The Americas Expansion is the fourth Wingspan expansion from designer Elizabeth Hargrave.
As well as an additional 111 bird cards, the expansion includes 40 smaller hummingbird cards which flit between a drafting area known as the hummingbird garden and overlays for the left side of the existing player mats on almost every turn, the game mechanic delightfully echoing the busy lifestyle of the actual birds.
Hummingbirds
I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Wingspan (if not, check out this how to play article), so you’ll already know that, apart from when you place birds into your tableau, turns involve stepping from right to left along one of the three habitats, activating bird cards as you go. The player mat overlay adds an extra action space at the end, specifically for the new hummingbirds.
The Americas Expansion is the fourth Wingspan expansion from designer Elizabeth Hargrave.
As well as an additional 111 bird cards, the expansion includes 40 smaller hummingbird cards which flit between a drafting area known as the hummingbird garden and overlays for the left side of the existing player mats on almost every turn, the game mechanic delightfully echoing the busy lifestyle of the actual birds.
Hummingbirds
I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Wingspan (if not, check out this how to play article), so you’ll already know that, apart from when you place birds into your tableau, turns involve stepping from right to left along one of the three habitats, activating bird cards as you go. The player mat overlay adds an extra action space at the end, specifically for the new hummingbirds.
If no hummingbird is present when you reach that part of the habitat track, you take a card from the garden (initially populated with 5 hummingbird cards) and place it there. You also gain the benefit marked in the bottom left of the card, such as lay an egg or gain food, though you can also advance along a hummingbird track, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
On the other hand, if there’s already a hummingbird in the space, you return it to the garden, either in an empty space or covering another in the garden. The hummingbird cards have a graphic at the top representing the birds’ 5 evolutionary groups: bees & mountaingems, brilliants & coquettes, emeralds, mangoes, and topazes, jacobins & hermits. Each player has a hummingbird board containing 5 corresponding tracks, and when you return a hummingbird, you advance a teeny-weeny token on the track matching the group of either the returned card or the card you covered in the garden (if any).
Some points on the track have hummingbird silhouettes, and if your token lands on one of those, you get to take another hummingbird action, i.e., attract one to your player mat (though not the one you just released) or release one back to the garden. The hummingbird boards are all different, adding a little bit of player asymmetry in terms of which tracks people choose to progress. However, at the end of the game, the token positions on the hummingbird tracks contribute to players’ final scores, higher being better, so you’ll want to advance along all of the tracks (though if you do happen to max out one track, you can treat further steps along that track as if they were for a different one).
At the end of each turn, empty spaces in the garden are filled from the hummingbird deck, and at the end of each round, all hummingbirds are removed from the garden and refreshed (similar to how the normal bird tray is dealt with between turns and rounds).
While the majority of the normal bird cards have no effect on hummingbirds, 20 or so of the new cards in this expansion directly relate to hummingbird actions—e.g., attract or release particular types when activated. Conversely, while hummingbird cards are independent of standard ones, they do contribute to some end of round goals and bonuses, such as the count of birds facing in particular directions—as the rulebook says, ‘Hummingbirds are birds.’ The expansion does contain a few new round goal and bonus cards which relate to specifically hummingbirds.
Note: there are hummingbirds within the standard deck too (e.g., the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird from the base game), but these are totally distinct from the new smaller cards. They behave as ‘normal’ bird cards.
Americas comes with automa updates, designed by David J Studley, to bring hummingbirds into play—as with the new smaller hummingbird cards, there are new smaller automa cards, operating in parallel with the main ones, and interacting just with hummingbirds. I usually play solo digitally, but as the Americas expansion isn’t available for the digital version of the game yet (maybe in a couple of years…), this automa is currently getting a fair amount of exercise.
How Does Americas Mesh with Other Expansions?
Very well, in the main. Having said that, I feel there’s just too much stuff now. I’m too lazy to do the sums myself, but according to Wingsearch there are now 707 standard bird cards across all the official expansions. That’s just too many, unless you’re prepared to curate subsets for particular games. In other words, you just don’t need every expansion!
