10 Great Board Games to Play if You Like Wingspan

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Wingspan has won over many fans with its beautiful bird-themed artwork, variable objectives, and accessible gameplay. The engine and tableau building mechanics are outstanding, and your strategy shifts every time you play. However, if you and your game night group are ready to try something new, there are more than a few great board games like Wingspan that will surely win you over. In the list below, you’ll find a few of our top picks.

1. Earth

The outstanding tableau building board game Earth shares several gameplay mechanics with Wingspan. However, there are of course plenty of mechanical twists that make it a distinct experience. Your player area has space for a 4×4 grid of Earth cards that you’ll fill up by spending soil. These cards often have interesting “when-activated” effects that trigger when you take actions. Placement order also matters because it determines which effects take place first. You can also build canopies on your Earth cards in similar fashion to how you lay eggs in Wingspan. There are a ton of unique cards, and no two games play out quite the same.

2. Mariposas

Mariposas is a fun butterfly-themed board game from Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave that’s all about collecting sets of cards and flower tokens. Your collection of butterflies migrates north every year in Spring, traveling from Mexico up the East Coast. They also complete the same journey in reverse for Fall. Each of the game’s three seasons has a unique scoring condition that affects how you move across the map, and there’s ton of variability for other card resource set bonuses. Just like Wingspan, the artwork is fantastic.

3. Ark Nova

In Ark Nova, you’re the manager of what will hopefully become the world’s best zoo. To achieve such heights you’ll of course need to build enclosures and find animals. Each animal brings in a new and exciting effect that can quickly change your strategy. You’ll also have to raise money with the aid of sponsors and invest in conservation projects to keep things sustainable. It’s an expansive and exciting game that takes a while to get the hang of, but once you do, you’ll find that there’s practically infinite ways to claim victory.

4. Wyrmspan

While it might look like it’s just Wingspan but with dragons, Wyrmspan actually has plenty of interesting differences from original bird-themed title. This time around you’ll get a mix of cave cards to explore in addition to hatching dragons on your board. There’s no dice tower, though luck of the draw can still affect what options you have on hand. There’s also no limit on the number of actions you can take during each of the four rounds. When you can’t trigger anything else on your board, you simply pass. There are still round-based bonuses you can compete for, and over 180 unique cards.

5. Evolution

The Evolution board game takes players back in time to the prehistoric era, when creatures were just arriving on land and had to adapt to survive. You’ll be in charge of a single species that you can customize with interesting traits. These traits make it easier to get food or avoid carnivores, and will hopefully keep you alive for another round. There are a ton of different combinations to choose from, and the shared ecosystem that you and the other players create feels very much alive.

6. Oceans

If the mechanics of Evolution seem appealing but you’d prefer a more aquatic theme, then Oceans might be the perfect board game for you. This time you’ll be able to play multiple deep sea species, and add up to three adaptions to them. You’ll also need to feed these species and continuously move population tokens, which can trigger the Cambrian Explosion. During this phase, the amount of cards you can play doubles, which leads to some truly exciting turns.

7. PARKS

PARKS takes you and up to four other players on a journey to the most iconic viewpoints in America’s National Parks. Your job is to create photos and collect memories at these locations. This then allows you to visit new places or get new hiking gear for the changing of the seasons. Like Wingspan, there isn’t too much direct competition with other players, which keeps things on the cozy side. I honestly can’t think of a single board game that has better art than this one.

8. Everdell

In Everdell, your goal is to create thriving village full of animal inhabitants. To do this, you’ll need to either build the cards in your hand, or send your workers to the different locations and destination cards in play. The tableau of travelers, governance, and construction projects that you build will be completely different in each game, and the cards and other resources you have on hand will force you to adapt your strategies accordingly. The theme is gorgeous and establishes a completely original fantasy world that’s sure to win you over.

9. Terraforming Mars

If you love the engine building mechanics of Wingspan and want to try a board game with a completely different theme, Terraforming Mars is a fantastic choice. Each player takes two actions at a time, and can spend their turn by building projects, placing greenery or city tiles on Mars, or increasing their production tracks. As your board state continues to fill out, your turns get more and more exciting. Soon you’ll be crashing giant ice asteroids onto the surface of the Red Planet and building colonies on distant moons.

10. Botany

If you enjoyed collecting different species of birds in Wingspan, then you’ll love putting together a beautiful mix of flowers in Botany. It’s the Victorian era, and you and various other members of the British elite are traveling the globe in hopes of finding enough rare specimens to to win the Royal Botanist title. Gameplay takes place on an intricately linked world map, and travel requires that you gather both crew and supplies. It’s certainly different from Wingspan in terms of mechanics, but there’s still a randomized objective system to keep things fresh, as well as a gorgeous nature theme.

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