I Want To Get Better At This Game But I Don't Know How

[Ceaseless]

I don't think the Turkey Vulture helped me opponent much. I know you said you're okay with it, but no help toward the bonus card or the End-round goals. I suppose we could calculate the expected value of the points I Passed up on by not going for the predator kills; perhaps it would have been an EV of 2 points.

Turns out it was the Black Vulture (same idea, 1 point more for being forest only). It was forest bird #1, meaning they had their forest and wetland set up quickly in round 1. That it ended up being worth ~4 points (2+the 2 you're saying it would get for messing with you) makes it a 4 point 0 food bird. Compare it to the play you mentioned, where you played a 4 pointer for 1 food in the forest in round 2, and that cost an egg on top of that, making it a significantly worse deal you were willing to take for yourself. I'd say their play was worth it.

[FrankJones]

True, another good point.

I swear I'm usually good at math and calculations. I know it probably doesn't look that way.

[Ceaseless]

True, another good point.

I swear I'm usually good at math and calculations. I know it probably doesn't look that way.

Values differences. When I look at my opening hand in Wingspan, I look at get out of the early game. With experience I've trained myself to spot basic things like the 2 forest 1 wetland, etc. and prioritize making sure I can do stuff.

From your posts, I suspect you have a different train of thought. You look at your birds and determine that good birds do good things and bad birds don't. So you keep the good birds and get rid of the bad birds. Your defintion of a good bird vs bad bird may differ a bit from mine, but the real divide isn't about where we rank the individual bird.

Interesting. I didn't even consider the Kite. It just seems like a terrible bird.

Turn 46 - yes, no love for the Tanager. Personal bias, I suppose. I do not like that bird. 3 food, and a brown power that can fail.

I don't think the Turkey Vulture helped me opponent much. I know you said you're okay with it, but no help toward the bonus card or the End-round goals. I suppose we could calculate the expected value of the points I Passed up on by not going for the predator kills; perhaps it would have been an EV of 2 points.

Good catch; I did not even consider the Chimney Swift because I personally dislike the migratory birds.

For example, while I don't think Mississippi Kite is a terrible bird (1decent flexible food for a 4 pointer and some scraps that can go in forest/grassland is some decent value) I didn't even do a quality check to determine its role in my opening hand. I simply saw forest bird #2. The Vulture isn't high scoring and its effect is circumstantial, though for 0 food I guess I wouldn't expect much, but the first thing I saw was forest bird #1. Tanager isn't at the top of my list of favorites, but its role as the second forest bird that carries the food requirements that seem to be needed wasn't something I could overlook. I don't have a distaste for the migratory birds, but the Swift's cost is awkward. However, again my evaluation was based on its slew of roles in the game rather than its individual card value. It fulfilled key positions in the forest/wetland, as well as the bonus and end of round.

I didn't look at any of those birds as necessarily incredible, they just happened to do what I wanted to get done. Those cards will get higher priorities in my hand than better cards that don't do what I want to get done. The model we use affects the sort of ideas that come to us right away. The systems we use to immediately rule out obvious bad ideas can end up shooting down some useful ones if we don't have our models set to catch the good ideas that clash with certain "common-sense" principals we've trained ourselves into.

I know I had a blind spot to a card in one of these Wingspan threads, a Brant I believe, because I haven't played much Wingspan with it in the deck so I wasn't used to remembering what it did. I couldn't even tell you offhand if I had played with it in the deck or if my time away from Winsgspan overlapped to when it got put in. This resulted in me largely skimming over it as one possibility rather than highlighting its role to substitute for a weak draw phase while taking the wetland slot.

[FrankJones]

From your posts, I suspect you have a different train of thought. You look at your birds and determine that good birds do good things and bad birds don't. So you keep the good birds and get rid of the bad birds. Your defintion of a good bird vs bad bird may differ a bit from mine, but the real divide isn't about where we rank the individual bird.

you are mostly correct, and this stems from several factors:

1) a LOT of wingspan plays with my family or friends, with expansions, where getting out of the early game is less difficult, and it's somewhat less important to keep marginal birds in the starting hand.

2) A lot of games played on the app with BOT players to fill the non-human player spots, (again, with expansions), which leads me to have a lot of "favorite" and "hated" birds.


Generally speaking, I prefer to play high value birds whenever I can and avoid playing birds that I deem lousy or overpriced.

But, above all, I want to play every game optimally with the information I have, and to win as much as possible, so, I am trying to adjust.

To be clear, I agree with your strategy of "2 in the forest one in the wetland, worry about the grassland later". In my ideal game, I have 2 in the forest and 2 in the wetland before I have anything in the grassland. I want to avoid having to pay a resource to draw 2 cards or gain 2 food, as quickly as possible.

