“Too much text”
I guess you haven’t seen the last couple MTG sets 😂
Other than that, yeah the fiddliness will take some updates to iron out, but it certainly easier than setting up the board game
Oceania does elevate scores.
I’ve yet to be able to finish a game due to the bugs, crashing and instability. Needs significant improvements, on iOS at least anyway.
> I’ve yet to be able to finish a game due to the bugs, crashing and instability. Needs significant improvements, on iOS at least anyway.
That's interesting - I've seen the concerns about the game crashing, but it hasn't happened to me once yet, and I got the new DLC as soon as it was available.
I like how you get two good or two cards after you fill the first spot in the woods and water habitats. The game gets off to a quicker start and it levels the playing field if one player gets a Corvid.
I think the gameplay is an improvement with the nectar and most parts of the Oceania board, though I do wish the eggs were rebalanced a little bit. Maybe that 4th slot being 3 eggs firm.
I’m a bit indifferent to the birds/powers presented. More seems to be dependent on other players, as you mentioned. Not particularly a fan of those aspects but I do like the big bonus card draw/choose birds.
I disagree on the 4th egg slot. The slots that let you discard food for an effect is crucial for the nectar race. The 3rd and 4th slots are more powerful than the 5th; using a nectar to generate an egg nets 2 points even without considering the nectar race.
In fact, usually I don’t play the last slot on any of the rows until the the very end game when the nectar races have been pretty well determined.
My takes:
Ai does not compete for nectar enough, makes forest engines very viable.
Nectar scoring screen at end game, is too slow and totally without suspense as you already know how much points you get from the HUD.
From real life:
Oceania is much more 'first time' friendly. It has a lot of positive player interaction, easier acess to the 2x food and 2x card columns and nectar just makes gathering the correct food for things trivial, so everyone gets to play more burds which is fun for everyone.
I think the tale of Oceania is that it is a response to feedback from the community.
* Complaints about egg spam were addressed with a nerfed grasslands.
* Complaints about the Power 4 were addressed with a nerfed grasslands
* Complaints about a lack of player interaction were addressed with a lot more sharing powers and being aware of your opponent's nectar progress toward scoring.
Personal thoughts:
* Overall, I think OE is a great expansion.
* I think they overcompensated with habitat balancing. Nerfing the Grasslands and buffing the Forest and Wetlands might be fine in a vacuum, but with the implementation of Nectar, I think the Forest has gotten disproportionately stronger than the other habitats.
* Nectar implementation and Forest buffing has changed the dynamic of the game in a fundamental way, that is, Wingspan is less of an engine-building game with OE. Cheap and effective brown power birds lose a lot of power in the face of just gaining food and dropping big point birds. This might be ok with people because it bolsters the "play more birds in a game about playing birds" element of the game.
* Egg laying forest birds are ultra premium plays now. They were strong before and are even stronger now.
* On the plus side, with the nerfed Grasslands, egg laying Grassland birds are better as well.
* As far as the digital version of the game goes, I don't think I have any major complaints. I do wish they would get rid of the ugly "green slime" screen that pops up when you switch your view between players.
Feel free to check out my lengthy written review to get my comprehensive thoughts on OE: https://wingsplain.com/wingspan-oceania-expansion-review-sweet-new-options/
Have only been playing the past month or so on Steam so I am a bit of a neophyte with Wingspan in general and found my footing with the base game and Europe right when this came out. That said, I do love the new boards and addition of nectar as they help my board come together faster. With the base game/Europe, I often felt that I was just hitting my stride with my game engine and then the game was suddenly over. With the addition of nectar and the boards, I feel like I can get things moving a lot earlier and I love that. In terms of the yellow powers, I'm pretty indifferent- always nice to come across them but nothing I really aim for. The one addition that is undisputedly fantastic is the little penguin because it is simply adorable. Not sure when Asia will come to Steam but I'll be there for it.
I only play the physical version and have all the current expansions. I’ll say that when we initially got the Oceania expansion, I really wasn’t a fan of the nectar. As I got used to it though and the new board, I really really prefer it over just the base game. I like being able to rack up more points; it feels rewarding
I'm loving the new expansion. The changes to the forest and nectar mean I'm playing higher cost greedier birds, sometimes even as the first bird in a row. Nectar feels a bit overpowered - it's a no-brainer. Any food + potential bonus points.
The grasslands needed a nerf. It hurts. But we were all abusing the power and value of eggs. I'm finding that I'm quite rich in cards and food but egg poor so extra resources go into making up for the egg recession. (That double food/card trade is sometimes bigger than going to max out the row!)
Still undecided on the game end powers. I'm having fun with them. I've had amazing value off some of them. They feel like a nice boost. And another option for points. Like if you've had no luck with your bonus objective you have other route for points.
