Wingspan: Oceania + Fan Coop

In its original form, Wingspan is a 1-5 player competitive engine building game. As we aren't a competitive gaming group, we straight away got this highly rated fan made cooperative version and the Oceania expansion that it recommends which adds a new resource and lots of new birds.

The idea is that each player is building their own bird sanctuary and in the cooperative version must accomplish a number of objectives to win - such as filling their sanctuary, gaining a set number of points, or having birds in a particular order (wingspan size for example). While there are lots of pieces and it looks incredibly complicated at the start, turns are really simple. There are four rounds to the game and you basically do the same process.

You all have a set number of cubes and you use one per turn to signify what action on your board you take - and there are only four: get new bird cards, hatch eggs which are used more and more as your sanctuary fills up, gain food to pay for new birds, and add a new bird. Apart from that last action you can add up to five bird cards which might also have special actions - and they ALL fire the next time you pick their row to activate (hence, engine building).

It's a very pleasant game with nice art and can also easily eat four hours or more away without anyone noticing so expect a long game if you put this on the table.