Wyrmspan review

Stonemaier Games, the creators of Wingspan, have brought out a gorgeous new game by the name of Wyrmspan, where you play as an amateur dracologist, enticing dragons to settle in excavated caves on your board. While the mechanics may feel familiar, some core rules have changed between the two games, bringing a new challenge to the playing field.

Our Couple’s Review on Wyrmspan

Anjali (8.5/10)

Let me first tip you readers to my bias – I am very much fond of dragons having grown up with TV shows like Dragon Tales, movies like How to Train your Dragon, and books like Eragon. Fantasy is my favourite genre and I admit to being more forgiving and critical about certain choices in mechanics for this reason.

To start with the packaging of the game, the box has a lot of cards and pieces, all of which were satisfying to open, though when it came to putting it all back, the box has no organiser to allow you to neatly put everything back except for some plastic bags.

Wyrmspan scratched an itch for a balanced strategy game that involves some tactical thinking based on the caves and dragons currently out on the card display board, as well as a strategic element in attempting to balance your engine powered by the dragons you choose and their unique abilities.

The game has a very satisfying feel when you get your dragon engine working as you intended – say from obtaining a dragon, tucking cards / caching resources on a dragon, obtaining more dragons and repeating the cycle to gain more victory points.

I really enjoyed the game, and I’d love to pull it out again sometime, especially for an excuse to find new ways to min-max the points I can get in a round!

Joshua (9/10)

Joshua’s a big fan of strategy games and really enjoys being challenged to find new strategies to victory in games. He enjoyed Wrymspan’s strategy elements, and recognised when things weren’t going quite in his favour.

One of the things he mentioned that we both agreed on, was that there was a lot of replayability to the game – from the types and number of dragons, to the challenges set each round. These two elements allowed each of the three games we’ve played so far to feel different!

There is some chance element to winning the game, which depends on securing dragons with abilities to make the most use of the game’s systems on the Player boards. This RNG side of the game Joshua doesn’t have great fondness for, as you can’t always pursue a strategy and may have to pivot during the game based on the dragons you manage to secure.

While competitive there’s no real way to obstruct other players besides securing limited resources or dragons other players may have their eye on. This makes for an interesting game when considering individual strategies.

Joshua’s still keen on playing Wyrmspan quite a few more times, when we have the braincells to spare!

Recommended table size

This might seem an unusual add to a review, but setting up and playing Wyrmspan certainly made us feel like our table was a tad too small (or maybe the board games we’re playing are growing bigger and more complex?) Needless to say, we found a way to make it work, though it did take us our second or maybe third game to comfortably settle all the parts down.

For reference, we play on a 90 x 150 cm table and had to use a chair to store extra pieces, with our boards just teetering on the edge of the table. We’ve found a way to make it comfortable, though we will say if you’ve got a much smaller table, consider using the floor and some cushions to spread out a bit more…

Rulebook vs Video Tutorial

We’d say the rulebook is pretty straightforward and you can get to playing the game without needing to watch a tutorial. The rulebook covers almost everything including rare edge cases and gives you examples on how to set-up / play, including strategies!

It’s a thumbs up from us.

How it actually played out

Now, we gave our thoughts on the game… but how we arrived there is a whole story in itself…

First time set-up & play-time

The first time we played Wyrmspan was at a friend’s house. Let me note here that they have a nice big long table ideal for ALL sorts of games. Setting up took us maybe about 30 minutes from unpacking the game to placing the pieces down and finding which cardinal direction in which to place them so that everyone had a good view.

That game took us six hours with a long rest in-between. This long rest was necessary as we started just after dinner and our brains were starting to turn to mush from reading the rulebook. Do note that Wyrmspan comes with an additional book on dragon facts, so don’t be immediately terrified by the material…

A short but dramatic re-enactment of the night:

Joshua: Anjali, could you read the rule book…?
Anjali: Yeah, alright - there’s like three books though…

Everyone at the table: WHY ARE THERE THREE BOOKS?!

Anjali: Maybe they’re like different languages…?
Oh, phew. This one thick book is just dragon facts. Let’s save this for later
(we did not in fact, read it later - I have been tempted to)
aaaaand… oh this one’s for single player! Neat.

Everyone: Neat! It’s nice games have single player rules now too.

Joshua: Oh… okay, and uh… how many pages is that book?
Anjali: Just 16
Joshua: Just?!

Our friends: Oh boy, its gonna be a while before we start playing, isn’t it?

It was in fact, an hour of figuring things out, and a trial run before we properly took our turns.

We got through a round by the end of 2 hours, so we did give it a good crack. But it wasn’t till the next afternoon that we actually managed to figure out how to play the game. By the third round we understood what we were doing and by the fourth round had clear winners.

It took us 6 hours in total for our first playthrough, and despite the initial clumsiness that comes with learning a new system, the game felt good! So, uh, be prepared…?

Our preferred strategies

Victory points earned consistently through eggs is a great strategy - One of our friends used the Amethyst Abyss to set-up an army of dragons that laid eggs. He got 26 points by the end and would have had more if Anjali hadn’t managed to snatch some eggs on the board before he had them all.

Anjali’s favourite strategy is tucking cards and getting a whole system going by making use of the Golden Grotto. With some luck and enough dragon cards in hand, this made a lethal enough combo that Anjali’s won or come close second in most games.

Joshua’s stratagem has been caching resources, which earns lots of points quickly and easily, making it another great way to place first with a good hand! This one can creep up over time amassing a ton of points, which makes it a steady way to make your way to first place.

As you can see, there’s lots of different strategies and definitely some tactical thinking and possible change of strategies that can take place based on the cards you acquire!

How long till you’re a dracologist…?

While our first playthrough was long and it took us a couple attempts to get on the right track, it did take us a couple more games before we knew how to make our own system and create and pursue our strategies for the game.

If you’ve not played any of the Wingspan games before or games with similar mechanics, it’ll likely take you 2-5 attempts (depending on the level of difficulty for board games you usually play) before you’re able to play the game for it to feel like second nature!

Publisher and their other games

Stonemaier Games have published all sorts of games, including the span series - Wingspan, Wyrmspan and Finspan, all three of which are great engine-building, resource management board games. We’ve yet to play Finspan, and between Wingspan and Wyrmspan, Joshua and Anjali prefer Wyrmspan for the increased complexity and systems when compared to Wingspan. Both are just as satisfying and well worth adding to your shelves.

One of the other games that Anjali spotted on this list is Tokaido. A game we’ve enjoyed since for its simplistic gameplay and gorgeous art, and one that’s been with her for several years, her first foray into more complex board games. We highly recommend Tokaido to others who would like to foray into slightly more complex board games, or evenings of family fun!

Some of their other notable games include Vantage, Expeditions, Apiary, Rolling Realms, Stamp Swap, Between two castles, Tapestry, Scythe and many more. As you can guess, Joshua’s got his eye on Scythe and Tapestry as he enjoys complex strategy board games.

Final impressions

Wyrmspan is a fantastic add to any avid board gamer’s collection, and a fun game to play over a nice long weekend. We highly recommend bringing competitive friends to see who can claim the title of best dracologist.

Wyrmspan at its core is an engine building board game with strong resource management mechanics to create a well rounded game. If you’d like to know more about engine building board games, we’ve written an article about them, along with our suggestions and other games we have our eyes on, which you can read right here.

If you enjoyed the resource management aspect in Wyrmspan, we’ve written an article that you can read right here, with an explanation about the mechanic and suggestions for other board games too!