In Wingspan, you collect bird cards and play them into three rows on your board: forest, grassland and wetland. On a turn, you can play a bird or use one of those rows to gain food, lay eggs or draw cards. Using a row can also trigger abilities on birds already there, making your earlier choices help you do more.
The game ends after four rounds, when you add up points from your birds, eggs and other scoring features. In the solo game, your goal is to outscore an opponent called the Automa. A small deck tells you what it does between your turns. You build your sanctuary as usual, but the Automa has no board of habitat rows and never needs food to play a bird.
It takes opportunities you might have used
Bird cards in the shared tray are available for you to draw. Food dice show which food you can collect to pay for birds. The Automa’s instructions can remove cards or dice from these shared supplies, changing what is available when you act again.
Consider its action called Draw Cards. When that instruction appears in the section for the current round, discard all three face-up birds in the tray. The Automa takes a different bird from the top of the deck and keeps it face down. On normal difficulty, that card will be worth four points to the Automa at the end.
If one of the discarded birds was part of your plan, you now have to look for another way forward. The Automa also has four more points for you to beat. Those two effects give its turn a consequence without asking you to decide where that bird should live or which food it would need.
This is one action from the booklet. Each Automa card has a separate section for each round, and a section can contain more than one instruction. Read only the current round’s section and carry out its symbols in order. You do not activate powers on the Automa’s collected birds.
It can compete for a goal without owning the matching birds
Wingspan also awards points at the end of each round for a stated goal, such as having birds in a particular habitat. On the green goal board recommended for solo play, you compare your count with the Automa’s to determine your ranking. You need at least one of the item being counted to score.
You count the birds actually in your row. The Automa gets its count from a number on its goal-scoring card, plus cubes that its instructions have placed on the current goal tile. Those cubes stand for progress toward the goal; they are not birds that need homes. For a goal counting birds in one habitat, the Automa’s count cannot exceed five.
That gives you something concrete to respond to. Adding a bird to the habitat being scored can improve your chances of the better award. Playing an equally useful bird in another row will not increase that particular count. You still have to decide whether the round’s reward is worth changing your plans.
A rival to run, with a score to beat
You do have another set of instructions to learn. During play, you reveal Automa cards, resolve their symbols and keep the birds, eggs and goal cubes they award. At the end, its collected birds, eggs and round-goal awards become its score. The booklet sets out those procedures; you do not need to invent a strategy for it.
The useful distinction is what you spend your attention on. Your own birds need food, space and turns to become a productive sanctuary. The Automa needs only enough procedure to change your available choices and produce a competing score. You can spend your turns planning for your birds, while still having a reason to worry about what the next opposing card will do.
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The game pages below include overviews, rulebook links and teaching videos.