Wingspan rules

Attract birds to your wildlife reserves with an engine-building card game.

Players: 1–5
Time: 40–70 min
Ages: 10+
Goal: Attract birds to your wildlife preserves by playing bird cards, feeding them, giving them a place to nest, and laying eggs. Most points after 4 rounds wins.

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How to play Wingspan

Setup

Shared: shuffle the bird deck, deal 3 cards face up into the bird tray, fill the food and egg supplies, and toss the 5 food dice into the birdfeeder.
Pick a goal board side (green or blue). Shuffle the 8 double-sided goal tiles without looking and place 1 (random side up) on each of the board's 4 spaces. Return the extra goal tiles to the box.
Bonus deck: shuffle the bonus cards into a deck and place it on the table.
Each player takes a player mat, 8 action cubes, 2 random bonus cards, and 5 random bird cards plus 5 food tokens (one of each type).
Keep any number of your 5 bird cards; discard the rest. For every card you keep, discard 1 of your food tokens.
Then keep 1 of your 2 bonus cards and discard the other.
Randomly pick a first player and give them the first-player token.

A round

The game is 4 rounds, with fewer turns each round: 8, then 7, then 6, then 5.

Turns: clockwise from the first player until all of the round's turns are used.
End of round: take your action cubes back, then place 1 on the goal board to score the round's goal tile. It stays there, so you have 1 fewer turn next round.
Refresh: discard the bird tray and deal 3 new cards; pass the first-player token clockwise.
Solo: you play against the Automa, which takes a turn after each of yours.

Your turn

Take exactly one action: place a cube in the leftmost open slot of that row and take what it shows.

Play a bird into the leftmost open slot of a habitat it can live in, paying its cost.
Gain food from the birdfeeder (forest row), then activate your brown forest powers right to left.
Lay eggs on your birds (grassland row), then activate brown grassland powers.
Draw cards from the bird tray or deck (wetland row), then activate brown wetland powers.
Bonus conversions: some slots let you trade a card, food or egg for one more of that row's reward.

Birds you play stay on your mat all game and keep activating; the habitat rows are your real engine.

Habitats, columns & powers

Egg cost: free in column 1, 1 egg in columns 2–3, 2 eggs in columns 4–5, taken off your birds.
Bird power colours: brown on that habitat's action, pink between your turns, white once when played. All are optional.
Nests: platform, bowl, cavity and ground, plus star nests that count as any.

Example: Playing a bird into column 3 of the forest costs its food plus 1 egg taken from any bird on your mat.

The birdfeeder

Birdfeeder: take 1 food per die you choose, removing that die. Reroll all 5 when it's empty; you may reroll when every die left shows the same face.
Paying for a bird: any 2 food can stand in for 1 food you need.

Scoring

You score twice: once a round from that round's goal tile, and once at game end.

Goal tile: green goals rank players, using the points on the goal board; blue goals give 1 point per item, up to 5.
Ties on a goal share the tied places' points, rounded down.
Final scoring: bird points, bonus cards, your goal scores, and 1 point per egg, cached food and tucked card (food or cards some powers put on or under birds).

Game end & winning

Game end: the moment round 4's goal tile is scored.
Winner: most points. The tie-breaker is most unused food; still tied, you share the win.

Expansion rules

Only needed if you play with the expansion named on each heading.

European European

Setup: shuffle everything into the base decks and supplies; the rulebook recommends the green side of the goal board.
New: teal round-end powers, alternative costs, birds played over other birds, and new goals.

Oceania Oceania

Setup: replace the 5 food dice and the player mats with the Oceania ones.
Setup: choose your starting cards and food from the 5 standard foods as normal, then every player gains 1 nectar.
Nectar is wild food (except for powers that name a specific food), and unspent nectar is discarded at the end of each round.
Oceania player mat: new options in columns 2 and 4.

Oceania game end Oceania

Game-end powers (yellow) each work once, after the last round ends.
Nectar scoring: in each habitat, most spent nectar scores 5 and second-most 2.

Asia Asia

A card expansion for the base game, and also a standalone game for 1 or 2 players.

Birds: 90 new birds using existing powers.
Duet mode (2 players): playing a bird also puts a token on the Duet map; your largest connected group scores.
Flock mode is for 6 or 7 players.

Americas Americas

Needs the base game or Asia. Adds hummingbirds.

Setup: put 5 face-up hummingbirds on the garden board. Each player puts an overlay on the left of their mat, places a random hummingbird on their grassland space, and takes a track with 5 tokens on the start spaces.
Hummingbird action: after a Gain Food, Lay Eggs or Draw Cards action, attract a hummingbird or send one back to move up a track.

Wingspan rules

How to play Wingspan

Setup

A round

Your turn

Habitats, columns & powers

The birdfeeder

Scoring

Game end & winning

Expansion rules

European European

Oceania Oceania

Oceania game end Oceania

Asia Asia

Americas Americas

Hummingbird scoring Americas

All Wingspan rules (59)

General

Clarification

Scoring

Solo

European expansion

Oceania expansion

Asia expansion

Americas expansion

Expansions covered