You are a member of a Dragon Guild. Your job, and the job of the competing players, is to excavate caves to house some of the many dragons in the world and to entice those dragons to live in those caves. After four rounds, the player with the greatest number of victory points (VP) is deemed the best dracologist and winds the game.
On each of their turns, a player may perform one of four actions.
Excavate: Clean out the next chamber in one of your caves, making it ready to be inhabited by a dragon. A player does this by paying the excavation cost, placing a cave card from their hand in the left-most unexcavated chamber in one of their three caves, and taking the rewards for placing that card. Rewards can include new cards, resources needed to entice dragons, or promotion in the Guild.
Entice: Lure a dragon into one of the excavated chambers. A player does this by paying the dragon’s cost - a coin and a set of resources identified on the dragon card - and playing a dragon card from their hand in the left-most excavated chamber in one of their three caves. Most dragons are limited into which caves they can be placed. Dragons have abilities which are activated when the dragon is enticed, when the player explores its cave, when the player caches a resource on the dragon card or tucks another card under it, at the end of each round, or at the end of the game.
Explore: The player’s adventurer hireling walks through one of the caves. As they do so, they get a reward as they go between chambers and when they enter chambers that house dragons that have abilities activated by exploration. Rewards include resources, new cards, and advancement on in the Guild. An adventurer can only enter chambers that contain dragons. They cannot enter chambers that have been excavated but do not house a dragon.
Pass: When a player cannot (or does not want to) perform an action, they must pass. Usually, this means that they have run out of coin, cards, or resources. To keep players from hoarding during one turn to be able to do more the next turn, players must discard down to a combined nine cards, coins, and resources.
Being promoted in the Guild means advancing a token around a rondel. Each step provides a player with a resource or a card. The steps at the top and bottom of the rondel allow a player to take a special action or to claim more VPs at the end of the game. There are four flavors of guild, each of which provides a different set of these special actions.
The game is played over four rounds. A round ends when all players have passed. Each round has a round-specific goal that the players are trying to meet, such as having the most small dragons in their cave system. Players are awarded VPs according to how well they meet the goal, with the one with the greatest number getting the most VPs.
At the end of the game, VPs are awarded according to eight criteria:
VPs awarded by the Dragon Guild,
VP value of each Dragon on a player’s board,
Dragon end-game abilities,
Number of eggs the dragons have laid,
Number of resources cached on dragons,
Number of cards tucked under dragons,
VPs resulting from fulfilling round objectives, and
Leftover coins, cards, and resources.
Solo mode: Stonemeier keeps getting better with their solo mode automa. I have played Scythe solo mode a few times. Its automa system replicates play very well, but is so complicated that I spent much more time on the automa turn than on my own. Never again. The Wyrmspan automa is much more player friendly. It is driven by decision cards, one of which is used each automa turn. These cards can refresh dragon cards, make it more or less likely that the automat scores points off the round-specific goals, and advance in the Guild. The automa get special actions (not the same ones the player gets) when she lands on the special guild spaces. Generally, the automa has actions which will either gain it VPs or interfere with the player in some way. These are not the same actions the player makes, and they do not involve any decisions. An automa turn can involve as many as six actions. They are all simple enough that even the most complicated automa turn should not take more than 30 seconds. The player interference is enough to make the player pay attention. It is not odious enough to be annoying. So far, I do not have any complaints about the automa.
Of course, I just received the game a few days ago at time of posting. I have only had a chance to play one game so far. That was a solo game. I spent the first couple of rounds feeling lost, trying to figure out how to play the game. Not the rules. They are simple enough. Trying to figure out how to sequence my actions to be able to do what I wanted to do. By the end of the game, I was starting to get the hang of it. I still did not think I was playing well. I never developed a strong engine like I could in Wingspan. Of course, in Wingspan, developing such an engine depends a lot on what birds come up. For this play, at least, Wyrmspan felt more like a very tight scramble for resources rather than a simple engine builder.
So, I was surprised when I won the game. Granted, the automa was on its easiest level. I also suspect that I misplayed the automa at one point and that she should have had a few more VP. Even with that mistake, I think I beat her by one point.