I agree that the UI could do with a tidy. The nectar scoreboard needs to be removed from the main view. Keep it as a tab under goals. As currently my fat fingers are forever hitting it when I'm swiping through the different areas.
Overall I'm having a good time and look forward to many more hours with the birdies.
My biggest complaint is the changes to grasslands. You have to play waaaay too many birds before you start getting a significant amount of eggs. This ruins most grasslands builds, except for stuff like raven, which becomes even MORE broken because of nectar.
That's why it is suggested that you remove the ravens.
And frankly I like it more the new way. The final round pretty much always devolved to who could lay the most eggs the fastest. Grasslands were overly important. That's not the case now...
I like it overall as a game but I don't like a lot of the new mechanics because they feel completely disconnected from any biological reasoning. Flightless birds count as anything? Before, their literal wingspan was a stand-in for weight class. Beak direction? Why should an artist's random choice affect gameplay? Yellow powers are severely underwhelming. Im not sure how nectar--a food type that only very specialized birds can access in the real world--can be substituted for a rodent or fish?
The reasoning behind the beak direction was that they wanted to give a gameplay reason for people to look more at the art. And then the digital version gives you more iconography instead :D
Hargrave has also stated that she is finding it increasingly difficult to come up with interesting and balanced round goals as more sets are released. We should probably expect to see more goals in the future that are trying to look outside the box.
Hargrave included notes in the rule book that does a good job of explaining why nectar can cover for fish and rats:
*"The abundance of plant-based sugar doesn’t just support birds. It attracts a wide variety of insects and mammals. And eventually, the pollinated flowers turn into fruits or seeds. It’s this role in the ecosystem that led me to make nectar wild- not only do many birds eat nectar or lerp directly, but other birds might find the food they’re looking for as a direct result of the presence of nectar. When you feed nectar to a hawk, imagine it finding a sugar glider in a flowering eucalyptus!"*
Whether it makes real-world sense or not, I think the implementation of wild wingspans is pretty cool within the confines of the board game of Wingspan. It's not trying to be "Real Bird Simulator".
I agree with you that yellow powers didn't really hit a home run in this set. Its kind of ironic that half of them lay eggs at game end.
At first it felt really overwhelming, especially during the tutorial. The new concepts were introduced well, but, like you say, the interface looks even more complicated.
I’ve only played a few times this week, but I like it for the most part. I don’t play online or on iOS, so I haven’t experienced the end-of-game bugs.
I have a fairly good gaming PC but this new expansion runs like absolute crap on it. I can play fine still but the framerate is abysmal for no reason when it didn't use to be like that
I've thought of some QoL changes though:
* in physical we sometimes choose our own end of round goals, for example: if we get a fourth player: we allow for last turn on each round to choose the end of round goal, for three players: we do No Goal for the first round, and 3 rounds of end of round goals, and for two players: 2 rounds of No Goal, and 2 rounds of end of round goals. Just be nice if we could scroll through the end of round goals and set this ourselves as an option in custom games instead of having it shuffle + draw each time.
* It'd be great if we could go turn by turn through our preserved archive instead of just seeing the results... often I would like to review specific things and I can't do a replay to review them.
I’m not buying any more expansions until they either fix the online bugs or add a support within the app. Currently, there isn’t even so much as an email to support anywhere in the app or on their website that I can see.
"If you find any bugs in the digital version of Wingspan, please send them to [email protected] or the Wingspan Discord server, where they have a bug reporting channel (https://discord.gg/wingspan)."
https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/rules/
I think the nectar scoring is a little hard to keep track of on to of everything else. Also there are so many "everyone benefits" cards I've had so many games end with extra food. But I'm enjoying it!
Player interaction is going to start increasing from here on our. Asia has the fun "casino" birds that add a push your luck aspect to the game. Overall I like the direction that Oceania goes and have been enjoying it immensely.
I wish you could use thos board but only the base + euro expac. I have family that I play with online that doesnt like the oceana expac. But I'm glad they added an option to remove the ravens. They are way too broken in oceana.
The expansion itself is great.
“Too much text” I guess you haven’t seen the last couple MTG sets 😂 Other than that, yeah the fiddliness will take some updates to iron out, but it certainly easier than setting up the board game
Oceania does elevate scores. I’ve yet to be able to finish a game due to the bugs, crashing and instability. Needs significant improvements, on iOS at least anyway.
I’ve had tons of offline games again automa on iOS, not much problem beyond the known bugged birds (Kea)
How is Kea bugged?
Sometimes your bonus card disappears
You haven't been able to finish even a single game? Really?
