Review: Wingspan – Americas Expansion

Introducción

This expansion explores the birds of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. This incredibly biodiverse region is home to over 3,000 bird species, including those holding the records for the smallest and largest wingspans (the bee hummingbird and the wandering albatross, respectively).

This is how we are presented with Wingspan: Americas Expansion, the fourth expansion for Wingspan, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave. It was published in 2026 by Stonemaier Games in an English version. The illustrations are once again handled by Beth Sobel (Snow Tails, Herbaceous, Viticulture), Ana María Martínez Jaramillo, and Natalia Rojas (who made their debut in the board gaming world with Wingspan).

The expansion is published in Spanish by Maldito Games (language dependence is high), without modifying the parameters of the original game (1 to 5 players, suggested minimum age of 10 years, and an approximate duration of 40 to 70 minutes). The suggested retail price is €28. For this review, a copy of the Spanish version by Maldito Games was used, which the publisher kindly provided to us.

Importante: si ya conoces el juego y/o sólo te interesa mi opinión sobre el mismo, puedes pasar directamente al apartado de Opinión. Los apartados Contenido y Mecánica están destinados especialmente a aquellos que no conocen el juego y prefieren hacerse una idea general de cómo funciona.

Ir a la Opinión Personal

Contenido

Inside a one-piece cardboard box, measuring 30×13×7 cm (a rectangular box with dimensions similar to the Scythe expansions), we find the following elements:

• 127 Cards (57×89 mm):
  • 111 Bird Cards
  • 12 Automa Cards
  • 2 Difficulty Adjustment Cards
  • Exclusive Automa Bonus Card
  • 2 End-of-Round Goal Scoring Cards
• 53 Cards (44×67 mm):
  • 40 Hummingbird Cards
  • 12 Automa Hummingbird Cards
  • Automa Hummingbird Current Round Tracker Card
• Hummingbird Garden Board (cardboard)
• 5 Hummingbird Track Boards (cardboard)
• 25 Hummingbird Tokens (5 of each type) (wooden)
• 5 Player Board Overlays (cardstock)
• 5 Double-Sided Goal Tokens (cardboard)
• 15 Green Eggs (plastic)
• Additional Nectar Tokens (cardboard)
• Updated Reference Tile (cardboard)
• Updated Nesting Box Divider (Americas) (cardboard)
• Scorepad (paper)
• Rulebook
• Automa Rulebook

Mecánica

Wingspan: Americas Expansion introduces a new concept centered around hummingbirds, which form a new deck of cards and are available on a common garden board. Players interact with this board by attracting or returning these birds to the different habitats at the end of their turns. These actions allow players to obtain immediate benefits (when attracting a hummingbird) or progress along one of the five hummingbird tracks (when returning it). At the end of the game, these tracks award victory points based on progress. If you are not familiar with the base game, I recommend checking out its corresponding tocho-review, as many concepts explained there will be referenced here.

Conceptos Básicos

Let’s start with the key concept of this expansion: the Hummingbird Cards. This is a special deck composed exclusively of cards dedicated to these birds. They feature an illustration of the hummingbird, a symbol in the upper left corner detailing its taxonomic group, and a specific benefit printed in the lower left corner. These cards are not played on the usual spaces of the player board, nor do they accumulate food or eggs; instead, they are used to temporarily occupy the hummingbird spaces in the habitats to trigger their immediate benefits when attracted, or to be returned to the general garden to progress on the scoring track. For all gameplay and goal purposes, hummingbirds are considered birds in your supply and habitat. However, they have a food cost of 0, an egg limit of 0, do not grant victory points directly, and have no active powers (they are white cards). Additionally, you cannot tuck cards under them, nor can you accumulate food or eggs on their spaces. Regarding size, they are always considered smaller than any wingspan criteria in the game.

To adapt the personal boards, Overlay Strips are used, which are placed over the left section of the player boards. They are printed on both sides, with one side showing the nectar symbol to ensure compatibility with other expansions. Their function in the game is to modify and update the physical structure of the player’s habitats, adding a special hummingbird space at the end of the forest, wetland, and grassland action tracks to enable this expansion’s mechanics.

The next element is the Hummingbird Garden Board. This functions as a central, shared pool deployed in the middle of the table alongside the rest of the game’s common elements. It features five designated spaces to hold cards. Its main function is to serve as a public display for the Hummingbird Cards, keeping five of them face up, visible, and available at all times for players to interact with throughout the game using the attract or return actions.

Moving on, we have the Hummingbird Track. Each player receives one of these separate, elongated boards at the start of the game, placed right next to their personal play area. It features a grid with five vertical columns (each associated with a hummingbird taxonomic group) starting from an initial starting space and ascending to a maximum value, alongside a point scale on its right side. It tracks the progress of five markers (one per column). As players advance through these spaces, they will unlock additional actions and directly determine the final points they will add or subtract during end-game scoring.

