Wingspan: Starting Hand Strategy - The Mill 

Thanks for the tips! That's great advice, George!

Deal #1: Absolutely: Backyard Birder, Woodpecker, Wren, Bunting (forest play), worm, and fruit. It is very likely to get three or even four birds in the forest for the round one bonus. Cards on offer, for my Wren draw I am taking Purple Martin if still available. It has tucking from hand with redraw, has cheap food cost, and plays toward Backyard Birder and second round bonus. If Purple Martin is not available, I am drawing for a wetland bird. Only if Purple Martin or other tolerable wetland bird is secured in the first draw, I could imagine the possibility of taking Mountain Bluebird too. With the Bunting helping gain worms and fruit in the forest, Mountain Bluebird costs are not too much and could save an action in building egg production, exchangeable for cards early on. Mountain Bluebird also plays toward the second round bonus. If there was any hint of other players getting three birds in the forest, I would be using one Wren draw in hopes of getting a forest bird. Deal #2: I like Omnivore, Sandhill Crane, Tanager, worm, seed, and fruit. Though expensive to play and having poor egg capacity, Sandhill Crane is a good tucking card and it's an omnivore. Start player will probably take the Dove, so don't get your hopes up. Imagine if you did though. Take Dove, play Dove in forest, take worm and get egg, play Tanager. That's the start of a great food engine. Tanager has a little bowl nest for the round one bonus. Note that keeping the Sandhill Crane could help in getting the second worm in this case, because you could be more likely to get a re-roll by discarding the Crane if needed to get a second food. Likely, you do not get the Dove. Look, American Coot is available. It's an Omnivore with tucking ability and good egg capacity in the wetlands for the second round bonus. You are hoping for something better than Sandhill Crane and anything on offer anyway. Take Coot, play Coot with seed and worm, if a good card comes up take it and tuck your Sandhill Crane, getting another card also. Otherwise, lay two eggs, now give an egg and take two cards, tucking the worst of your new hand and getting another card. You see Sandhill Crane remains more valuable than keeping a fish or rodent in either scenario described in the first two paragraphs. Suppose the unlikely event that both those birds were snatched up and no good card was on offer. The bird-feeder is showing two worms and three fruit. So if two cards are being taken, you are probably getting a worm or a re-roll for a worm at the least. Then the Tanager is first to play. Again having Sandhill Crane in your hand is going to help in getting food for what good cards come your way. You can discard Crane when taking food. Why keep Sandhill Crane and not another from the start hand? It is Omnivore with good tucking and high victory points. You get 7 points just for playing. You will need a good deal of seed. Hey look, American Goldfinch is likely to stay on offer for some time. It has a bowl nest for the round one bonus big enough for the round 4 bonus also, and gives three seed. Suppose you hold on to Sandhill Crane, take Goldfinch, get a second seed, play Goldfinch, then play Sandhill Crane, hopefully holding on to a seed for later activation and tucking two cards from the deck. Playing Crane in wetlands or grasslands would depend on what comes next. Crane does give one more possible egg in the wetlands for round two bonus. However, consider going for the round one bonus. For the round one bonus, consider these possible first round actions: (1,2 interchangeable depending on food availability) 1 Take worm, 2 take Goldfinch, 3 play Tanager, 4 take seed + worm/fruit, 5 play Goldfinch (now have three seed + worm/fruit), 6 lay eggs possibly giving food for third egg, 7 play Sandhill Crane in grasslands, 8 lay three eggs. Round one result is four eggs in bowl nests with two cards tucked, or five eggs in bowl nests with no cards tucked depending on competition with bowl nests. Depending on food availability, the four eggs in bowl nests with two cards tucked could also be accomplished when moving action 6 to prior to actions 4 and 5, renumbering those actions. Best case is 26 points showing for round one; Sandhill Crane contributes 9 points: 5 base, 2 omnivore, 2 tuck; Tanager 6 points, Goldfinch 3 points, bonus 4 points, eggs 4 points.

FYI: Omnivore is misprinted, should be 16% of birds (NOT 10%).

You're the first feedback I've heard like that, Chuck, but I do appreciate the feedback. I guess I felt that it felt kind of empty, but I'll remove it from the next video of that type I do. We'll see if anyone misses it. :) Sorry about the distraction.

The Mill Another option would be to turn it down but leave it. In my devices, it is almost as loud as your voice.