Here’s what I think is essential: first, either the base game or the Asia standalone expansion, depending on whether you have varying numbers of players or strictly only one or two. You need one of these to have the basic tokens and player boards, etc. The base Wingspan includes the cute birdhouse dice tower and does come in a big enough box that a couple of expansions can be squeezed in; Asia includes the duet board, offering extra options for players. I’m not totally enamoured of duet mode and can take it or leave it—it’s sort of interesting, but for me, it adds more to game length than enjoyment. Asia also enables flock mode when coupled with the base game, allowing up to 7 players, but to be frank, I don’t find it an attractive option: it’s pretty much two almost totally decoupled games happening at the same time. (Americas isn’t fully compatible with flock mode, since insufficient overlay and hummingbird track boards are provided—though you can improvise, I’m not sure if 7 people fighting over one hummingbird garden is going to work, so perhaps buying 2 copies of Americas is currently the only viable option.)
Many people are perfectly happy with the basic game mechanics starter set, but I reckon Oceania is a must-have. This replaces the player mats with ones giving more generous rewards and introduces nectar as a wildcard food type; both of these really speed up the first few turns, which are tedious slogs in the base game. Note that Americas includes nectar as well, but with less functionality than Oceania and no nectar dice; also, Asia provides dual-sided player mats, matching both the base game and Oceania styles, but no nectar or related dice, so you can’t really make much use of the Oceania side. It all gets a bit messy when combining expansions, and my suggestion is to work out which bits all function together, and hide the rest away at the back of a cupboard!
This is where I’d say Americas comes in, most definitely after Oceania if you want the speedup it brings; but skip Oceania altogether if you enjoy the slow build up. If you’ve got both Americas and Asia, I think having the duet board and the hummingbird garden in play at the same time is a bit much, and I much prefer the latter. Both kind of do the same thing (at the end of your turn, do something on this additional board to gain a bonus, with a final scoring contribution depending on your actions there across the whole game), but Americas is prettier. Do note that the Americas rulebook states: ‘If you mix this expansion with Wingspan Asia, attracting a hummingbird does not allow you to place a token on the Duet map.’ In other words, playing with both doesn’t compound extra actions; but still, there is more to think about and a bigger table presence.
I’m inclined stop at this point. The European Expansion has a lot of lovely cards, but you’ll already have heaps without that. This one was the first Wingspan expansion and did introduce round end abilities to the game, but you can find some of those in later expansions too. Likewise, the recent Fan-Designed Packs bring no more than moar birb (a lot more). A number of the novel bird abilities in these packs increase interaction between players, but is the hummingbird garden (or duet mode) already enough to scratch that itch, though in different ways? Despite that, I will say that I am attracted to one of the fan packs: British Birds, just to see some local wildlife. (The same can be said about the European Expansion too.)
If 707 birds just isn’t enough, you can go wild on the plethora of unofficial fan-created content in the Wingspan BoardGameGeek forums and files sections. The difficulty is printing cards that tickle your fancy, but see my article on fan expansions for some suggestions.
For completeness, I’ll also mention the Fan Art Pack, not to be confused with the Fan-Designed Packs. This one merely provides replacements for some base game cards with ones having different artwork.
Verdict
The Americas Expansion is a clever and pretty addition to the game, but perhaps it brings a smidge too much. The additional hummingbird action will add time to a player’s turn (particularly when a release triggers an extra hummingbird action via the hummingbird tracks); page 7 of the rulebook does suggest removing an action cube from each player as a means of compensating, but who really wants to do pass on an engine-running action?
I do like the bonus for attracting a hummingbird, but feel that the hummingbird track is more of a distraction than a benefit—similar to how I feel about the duet board. I’ve tried a few games where releasing a hummingbird does nothing, and they haven’t been too bad.
There were a couple of things about the game presentation that I found annoying. First, the overlays—ugh, slipping and sliding, and just plain ugly. I suggest investing in a few paper clips or the like to keep them anchored. It’d be even nicer to have full player mats (double-sided, like Asia includes) with the hummingbird spaces, and even better with the hummingbird track incorporated (though that would reduce player asymmetry), so that there’s one mat instead of players having to faff around with three. I imagine Stonemaier Games will eventually provide some solution, perhaps upgraded neoprene/rubber mats. Having said that, taking a deep breath and revisiting the ‘problem,’ the overlay exists for one reason, and one only: to provide somewhere to place a hummingbird card. Forget the overlay, and just set the card on the left of the player mats! The other irritation is the fold in the hummingbird garden: if the board had been a few millimetres shorter, it could have slotted into the box as a flat card instead of needing to be folded. An additional tiny annoyance is an error on the first printing of the end of round reference card, regarding how nectar is treated depending on whether you’re playing with Oceania or not, but a correction note’s included, and I doubt if many people would need that reminder card anyway.
Despite these niggles, Americas is a good addition to the game, though perhaps not as beneficial to gameplay as Oceania.
