the given number of eggs and introducing
them to the rows of forest, grassland or
wetland that make up their tableau.
Once in their habitat, the birds become a chain of
abilities that players can trigger, activating an entire
row in order to gain more food, lay eggs and a huge
variety of di erent bene ts o ered by the dozens of
unique cards.
“ e most creatively challenging part was trying
to come up with the powers for all of the bird cards
that, where I could, I tried to come up with things that
actually go along with things that the birds actually do,”
Hargrave says.
She gives the example of the brown-headed
cowbird, a bird that in real life only lays its eggs in
other birds’ nests – saving it the trouble of having
to feed its own young, making it the envy of human
parents across the globe.
“I kind of ri ed on that: when other people choose
the lay eggs action then your brown-headed cowbird
lays eggs in other birds’ nests on your own tableau,”
Hargrave says. “Little things like that where I could think
of a way to sort of reference something the bird actually
does, that was probably the biggest challenge. Some of
them are much more simple; just like, this bird lets you
draw an extra card and that’s not really directly related
to anything, but still is a nice engine-building power.”
Hargrave compares the vast number of
combinations possible to weighty strategy titanHargrave says. “Little things like that where I could think
of a way to sort of reference something the bird actually
does, that was probably the biggest challenge. Some of
them are much more simple; just like, this bird lets you
draw an extra card and that’s not really directly related
to anything, but still is a nice engine-building power.”More than 170 different
birds make up Wingspan’s
deck, each based closely on
their real-life counterpartsMore than 170 different
Wingspan’s
deck, each based closely on
their real-life counterpartstabletopgaming.co.uk 25Hargrave’s rst major board game release is
Wingspan, an engine-building title put out by Scythe
publisher Stonermaier Games this year. It too arose from
her eclectic fascination with the outside world.
“Partly it came out of a conversation with a bunch
of friends of mine,” she reveals. “We all play games
but we’re also big nature people; we’re as likely to go
hiking together as we are to play games together. is
conversation about, ‘Why are all the games about, like,
ancient castles and space and nothing we actually like
as our hobbies?’”
e idea was given further potential as a game by
Hargrave’s realisation of “economic systems in nature
that people have not exploited much in games”.
“ ere are resources out there that di erent animals
need in di erent amounts, and lots of sort of supply-
and-demand and ‘getting resources makes you
stronger’ kind of things going on in nature just as much
as they are in medieval Europe,” she contends.
Meanwhile, Hargrave and her husband had begun
to get serious about birding after dabbling in the hobby
for a long time.
“It was sort of the perfect storm to make this game
about birds,” she says.
FLIGHT OF FANCY
Its staggering commitment to detail is one of the
things that marks Wingspan out as more than just
another strategy game with a pretty coat of feathers.
Over 170 di erent North American birds make up
the game’s deck of cards, each with a distinct diet,
ability and habitat – all closely modelled on their
real-life counterparts, down to the proportionately
accurate number of eggs they can lay during the
course of gameplay.
“I don’t know if there were particular challenges,
but just, yeah, trying to sort of nd the right balance
between keeping it super realistic but also simpli ed
enough to actually work as a game,” says Hargrave.
“So the food is super simpli ed; there’s only ve
kinds of food, for example. Which I think has been
true from the beginning, I just sort of [said]: ‘Okay,
we’re going to have these ve kinds of food, we’ll
t all the birds into that.’ All the nests are sort of
simpli ed into four kinds of nest. at kind of
thing. But within that simpli cation I did try to
stick to reality.”
She laughs: “ ere’s a big spreadsheet
involved, that’s for sure.”
e cards are the focus of players’ bird
enthusiasts – uniting the passionate
obsession of birdwatchers, ornithologists
and collectors – who are trying
to attract as many birds to their
personal environment as possible.
Doing so involves collecting the
right food – boiled down to invertebrates,
seeds, sh, fruit and rodents – exchanging