S1E3 - Wingspan (Birds) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to the Gaming with Science Podcast,
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of the favorite
games.

Brian (00:11):
In today's episode, we're going to discuss wingspan from
Stonemaier games.
Hey, this is Brian.

Jason (00:23):
This is Jason.

Brian (00:25):
Welcome back to our third episode, we're going to talk
about wingspan today. But beforewe get into that, Jason, do you
have any science topics for usto talk about?

Jason (00:33):
So yeah, I am brimming with topics today because I just
got back from a majorconference. For those of you who
don't know how science works,conferences are how academics
exchange information and networkand such. Yes, technically, we
publish papers. And those areimportant. But everyone knows
that most of the real workhappens by in person meetings,
being at a conference presentingthings either in front of an
audience or at a poster sessionor something. And there can be a

(00:56):
mixed bag because scientists arenot always the best
communicators. But so sometimes,they're really good. And
sometimes they're not. But theone I was just at is plant and
animal genome, which is everyyear this time of year, and it
is the biggest one in my area,which is agricultural genomics.
So studying the genes andgenomes of plants and animals.

(01:18):
And there's just a ton of stuff.And so there was all sorts of
cool things going on. There'ssomeone in upstate New York, who
works for USDA, who isassembling a collection of hemp
to use as a germplasm resource.So basically, where people who
are breeding hemp can ask forseeds, and they can use it to,
to breed new varieties. You haveto be affiliated with an actual

(01:41):
company or research lab. So no,if you're just a private
individual, sorry, you can't dothat. They can't send it to just
anyone who wants to grow some.I'm also pretty sure they're
focusing on fiber varieties, notTHC and the ones that give you
actual highs

Brian (01:57):
Not yet anyway

Jason (01:58):
Not yet anyway. But yeah, as it continues to get legalized
and assuming that trendcontinues, then yes, the USDA
will eventually want toaccumulate a large supply,
because that's sort of the basisof what people used to breed.
There was I can relate totoday's topic, there was someone
who has done a lot of what arecalled pan genomes of birds.
This is where you don't just getone genome sequence, you get the

(02:18):
genome sequences of a lot ofindividuals. And then you're
able to compare a lot ofdifferences among them,
especially things that are therein one person's genome, or in
this case, one birds genome andabsent in another and how these
can affect behavior and traitsand stuff. The one I really
liked, there was this woman fromthe UK, who really came onto the

(02:38):
scene during COVID, because shestudies viral evolution. So
she's making use of all these1000s upon 1000s of COVID
sequences that were depositedduring the pandemic, to study
viral evolution in real time,where she can actually track
down using mathematical models,how the virus was changing over
time, how long it had beencirculating, and based on her

(03:01):
results confirms that, yes, itprobably made the jump to humans
sometime in September, Octoberof 2019. And she really drove
home just how much globalizationis changing the way these
viruses move around, because shestudied the data from Britain,
in terms of what the viruseswere. And as far as her well,

(03:21):
her and her lab, because she hasa bunch of people working with
her, as far as they can tell. ByMarch 2020, so when everything
really went to pot, there havebeen over 1000 independent
introductions of the SARS-COV-19 virus to Britain by that
point. It's not like there's asingle patient zero who brought
it in. I mean, this thing wasjust jumping plane after plane

(03:43):
after plane and coming in andthen just spreading like
wildfire.

Brian (03:46):
Wow, that's interesting to hear about viruses. I know
like in the agriculturalcontext, you know, I study
bacteria that infect plants,when they find an epidemic
strain, and they check itshistory, it always seems to turn
out Oh, that's actually beenaround for decades before it
became a problem. So it'sfascinating to see that that's
not what happened here. As soonas it jumped to humans, it was a

Jason (04:05):
That seems to be the thing with animals. These are
problem.
called zoonotic diseases, whichI think is just a fancy Latin
term for "it came from ananimal" that basically when they
jump hosts, when they go from apig to a human or a bird to
human, or vice versa--she'sactually studying the opposite
direction too where we givediseases to our animals, which

(04:25):
apparently actually happens alot more. But anyway, when it
makes that jump, suddenly thenew virus or the virus, assuming
it can actually make progress inits new host, which most of the
time it can't, but the rarelucky one that can, there's no
immunities against it, and so itjust takes off. And she was
saying how, like she's studyingall this viral diseases and

(04:46):
everything. But at the end ofthe day, there's actually not
that much variation in the viruscompared to most other viruses
because it is still so new andso young. It's only been in
humans for...at the time ofrecording, what, three and a
half years, something like that.

