드게임, deskováhra, graplanszowa, bordspel, 棋盘游戏, gioco da tavolo, desková hra, gra planszowa, настольная игра, trò chơi trên bàn cờ, jogo de tabuleiro, لعبة اللوحة

Id: obmNlVLb38s

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022