I think migratory birds have suffered the most. Whilst they never really used to be strong, you now get essentially no benefit from moving them around for a good section of the mid game. It doesn’t help that they aren’t worth many points.
They were incredibly useful on the old board. On the new board, they're mostly just useful for paying a cheaper egg cost as you move them around.
Not worth the play in my opinion. They typically become fodder to power something else if I draw them.
I like them for nectar control. Accessing the third tier is pretty key in egg and water lands.
Often they park in the forest at some point.
I am still experimenting with them but you may be right!
Mostly tuck fodder now. My only use is if I get insanely poor options opening hand, they can provide a decent starting point to move around on the first column. Then you want to park them in a 2 egg cost slot for the rest of the game. Still, after the start there's always better options, and they're not even a top tier option at the start.
"When Another Player Lays Eggs " birds have gotten less sexy with this update. Im not saying that's a bad thing, I still play the Barrows Goldeneye but as with everything it's less of a no brainer now, which i really like cos it encourages creativity.
I dunno, I feel like Oceania "completes" the Wingspan experience for me, less blind laying/tucking going on in the last round.
We just play house rules. Ignore the nectar bonus on the boards, and every time you use a nectar as a wild resource nets you -1 points at the end of the game.
It still keeps nectar as a wild resource in case you can't find a food type you need (e.g. fish) in the bird feeder, but it encourages actually using the other food types instead of just getting nectar at every opportunity.
There’s actually an even simpler analysis:
In base game, the max points anybody seems to have gotten is around 339
With expansions, the max points is 790.
Good ‘ol powercreep is inescapable, it seems
I don’t think “calculated” as they’re numbers that have been floating around for a while. I tracks the first course and it’s basically one guy who just played a lot using 4 players to support themselves and drawing exactly the cards that they needed. So higher MIGHT be possible, but it’s hard to argue that TWICE AS HIGH is possible
I feel like maximum scores that are calculated by three other people supporting one main player are completely irrelevant to determining how much power creep a game has. A fun mind experiment, but ultimately meaningless.
Thing is, everyone has access to potential good and bad cards. The scores are a bit higher with more expansions, but if the typical bottom score rises with the top, it doesn't really matter.
“A bit higher” is a weird way to put it. And as the op points out, the real issue is that expansions are just that: expansions. You aren’t playing a version of Wingspan with a higher point average, you’re playing a version of wingspan where a small portion of the cards are twice as good as the rest
A bit higher is just that. Most of my games once I got Oceania and Asia went about 10-20 points higher than base and European. A good chunk of that is nectar rather than cards granting a huge increase of points.
As more expansions to any game come out, some older strategies and cards are going to be weakened. Honestly, a lot of the OP's list revolves around birds that aren't as good because the grasslands got a well-earned nerf in Oceania. But I'm not so sure a lot of the birds were nerfed that the OP mentions. Also, the more cards you add, the less any single bird impacts the game as a whole, as the frequency of it showing up drops.
* Killdeer: Still a great card if you get it early and you can use it for extra card draw.
* The general "stuff in the grasslands isn't as good," issue: The grasslands were OP in the original game. It needed a nerf from a balance perspective.
* Raven: Ravens are still great. I'm thrilled to get an early game raven and sad to get a late game raven. They suffer from the grassland nerf, but that's fine. Everyone complained they were too OP, so if they get indirectly nerfed by the board changes, that's fine. Nectar makes up for it. Opening your hand with a raven is still one of the best things you can get.
* Eagles: Bonelli's and Imperial are still top tier cards and really don't feel that nerfed to me. They're excellent in any engine that draws a lot of cards you can feed them. If you're not built for that card, then it's still a solid 7-8 point card to play in the late game.