Brian (05:00):
Something like that.

Jason (05:01):
So, anyway, it's still a very young virus in us. And then
I mean, this is my own personalobservation, but it seems like
it's just here to stay. It's nowjust like the seasonal flu,
it'll just be circulating aroundlike all other coronaviruses we
have.

Brian (05:14):
Yeah, we'll just have to get those shots every, every
fall, probably forever now.

Jason (05:19):
Yep.

Brian (05:21):
Can I ask a question about the bird pangenome study?

Jason (05:23):
Sure. I can't guarantee I can answer it. But yes, you can
ask.

Brian (05:28):
So you said that it is looking at sort of presence
absence of genes in birds? Wasthis just like across all birds,
or a population of one type ofbird.

Jason (05:36):
So the one he specifically did was scrub jays,
which are a type of blue jay, hewas looking at three
populations, there's a big onethat's in kind of the
southwestern United States,there's a small little
population on some island off ofCalifornia. And then there's
another population on the southof Florida. And it I mean, who
knows, I actually didn't havetime to check, maybe at least

(05:59):
one of these is actually inwingspan, but they...he was
following the patterns of themand seeing that, yes, the big
one has a whole lot more geneticvariation than the little ones,
as you'd expect. Smallpopulations, they just tend to
have less variation. Andproblematic, problematic genes
tend to rise to higherfrequencies, because natural
selection is not very efficientWwen you have a small number of

(06:20):
individuals. It's much moreefficient when there's a lot of
them,

Brian (06:23):
Yeah, just random chance you end up carrying through bad
genes, because you've got towork with the genes you got.

Jason (06:28):
Yeah, and the thing is like this, he's working on
birds. But I know the humangeneticists are doing the exact
same thing. Actually, they'reprobably a lot more advanced
than the plant and animal peopleare just because, like big
surprise, human genetics gets alot more money than those of us
working on animals and plants.And so they tend to have a lot
more tools. And just be, Iusually say maybe five, five to
10 years ahead of the plant andanimal community just because

(06:52):
there's so many more resourcesthere.

Brian (06:54):
It makes sense. But then how do you define your separate
populations of humans?

Jason (06:59):
That's the thing, you don't really, especially not
today with so muchglobalization. You could 20,000
years ago, not so much today.Why no humans are actually kind
of the outlier this was broughthome a few times is that we have
a lot less genetic variationthan most other species out
there. Especially ones with ourpopulation size. And it's
thought that we went through abottleneck, I don't know, a few

(07:21):
100,000 years ago, where we gotdown to like, less than 1000
breeding individuals. So wealmost went extinct before
anything happened. Butapparently, we got lucky.

Brian (07:33):
That sounds like a really cool basis for some kind of a
novel or story of telling thestory of when humans almost got
wiped out.

Jason (07:42):
I don't know that we know enough information about it,
though. Like I've only everheard about it from genetic
studies. I don't know anythingarchaeological, or anything like
that. So I don't know if anyoneknows exactly when it was or why
it was or anything.

Brian (07:54):
Even more open for speculation then right?

Jason (07:57):
There you go.

Brian (07:58):
All, right. That was fun. Um, should we talked about this
board game?

Jason (08:01):
Yes, let's talk about wingspan, which is a lovely
board game.

Brian (08:04):
Yeah. What a game. For science content purposes, for
just fun, for overall qualityfor the enthusiasm of the
community that is built aroundWingspan, there is this
enormous, enthusiastic, activecommunity making resources for
Wingspan, discussing strategiesfor Wingspan, optimizations,
everything there, there is anapp for Wingspan that replicates

(08:24):
the full gameplay. This is quitethe game. So Wingspan was
designed by Elisabeth Hargrave.It's published by Stonemaier
Games. It is for one to fiveplayers, which is the first game
that we played that actually hasa single player mode, I wish I'd
had a chance to play that; I didnot. The single player mode was
designed by Automa Factory,which as I understand it, they

(08:45):
design apps to allow board gamesto be played single player.
Let's see...it is for ages 10and up, which seems right and 40
to 70 minutes, which also seemsright depending on how quick
your opponent is and sort oftaking...well we we've primarily
played two player I imagine whenyou get up to the higher player
counts, it's going to takelonger.

