Wyrmspan at EsCon

Just a few days after seeing Wyrmspan in Barnes & Noble and trying to explain all the offshoots and clones and add-ons of Wingspan ... and then trying to explain Wingspan itself ... I found myself at a table with three strangers actually playing the game.

We were at EsCon, our local board gaming con that I had never heard about even though it has been around for 10 years.  Anne did her own thing while I sat down with Adam and Kristen and {unknown woman} and got a good introduction to the game.

There are resources, cave cards, dragon cards, a player mat, a guild mat, and some other bits and bobs.  Basically, you are trying to extend the caves on your game mat from left to right, and invite dragons to each cave, then run through the cave with your little explorer meeple.  As you place a dragon card, it covers up the little stop sign that would end your exploration.

You spend a coin (and sometimes eggs) to either EXCAVATE (play a cave card) or ENTICE (play a dragon card into a cave) or EXPLORE (move your meeple).  There are three tracks to build on.  The caves and dragons have icons showing their resource cost, type, how many eggs they can hold, which track you can play the dragon on, and bonus actions.  These actions have icons so they either happen when you place the card, end of round, end of game, or whenever your explorer passes the card.  The tiny icons between the cave/dragon cards show which action your explorer takes as they pass: grab a resource, move on the guild track, grab a cave card, etc.

As the game progresses, your caves go deeper, and each time you Explore you go further and bring in more goods.  That has a good, natural progression to it, but I wish a few of the layers of detail were optional.

The guild mat was okay, but it seemed like an added bother for an extra egg or steak here & there.  At the top and bottom of the circle on the guild mat, you get to put a marker in one of the bonus options in the middle.  I got a few things from it, but found it an arm's reach away and hard to follow.

The game borders on overwhelming.  Hardly a round went by where somebody didn't forget a thing.  Oops, I should have drawn a card there.  Oops, playing that cave card last turn should have cost me an egg, so here's that egg.  At the very end, I had one coin left and had a dragon that would have been a big play (about 7 points), but I didn't see that it needed a coin to place, so after I got the resources I needed, my last move was to run out of coins and not be able to play the card anyway.

There was also an encyclopedia of dragons describing every one in sometimes hilarious detail.

I came in 3rd with 69 points (if I recall correctly), but the spread from first to last was only about 30 points.  Kristen was disappointed with first place, saying she usually gets more than 80 points.  I think the whole game took just under 90 minutes.  Then the fire alarm went off -- see previous post. 

Anne was very patient while I got sucked into this game.  On the way home, I mentioned that when Dog Park (one of our favorites) first came out, it was dismissed as "Wingspan but for dogs, and with half the rules missing".  I would have to say that Dog Park is right at our limit of complexity.  Wyrmspan is a bit beyond that.  It's just not fun when you constantly worry that you're going to miss some tiny detail and the other players will either school you or say you're cheating.  No, it just has too many rules.