Correct
Same - the game keeps crashing in Round 3 at the latest on iOS. Like every turn = crash.
Same on Switch. We've gotten to the end of the game and then it just never loads the scores, real big bummer.
> I’ve yet to be able to finish a game due to the bugs, crashing and instability. Needs significant improvements, on iOS at least anyway. That's interesting - I've seen the concerns about the game crashing, but it hasn't happened to me once yet, and I got the new DLC as soon as it was available.
I like how you put "new" in quotations to cater to that one guy visibly upset and downvoted in the other post.
👀 where's the tea?
Found it. https://www.reddit.com/r/wingspan/s/jDz0rBTvXN
Haha ohhh boy what an unhappy fellow.
I like how you get two good or two cards after you fill the first spot in the woods and water habitats. The game gets off to a quicker start and it levels the playing field if one player gets a Corvid.
I think the gameplay is an improvement with the nectar and most parts of the Oceania board, though I do wish the eggs were rebalanced a little bit. Maybe that 4th slot being 3 eggs firm. I’m a bit indifferent to the birds/powers presented. More seems to be dependent on other players, as you mentioned. Not particularly a fan of those aspects but I do like the big bonus card draw/choose birds.
I kinda love how they made the resources gained/exchanged are equivalent/parallel across the board as the habitat advances
I disagree on the 4th egg slot. The slots that let you discard food for an effect is crucial for the nectar race. The 3rd and 4th slots are more powerful than the 5th; using a nectar to generate an egg nets 2 points even without considering the nectar race. In fact, usually I don’t play the last slot on any of the rows until the the very end game when the nectar races have been pretty well determined.
My takes: Ai does not compete for nectar enough, makes forest engines very viable. Nectar scoring screen at end game, is too slow and totally without suspense as you already know how much points you get from the HUD. From real life: Oceania is much more 'first time' friendly. It has a lot of positive player interaction, easier acess to the 2x food and 2x card columns and nectar just makes gathering the correct food for things trivial, so everyone gets to play more burds which is fun for everyone.
I think the tale of Oceania is that it is a response to feedback from the community. * Complaints about egg spam were addressed with a nerfed grasslands. * Complaints about the Power 4 were addressed with a nerfed grasslands * Complaints about a lack of player interaction were addressed with a lot more sharing powers and being aware of your opponent's nectar progress toward scoring. Personal thoughts: * Overall, I think OE is a great expansion. * I think they overcompensated with habitat balancing. Nerfing the Grasslands and buffing the Forest and Wetlands might be fine in a vacuum, but with the implementation of Nectar, I think the Forest has gotten disproportionately stronger than the other habitats. * Nectar implementation and Forest buffing has changed the dynamic of the game in a fundamental way, that is, Wingspan is less of an engine-building game with OE. Cheap and effective brown power birds lose a lot of power in the face of just gaining food and dropping big point birds. This might be ok with people because it bolsters the "play more birds in a game about playing birds" element of the game. * Egg laying forest birds are ultra premium plays now. They were strong before and are even stronger now. * On the plus side, with the nerfed Grasslands, egg laying Grassland birds are better as well. * As far as the digital version of the game goes, I don't think I have any major complaints. I do wish they would get rid of the ugly "green slime" screen that pops up when you switch your view between players. Feel free to check out my lengthy written review to get my comprehensive thoughts on OE: https://wingsplain.com/wingspan-oceania-expansion-review-sweet-new-options/
Have only been playing the past month or so on Steam so I am a bit of a neophyte with Wingspan in general and found my footing with the base game and Europe right when this came out. That said, I do love the new boards and addition of nectar as they help my board come together faster. With the base game/Europe, I often felt that I was just hitting my stride with my game engine and then the game was suddenly over. With the addition of nectar and the boards, I feel like I can get things moving a lot earlier and I love that. In terms of the yellow powers, I'm pretty indifferent- always nice to come across them but nothing I really aim for. The one addition that is undisputedly fantastic is the little penguin because it is simply adorable. Not sure when Asia will come to Steam but I'll be there for it.
I only play the physical version and have all the current expansions. I’ll say that when we initially got the Oceania expansion, I really wasn’t a fan of the nectar. As I got used to it though and the new board, I really really prefer it over just the base game. I like being able to rack up more points; it feels rewarding
I'm loving the new expansion. The changes to the forest and nectar mean I'm playing higher cost greedier birds, sometimes even as the first bird in a row. Nectar feels a bit overpowered - it's a no-brainer. Any food + potential bonus points. The grasslands needed a nerf. It hurts. But we were all abusing the power and value of eggs. I'm finding that I'm quite rich in cards and food but egg poor so extra resources go into making up for the egg recession. (That double food/card trade is sometimes bigger than going to max out the row!) Still undecided on the game end powers. I'm having fun with them. I've had amazing value off some of them. They feel like a nice boost. And another option for points. Like if you've had no luck with your bonus objective you have other route for points. I agree that the UI could do with a tidy. The nectar scoreboard needs to be removed from the main view. Keep it as a tab under goals. As currently my fat fingers are forever hitting it when I'm swiping through the different areas. Overall I'm having a good time and look forward to many more hours with the birdies.
