I have no illusions about my wife’s interest in the bulk of my gaming hobby. Bemused by my fixation on systems and processes, collecting the correct and balanced forces and the variety of subjects I bring up when thinking about gaming, she has been well saturated with enough “Nerd” to stay well away.

This lockdown (such as it was in Tassie) and the reality that we are really home bodies anyway, has made us look deeper for entertainment. Netflix etc failed to excite for more than a month or so, so I hatched a rudimentary plan to ensnare my beloved in a cunning web of trickery….I digress. I bought Wingspan with the knowledge that it is;

• A well respected game

• Beautiful

• Mechanically different to most of my other games

• May hold some interest for Meg, my wife.

Broad hints went by seemingly unnoticed, then two things happened. My brother in law sent us a copy of Kingdomino for Christmas and friends also bought Wingspan ata bout the same time, giving us a more social opportunity to try it out as a group of beginners (only our host had read the rules and only once, so we got a few things wrong).

Meg and I tied for first! This convinced her that her main fear, the fear of playing against and slowing down “natural” gamers, was unfounded.

We now play something most nights while the TV does it’s best to regurgitate something bearable (mostly T20 Cricket at the moment).

Wingspan is our “Big” game (with both expansions), already very mildly house ruled and played usually in a three game “set”.

Kingdomino is the light game, often played in three sets of three.

Catan (Star Trek version with Fed Space expansion) is the favourite though which surprises me on a couple of levels (Meg not being at all interested in franchise Sci Fi), but it goes to show how a good game catches you regardless of it’s delivery.

I plan to add Pandemic (Cthulhu version), Star Trek Panic, Star Wars Risk, then the deeper Eldritch Horror and Batman Talisman as needed to keep things fresh, but don’t want to push things too fast. Buying vanilla versions would probably help, but our gaming friends have most of these and in many cases (Panic/Catan/Talisman) the franchised variants have extra or improved mechanics.