Recently I watched the Watch It Played video for Stonemaier's upcoming game WINGSPAN.
This is a fairly light competitive tableau builder in which players take the roles of ornithologists trying to attract various bird species to their aviaries. Each turn, a player can take one of four actions corresponding to one of four bird habitats. Place a bird in their aviary, gain a food (required to "pay" for birds you place), lay eggs (for scoring), or draw new bird cards.
Each bird has special powers that will activate when you perform an action on their row, so there is some depth in figuring out where to place birds and when to play certain actions to maximize the effects of your tableau. At the end of the game (played over several rounds), the winner is the player with the most points. Points are scored not only from number of birds, eggs, cached food tokens, etc. on each player's board, but also by completing special randomized bonus objectives each round.
The game comes with dozens of bird species cards with actual information about them, as well as cool little egg miniatures and a dice tower shaped like a bird feeder.
I'm not a huge bird guy but I must admit I'm strangely drawn to this one. It's a type of game I don't have in my collection, and is light enough I could possibly get the family involved. It also contains solo rules through the use of an Automa. Since Stonemaier is known for the quality of their Automa rules, I'm really hoping it's solid in this game as well.
Website is saying it will be available from Stonemaier next month with general retail in March. Check it out.
