Popular Board Game Wingspan Gets a Fan-Made Pokemon Mod

A popular board game has gotten a surprise Pokemon remake. Earlier this week, a Redditor shared their Pokemon-themed reskin of the board game Wingspan. While the original Wingspan involves players attracting birds to nature habitats in order to score points, the "Pokemon Nursery" version replaces birds with the original 151 Pokemon (along with 19 Shiny Pokemon). Food resources are replaced with various kinds of berries, the predator mechanic was replaced by a d20 dice mechanic that involves attacking other Pokemon on the board, and the bird eggs are replaced by...well, Pokemon eggs. Even the bird facts on the various cards were replaced by Pokedex facts. You can check out some screenshots of the digital mods (available on Tabletop Simulator) below.

Pokemon Nursery TTS Mod

Wingspan is a popular engine-building board game that was originally released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games. The game received wide acclaim for its thematic gameplay, beautiful art, and multiple strategies to win and picked up multiple awards throughout the year. Demand for the game was surprisingly high (as it attracted bird enthusiasts in addition to board game fans) when it was first released, and the game remains a perennial best-seller at board game stores. Multiple expansions for Wingspan have already been announced, and several more are planned. A digital version is also available on the Nintendo Switch and other platforms.

While this is hardly an official Wingspan expansion, the maker of Pokemon Nursery did receive the publisher's blessing. "I contacted Stonemaier Games about posting what was essentially a clone of Wingspan onto the workshop," the maker wrote on Reddit. "Jamey [Stegmaier, the owner of Stonemaier Games] said it was fine as long as I didn't copy the text of the rules or images." Of course, that led to an unexpected obstacle - the original cards used the habitat icons from Wingspan. That meant all 170 cards needed updated.

For the time being, no expansions of Pokemon Nursery are planned. However, the maker said that he may add the "Gen 2" and "Gen 3" Pokemon if they get bored.