Stonemaier Games reveals Green Bee-Eater from the upcoming Wingspan Asia Expansion
This bird’s triple invertebrate food cost feels steep for a four-point bird with a middle-of-the-road, three-egg nest. At least it has the utility of having a star nest. It also has the added flexibility of either Forest or Grasslands placement.
It’s clear that this isn’t a point bomb right out of the box (which makes the food cost harder to swallow), although the combination of Food Web Expert and Bird Counter pick up two points each from this play. This is a point-scoring engine bird at its core.
A food-rich Forest Engine should have an easier time playing this bird and will welcome any bird that consistently scores raw points.
Not counting the Wingspan Asia Expansion itself, there are a total of 221 cards (62%) with invertebrates in its food cost between the North American Core Set, the European Expansion, and the Oceania Expansion.
Using just these numbers, we could expect a 94.5% chance that there would be a qualifying bird in the tray for the Green Bee-Eater to tuck (for simplicity, this math ignores cards lost to starting hands). That’s a fairly high success rate.
Even though this is technically a flocking power, thematically, it’s easy to imagine this bird taking a predatory action by hunting down bugs for its food. In that light, it’s easy to see this card being modeled after the Oceania Expansion’s Rufous Owl. Too bad the Green Bee-Eater isn’t also a seven-point bird.
I’d rate Green Bee-Eater as Tier 2 on our Wingspan Bird Card Tier List
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