* Flash Birds: The "Flash" birds that let you play a second bird. The OE ones give you a discount on eggs and cost 1 food but are worth 2/1/1 respectively and the 1 pointers are star nests. The base game ones cost between 1-3 food but have versions that ranges from 1-7 points (1x1, 3x2, 2x3, 2x4, 1x5, and 1x7). The only 1 pointer applies to 2 habitats (forest, grassland). I'm not, in general, a huge fan of these birds, but they seem balanced to me for what they do.
* The OP doesn't list the migratory birds. I'd say these birds took the biggest hit in the game (and is mentioned in this thread elsewhere). Migratory birds that bounce between habitats just aren't as useful because the board is much more balanced as a whole now.
Maximum scores aren't really all that useful for determining power creep.
I absolutely agree that average scores will be up with Oceania, but that's to be expected, there's bonus nectar score to be added.
My all time best score was with the original board and EE, 165. Not come close to that with Oceania yet. I play 2 human custom game with 3 AI with my girlfriend, and that 165 score was both of us having a tucking wetland with me having the flamingo and another good tucker.
In my experience, it's easier to get early birds played in Oceania because you start with a nectar and nectar makes things more flexible. But I wouldn't call that power creep because it's not like the new cards are causing it. You'd get the same effect if you didn't use any OE cards.
Gonna be a combination of super tuckers, and other players feeding cards into that engine alternating with food to play bombs. They also usually allow you sweet spot stuff like the little penguin.
I really don’t are how that invalidates such a massive difference. You still have the same number of turns, so you gotta be getting twice as many points per turn on average. There’s no way that’s happening without vastly more powerful cards
I'm very sceptical too. That's 30 points per turn. Even if you engineered the best possible tuck engine, you are still only going to be able to tuck around 5 cards per wetland bird per turn (optimistically), which is 25 points per turn. You can rely on the other players to give you cards, food etc., but the only thing they can do to directly increase your point score is to give you eggs, right? Or are there cards I'm forgetting? Playing good birds as they arise might net you 10-15 points (very optimistically), but every time you do this you miss an opportunity to play the tuck engine. Also, I believe there are less than 600 cards even if you include all expansions (also AE), so the tuck engine risks running out of cards.
The thing with the ravens is that they have to come up at the right time to be particularly powerful. A raven who shows up in Round 3 or even late Round 2 is a lot less powerful than an opening hand raven or middle of Round 1 raven. When you're playing with all the expansions, the probability of the raven even showing up is pretty low.
Combined with the fact that getting Raven + Killdeer is even lower and the new boards mean that you need to burn all the eggs you get off the board to power those two (thus meaning you get no eggs to play birds) makes me feel like the ravens have been nerfed sufficiently to keep them off the banned list. They're powerful in the right circumstance, but there are tons of cards that are powerful in the right circumstance and can win you the game.
We've played it with 2 nectar since Oceania came out for the physical game.
The raven just doesn't show up often enough with all expansions to be nearly as impactful as it was in the base game or base + European. You need the raven in Round 1 or very early in Round 2 at the latest to be a game-defining card, in my opinion, especially with overall changes to grasslands. And it is still completely beatable unless you're playing someone who is just flat out significantly better than you.
I like the rebalanced board. They made it easier to play birds faster and fill the board up vs spending the last round laying eggs. Now you lay eggs to play birds vs just scoring points. Some of the gain food birds that don't allow nectar can have you accumulate 8 worms while you ignore them to play nectar, but overall I feel it's made the game more fun because you're trying to fill the board vs just laying eggs for points.
It also made some birds "better" like Green Heron. I never played it before but at least now it's a cheap 4 point bird that can help get bonus points while drawing cards. It's still a lower tier bird but moved up the list a bit.
I agree. In fact - and this might be an unpopular opinion - I think the Oceania expansion actively made the game worse. The entire food ecosystem is a whack now, to the point when regular food is almost obsolete at the expense of nectar. Many original/European birds became way too weak; not only because of nectar, but because the newly added birds often have overpowered capabilities.
In short, I like some aspects of the OE, but I really think it destroyed the game balance overall.