I will not say I enjoyed my first game of Wyrmspan. There was too much learning the rules and paying attention to the mechanisms for that. But I rarely enjoy my first play of any game, particularly solo games. (Shem Phillips games often being an exception.) That does not mean that I will not enjoy future games. It will take two or three plays to get comfortable enough with it to really enjoy it. It is going to stay in my collection. For solo play, I think I will reach for Wyrmspan before Wingspan. For group play, particularly with those who are more casual gamers, I would bring out Wingspan.
Components: The Wyrmspan components are the high-quality expected of Stonemeier games. I admit I did bling my set out by replacing the cardboard coins and resources with metal coins and wood resources bought from Stonemeier. The game boards are chunky. The cards are high-quality, with a nice linen finish. You won’t need to sleeve the dragon cards unless you plan on playing the game many, many times. The cave cards are another matter. They are the same high quality as the dragon cards. But they are square, much shorter than the standard size dragon cards. This makes them very difficult to shuffle. I could only riffle shuffle about a fifth of the 75 cave cards at a time. Sleeving them would make this shuffling much easier.
Wyrmspan is obviously and admittedly derived from Wingspan. How is it different? Is it any better?
The most obvious difference is that it is based around dragons, not birds. 183 dragons, to be exact. And that is a problem. The birds in Wingspan exist. They have names. They have pictures. The dragons in Wyrmspan do not. That means the designer and artist had to come up with 183 new dragon species. The artwork is generally good with unique designs for each dragon, although some dragons are variations on others. The naming of the dragons is the weakest part of the game. Some dragons have good names, such as “Scaly Rock Dragon” and “Waddy’s Rufftail”. Many, however, are just a combination of an adjective or two and a base dragon type, such as “Churlish Firevern”, “Weary Gryphdragon”, “Capricious Venomous Wyrm”, and “Particularly Haughty Wyvern”. Most of these assign a personality trait to the whole subspecies. If that is the way to distinguish a subspecies, and not physical characteristics, then the “Customary Grazer” is still a really bad name. Overall, the benefit of substitution of dragons for birds is personal preference.
The next most obvious difference is the lack of dice. In Wingspan, when a player got new resources, they could only choose from those available from the last roll of the resource dice. This often added a random scarcity to the game that many players found annoying. In Wyrmspan, players who get a new resource either get a specific resource or get to choose from all the available resources. No more scarcity of a particular resource. I find that, in this area, Wyrmspan is significantly better than Wingspan.
Wyrmspan adds two new gameplay components. One is the need to excavate chambers before playing a dragon there. This makes the puzzle of building an engine more complicate than in Wingspan. Not only does a player have to determine which dragon they want to play next and gather the resource to do so, they have to make sure that they have an excavated chamber ready for that dragon. On the other hand, playing a cave card can be the most efficient way of getting needed resources or cards. This aspect will appeal to players who want a game that requires a little more thought than Wingspan.
The second of the major new gameplay components is the Guild. Most of the time getting promoted in the Guild gets a player a single resource or card. Every six steps, however, a player gets to either reserve some VPs or perform a special action, such as paying a single coin to play two cave cards for free. A player would probably only get to perform these actions a couple of times per game, but they are very powerful. Mostly, though, the Guild operates as another source of cards and resources. The fact that there are four different flavors of guild with their own special actions increases the replayability of the game. With a significant number of different round-specific goals, 183 different dragons, and 75 (not all different) cave cards, that extra replayability is not necessary. The Guild may add some necessary balance to play, but I would not miss it too much if it was not there.
There are a few other differences between Wyrmspan and Wingspan. Dragon hatchling cards give extra incentives to tuck cards behind or cache resources on the hatchling cards. Running an engine (cave) from left to right rather than right to left changes the way a player needs to sequence their engine. These are interesting, but not important, differences.
That leaves two questions.
If I already have Wingspan, should I buy Wyrmspan?
Generally, no. Most people will not get much more from Wyrmspan than they do from Wingspan. But,
Yes, if you REALLY love dragons
Yes, if you love Wingspan’s mechanism but want a more complex version.
If I do not own either, which should I buy?
Wingspan, if you want a more approachable game
Wyrmspan, if you want a more strategic, less random game
Wyrmspan, if you want to live in a fantasy world
Den of the Red Wolf 