I think if you asked Wyrmspan directly, I’m not sure it would be particularly happy with being called a cash in, or a money grab. Its that situation where the game simply wouldn’t exist without it’s household name sibling. Like some kind of unfortunate cardboard Kieran Culkin, it does owe a little to its family, but at the same time, it would be probably justified to tell you to eff off if you asked them to consider defending their home in some kind of slapstick way.
Wyrmspan was damned to be compared when it was announced. It was damned when it didn’t do things exactly the same as Wingspan and damned again when it tried to keep the core mechanics. It’s like the Force Awakens, it’s learned things from A New Hope and its trying its own thing, but that doesn’t stop the detractors in their rage finder tractors looking for their next field. I have spoken to those who prefer Wyrm over Wing, and those who at the same time will not being going anywhere near Finspan, because it’s probably just another thing that is going to be different for the sake of it that won’t be liked. (Which I never get because both Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne are doing exactly the same thing and they just a keep on selling.)
For those who have the simple question, “Is it any Fun?”, well the answer to that is a resounding yes. On a base level, Wyrmspan offers an extremely solid and well crafted fun experience. There are some major differences to the main mechanics from Wingspan. The random food tower is no more, opting for a more streamlined choose what you want in most occasions. The number of potential nesting spaces for your leathery Birbs has also decreased, and instead every space requires a cave to be explored before you can then entice a dragon into aforesaid mentioned abode.
Caves often act as an aid to assist you in your run up to gain what you need to house a Wyrm, and normally give you little breadcrumbs towards a solid foundation. A compulsory requirement which tries something different, and for the most case works very well, but has tinges of frustration in the last half of the game where you want to start scoring points as opposed to laying down nests for leaping lizards. The main big change comes in the form of the direction your piece travels on taking an action, which thematically has you exploring from left to right instead of Wingspans direction. In Wyrmspan you’re moving an explorer further into the cave as opposed to moving some kind of abstract action cube. It just makes that little bit more sense.
The other major change is that actions take the form of dragon coins that need to be paid to carry out an action, but unlike Wingspan, there are opportunities to gain additional coins in a round and therefore give you extra turns for that entire round. I don’t know I was falling foul to reading a line in a rulebook too many times, that it became nonsensical, but it is technically possible to end up with nine turns in a round providing you use nothing in the round before, but were never 100% sure regardless of the number of times we checked. It was the only part of the rules which required some kind of second glance to fully understand. As a main mechanic, it at least is making an effort to lean into the theme, as opposed to an abstract cube deciding how many goes you get.
There’s also the inclusion of the dragon, where you travel around a clock like board and gather bonuses as you do so, and on hitting the 6 and 12 positions you gain the chance to have some much meatier bonuses to add to your endeavours. It’s one of the few parts of the game where you feel you are racing against other players to gain some of the limited bonuses on offer and it encourages you to keep an eye on something else that isn’t your board. Of course, the artwork is a mixture of fantastical and imaginative watercolour whimsy, where there has been effort to bring each of the wryms to life in a wonderfully illustrated booklet. The components are up to Stonemaier’s usual quality standard, and you just feel that someone really gave a damn when they put things together. This is after all a board game package based around second time experience.
What is most frustrating for this second game, is the continued lack of player interaction. As with Wingspan, it mattered not that I was playing with 2 or 4 other players, while there was competition with the food, there was very little else going one. Yes, there is the introduction of the dragon guild which does bring in some slight competition and just like Wingspan you have the ongoing goals for every round that you can chase to win, but this has been sanitised slightly so that ties just result in everyone getting the same points. It reduces the need to focus on those goals as much and just make sure you’re grabbing a competent second place on everything you miss out on to make sure you get some points. I just find it hard to fathom that at no point someone looked at the entice mechanic and thought “What if you could entice Wyrms from other players?” or even, “HEY LOOK, I’VE BREATHED FIRE AND YOUR DRAGON HAS RAN AWAY”. Even if it was just a once a game power, just to interrupt the ongoing quiet potential engine building that is going on. Even if it was optional and could be added in as a rule that could be introduced to more experienced players. I just feel scaly tricks have been missed where they could have added that extra level of underlying pressure.
Wyrmspan does enough to separate itself from its older sibling. You might even argue that does things better in some ways than Birbgirth, which makes the general play more straightforward and easier to access for new players. In my opinion, the fantasy theme of caves and beast actually works better mechanically compared to Wingspan while I prefer the more solid artwork of the first game. What is interesting and maybe slightly concerning is that I don’t think anyone I played it with seemed to have the same level of excitement that they did after playing Wingspan. I don’t think that’s anything that Wyrmspan has done wrong. I think we’re in that place where we’ve in a world where Wingspan exists, and in order for Wyrmspan to hit that same level of excitement, it would have needed to reinvent the game in terms of the levels of ‘new and unique’. You take Wyrmspan for what it is, set it on the table and get it played and you’re going to have a good old time. You can nit pick of course, but its dragons for goodness sake. Who doesn’t like dragons?
This review is based on the retail version of the game provided to us by the designer and publisher. We were not paid monetary compensation for this review. We give a general overview of the gameplay and so not all of the mechanical aspects of the game may be mentioned.
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