Wingspan: Pocket

It's hard to find a game that everyone in my family loves, but this hits the spot. It's quick and provides satisfying engine building and enough luck to give everyone a chance at victory with enough plays, and it has cooperative potential (cards that benefit all players) and no take that (cards that hurt other players). I don't like Wingspan (too long, slow, and weak engine building), but I like Wingspan Pocket.

Wingspan Pocket is basically a bird-themed factory simulator. You gather food and eggs to play bird cards, and each bird card has a power that may help you get food and eggs and more bird cards and can synergize with other bird card powers. At the end of each of your turns, you activate all of the powers of all of the birds you have played so far in the order you played them. So you can wind up with combos like your first played bird gives you an egg, and then your second bird lets you discard an egg to get any two cards, and then your third bird lets you discard a card to get an egg. The only complaints I've seen are too much of a luck factor for competitive strategic gamers and some weird corner cases that I don't think are explained in the rules (e.g., a bird lets me copy the rightmost bird power of the player to my left, which is to copy the rightmost bird power of the player to my left, so it's an infinite loop?). For a short, satisfying taste of engine building, this is a great game.

We are loving this game!! We love playing the full Wingspan, but Wingspan Pocket is perfect for a short playing time. It’s just as satisfying and beautiful as the original. It’s a great addition to our game library!!