Wingspan Bird Card Tier List

Hello sharpChed,

I’m glad you’ve had some good games with the Moorhen. In my personal experience, and in talking with other players in the competitive tournament community, the Moorhen just doesn’t make much of an impact and it doesn’t produce high scoring games. It’s expensive for a three point bird. It does have a great six egg star nest but that alone doesn’t convince people to play it. It can be pretty difficult for a wetland engine to produce the extra food for the Moorhen’s power without also handing some out to your opponents, which is a two edged sword.

Hello Paul,

Here’s my ranking for Wingspan Pink Powers.

A quick look at Wingsearch reveals that there are seven Grey birds and 3 Gray birds.

Hello Dalene,

Thanks for checking out the list. Wingsearch makes a great companion for this list, as it has all the card detail you could be looking for.

These birds can certainly be powerhouses when they have the correct support. That support often takes specific cards and specific timing to make a significant impact. It’s been my experience that the more support or micromanagement a bird needs, the less powerful it becomes in practice. The Canada Goose archetype of birds can have high highs and low lows in practice.

Check out my Canada Goose/Sandhill Crane playlist on YouTube to see these birds in action.

Hello Dalene,

The tier definitions pretty much summarize my ranking criteria. If you read through all of the tier list revision history posts, you will see more of my thought process for moving birds up or down. You might also want to check out this article I did a while back about Objectively Ranking Birds.

Yeah, nectar really elevates Wood Duck to the next level. Those teal powers feel like they get a boost as well.

8 Point birds can often be more valuable than 5-point birds with an average power. Especially if the 8 point bird also has an average or better power on top of its point value.

Yeah, I think Horned Lark has gotten a bad rap in the past. It’s not terrible.

These “mass tuckers” as I call them do function best when you fully commit to a wetland tucking engine. Wetland tucking strategies do fall off a bit in effectiveness in the Oceania metagame, primarily due to the importance of nectar and the overall strength of Forest strategies.

I’ve thought about making a cube list myself but I’ve never gotten around to it. One important thing to consider is that bonus cards and round goals will be heavily impacted by removing certain birds. I think this is the main reason I haven’t really come up with a list. I would start by removing some of the birds from the Underused Tier of this list.

That would be a lot of work for us to do, especially when it comes time to update the list and move things around. The WordPress code looks pretty messy. You could just have Wingsearch open in another window and look up the birds yourself.

This list is based on my experience playing competitively with the players on the Wingspan Tournament Discord. As with any card, the Owlet can have its moments to shine. More often than not though, it doesn’t seem to make much of an impact. This is more true in the Oceania metagame where food is much more prevalent in general.

I haven’t tried it but I’ve thought about it. The biggest impact would be to bonus card and round goal scoring.

Hello Nick, I’m glad you like the site.

In practice, the “Tuck/Draw” archetype of birds have proven to be much more powerful and easier to maintain in the Grasslands. The effect of cycling or drawing cards on top of laying eggs has proven to be one of the most powerful meta strategies in the game. For this reason, the Yellow-Rumped Warbler doesn’t see as much play or make as much of an impact on scores since it can only live in the Forest. The Oceania expansion changes the overall dynamic of how strong the habitats are so the potential exists for this archetype to pull more weight in the Forest habitat if you are playing with that expansion.

Hello Shyam,

I disagree that they are the two best starting cards in the game. They have the unique distinction of being the only two card drawing birds that get worse the more you develop your Wetlands. While good, Petrel loses out in head to head decisions made between it and other card drawing birds that cost less food. If the Petrel is your only card drawing bird available at the start of the game though, I would make the effort to keep it and play it, especially when using OE.

Hello Hunt,

I’m glad you like the site.

Brant can be a valid play if you don’t have access to a card drawing brown power or in situations where you need to pick up the whole tray in one action at the start of the game. Such as having multiple power birds in the tray. Brant would be a good play to not only get those for yourself, but also deny them from your opponent when you otherwise couldn’t draw all three cards. Brant is a long way from being an auto win whenever it is played. It’s only as good as the cards you’re picking up. If there are a bunch of duds in the tray, Brant is also a dud. Brown powered card drawing birds have much more consistency and draw much more volume.

As usual, having strong situational awareness will allow you to determine when its the best time to throw down the Brant. Grabbing some choice birds while also fulfilling Round Goals and/or Bonus cards could greatly improve its viability in any particular game you are playing.

Hello culi,

It would be neat but it’s also a lot of work for me to implement and maintain should I move things between tiers (because I’ve done it before). Its so much easier to just have Wingsearch open on another tab.