Jason (09:04):
Yeah, probably there's only so fast that people can do.
Although good players--and thisis a tip for everyone out
there--good players plan yourmove while other people are
playing so that it doesn't cometo you, and then suddenly you
spend two minutes trying tofigure out what you're going to
do.

Brian (09:18):
I mean, that's that's just a general tip for any kind
of turn based game, though,isn't it?

Jason (09:21):
Yes it is. And yet, it's surprising how many people I've
played with don't get that.Especially in wingspan where you
don't affect each other, theonly thing you can do to someone
else's steal a card from thedraw pile.

Brian (09:32):
Yeah, that is a good point. And when we talk about
the game plays like there arerelatively limited interactions
between the players, mostlyyou're sort of playing against
the game trying to get as manypoints as possible. There's a
few things where you do have topay attention because if you do
something, your opponent may dosomething else, right. You have
to kind of interact from thatperspective. Let's try to
address the challenge of a audiomedium for a visual, visual

(09:54):
board game. What does this gamelook like? So in terms of
display, it's relatively simple.Every player will have a play
mat that is in front of them. Ithink most of this is done as
watercolors. Each mat is dividedinto three sections representing
forests, grasslands, andwetlands. And on that map, there
will be places for five cards ineach of those sections. You have

(10:15):
two decks of cards, you havethis thick deck of 170 bird
cards, each unique, and asmaller deck of goal cards. You
have the little cardboard tokensthat represent five different
types of foods, so seeds,berries, rodents, invertebrates,
which are supposed to representall types of invertebrates, not
just bugs, but like based ondesigner notes also like aquatic

(10:35):
invertebrates, clams or stufflike that. Let's see what am I
forgetting? Ah, yes, fish, ofcourse. Thank you. You have
these wonderful chunky woodendice, where each face represents
some of those food tokens andthis gorgeous foldable dice
tower that looks like a birdfeeder that you put in your
backyard, which is totallyunnecessary, but really fun to

(10:58):
roll your food dice into. Littlewooden egg miniatures, or little
resin egg miniatures ofdifferent colors, which is great
to have the different colors,they don't do anything. But it's
really fun to be able to pickyour favorite color, some action
cubes, and then like a goal matthat I don't know if that's a
good picture. But mostly this ismats and cards and a little dice
tower. Right is how you playthis game.

Jason (11:19):
Yeah, and the game. I mean, you alluded to this, the
game is just beautifullydesigned the watercolors and the
bird designs. Yeah, I mean, it'sdefinitely done by people who
care a lot about birds. I almostwonder if the popularity in that
community you mentioned tapsinto that because I know birders
are a very avid community. I'mnot a birder. So I, I haven't

(11:40):
done it. I don't really get it.But I know some people who are,
and it just inspires a lot ofenthusiasm and people. So I
wonder if they're, the game ismanaging to tap into that
somehow.

Brian (11:49):
I think it I think absolutely 100%, it does. Yes,
the components, the quality ofthe components, they just they
had a wonderful feel, the cards,the cardstock is thick, and it's
got a wonderful sheen to it.Everything looks like it was
designed with a lot of care andattention to detail. The decks
come in a plastic molded holderwith a tray that can hold all
the cards. None of this isnecessary. Like you could play

(12:12):
the game with just cheap paper.But it's so much nicer that you
don't have to, it just feelsgood to hold the well design
materials hold the cards in yourhand.

Jason (12:21):
No, I agree quality of game components is important.
Board games are tactile. I mean,if you're playing the app, not
so much. But if you're playingaround the table with people,
it's a tactile experience. Andso the little visuals and the
sensory things that make it somuch better, really up the
quality of the game.

