Board game publisher Stonemaier Games revealed details about the hotly anticipated new Wingspan Americas expansion on January 7. Stonemaier says that the expansion covers birds from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, locales which are collectively home to over 3,000 bird species. Many of these are hummingbirds, and these tiny, vibrant creatures are the focus of a major new Wingspan mechanic.
A new, communal hummingbird garden board is added to the game, and many hummingbirds will hang out here as you play. Your player board has also been modified to contain a hummingbird space on the left-hand side of each habitat. Another player board is used to track your hummingbird score based on several different hummingbird categories.
The new gameplay rules run a little like this. You'll take an action as normal, with your cube traveling from right to left through a habitat as normal. At the end of that turn, it'll reach the hummingbird space. Now, you'll either attract a hummingbird or return one.
Attracting a hummingbird allows you to select one from the hummingbird garden (or from the top of the hummingbird deck) and place it in your hummingbird space. Doing so allows you to benefit from the effects on the card immediately. If there is already a hummingbird in your hummingbird space, you must return it to a space in the garden - even if you have to place it on top of another hummingbird.
(At this point, hummingbird has stopped looking like a real word as I type it.)
Unlike usual bird cards, hummingbirds don't have an innate score. They can contribute to end-of-round goals, but your primary way of earning points through them is the hummingbird track. When you return a bird to the garden, you can move a token one space up your personal track board. This can either be the category symbol that matches the hummingbird you returned or the one you covered.
This track occasionally lets you take additional hummingbird actions, but otherwise it's most important at game end. Then, you'll score (or lose) points for each token, depending on its position on the track.
There are 40 hummingbird cards, but Wingspan Asia also adds 111 regular bird cards. The expansion also includes extra nectar tokens so that players without the Oceania expansion can use the nectar mechanic. Stonemaier also confirmed in a YouTube reveal video (see above) on January 7 that the Americas expansion does not have enough player mats for six-to-seven-player games, which are possible when playing with the Asia expansion. A complete rulebook is already available from Stonemaier, and it says to expect the Americas expansion to extend Wingspan's usual playtime, particularly in larger groups.
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