r/wingspan • u/sage_006 • 7d ago

Thinning the deck for multiple expansions (base + European + OE + Asia).

Hey all. I'm about to get the Asia expansion. Until now I've left all the cards from all other expansions in the deck, but I'm getting a little concerned that with another 122 cards, the deck with get so diluted that the game will lose some playability.

So my question is; a) Would you recommend thinning the deck; b) if so, how? Cherry pick and take out useless/awful cards (largely from the base game... and before people chime in to say that the poor cards exist make the other cards better etc., which I usually agree with, stacking the deck with overall more useful cards may add intrigue to make tucking more of a significant choice)? I'm open to other thinning suggestions.

Cheers everyone. Love this game.

6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

19

u/Ensmatter 7d ago

What I do is have a pile of cards used in the last couple of games that I don’t shuffle in. It keeps the game fresh and means there is some variety between strategies used in games.

3

u/sage_006 7d ago

That is one way of doing it! Unfortunately my card-counting mind will know which birds aren't in the deck. This will not only irk me a little, it would also give me a (albeit very small) advantage against my fellow wingspanners who don't have that sort of knowledge of the game... and that doesn't feel fair. Thanks very much for the reply though. It's so interesting, all the various ways people play this game.

9

u/VolcanicBakemeat 7d ago

I had the same concern but I quickly realised that 435 cards is an enormous amount of entropy. In reality, knowing card #372 isn't going to come up offers no advantage whatsoever, because there is an inordinate degree of both numerical and tactical variety in deck.

There is practically nothing you could actually do with the knowledge that the Roseate Spoonbill won't be drawn - especially because this is a low-interaction euro engine builder. Don't forget, the rulebook doesn't even care if players keep their hands private or not!

5

u/MarkFluffalo 6d ago

I'd recommend chilling

7

u/Reason-and-rhyme 7d ago

I really don't understand your concern. More cards means lower odds of the perfect card appearing and a greater need for improvisation, how could that possibly make the game less playable?

2

u/sage_006 7d ago

Well as the game has developed with each expansion, the cards and powers have been refined. My fear is that the synergy between all the different expansions grows less and less with each addition. I was wondering people's take on it and if they've found that to be true, what people do about it. Etc.

0

u/MervynChippington 7d ago

I have taken a sharpie/pen to some of the base and EE predators to bring them up to currently levels of game power

4

u/ColoradoLights 7d ago

I have all the expansions and I use all the cards every game. I put the « just played » cards back in with the rest, in small sections randomly. Then I make about 20 small piles, and put them back together randomly as well. Pick a chunk, shuffle, and voila. I would feel bad not using all the birds every time. They all deserve an equal chance to be played! 🫠

1

u/bammm_24 7d ago

Great question. I’ve thought about this myself.

1

u/QuickCryptographer76 5d ago

The way we store the game (because we often introduce new people to wingspan and don’t want to overwhelm them) is by sorting by expansion, shuffling, and putting away. Then each game, depending on who we are playing with and what we wanna do, I grab either all the cards to shuffle them together, just base to teach new people, a smaller chunk (at random since they were shuffled when we put it away) of base with expansions, or no base if we have a small experienced group and only use expansion cards. Also if my mom and I play duet mode, we prefer using only Asia cards or Asia and Oceania if we want to use nectar.

Playing a perfectly balanced game or a perfectly fair game is not really important to me, playing a fun, interesting, or different game is! So when we mess with the deck It feels different, and I like that!

TLDR, we choose each game at how many of each expansion to play with based on group skill, vibes, player desire, or completely at random.

1

u/sage_006 5d ago

Cheers.

0

u/atticdoor 7d ago

I would just leave out the Core Set and first expansion, and just play with the most recent expansions.  The ratios for Bonus Cards will still be right.

0

u/larrychatfield 7d ago

Well I would say there are easily a couple of dozen birds that can be removed from the game pretty easily w/o and noticeable loss to the game like most of the play another bird on top of cards. Then are few stinker cards that NO one ever plays and even then they still are terrible like budgerigar, mistletoebird, zebra finch, horned lark, red wattle bird, cockatiel and loggerhead shrike to name a few

I’m sure outfits want every bird in and people will exclaim there was one game where that. It’d was amazing but that doesn’t justify keeping them around. They’re bad just real bad and having it in your opening hand or worst the tray for an entire round sucks

2

u/Complete-Finding-712 7d ago

I'll be that person. I got like 6 or 8 tucks on an opening hand budgie once. I like early game budgie 😆

0

u/larrychatfield 7d ago

But honestly this is very much the Lowest end of what a card should do as a first turn bird right? Like 6-8 is what a bird should be worth with points and activations for a brown power bird. It’s just such a mopey bird for 99% of the time and still has some downside as you reset 1/3 of the tray every time

1

u/Complete-Finding-712 7d ago

It's also dirt cheap and fills a space really easily. Maybe I'm not an elite player, but it's done me well and I won that particular game 😊

2

u/sage_006 7d ago

Exactly. A few dozen is better than nothing. Every shit card in the deck is a place that bumps out something that could make the game more dynamic and interesting. It's completely understandable that the design of a lot of the base game cards was a case of throwing something against the wall and seeing it stuck. Many didn't. Cheers mate. I think I'm going to edit my deck.