Brian (12:36):
Yeah for sure. I do wish that the game was I think when
you get used to it, it does takea little bit of time to set up.
Like if I could just throw outthe game and have it ready to go
in a few minutes, I feel like Iwould play this every evening.
We also have a cat so we can'tleave the game out. So we have
to actually then pack everythingup and put it away. But anyway,
let's talk about some of thescience concepts here because
this has layers to it. From apure scientific concept

(12:59):
perspective. I think I mean,this is bird facts that game.

Jason (13:03):
Yes, I mean, look, let's start with what you got the
metaphor of the game. So thegame claims you're building a
bird sanctuary and you're tryingto build the most elegant bird
sanctuary or the most beautifulone based on what you get.
Mechanically, it's a workerplacement slash engine building
game, you choose which actionyou're going to do each turn,
that says what you're allowed todo, and you're trying to build

(13:24):
up the right combination ofbirds in the right places to get
as many victory points aspossible. So like, I don't know
how much that those mechanicsmesh with that metaphor, but the
metaphor is a great package forhaving a whole bunch of bird
stuff you're trying to do.

Brian (13:37):
I think okay, so so this was what I've been thinking
about is if we think about themetaphor as exclusively the game
play, I agree with you thatmaybe the way that the game is
played doesn't necessarily tiedirectly and meaningful to the
to the actual science, but thisthis entire game, how everything
is set up is based on science.Let's start with the, just the

(13:58):
core concepts. You've gotornithology, right, which is the
study of birds, which is a subdiscipline of Zoology. I said,
Okay, great. So what what do youstudy specifically about birds?
What makes ornithology unique?And from looking around one of
the things and I think youalready brought this up, one of
the things about ornithologythat is interesting is that it
is a field where enthusiasticamateurs still make regular

(14:20):
contributions to the field. Sopeople who don't have a formal
education from a university or adegree are still making
important contributions to thestudy of birds, to ornithology.
And that's actually reflected byElizabeth Hargrave herself, the
designer of the game, who doesnot have a science degree,
although as far as I understandfrom looking at her biography,
if we can trust Wikipedia as aas a valued source, I don't know

(14:42):
why anybody would be spammingWikipedia for a game designer.
She did volunteer, she worked ina survey of stingrays like
volunteered to do that, like anecological survey, but she's a
birder, that amateur enthusiasmfor the study of birds is a huge
part of this game. The otherthing that we have here where
it's sort of like it's inlaidinto the game is ecology, right?

(15:03):
And what is ecology? It's thestudy of living organisms, how
they interact with each otherand their environment. These are
the kinds of layers that I see.The first is the player mat
itself. So we've got these threedifferent sort of habitats, the
forest, the grasslands, thewetlands, the birds that you
play have to have acorresponding food cost based on
it is modeled based on whatthese birds actually eat. So

(15:27):
you're essentially representingin a very limited sense, their
ecological niche, what are theirhabitat and food requirements to
be able to play them out ontothe mat? So that, that's one
layer there. And when we come tothe cards themselves, one thing
is every card has flavor textthat basically represents actual
bird facts. That doesn't reallyinfluence the game. But it is

(15:49):
awfully neat, because sometimesthey do tie together in
interesting ways.

Jason (15:53):
Yeah, no, I, I that's one thing that I really liked about
the game is how there are thingsyou think wouldn't matter. They
end up mattering, like everybird has its wingspan put on it.
Like how big is this bird? Whichseems like a just a random fact,
except that are some birds,which are the hunting birds that
when things trigger them to do,you will look at bird cards from
the deck. And if it's smallerthan a certain size, they

(16:15):
basically capture it and eat itand you get to stash that for
victory point.

Brian (16:19):
Yeah, or some of the goal cards for instance, will be
Well, my favorites are the birdsthat they don't have a nest
based on collecting a certainnumber of birds under a certain
size. Yeah, let's talk about thecards and everything that goes
into the cards themselves. Sooh, I didn't even mention this
is...okay, we've only done threegames. At this point. This is
our third game. This is the onlygame I've ever played that cites

(16:39):
its sources. Like in the designof this game, it says this,
basically used the Cornell Labof Ornithology, the Audubon
Society to derive all of thefacts about the birds that were
used to design the cards. Sowhat's on the card is a
beautiful illustration of thebird itself, a point value
represented to it. Now, there'sactually no notes in the game
about how those point valueswere derived. I think that these

