Wingspan Bird Evaluation: What Is This Bird Worth Right Now?

Welcome to Level 3. At Level 2 you learned how engines grow, which powers score, and how to count every point in round four. Now you put those together into one skill: looking at any bird, in your hand or on the tray, and knowing roughly what it is worth at this moment in this game.

You will not run full numbers every turn. But a rough price, worked out a few times, trains the instinct that strong players seem to have.

The currency is turns

You get 26 turns in a game: 8, 7, 6, and 5. Every bird costs at least one of them, the play action itself. Most cost more, because you also need turns to gather its food and the eggs for its column.

So a bird’s real price is something like:

• The play turn, always.
• Food turns, if you do not already hold its food. A 3-food bird when you have none might need two gain food turns.
• Egg cost, from the column. Columns 2 and 3 take 1 egg, columns 4 and 5 take 2. Each egg spent is a point you will not score, and often part of a lay eggs turn.

A cheap bird you can afford right now costs one turn. An expensive bird in column 5 can cost three or four turns plus 2 points of eggs.

What a bird gives back

Add up four things:

1. Printed points. Fixed, the floor.
2. Egg room. Each egg space you will actually fill is a point. A bird that holds 4 eggs in a game where you will have spare lay eggs actions adds real value. Egg room you will not fill adds nothing.
3. Power firings left. A brown power is worth what it gives, times the number of times you will still use its row. A pink power is worth what it gives, times how often rivals will trigger it. A white power happens once.
4. Goals and bonus cards. Does it count toward a round goal still to come, or toward the next step on your bonus card?

The same bird across a game

Take a bird with a brown power that caches 1 seed from the supply, so each use of its row is a point.

• Played in round 1, in a row you use roughly one turn in three, it might fire seven or eight times. That is seven or eight points from its power alone.
• Played at the start of round 3, it might fire three or four times.
• Played in round 4, once or twice.

Its printed points did not change. Its worth fell by more than half. That is the core of Wingspan tempo, now as arithmetic.

The yardstick: an egg turn

To know whether a play is good, compare it to a reliable alternative. In the late game, that alternative is usually a lay eggs turn. As the scoring lesson showed, a grassland slot lays 2 to 4 eggs, worth a point each if you have room, plus any grassland powers.

So in round 4, a bird play that nets fewer points than your egg turn would is a mistake, unless it also wins a goal or a bonus step. A 6-point bird in column 4 nets 4 after its egg cost. If your egg turn would score 4, they are even. If you also had to spend a turn getting its food, the eggs win.

Earlier in the game, the yardstick shifts toward growth. A bird that makes your main action bigger, or adds a power you will use many times, beats a few eggs that you could lay later anyway.

Growing the row

Every bird you play covers a slot and pushes your next action in that row one slot to the right. On the base mat, the base amount in each row grows every second slot, and the slots in between offer a trade, such as a card for a food in the forest.

That means a bird’s place in the row has value of its own. The bird that lifts your forest from 2 food to 3 is worth more to you than the same bird somewhere you rarely go.

Why tournaments set aside four birds

The four birds the World Boardgaming Championships removes, two ravens and two that draw cards, show this math at work. Each one turns an egg, worth 1 point, into 2 food or 2 cards, every time its row runs. Played early, that converts spare points into a much bigger engine for the rest of the game. The tournaments lesson covers the event rules.

A quick pricing habit

When a bird catches your eye, ask in this order:

1. How many turns will it really cost me, and how many eggs?
2. How many more times will its power fire?
3. Does it help a goal or bonus step still to come?
4. Is that better than my best simple turn right now?

Do this out loud a few times in practice games. Before long it becomes a glance. Our article on engine building games explains the general idea behind early investment, and this lesson is the Wingspan version of it.