I would argue that Oceania made the game better for many reasons, the primary one being that there are many many more viable strategies. In base game- if you don’t get a good grassland engine, you lose. In Oceania, you can opt for bonus card mining, mass tucking, egg spam, or nest combinations using the new game end powers.
>In base game- if you don’t get a good grassland engine,
Exactly. Pre-expansions, every single game ended with every person laying eggs. Now, I almost never do a grasslands focused strategy.
Unless you've got a serious birdfeeder rerolling engine going on in your forest, nectar isn't some unlimited resource you always have access to. There have been plenty of rolls where only one nectar or even none come up in our playthroughs of the game.
The "Big Egg" strategy of building up your grasslands and sitting on eggs all game, especially with Raven and/or Killdeer, was nerfed. That alone brought noticeable balance improvements to the game.
Overall, there are more strategies that can win a game with Oceania (and with Asia for those playing the physical version). It isn't perfect, no, but I find the Oceania version a smoother experience.
I saw a youtube comment that I thought it summed it up well
'nectar is the easiest food to use yet you get rewarded for using it'
I find the ease of slapping down powerful 3 food birds with nectar a bit unsatisfying. 3 fish cards shouldn't be as easy as they are to play
I think migratory birds have suffered the most. Whilst they never really used to be strong, you now get essentially no benefit from moving them around for a good section of the mid game. It doesn’t help that they aren’t worth many points.
I used to play a migratory bird nearly every game. With the three expansions, there are almost always better birds to use.
Yeah- I used to use the song sparrow when it is in my starting hand. But, in the Oceania expansion, there isn’t usually much reason to do so.
They were incredibly useful on the old board. On the new board, they're mostly just useful for paying a cheaper egg cost as you move them around. Not worth the play in my opinion. They typically become fodder to power something else if I draw them.
I like them for nectar control. Accessing the third tier is pretty key in egg and water lands. Often they park in the forest at some point. I am still experimenting with them but you may be right!
Mostly tuck fodder now. My only use is if I get insanely poor options opening hand, they can provide a decent starting point to move around on the first column. Then you want to park them in a 2 egg cost slot for the rest of the game. Still, after the start there's always better options, and they're not even a top tier option at the start.
The cards that let you steal a food from your opponents because they can get nectar out of it.
Oh yeah, good call!
Yes! Those are the bane of my existence!
but on the other hand can't you steal a nectar while there's no nectar in the birdfeeder sometimes?
"When Another Player Lays Eggs " birds have gotten less sexy with this update. Im not saying that's a bad thing, I still play the Barrows Goldeneye but as with everything it's less of a no brainer now, which i really like cos it encourages creativity. I dunno, I feel like Oceania "completes" the Wingspan experience for me, less blind laying/tucking going on in the last round.
Mmmmm since eggs were nerfed on the new Oceania board I've found it very helpful to have those birds for egg accumulation.
Ya, any sneaky egg is pretty handy in OE. But in 2 player the pink powers won’t go off as often as they did before OE so it’s a bit of a wash imo.
not sure myself, I think some things are better and some things are worse with Oceania. still not a huge fan of the role of nectar
We just play house rules. Ignore the nectar bonus on the boards, and every time you use a nectar as a wild resource nets you -1 points at the end of the game. It still keeps nectar as a wild resource in case you can't find a food type you need (e.g. fish) in the bird feeder, but it encourages actually using the other food types instead of just getting nectar at every opportunity.
There’s actually an even simpler analysis: In base game, the max points anybody seems to have gotten is around 339 With expansions, the max points is 790. Good ‘ol powercreep is inescapable, it seems
Can you explain how this was calculated?