Then, as expected, New Bird Cards inspired by the biodiversity of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean are added. They maintain the standard format of the base game, detailing name, habitat, cost, wingspan, egg capacity, and points. They are shuffled into the main bird deck to expand players’ strategic options, allowing them to be played into the habitats on personal boards to activate combos, store resources, and fulfill goals in the traditional manner.

On the other hand, we find New Bonus Cards. These join the game’s existing repertoire, offering new individual and secret long-term goals, granting additional victory points at the end of the game to players who successfully meet the conditions indicated on them.

A similar purpose is served by the New End-of-Round Goal Tiles, featuring new scoring criteria from the expansion, which are directly linked to progress on the hummingbird track columns, printed egg limits, or the variety of point values of the birds on the board.

Lastly, the game includes Green Eggs, which are added to the egg supplies from the base game, maintaining the same size and texture as the originals but distinguished by their green hue. As in previous expansions, they do not add any color-dependent mechanics and are a purely aesthetic addition.

That covers all the components.

Preparación de la Partida

The base game is set up as normal, and other Wingspan expansions may be included or excluded. Additionally, the following steps are performed:

• Place the hummingbird garden board in the center of the table next to the rest of the shared components.
• Shuffle the hummingbird card deck and place it face down to one side of that board.
• Place one face-up hummingbird card in each of the five spaces on the garden board.
• Each player takes a hummingbird overlay and places it on the left section of their player board, making sure to place it nectar-side up if the Oceania expansion is included.
• Each player draws a random hummingbird card from the deck and places it in the hummingbird space of their respective grassland habitat.
• Each player receives a random hummingbird track board, placing it next to their player board on either side.
• Each player receives five hummingbird tokens and places one on each of the initial starting spaces.

Desarrollo de la Partida

A game of Wingspan with the Americas Expansion plays out according to the standard rules of the base game over four rounds. However, it introduces a new element: hummingbird actions. At the end of each turn, after executing and activating the standard actions in one of your three habitat rows (forest, grassland, or wetland), the player may interact with the hummingbird garden.

After completing a row action and moving the action cube from right to left, you reach the hummingbird space on the personal board overlay strip. At that point, the player performs one of the two following hummingbird actions:

• Attract a Hummingbird (if the space is empty). The player chooses a hummingbird and places it on the empty space of the activated habitat. To do this, they can take any face-up card available in the hummingbird garden or draw a card blindly from the deck. Upon placing it, the player immediately gains the benefit shown in the lower-left corner of the hummingbird card.
• Return a Hummingbird (if the space already contains one). The player returns the hummingbird card from their board to the central hummingbird garden board, placing it on any space and usually covering another bird. In exchange, the player advances one space upward on their personal hummingbird track. This advancement must be made in the column that matches the taxonomic group of the returned hummingbird or the hummingbird that was covered in the garden.

When advancing through the columns of the hummingbird track, the player can trigger additional effects:

• If the marker lands on a space with a hummingbird icon, the player immediately performs a new hummingbird action (attract or return) in any habitat on their board (not necessarily the one where they executed the action).
• If a marker reaches the end of its column and would advance again, it remains on the final space and allows the player to advance any other marker of their choice instead.

The following maintenance steps must be applied at the appropriate times:

• At the end of a player’s turn, empty spaces in the hummingbird garden are refilled by revealing new cards.
• At the end of each round, all displayed hummingbirds are discarded, and five new face-up cards are placed out.

Fin de la Partida

At the end of the game, each player’s hummingbird track board is evaluated, adding (or subtracting) the points printed to the right of the track based on how high they managed to advance each of their 5 markers. Hummingbirds on personal boards can also be counted toward new end-of-round goals and bonus cards that reference their names or characteristics.

Variantes

Solo Mode. A special deck of hummingbird cards is added for the Automa. During each round, after resolving the Automa’s normal turn, the player reveals a card from this deck to determine the hummingbird action it executes. This involves moving a hummingbird in the corresponding garden and advancing its respective marker on the Automa tracking board, which will grant it points at the end of the game. On the other hand, when the human player activates interactive powers from their own birds that benefit others, the Automa reacts by accumulating tokens in its supply, which will convert into scoring eggs at the conclusion of the game based on the chosen difficulty.

Opinión Personal

Just when it seemed like Stonemaier Games’ cash cow (pun intended) had been milked dry after breaking new ground with spin-offs like Wyrmspan (here is its tocho-review) and Finspan (here is its tocho-review), we run into a new expansion for Wingspan.