(17:03):
are based on the rarity of thatbird. That would make sense
based on the sort of overalldesign and metaphor of the game
of attracting birds to yourplace. But other things that are
on this card. One is, what isits habitat? Now the base game
is explicitly birds that arenative to North America. There's
170, unique birds out of likeover 900 birds, so 170 seems

(17:23):
like a lot. But it's still onlyonly a small fraction of those.
Other things are, like youmentioned the size of the bird,
which does have realconsequences. Other things that
are just on every card will bewhat type of nest does it lay,
with four different categories.A bowl nest is sort of classic
bird nest, cavity nests...sobirds that will lay nest inside

(17:43):
of hollow trees or other similarsituations. Platform nests, so
you know, an eagle building thatbig sort of platform of sticks
on top of something, and thenground nesting birds that just
lay their eggs right on theground. And then there's a wild
card, which basically, well,this doesn't cleanly fit in
anything else. So just counts asall of them. The number of eggs

(18:04):
that you could put on the cardis proportional to the real life
number of eggs that that birdwould lay. Not a one to one, but
just like they must have beensectioned out into groups of
just, you know, one egg to lotsand lots of eggs, I think they
go from zero to six. Let's seewhat else is on the cards.

(18:25):
because they lay their eggs inother birds nests. And then
mechanics reflect that.
Exactly. And this is the otherplace that we get this. So we
have all of these details aboutthe birds that affect the
mechanics, their habitat, theirfood requirements are all there.
But then the birds will alsolike you said, sometimes they'll
have abilities that are based oncollecting food, or yes, you're

(18:46):
right, the nest parasites thatdo not have their own nests,
will have powers to lay eggs onother birds nests. So not every
single of the unique 170 birdcards has powers that are
uniquely associated with thatbird, but easily half of them
do. For instance, if the speciesis endangered, it will have all

(19:08):
of the ones that are endangeredhave the same ability to draw
two new goal cards. So it's likeis that uniquely associated with
them as being endangered? No.But does it basically key you in
to this information that thesebirds are all endangered if they
have this ability? The...everycard has the common name and
Latin name. You can't play thisgame and not learn something. I

(19:29):
don't think it's possible.Whether you realize it or not.
You have learned something aboutbirds when you played this game.

Jason (19:36):
Yeah, and I think another great thing about it is that
that's half the equation, isthat the science is really top
notch. The other half is thatthe gameplay is top notch. The
mechanics work really well. Sowe didn't actually talk about
how you win yet but the fact is,you're, you're trying to gather
victory points, and there's manydifferent ways you can do that.
The birds themselves are worthpoints so you can just get a

(19:56):
bunch of high value birds. Eggsyou lay on the cards are worth
points. There are ways to stashcards from the deck underneath
them, those are worth points

Brian (20:05):
That stashing is based on two different things. Either the
hunting birds will take thatcard that they capture and tuck
it under. Or it's alsorepresenting birds that travel
in very large flocks. So this ishow like the metaphor of the
ecology is kind of like with thestashing cards under cards.

Jason (20:20):
Okay, I didn't know the flock part, that's good to know,
that explains some of the otherones. Yeah, then you got your
there's end-of-round goals thatget you points, there are your
own personal goals that arehidden from other players that
get you points. So there's a lotof different ways to get points
in this. And so there's a lot ofdifferent ways to play the game.
The ideal, at least in my headis to try to build up some sort
of engine so that when you doyour actions, you're able to

(20:43):
just generate points afterpoints after points. I've only
achieved this once. I got a carddraw engine where, by the end of
the game, every turn, I wasdrawing five cards, and tucking
five cards underneath my birdsand drawing five and tucking
five. I'll be honest, like itwas nice to do it, but actually
got a little boring, because mylast six actions were all the
exact same thing.

Brian (21:04):
When we played, you had the crows, the crows allow you
to develop a pretty powerfulengine, too.

