• Home
  • Wyrmspan Game Review with Iain

Wyrmspan Review with Iain!

Intro from Iain

I'd been following Wyrmspan's development for awhile, so I was excited to see us carry it here at Henry Bear's Park! Below are my main takeaways from when I played Wyrmspan with my friends. I hope you find this review helpful and informative! It's a little wordy, but the game has, literally, a lot to unpack.

📦Unboxing📦



✅Pros

- ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS ART/THEME

- TRAYS with lids for the game tokens, eggs, and meeples

- Extra bags for storage of when pieces are taken out

- Very easy to pop tokens, boards, etc out of their hole-punched pieces

❌Cons

This can be taken either as a pro/con, but there is an incredible amount of parts, boards, pieces etc. It can be overwhelming to people not acquainted with higher level complex board games.

🎲Gameplay🎲



Wyrmspan is a game in which every player is given a board consisting of three caverns they need to expand in order to collect and place dragon cards. Dragon and cave cards have unique abilities that help their respective players score points, but they are not the sole way of gaining points. Players can also earn points through secondary means such as the Dragon Guild or Round Objectives board. The player with the most points at the end of round 4 wins!



✅Pros

- There are only 4 rounds in this game, however a player's turn can last as long as they can afford to keep spending resources for action until they reach their maximum or pass their turn to the next. This allows a great degree of planning ahead

- All points in the game are calculated at the END, and any points scored DURING the game are marked with a player's colored cubes. These cubes mark a player's progress in the dragon guild or the objective board

- There are MULTIPLE ways to win/score points! A player does not just need lots of dragons, they could win from the guild, objectives, etc.

- There is insane replayability. There are four different guilds, several different round objectives, and 183 DIFFERENT dragon cards.

- The actions a player can take in a turn are simple and directly feed into each other, creating a gameplay loop. Excavate(place) a cavern, Entice(place) a dragon, Explore (collect resources in your cavern), repeat.

- There are few symbols in the game and each player is given a card explaining how these symbols (abilities) work

- All the cards are self explanatory when you understand the symbols.

- There's a book included containing all the dragon card artwork and the dragon's information (this pro is a coolness factor)

- Wyrmspan features a solo mode

❌Cons

- Information overload. Although after playing I understand how the board works and why it has so much information, it is without a doubt overwhelming and takes getting used to. Highly recommend following players actions on a turn to ensure they do it correctly.

- It is very important to remember when one spends resources, they should place said resources on the action they are taking. This can become a con as the layout of the board can be confusing for players who are not policed.

- Although the rules state this, it can be v e r y easy to forget you cannot take more than 9 actions in a turn, even if you have enough resources. This stops players from gaining too much momentum, but since you start with 6 actions - assuming you didn't save up further actions as those you don't use carry over - it can be disorienting to have to backpedal, especially if your "Super cool move of awesomeness" takes you 10 actions to do. ((this was me in my game))

- Turns can be confusing, so have players actually say what they are doing and how they are doing it. The gameplay is snappy once you figure it out, but to starters this will be devastating to attention span.

⭐CONCLUSION⭐

With most of the cons being nit picky and advice, I STRONGLY recommend Wyrmspan to any board game enjoyer that enjoys more complex games, or has time to kill and relax with. The game can be taken at any pace, but a group that has played it once or twice might finish it in as quick as 30-45 minutes! The gameplay is snappy indeed and fun! I was always excited to see my next dragon and how I might exploit my hatchtling's ability to hoard eggs and meat.

Sound like fun??

Grab a copy of Wyrmspan and start assembling your dragon hoard today!