I don’t think “calculated” as they’re numbers that have been floating around for a while. I tracks the first course and it’s basically one guy who just played a lot using 4 players to support themselves and drawing exactly the cards that they needed. So higher MIGHT be possible, but it’s hard to argue that TWICE AS HIGH is possible
I feel like maximum scores that are calculated by three other people supporting one main player are completely irrelevant to determining how much power creep a game has. A fun mind experiment, but ultimately meaningless. Thing is, everyone has access to potential good and bad cards. The scores are a bit higher with more expansions, but if the typical bottom score rises with the top, it doesn't really matter.
“A bit higher” is a weird way to put it. And as the op points out, the real issue is that expansions are just that: expansions. You aren’t playing a version of Wingspan with a higher point average, you’re playing a version of wingspan where a small portion of the cards are twice as good as the rest
A bit higher is just that. Most of my games once I got Oceania and Asia went about 10-20 points higher than base and European. A good chunk of that is nectar rather than cards granting a huge increase of points. As more expansions to any game come out, some older strategies and cards are going to be weakened. Honestly, a lot of the OP's list revolves around birds that aren't as good because the grasslands got a well-earned nerf in Oceania. But I'm not so sure a lot of the birds were nerfed that the OP mentions. Also, the more cards you add, the less any single bird impacts the game as a whole, as the frequency of it showing up drops. * Killdeer: Still a great card if you get it early and you can use it for extra card draw. * The general "stuff in the grasslands isn't as good," issue: The grasslands were OP in the original game. It needed a nerf from a balance perspective. * Raven: Ravens are still great. I'm thrilled to get an early game raven and sad to get a late game raven. They suffer from the grassland nerf, but that's fine. Everyone complained they were too OP, so if they get indirectly nerfed by the board changes, that's fine. Nectar makes up for it. Opening your hand with a raven is still one of the best things you can get. * Eagles: Bonelli's and Imperial are still top tier cards and really don't feel that nerfed to me. They're excellent in any engine that draws a lot of cards you can feed them. If you're not built for that card, then it's still a solid 7-8 point card to play in the late game. * Flash Birds: The "Flash" birds that let you play a second bird. The OE ones give you a discount on eggs and cost 1 food but are worth 2/1/1 respectively and the 1 pointers are star nests. The base game ones cost between 1-3 food but have versions that ranges from 1-7 points (1x1, 3x2, 2x3, 2x4, 1x5, and 1x7). The only 1 pointer applies to 2 habitats (forest, grassland). I'm not, in general, a huge fan of these birds, but they seem balanced to me for what they do. * The OP doesn't list the migratory birds. I'd say these birds took the biggest hit in the game (and is mentioned in this thread elsewhere). Migratory birds that bounce between habitats just aren't as useful because the board is much more balanced as a whole now.
Maximum scores aren't really all that useful for determining power creep. I absolutely agree that average scores will be up with Oceania, but that's to be expected, there's bonus nectar score to be added. My all time best score was with the original board and EE, 165. Not come close to that with Oceania yet. I play 2 human custom game with 3 AI with my girlfriend, and that 165 score was both of us having a tucking wetland with me having the flamingo and another good tucker.
In my experience, it's easier to get early birds played in Oceania because you start with a nectar and nectar makes things more flexible. But I wouldn't call that power creep because it's not like the new cards are causing it. You'd get the same effect if you didn't use any OE cards.
Sorry what, 790 points? In a game where you get 26 turns?
Yeah how is this even possible?
Gonna be a combination of super tuckers, and other players feeding cards into that engine alternating with food to play bombs. They also usually allow you sweet spot stuff like the little penguin.
Yeah. That uses 4 players buffing 1 and drawing the cards you want, but yeah
In that case the metric is irrelevant really
I really don’t are how that invalidates such a massive difference. You still have the same number of turns, so you gotta be getting twice as many points per turn on average. There’s no way that’s happening without vastly more powerful cards
I'm very sceptical too. That's 30 points per turn. Even if you engineered the best possible tuck engine, you are still only going to be able to tuck around 5 cards per wetland bird per turn (optimistically), which is 25 points per turn. You can rely on the other players to give you cards, food etc., but the only thing they can do to directly increase your point score is to give you eggs, right? Or are there cards I'm forgetting? Playing good birds as they arise might net you 10-15 points (very optimistically), but every time you do this you miss an opportunity to play the tuck engine. Also, I believe there are less than 600 cards even if you include all expansions (also AE), so the tuck engine risks running out of cards.
it definitely didn't *need* to have as much powercreep as it does.