Jason (21:09):
Yes, that was a that's a general tactic, where if you can
get the birds... So, each of thethree habitats give you a
different resource when you usethem. So the forest gets you
food, the grassland gets youeggs, and then the water gets
you cards, and you need all ofthese, but you can only pick one
each turn. And so by placingbirds in each of those rows that
get you resources from one ofthe other rows, you're able to

(21:31):
get two things for one. And so Ivery early on in one of our
games, managed to get in mygrassland birds that could trade
eggs for food, and birds thatcould trade eggs for cards. And
so I pretty much just did thatfor an entire round to just
build up tons and tons and tonsof food and card resources, and
then ran off of that the rest ofthe game and managed to get a

(21:53):
pretty good score,

Brian (21:54):
You pretty much didn't have to do the collect food
action at all, it wasunnecessary. Like you were
getting all of your food fromthe ability of trading eggs for
food.

Jason (22:03):
Yeah, I could have but I didn't. Because I was using the
middle row, I didn't reallyinvest much in my forest. And so
it's a pretty low payout. Sothis is one thing as you put
more birds in your rows, they'remore expensive to put there. But
you get more from them eachtime. And so the game rewards
you for filling out yourecology.

Brian (22:22):
And my wife and I actually played this game a lot
when we were researching and shegot really into it. And there is
an app that you can play on yourphone where you can play against
an AI and normal two playergame, play against someone else
online or just pass the phoneback and forth and play
wingspan. I read that they havetaken the crows out of the game.
With the expansion at this pointthe crows were considered, they

(22:44):
basically are banned cards likean overly powered card in Magic.

Jason (22:47):
I totally agree. The corvids are usually the most
powerful. So the common crow andthe raven...let's see, one of
them, I think you can trade anegg for two pieces of food and
one an egg for one piece. Ithink maybe the the one egg for
one food might be fair, but theone egg for two pieces of food
is definitely very powerfulanytime. So hint if you're

(23:08):
playing with that corvid, if itshows up, get it because it is
arguably the most powerful cardin the game.

Brian (23:14):
And again, how does the game represent that? They're the
ultimate generalists. They cango into any habitat, they can
choose any food, to play them.They have amazing abilities.
They're smart, and like veryYeah, yep, makes sense to me.
They're powerful. They'repowerful birds. So let's come
back to the metaphor of theactual gameplay. So this game

(23:36):
integrates real biology, realecology through most of it. Now,
when you are assembling yourbird engine, or, you know,
recruiting birds into your birdsanctuary, you're, you're not
really trying to assemble afunctional ecosystem, per se,
it's not like you would have atop predator and things that
have a balanced use of differenttypes of food resources or

(23:58):
anything like that. So from thatperspective, you're not building
an ecosystem in the game. Butyou're building an engine,
you're building something wherethe abilities of one creature
interact meaningfully withanother. So in a strange way,
you're you almost arerepresenting an ecosystem in a
strange way of building afunctional set of interactions

(24:20):
between individuals that, Idon't know, make them
successful. I don't Is that toomuch of a stretch?

Jason (24:26):
It may be a little bit of a stretch, but I can get it.
You're trying to get synergiesgoing on. So things support each
other. I mean, the thing wedon't have is you don't have
when suddenly you introduce anew bird, suddenly the existing
ecosystem collapses because youmanaged to predate something to
extinction or something likethat. So these birds all play
nice with each other. Whereasreality is messier. Let's put it

(24:47):
that way. Yeah, people have thisidea that like nature's all in
harmony and everything, andanyone who actually studies
ecology knows it's not likethat. It's only in harmony
because everything is pulling ashard as it can in every
different direction and it allcancels out. So there's no, this
mystical harmony of nature whereeverything respects and helps
everything else. No, no. Like,everything is out to get as

(25:09):
many resources as it can.They're just stymied by
everything else also trying toget as many resources as they
can. And yes, that's not nearlyas like, feel good. But it
explains things a lot better.

Brian (25:21):
Yeah, no, cooperation in nature is tricky. Yeah. So this
is not, okay, I was thinkingabout this. And I don't think
that this is really fullyreplicating what you're what
you're talking about, at theend, you introduce a new
species, that everything goescrazy. In the expansion, because
there are many expansions forthis game, we only played the

(25:41):
base game. But there areexpansions that are the birds of
Oceania that add Europe, thatadd Asia, the Oceania adds some
new rules. And that's actuallywhen they had to take the crow
cards out because they becametoo powerful when coupled with
some of these new rules. So fromthat perspective, when you
introduce birds from differentecosystems together, the

(26:01):
ecosystem breaks. So does thatcount?