So, I wouldn't say there is actually any real divide. I am just a bit picky about my second forest bird. I'm still early in my Wingspan path here. I have played 22 games. Going forward, maybe my style of play will fizzle, or maybe it will catapult me to a 500+ rating. Who knows? Thus far, I am 6-1 against strong players. It's a small sample size. I don't even know whether I will make it to 50 plays. This game, without expansions, is pretty low on my list in terms of "fun". I just wanted to see whether I could get to 300 Elo, and once I did and I was at 310, I figured, "Well, I can play a game with the filter set to strong or above, and even if I lose I'll still be at 300." I'm still getting accustomed to which birds I'll never see because they are EE birds. We got the EE expansion almost immediately after the base game, so to me, I think of EE + base as the "base game", just as most Terraforming Mars players consider the "base game" to include the corporate era deck. I think this game without any of the expansions is actually rather tedious. If someone told me with 100% certainty that we will never get any expansions here, I would probably stop playing altogether. But in the small hopes of getting expansions, I want to practice playing against strong players.

For what it's worth, I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to keep that Sparrow in my starting hand. At least 10 minutes. Maybe more.

It came down to,
"I think I can draw a good second bird in the forest, and I don't know whether I'll get a good grassland bird, and I see a specific sequence that allows me to get these 3 birds (Sparrow, Tern, and the forest bird) into play without unreasonable effort, so, I'll do it."

I may have made the wrong choices. I don't know. I am inclined, generally speaking, to take very seriously the advice of players with a high rating and a lot of games played, so please know that everything you say, I will examine very carefully.

[Ceaseless]

From your posts, I suspect you have a different train of thought. You look at your birds and determine that good birds do good things and bad birds don't. So you keep the good birds and get rid of the bad birds. Your defintion of a good bird vs bad bird may differ a bit from mine, but the real divide isn't about where we rank the individual bird.

you are mostly correct, and this stems from several factors:

1) a LOT of wingspan plays with my family or friends, with expansions, where getting out of the early game is less difficult, and it's somewhat less important to keep marginal birds in the starting hand.

2) A lot of games played on the app with BOT players to fill the non-human player spots, (again, with expansions), which leads me to have a lot of "favorite" and "hated" birds.


Generally speaking, I prefer to play high value birds whenever I can and avoid playing birds that I deem lousy or overpriced.

But, above all, I want to play every game optimally with the information I have, and to win as much as possible, so, I am trying to adjust.

To be clear, I agree with your strategy of "2 in the forest one in the wetland, worry about the grassland later". In my ideal game, I have 2 in the forest and 2 in the wetland before I have anything in the grassland. I want to avoid having to pay a resource to draw 2 cards or gain 2 food, as quickly as possible.

So, I wouldn't say there is actually any real divide. I am just a bit picky about my second forest bird. I'm still early in my Wingspan path here. I have played 22 games. Going forward, maybe my style of play will fizzle, or maybe it will catapult me to a 500+ rating. Who knows? Thus far, I am 6-1 against strong players. It's a small sample size. I don't even know whether I will make it to 50 plays. This game, without expansions, is pretty low on my list in terms of "fun". I just wanted to see whether I could get to 300 Elo, and once I did and I was at 310, I figured, "Well, I can play a game with the filter set to strong or above, and even if I lose I'll still be at 300." I'm still getting accustomed to which birds I'll never see because they are EE birds. We got the EE expansion almost immediately after the base game, so to me, I think of EE + base as the "base game", just as most Terraforming Mars players consider the "base game" to include the corporate era deck. I think this game without any of the expansions is actually rather tedious. If someone told me with 100% certainty that we will never get any expansions here, I would probably stop playing altogether. But in the small hopes of getting expansions, I want to practice playing against strong players.

For what it's worth, I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to keep that Sparrow in my starting hand. At least 10 minutes. Maybe more.

It came down to,
"I think I can draw a good second bird in the forest, and I don't know whether I'll get a good grassland bird, and I see a specific sequence that allows me to get these 3 birds (Sparrow, Tern, and the forest bird) into play without unreasonable effort, so, I'll do it."

I may have made the wrong choices. I don't know. I am inclined, generally speaking, to take very seriously the advice of players with a high rating and a lot of games played, so please know that everything you say, I will examine very carefully.

"So, I wouldn't say there is actually any real divide. I am just a bit picky about my second forest bird." is an indication of a real divide. You believe in the quality of your second forest bird more than the fact that you're getting one compared to me. So while you agree with the idea of wanting those two forest birds, the degree you'll go to get them differs. That's a notable difference when it comes up. The difference in our decisions in the case of the Sparrow is not one player making an obvious error but instead choosing to prioritize one sort of resource over another.

