Americas is the newest expansion for Wingspan. Besides the most important addition in any expansion, the birds local to the region, it adds a major new mechanic: hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds are one of the biggest mechanical changes in any of Wingspan’s expansions. They come in a deck of mini cards and are available during the game on a shared display called the garden. Each player also gets a hummingbird board and an overlay for their player board, which adds 3 hummingbird spots to the left, one for each habitat. After taking an action in a habitat, you also take a hummingbird action. If the corresponding space is empty, you attract a hummingbird from the garden and earn a benefit. If it’s already occupied, you return the hummingbird and move up the track for that bird’s type. Each track scores victory points at the end of the game.

Attracting hummingbirds provides various benefits, including cards, nectar, and moving up a hummingbird track. Some bird cards and the hummingbird board itself also provide additional hummingbird actions. Besides adding more depth, these actions give you more resources. But they also make the game longer, so players can choose to remove one action token during setup to play a shorter game.

The best thing about hummingbirds is that they can bail you out when you are short one egg or one resource to take an action. If you plan right, sometimes you can gather the resources you need to play a card in one turn instead of two. Gaining nectar as a wild resource also eliminates the need for specific food tokens. In the base game, you sometimes have to gather food multiple times to get the food tokens you want or pay two tokens for one to be able to play a card. Hummingbirds mostly fix that and help you ramp up faster at the beginning of the game.

On top of the 111 new bird cards and 40 new hummingbird cards, the expansion comes with new end-of-round goals and bonus cards, many of which interact with or mention hummingbirds.

The expansion comes in a disposable cardboard box and includes a green plastic box that fits two decks of normal-sized cards and one deck of mini cards. The expansion also includes thin overlays for player boards, a hummingbird garden board, and hummingbird tracks and tokens for each player.

My only issue with this expansion is the hummingbird tracks. These could be much better and more functional if they were dual-layered with recessed tracks. A small board with 5 tiny tokens is prone to getting messed up during the game, and it’s nearly impossible to trace what you’ve done and where the tokens should be if that happens.

Overall, Americas is an excellent expansion for Wingspan. The new hummingbird mechanic adds more depth and lets you accomplish more, especially at the beginning of the game. However, it also adds a bit more complexity and affects how the game feels and plays, so it might not be suitable for everyone. If you find Wingspan perfect as it is, this expansion isn’t particularly necessary. But if you don’t mind spicing things up, Americas brings new ideas to the game and improves some aspects of it.

Disclaimer: We received a review copy of this expansion. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.