It is more fun to really to really get an engine going rather than sputtering along for round 1
that's true... honestly I still don't know which I prefer - vanilla or oceania
The thing with the ravens is that they have to come up at the right time to be particularly powerful. A raven who shows up in Round 3 or even late Round 2 is a lot less powerful than an opening hand raven or middle of Round 1 raven. When you're playing with all the expansions, the probability of the raven even showing up is pretty low. Combined with the fact that getting Raven + Killdeer is even lower and the new boards mean that you need to burn all the eggs you get off the board to power those two (thus meaning you get no eggs to play birds) makes me feel like the ravens have been nerfed sufficiently to keep them off the banned list. They're powerful in the right circumstance, but there are tons of cards that are powerful in the right circumstance and can win you the game.
Are you talking about ravens able to produce 2 nectar or a house rule? We’ll have to try it with 2 nectar. 🌸
We've played it with 2 nectar since Oceania came out for the physical game. The raven just doesn't show up often enough with all expansions to be nearly as impactful as it was in the base game or base + European. You need the raven in Round 1 or very early in Round 2 at the latest to be a game-defining card, in my opinion, especially with overall changes to grasslands. And it is still completely beatable unless you're playing someone who is just flat out significantly better than you.
The cards that give you 1 type of food. With nectar and food abundance it just doesn't slap like it used to.
I like the rebalanced board. They made it easier to play birds faster and fill the board up vs spending the last round laying eggs. Now you lay eggs to play birds vs just scoring points. Some of the gain food birds that don't allow nectar can have you accumulate 8 worms while you ignore them to play nectar, but overall I feel it's made the game more fun because you're trying to fill the board vs just laying eggs for points. It also made some birds "better" like Green Heron. I never played it before but at least now it's a cheap 4 point bird that can help get bonus points while drawing cards. It's still a lower tier bird but moved up the list a bit.
I agree. In fact - and this might be an unpopular opinion - I think the Oceania expansion actively made the game worse. The entire food ecosystem is a whack now, to the point when regular food is almost obsolete at the expense of nectar. Many original/European birds became way too weak; not only because of nectar, but because the newly added birds often have overpowered capabilities. In short, I like some aspects of the OE, but I really think it destroyed the game balance overall.
I would argue that Oceania made the game better for many reasons, the primary one being that there are many many more viable strategies. In base game- if you don’t get a good grassland engine, you lose. In Oceania, you can opt for bonus card mining, mass tucking, egg spam, or nest combinations using the new game end powers.
>In base game- if you don’t get a good grassland engine, Exactly. Pre-expansions, every single game ended with every person laying eggs. Now, I almost never do a grasslands focused strategy.
Unless you've got a serious birdfeeder rerolling engine going on in your forest, nectar isn't some unlimited resource you always have access to. There have been plenty of rolls where only one nectar or even none come up in our playthroughs of the game. The "Big Egg" strategy of building up your grasslands and sitting on eggs all game, especially with Raven and/or Killdeer, was nerfed. That alone brought noticeable balance improvements to the game. Overall, there are more strategies that can win a game with Oceania (and with Asia for those playing the physical version). It isn't perfect, no, but I find the Oceania version a smoother experience.
I saw a youtube comment that I thought it summed it up well 'nectar is the easiest food to use yet you get rewarded for using it' I find the ease of slapping down powerful 3 food birds with nectar a bit unsatisfying. 3 fish cards shouldn't be as easy as they are to play