I would have gotten a better forest than you and developed faster. In exchange, I also would have failed to get the combination of Cassin's Sparrow and the effect copier, meaning I wouldn't have gotten the specific engine you did and would have had to approach my Grassland base another way since I'd lack the initial strength there that you had. That's one of the results of our differences in values.

You don't have to make the same calls I do. In fact, it would be strange if everyone had an identical take on a game like this. Obviously, I'm going to miss things and make mistakes. I just want to point out that divide in the way we view those cards and how it affects our overall philosophy and decisions in the game.

[FrankJones]

Good point.

I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page

"divide" made it sound as though we had some sort of bitter enmity or something.

But yes, from a strategic standpoint, our approaches are different; but, as I said, I am very much inclined to switch my philosophy when I am given advice by a high-level player.

I might play some games in friendly mode and experiment, following your advice as closely as I can. I expect the results will validate what you're saying.

If we rank the resources in order of importance, it goes: Food, cards, eggs, so it makes sense to aim for 2 in the forest, 1 in the wetland.

[Ceaseless]

Good point.

I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page

"divide" made it sound as though we had some sort of bitter enmity or something.

But yes, from a strategic standpoint, our approaches are different; but, as I said, I am very much inclined to switch my philosophy when I am given advice by a high-level player.

I might play some games in friendly mode and experiment, following your advice as closely as I can. I expect the results will validate what you're saying.

If we rank the resources in order of importance, it goes: Food, cards, eggs, so it makes sense to aim for 2 in the forest, 1 in the wetland.

I'm not sure how I'd rank cards vs food, you need both to make things work in the early game. It's easier to pay the egg for the wetland's card than it is to pay the card for the forest's food, so you end up needing the second forest bird more than you need the second wetland bird. Though you also tend to need the first wetland bird more than the first forest bird on similar grounds. Basically, the wetland can go off with fewer resources more effectively than the forest can, so it doesn't need as much start-up as the forest does.

[The Recogniser]

Here's my most recent game. What could I have done in the game to have improved my odds?

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=678490594

I'd say you have a bad starting hand for this game. In my opinion, the good starting hand is to have cheap birds in forest & wetland that give extra resource, such as: bird in forest that can have extra food, or bird in wetland that have extra card. I think I'd lose too if I have the same as your starting hand here. But I'd rather discard them all then try my luck on the deck, rather than keeping a grassland bird.

[FrankJones]

Speaking of bad starting hands:

https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=87790301;#

What do I do with this trash?

Keep the wetland bird in my starting hand?

The game did not go well. I should have lost. I was 3.8% to draw a very lucky card on my final draw of my second-to-last turn, and the RNG decided to smile upon me with one of the 4 birds out of the 105-card draw pile that would win me the game.

[Ceaseless]

Speaking of bad starting hands:

https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=87790301;#

What do I do with this trash?

Keep the wetland bird in my starting hand?

The game did not go well. I should have lost. I was 3.8% to draw a very lucky card on my final draw of my second-to-last turn, and the RNG decided to smile upon me with one of the 4 birds out of the 105-card draw pile that would win me the game.

You keep Juniper and Bittern alongside Invertebrate, Seed, and Fish (since the rat is in the feeder and fish isn't). Dealer's choice on bonus, Wetland is better supported but Omnivore Expert is naturally more flexible.

Hard draw Mourning Dove and play it for turns 1-2. Turn 3 you ideally grab a Seed to use to play Juniper turn 4. If they've taken out the Seed you'll grab a generic food (preferably not Invertebrate) so you can two for one it and the Fish to play a turn 4 Juniper using Dove's egg. Ideally turn 5 you gain Invertebrate and Rodent and use it with the Fish to play Bittern turn 6 and you're already ready to draw 2 cards turn 7 thanks to Dove's egg. If not you may end up having to gain food a second time. I find it hard to imagine you wouldn't have gotten Rodent, and Invertebrate and often stable in a reroll, so I'd be surprised to see you needing to do more than one 2 for 1 exchange to play Bittern. (As it turns out, you have an Invertebrate in a reroll depending who gets it, but fish ends up being there too.) It also turns out your Juniper delivers you a cavity nest that makes a single Grassland push 6 points if you so desire, since your opponent played none.

I don't think your hand is that bad. I see 2 forest birds and a wetland bird. Your forest birds generate 2 points a shot, one of which is an egg to dodge early game Grassland requirements. Your Wetland bird is slow but gives you some points as well as a passable effect. It's not an ideal Wetland bird but will do what is needed, especially since your forest is so strong. Your bonus options will likely get you something too.

You end up getting extremely lucky your opponent did not hard draw the incredible bird that is Mourning Dove on their first turn. There was no reason for them not to do that. You failed to use it early in your own game and wasted turns using a Grassland for basic egg set-up as a result. Those are the issues I saw just looking at the earlyish parts of the game.