Oceanic Soon, Please!

[Yuga-Suggah]

The big thing that is holding me back from playing this version of Wingspan is how slow the board is. That not being able to roll for two dice until you play two birds in the forest is a real real drag. The orginal board almost requires you to have a bird that 1) Requires you to play a small bird on the forest and hope you have or get another bird of forest 2) You have a food producing bird on forest 3) Have Raven or two food producing birds on plains.

For a long time, I felt like the Raven card in general is a cheat button, but I think that the Raven kinda showed me that early game food is probably the most boring thing about this whole game. Not being able to get AT LEAST two food in one move at any given time seriously slows down when most birds get played.

So here is the flow of almost every goodish game in Non-Oceanaic.
Turn 1 Play Bird on Forest(hopefully you can get extra food from bird)
Turn 2 Get Eggs
Turn 3: Play low value bird on Forest or get food for second bird on forest
Turn 4:Play second bird if not played on 3. Start Playing on Ocean to get more birds on Ocean.

That's like half your round GONE to being able to bird out of the lack of food hole.

Whereas Oceana its
Turn 1: Use Wild Food to pick up two cards in Ocean, OR Play bird in forest, even if that bird doesnt give you more food.
Turn 2: Play bird in forest or grab food.

Now you have an ability to play most of the cards in the game, and you have 6 more turns to play around with. Which means more chances to play birds on round 1. And those round 1 birds really effect how you play the rest of the game.

In every Oceanic, it's ussually pretty bad that you aren't playing 3 birds at end of move 8 unless you got like all three food cost cards. But yeah, like 3 to 4 cards at end of Round 1 is very common in Oceanic. Non-Oceanic, 2 MAYBE 3.

End of game for Oceanic, you are seeing people with maybe 2 to 4 slots with no birds. Non, is like maybe 4 to 6. And honestly, if you don't have good cards in the beginning, it might be 6 to 8 card slots not filled.

The point is Oceana changes the actual fundamental flow of the game so radically, that I really don't like playing any other version of the game.

That and please fix the 5 minute timer. That's way WAY too much time to play.

[agentmith]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1054490/discussions/0/3043857610268566227/

[Yuga-Suggah]

Originally posted by agentmith:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1054490/discussions/0/3043857610268566227/

Link doesn't help because European just came out. I mean, no duh that they needed to finish Euro before they started working on Oceanic.
The point of the post was talk about the speed of two different versions and hoping its coming out soon. Saying offically its coming out soon, we dont know when doesn't really add much.

[Rick80]

I'm happy for European expansion, I hope naturally for the Ocean exp... but I think they need time to develop it

[easytarget]

My prediction would be not this year.

Set your expectations accordingly and chill out would be my suggestion.

[spoto]

I love the new European expansion. I've already run into cards I've never seen in board game play. That said, Oceanic expansion is awesome too! Please make many of us happy and post confirmation that Oceanic is coming some day in the future.

[Yuga-Suggah]

The real problem is how much the board, new food type, and other stuff changes the game.

New Board: Basically, the new board nerfs egg laying to one egg on first row, allows for two food collection after one bird played on forest, and scarfice of an egg or wild food for an extra card on first row ocean. All of this allows for at least one extra bird played on average. If you usually play 2 on Euro, you are playing 3 on Ocean. All of this sums up to a MUCH more exciting first round, which is often the worst round in Euro because so often you have folks with no cards until the end of the round, or junk birds just to get to more food on forest or more cards on ocean. Now you have a much great chance of a bird on every row within 8 moves.

New Food Type, nectar: At the start of the game, you get one nectar food, which can be used for anything. The dice have also been changed to add three nectar on the solo wheat, bug, and fruit. This basically makes all food distributions at least a 1/2 of getting a food you need on every die, just not always the exact food. This makes food gathering a lot more exciting because for the most part, you won't have to go for food as often as you would on Euro.

These things fundamentally speeds up by at least 1, 2 sometimes 3 moves on the first round, and probably about 4 or 5 more saved due to how much nectar. And I wouldn't really be surprised to see just one of these things show up before the expansion comes out.

You also got crazy options like the No Goal First Round option, meaning the first round gets no end of round bonus points, but you get an extra move for rounds 2:4. Which 3 rounds means an extra bird, or an extra tucking machine.

It also makes the other scoring options much more viable. Wingspan basically forced you to have an egg laying machine, Euro pushes you for a tucking machine with SOME options for food caching. Oceanic gives a lot more ability to gain food(with the cost of less egg laying options early game), for use of food caching. Basically, every card in some way is buffed due to either the board, the nectars, or the new cards. For people who don't play with raven, ussually put Raven back in the deck, because there are other card combos that do the roll of the Raven much better.

All of this basically changes the score range from about 60-90 with a much stronger left tail, meaning possibility of bad scores due to bad luck, to a range of about 75-120 with a strong right tail, meaning more likely to have good luck.

If you never played Oceanic, you really should.