@@chuckm1961 - That's really weird. I don't have a nice audio setup, nothing 5.1 or anything (or I guess that's not even great anymore. lol.) But I mean, just stereo setup. But I do think in listening to it now that I would have lowered that volume even more. In any case, I do appreciate the feedback and I'll probably just exclude it.. or lower the volume even more than I think it should be. My apologies that it distracted you. That's certainly not what I'm going for. :)

The Mill cool. Thanks for bring responsive!

I was just thinking the same thing:-(

Great catch! That is an important distinction.

It's a very niche goal. It is possible to get like 7 points from it if you plan carefully. That's as much as any other goal cards but with more potential. But yes, mostly useless if you're not going for the egg strategy. There's too many 3 egg capacity birds in the game to lower the threshold. I would easily get over 10+ points if that was the case.

I mean, you got an answer from our strategy guru already, so who needs me? lol. For me though, yeah, I'd have to really dislike my other goal to lean toward that one. I don't know the percentage of bird cards that allow for 4 or more, but I have no doubt that someone will figure that out. That one, at least, is one that you could accomplish just sort of semi-accidentally. I've found myself sort of thought locked around the idea of 'I need to work on my end of round goals' and 'I need to work on my bonus card' and I have found that I haven't paid the closest attention to my engine in all of my games. So hearing Jamey talk about it being alright ignoring your Objective card in Scythe, or Mat remind me that I don't NEED to pursue bonuses or goals, it helps become a more well rounded player. Back to your question though, it does make me wonder what we'd find, percentage wise, if we changed that goal to 3 eggs. Is 4 eggs represent 20% of the birds and 3 eggs represent 40%? Because landing that card would be a massive boon.

Worst goal in the game, avoid it. Not enough points for the effort

You can only play one bird per turn, Caecilia. So you'd place a cube on "Play a Bird" .. pay that cost (food + eggs, if applicable) and then put the bird into its habitat. If it has a "When Played" power, you'll get that at this point, but otherwise, that was your whole turn.

The Mill thank you for your reply! I’ll play by the rules from now on 😂

Read the game directions. Works wonders

@@TheMillShow @The Mill Mountain Bluebird shown in video did have a power allowing the play of a second bird in the same turn. More hand analysis videos would be appreciated, with better analysis hopefully. I wrote a lengthy analysis in reply to Mircea Pauca. You had dismissed them, however, the "if available" food options are really worthwhile because you have a good estimation of odds of getting the food before choosing that action. Worm and grain are very common on a re-roll. Placing Woodpecker and Bunting in the forest, allows good food gathering. If seed and worm/fruit are available choose another two in the bird-feeder to be sure to get a bonus seed and worm/fruit. Otherwise, choose whatever two foods to force a re-roll. Even odd foods are useful for omnivores or for exchanging two for one of another food.

五毛共匪 It’s interesting to develop a strategy video a week or two after the games release and then watch how the early meta changes as more -better?- card interactions come to the forefront and other folks with more plays start to share their experience. Perhaps it might be a good idea to revisit these videos from time to time and produce new videos as more has been learned. I appreciate you sharing your advice. It’s great for others visiting but also very helpful for me trying to get better. :)

It's on Tabletopia, John.

John, Christopher has it right. Tabletopia.com. It's one of their free titles too. Either install it and play it in Steam or use Internet Explorer and play in browser. Yes. Really IE. For some reason it just works better with Tabletopia.

Thanks to the both of you!

Digital version just got released on Steam if you're interested in that a year on

This is the blue bird in your hand

I think I made that very shortly after Wingspan came out. I haven't watched it in a while. I should revisit it and see how much my thinking has changed since making it. Definitely a good idea to get a good synergy going with birds that can give you things that aren't typical to that habitat. If you can get bird cards from the grasslands or forest, do it. If you can get food in the grasslands or wetlands, do it. Same with eggs in the forest or wetlands. Great recommendation, TP.

@@TheMillShow yeah exactly. There’s a video from ‘obsessive board game disorder’ that talks about this for wingspan. Quite interesting.

James David I know, right? I need a promo card.

Thank you for the feedback, Tom. It was a lesson learned.

Hey N B, I actually got that feedback on this video from a couple of other folks too. The music won’t be returning. Thanks for the feedback. Lesson learned.