Jason (26:04):
Yes, I think that counts.

Brian (26:05):
Sort of the unintended consequences of mixing species
from different areas together.That's kind of the major
science, I see four differentlayers. There's sort of record
representation of ecologicalniches. There's all of the
details on the bird cardsthemselves. There's the bird
facts. And then there's justsort of a more nebulous, sort
of, you're building an engine,which is a little bit like an

(26:27):
ecosystem, right? Of course, anecosystem doesn't just have
birds in it.

Jason (26:30):
Yes, but you're eating all the other stuff. So it's
tricky. It's technically they'rejust all gets eaten.

Brian (26:34):
Yeah, that's very fair. Do we want to spend some time
like talking about what the gamefeels like to play? I mean, I
think we already addressed it alittle bit, is there anything
else you'd want to bring upabout that?

Jason (26:47):
I think we've covered it. It's a worker placement engine
building game, you have so manymoves. And so the game actually
has a very specific set timelength, because you have X
number of moves to carry now andI forget what it is like eight
plus each, each round, youactually get one fewer moves. So
it's probably somewhere between20 and 30. You could calculate
it out exactly,

Brian (27:08):
of each round, one of those cubes goes onto your
scorecard. So as a consequenceof that, you're always having
one less action to take eachround until I think when you're
done, you only get I guess, fivethings or something.

Jason (27:22):
Yeah. Although presumably, by then they are
five very powerful actions,right?

Brian (27:26):
If you've, if you've done a good job. I would always get
into the situation where I'd getreally focused on specific
either public or private goals.And then I would have what
looked like a lot of cards thatwere filled out, but then the
face value of my birds was verylow. And since the face value of
your birds under a in a normalgame actually makes up a huge

(27:46):
majority of the points you'llearn. Oh, I actually didn't do
that well. Even though I met allof my goals. Do you have a
favorite goal card?

Jason (27:53):
I remember reading over them, some of them seemed kind
of clever. I think there was onethat was like "forward thinking"
and you have the most, you havemore than 10 cards in hand or
something like that.

Brian (28:02):
That might be "visionary leader" where basically, you
score points based on how manybird cards you have in your hand
that you haven't played at theend of the game.

Jason (28:10):
There's just all sorts of different ways they've chosen to
give you points. Birds that aresmaller than an amount or bigger
than an amount or that havecavity nests, or this or that.
And I like it that they have twotiers on them. There's the easy
tier and the hard tier, and theeasy tier is usually pretty easy
to get. And then the hard tiertakes significant effort and
investment, you're not going tojust accidentally hit the hard
tier of your goal. And it'sworth usually about double the

(28:33):
points.

Brian (28:34):
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Another thing I like
about the goal cards is when youpull the goal card at the bottom
of the card, it tells you whatpercentage of the birds in the
game will be able to satisfythat goal. So if for nothing
else, if you have two cards infront of you, you could say,
well, this one only has 15% ofall the bird cards can satisfy
this. This one has 25% They'rerelatively well balanced. But

Jason (28:54):
Yeah, it's one of those we're you're racing towards a
But yeah. If say, I don't know,it's just a fun game. Like it's,
it's competitive, but not in away that where you feel bad when
you lose, because you're kind ofcompeting with yourself.
common goal. And it's whoeverraces first, you're not really
sabotaging each other along theway. I mean, it is possible to
hate draft, to choose a birdcard, you know, someone else is

(29:16):
going to want, but that, thatdoesn't happen all that much.
Because, one, there's just notthat many options out there. And
two, you that if you're doing itjust for that purpose, then you
usually have something betteryou can be doing with your move.

Brian (29:30):
Yeah, you'd be sacrificing your own ability to
do something to stymie somebodyelse. So that's not really I
know your playstyle is oftenwanting to mess with the other
people at the table.

