Eggs, Hatchlings, Dragons Galore! — A Wyrmspan Review

Excavate your caves, attract your dragons, and check out what they’ve been up to all while increasing the prestige of your Dragon Guild.

Game Attributes Block

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Art Direction/Artists: Clémentine Campardou

Designer: Connie Vogelmann

Initial Year: 2024

Expected Play Time: 90 min

Age Range: 14+

Number of Players: 1–5

Game Type: Card Drafting, Engine Builder

Unboxing

Theme and What Is It?

Wyrmspan brings you into the world of dragons and their rookeries. As a member of a Dragon Guild, you excavate caves, entice the magical creatures to take up refuge, and explore these great caverns to improve upon your ability to care for them. Meet a variety of dragons, ranging from young age with playful temperament to great age and more aggressive temperament, and everything in between.

Initial Impressions

Opening up the box from Stonemaier Games, I wasn’t totally sure what to expect. I wanted to keep myself as much in the dark as possible, without watching or reading too many articles about it. I wasn’t disappointed. From opening the box to putting the game together and setting it up to play, I couldn’t help but be a bit excited.

Gameplay Mechanics

Goal

The goal of Wyrmspan is to accumulate the most Victory Points from a variety of aspects like the dragons you entice to completing objectives.

Setup

Place the Dragon Guild board, Card Mat, and Round Tracker board in the center of play. Players place their guild tokens on the starting space of the Dragon Guild board. The Dragon and Cave cards are shuffled and 3 of each are placed face up on the Card Mat. The Round Marker is placed on the Round Tracker board for Round 1. Place the resource tokens, coins, and eggs within reach of all players.

Each player picks a color and acquires their starting cards, eggs, and tokens. Decide who is the starting player for the round.

Turns

There are four rounds in Wyrmspan. In each round, beginning with the starting player, each player plays a coin (and any other required resources) to choose an action (Excavate, Entice, and Explore). During Excavate, the player plays a Cave card on the leftmost unexcavated location in a selected cave and acquires whatever benefits are listed. Entice brings a dragon to the leftmost excavated location in a selected cave after paying the necessary resources; acquire any benefits related to placing the dragon. Explore takes your Guild Member through a selected cave, acquiring benefits along the way, until it hits a Stop sign or reaches the end of the cave.

Play passes to the left until all players pass and then End of Round actions occur, where dragon actions are taken and round objectives are scored. After the fourth round is completed and objectives are scored, each player adds up their scores on the scorecard.

Optional Rules

There are optional rules for solo play using an automata.

Game Build Quality

The game is comprised of cards (playing cards and cardboard), player mats, cardboard and wood tokens, and plastic eggs. I can find no fault in any of the components — mid-grade cores with linen finish to withstand lots of shuffling, cardboard punch items did so with no hint of tears and came out easily. I did spring for the neoprene player mats and love them! The only things I would wish for were the rest of the premium components and box organizer.

Artistic Direction

These cards are beautifully drawn and colored, the artist created so many unique creatures, caves, backgrounds, etc. — absolutely amazing. My only nit is that the cards are so densely packed with information that it can detract from their beauty.

Fun Factor

There are two or three reasons people come to play this game. First, Wingspan impact — either liking/loving the game or even not liking that game or theme but were impressed enough to give this a try. Second, the mechanics of drafting and engine building tickles your fancy. Lastly, dragons — ‘nuff said.

Age Range & Weight

The age range is 14+ and largely would agree with that assessment given the weight of the game, but it wouldn’t take much play on a younger player’s part to get the hang of it.

Conclusions

Never having played Wingspan, I picked up this game based upon what I understood of its sibling, proposed improvements, and the theme helped just a bit. From start to finish, I wasn’t let down. There is an appearance of complexity with so much of everything everywhere — lots of words on cards and player mats, not a short rulebook, etc. — but that all quickly faded after a couple turns in the first round. Given my unfamiliarity with it, those couple of rounds didn’t help me much for my end score because I didn’t get the abilities and such fed your engine. I did turn it around quickly though and my Blue player turned in a pretty decent score. Of course I can’t say that I didn’t mess up a couple of rules and I’m sure I didn’t optimize as well as I could or should have, but this was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get it to the table again.

Theme & What Is It — 4

Initial Impressions — 5

Gameplay Mechanics — 4

Game Build Quality — 5

Artistic Direction — 5

Fun Factor — 4

Age Range & Weight — 4

Conclusions — 4.4

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