Then again, the promise of this and more expansions remained alive after the launch of the Nesting Box designed to hold the entire game, where we already found dividers for South and Central America, Antarctica, or Africa cards (the latter two still without a release date, but don’t worry, Jamey Stegmaier surely has it all perfectly calculated).

But well, that will be further down the road. Today we are going to focus on this expansion that completes the collection of birds from the American continent for Wingspan. I’d like to thank Maldito Games for providing the copy that makes this lengthy review possible. And, as always, I recommend checking out the base game’s tocho-review to refresh concepts and details that I’ll only mention in passing here.

As a quick summary, remember that in Wingspan, each player manages a wildlife preserve where they attempt to successfully introduce a series of bird species for their protection. It is a card-driven engine-building game in which, over four rounds, players resolve a fixed number of alternating turns that decrease in quantity each round.

Each card represents a bird species, complete with a food cost, habitat requirements, and an effect. These effects are the core of the game. In the base game, we had immediate effects, passive effects, and habitat-activation effects. With the European Expansion (here is its tocho-review), we added end-of-round effects. The Oceania Expansion (here is its tocho-review) added end-of-game effects.

I believe that in terms of effect types, there isn’t much room left to innovate, which is why this Americas Expansion adds a new type of card: hummingbirds. These cards are not played in the usual way; instead, they reside on a separate common board that players can interact with when activating a habitat.

Now, in each habitat, on the far left, we will have a slot to place a hummingbird card. When resolving a habitat action, as a final step, the player will execute a hummingbird action depending on whether there is a card in that space or not. If there isn’t, they simply choose one of the available cards from the board and apply its printed immediate effect (which usually involves gaining a resource, drawing a card, laying an egg, etc.).

Otherwise, the player returns the hummingbird card to the common board, choosing an existing card on it to place it over. By doing this, the player advances on the new hummingbird tracks (there is one for each hummingbird taxonomic group represented in the game), choosing the track corresponding to either the card placed or the one covered by it.

These tracks yield an increasing number of victory points, making them a significant incentive to advance your markers. Some spaces on each track display a wildcard action symbol, which allows players—upon reaching them with the corresponding marker—to resolve an additional hummingbird action. These small combos are always highly satisfying.

And really, there isn’t much more to it. This Americas Expansion is the typical expansion that must introduce a new mechanical concept so that all the elements aimed at adding variability to the set make sense, as what is already present in the base game and its expansions has been pushed to its limits.

I find it a highly recommendable expansion because it solves one of the main issues I used to find in Wingspan: player flexibility. Now, thanks to these hummingbirds, players have access to basic elements without depending on activating the specific track associated with them.

For instance, if we needed an egg, we would normally only be able to get it by activating the central habitat of our board. But now, if we activate a different habitat, in addition to getting its corresponding benefits, we can acquire a hummingbird card that grants us a resource associated with one of the other two habitats.

These synergies between the habitats and the hummingbird tracks provide plenty of tactical leeway, leaving a very good taste in the mouth for those who have already mastered the base game. Do I consider it essential? No, because its impact isn’t earth-shattering either, but it is one of those expansions that feel pleasant and barely add any rules overhead despite introducing a brand-new element to the game.

The only downside is that, besides the bird card deck becoming unmanageable—as happens in other games of this style like Terraforming Mars (here is its tocho-review)—upkeep between turns and rounds increases, since you have to keep an eye on a whole new card supply. But hey, if all players pitch in with this task, it doesn’t feel particularly tedious.

Let’s move on to production. Unsurprisingly, the overall quality remains top-notch, with cards of an excellent thickness, linen finish, and a fantastic snap back (sleeving is always recommended, but this is one of those games I keep unsleeved due to the sheer quality of the cards). As for the rest of the components, the cardboard is thick and well-pressed. The rulebook is well-structured. Visually, the trio formed by Sobel, Rojas, and Martínez Jaramillo continues to deliver spectacular artwork. Of course, the variety of egg colors is expanded without adding any mechanics tied to those colors. That said, the box is now a single piece, which I think is a good move, since most people will end up tossing it anyway and it’s easier to flatten.

Time to wrap up. Wingspan: Americas Expansion is a pleasant breath of fresh air that intelligently rejuvenates the franchise’s subtle card-play. The design’s great triumph is the dynamism injected by the hummingbird mechanic, granting players more flexibility and creating cross-habitat synergies that mitigate the rigidness of the base game actions with almost zero added complexity. While it’s true that it doesn’t achieve a revolutionary impact and that keeping up with the card supplies requires more attention, the satisfying combos triggered on the new tracks ultimately leave a very good impression. It’s one of those expansions you add and never play without again, even if it isn’t strictly mandatory. For all these reasons, I give it a…