Jason (29:38):
Yes, I love messing with other people at the table. So
that's why I love Robo Rally somuch is because I got to mess
with people. So I can't do thatwith the birds, other than
trying to grab the corvids assoon as they come out. Before we
close. I do want to give a plugto the Cornell Lab of
Ornithology. You mentioned thatthat was one of the sources
cited. So the Cornell Lab ofOrnithology is really cool. I

(29:58):
actually lived next to it forabout three and a half years
when I was postdocing.Literally, there was a a gate in
the chain link fence next to ourparking lot that I could go
through. And we could just walkthrough the trails and go by the
wetlands and everything. But thething is, it's really cool for
anyone anywhere because theymaintain a vast library of
animal sounds. You can actuallylook up different bird calls,

(30:21):
and I think mammals andamphibians, I'm not super
familiar with it, but I just dida Google search. It's called the
Macaulay, M-A-C-A-U-L-A-Ylibrary. Anyway, they have a
library of animal sounds andanimal media that you can, you
can work with, that you canlisten to and just I assume it's
used for naturalist purposes.There's probably some way of

(30:43):
trying to identify stuff basedoff of it. I don't know. But
it's just it's a cool resourcethat puts out a lot of public
stuff. And I know when we werethere every year, I think it was
golden eagles. Some birds ofprey would nest in the middle of
their big pond, and they wouldhave their little chick cam so
they'd have a live webcam justmounted up in the tree so you
can see the little baby chicksas they were hatching and

(31:05):
fledging and everything.

Brian (31:07):
horrible little baby chicks.

Jason (31:09):
Okay, yes, baby birds are not particularly cute. Chicks.
Like actual chicken chicks? Idon't know. Maybe they've been
selected for cuteness. Most ofthe ones I've seen are just
super ugly.

Brian (31:21):
Until their feathers come in. Then they go, exactly.

Jason (31:24):
They get better then. But when they're just little naked,
tiny dinosaurs, they're justsuper ugly. I'm sorry, baby
birds do not look cute. Babymammals do, baby birds, sorry,
you got the short end of theevolutionary stick.

Brian (31:35):
Let's see. So let's do our, let's do our grades, let's
do our scorecard. So let's startwith the with the science. Now.
We talked about this briefly. Ifthis is not an A on science, I
don't know what an A for sciencelooks like.

Jason (31:50):
I agree. It's like this is A, A+ territory. Definitely.
I mean, it, it sets the bar forwhat a science themed board game
really should be.

Brian (31:59):
Great gameplay solid science content with like
specific designer notes on, onhow the real life science was
integrated into the design ofthe game. I don't think you
could ask for more. Okay, whatabout the, what about the fun?
Where are you on the fun?

Jason (32:14):
I'm also going to go A. I mean, there's a reason this has
such a huge following, is thatit has very deep gameplay.
There's a lot of different waysto play the game, a lot of
different ways to explore it.There's enough randomness in
terms of the bird cards thatit's not like you can just get
us, you always play the exactsame way because, those super
corvids we talked about, theymay never show up in your game.

Brian (32:35):
I feel like, I hope I'm not just inflating this, but
this is an A. This is, there'sso much replay value. So much
fun to play. I just, I wish thegame was just a little quicker
to set up so that you could justpop it down and play after
dinner every night.

Jason (32:48):
There's an app for that.

Brian (32:49):
Yeah, there actually literally is an app for that.
No, great game, really fun. Andalso while we're talking about
plugs, I also wanted to thankour buddy Kyle for lending me
the game for almost two monthswhile I was researching it.

Jason (33:01):
Alright, well that seems like a good place to wrap it up.
So we're going to close down.Hope you all enjoyed this. I
hope if you are not a wingspanfan already then I hope you're
willing to at least give it atry. And if you were, hopefully
you learned some things. So withthat we're going to sign off and
happy gaming.

Brian (33:16):
Yep, thanks so much. Have fun playing dice with the
universe. See ya!
This has been the gaming withScience Podcast copyright 2024.
listeners are free to reuse thisrecording for any non commercial
purpose as long as credit isgiven to gaming with science.
This podcast is produced withsupport from the University of
Georgia. All opinions are thoseof the hosts and do not imply
endorsement by the sponsors. Ifyou wish to purchase any of the

(33:37):
games that we talked about, weencourage you to do so through
your friendly local game store.Thank you and have fun playing
dice with the universe.

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S1E3 - Wingspan (Birds)

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