Wingspan Oceania expansion

[roaddad]

We just acquired our second expansion for Wingspan. I want to know about using nectar. Does anyone know about using this?

[bananasplay]

We just acquired our second expansion for Wingspan. I want to know about using nectar. Does anyone know about using this?

I'm sure there are people who know, yeah... but does your copy of the expansion not come with a rulebook?

[JohnnyCyclops]

We just acquired our second expansion for Wingspan. I want to know about using nectar. Does anyone know about using this?

Should be a rule book in the expansion box. Presume you spotted the replacement player mats with the nectar icons on the left of the rows. The new mats also rebalance the three main rows, reducing down the power of eggs and including in columns 2 and 4 some other options to trade in resources, including using nectar.

You'll have five replacement dice that show nectar on two of the six faces. Those should be swapped in for the original dice.

After setting up as normally and probably discarding some of the initial five food items, take a piece of nectar.

Nectar can be gained on dice rolls and it's likely you'll always take it, unless you're at the end of a round. Any unused nectar at the end of a round is surrendered back to the general supply.

Nectar is wild and can replace any other food when playing a bird, and for some other purposes (see rule book). It can't be picked up in place of a food (e.g. a card saying 'collect a grain from the supply', you can't instead take a nectar).

If you use nectar for an action on one of the three rows then that piece of nectar is accumulated into the relevant row space on the left hand side (whereas normal food used goes back into the supply). For this reason you've been given a lot more nectar tokens than the other five food types. At the end of the game, PER ROW, the player with the most nectar gains 5VP and the second placed player gains 2VP. So, this contributes up to 21VP more into the game (3x5VP for first place, 3x2VP for second place). There's a tie breaker rule in the rule book.

That's about it. Some people consider nectar overpowered. On the dice it's on the face with the fruit/berries (and also on grain/corn), that makes it unlikely to ever pick berries again (unless it's towards the end of a round, as the berries can be carried over to the next round, but the nectar surrendered). I've read some people swapping out only 2 or 3 of the five dice, to not allow as much nectar into the game, and create more balance.

I've played too few games with Oceania to know whether I like nectar or not as a mechanism. My most recent game very little nectar came up. My solo plays against the automa I got beaten heavily, as the automa has a specific way of handling nectar that seems to benefit it.

[laughsalot]

Having played the Oceania expansion myself (and loving it too!) I would say that the uses of nectar can be varied.

On one hand, it's useful in a pinch. It's useful for those birds that have 3 food cost in their requirement, and having that as an extra bit of help for your objective is quite useful in that respect, especially if in the bird feeder your required food is not turning up for ages. Add that given it could be the difference between winning and losing in some respects with either bird points or nectar points and it is a good mechanic.

However, it can admittedly be overpowered in some respects, and the very easy one is with the raven that allows you to discard 1 egg from another bird to get 2 food from the supply. You could then just spam that to get so much nectar. We have a house rule that for this bird ( or the other one that you discard 1 to get 1 food) you are not allowed to choose nectar. It would simply be a lopsided way to get nectar points.

[lilycollins]

I'm excited to explore this new need in * Wingspan with nectar and want to know more about how to use it.

*Moderator edit: please do not specifically name other gaming platforms.