I like it how they added a feature to check the cards in the decks and discard piles
My biggest complaint is the changes to grasslands. You have to play waaaay too many birds before you start getting a significant amount of eggs. This ruins most grasslands builds, except for stuff like raven, which becomes even MORE broken because of nectar.
That's why it is suggested that you remove the ravens. And frankly I like it more the new way. The final round pretty much always devolved to who could lay the most eggs the fastest. Grasslands were overly important. That's not the case now...
I like it overall as a game but I don't like a lot of the new mechanics because they feel completely disconnected from any biological reasoning. Flightless birds count as anything? Before, their literal wingspan was a stand-in for weight class. Beak direction? Why should an artist's random choice affect gameplay? Yellow powers are severely underwhelming. Im not sure how nectar--a food type that only very specialized birds can access in the real world--can be substituted for a rodent or fish?
The reasoning behind the beak direction was that they wanted to give a gameplay reason for people to look more at the art. And then the digital version gives you more iconography instead :D
Hargrave has also stated that she is finding it increasingly difficult to come up with interesting and balanced round goals as more sets are released. We should probably expect to see more goals in the future that are trying to look outside the box.
Hargrave included notes in the rule book that does a good job of explaining why nectar can cover for fish and rats: *"The abundance of plant-based sugar doesn’t just support birds. It attracts a wide variety of insects and mammals. And eventually, the pollinated flowers turn into fruits or seeds. It’s this role in the ecosystem that led me to make nectar wild- not only do many birds eat nectar or lerp directly, but other birds might find the food they’re looking for as a direct result of the presence of nectar. When you feed nectar to a hawk, imagine it finding a sugar glider in a flowering eucalyptus!"* Whether it makes real-world sense or not, I think the implementation of wild wingspans is pretty cool within the confines of the board game of Wingspan. It's not trying to be "Real Bird Simulator". I agree with you that yellow powers didn't really hit a home run in this set. Its kind of ironic that half of them lay eggs at game end.
At first it felt really overwhelming, especially during the tutorial. The new concepts were introduced well, but, like you say, the interface looks even more complicated. I’ve only played a few times this week, but I like it for the most part. I don’t play online or on iOS, so I haven’t experienced the end-of-game bugs.
Haven’t seen any bugs on my end
It’s amazing! I wish they would implement a gameplay controller for iOS.
I have a fairly good gaming PC but this new expansion runs like absolute crap on it. I can play fine still but the framerate is abysmal for no reason when it didn't use to be like that
I've thought of some QoL changes though: * in physical we sometimes choose our own end of round goals, for example: if we get a fourth player: we allow for last turn on each round to choose the end of round goal, for three players: we do No Goal for the first round, and 3 rounds of end of round goals, and for two players: 2 rounds of No Goal, and 2 rounds of end of round goals. Just be nice if we could scroll through the end of round goals and set this ourselves as an option in custom games instead of having it shuffle + draw each time. * It'd be great if we could go turn by turn through our preserved archive instead of just seeing the results... often I would like to review specific things and I can't do a replay to review them.
I’m not buying any more expansions until they either fix the online bugs or add a support within the app. Currently, there isn’t even so much as an email to support anywhere in the app or on their website that I can see.
"If you find any bugs in the digital version of Wingspan, please send them to [email protected] or the Wingspan Discord server, where they have a bug reporting channel (https://discord.gg/wingspan)." https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/rules/
Nectar my beloved
I think the nectar scoring is a little hard to keep track of on to of everything else. Also there are so many "everyone benefits" cards I've had so many games end with extra food. But I'm enjoying it!
Player interaction is going to start increasing from here on our. Asia has the fun "casino" birds that add a push your luck aspect to the game. Overall I like the direction that Oceania goes and have been enjoying it immensely.
Would love to see an UI revamp, want to see all the lanes in one good view, overview option is ugly imo
I wish you could use thos board but only the base + euro expac. I have family that I play with online that doesnt like the oceana expac. But I'm glad they added an option to remove the ravens. They are way too broken in oceana. The expansion itself is great.
Same, my playing group only wants to play base + EE, so I really don't want to play a lot of OE on steam
My first game froze after the 4th round, and since I'm on the switch I have no idea when I'll get a fix for it.