How to Play Wyrmspan: Excavate, Entice & Explore

ByBoardGame Archive

Wyrmspan is a four-round engine-building game about creating a dragon sanctuary. Your mat begins with one excavated space in each of three caves. Over the game you excavate more spaces, entice dragons into them and explore the caves to activate increasingly long chains of abilities.

Your five action choices

On a turn, choose one of five actions:

  • Excavate a space.
  • Entice a dragon.
  • Explore the Crimson Cavern.
  • Explore the Golden Grotto.
  • Explore the Amethyst Abyss.

Most actions cost a coin, and some later uses also require eggs or resources.

Excavate

Choose the leftmost empty space in one cave. Pay the action cost and play a Cave card there. Each cave develops from left to right.

The first space of every cave starts excavated. Excavating into the third and fourth columns requires additional eggs under the standard player-mat costs.

Entice a dragon

Pay the base action coin plus the cost printed on the dragon. The dragon must be placed in a compatible habitat, in an already excavated space, and in left-to-right order within that cave.

Resolve any “when played” ability after placing it.

Explore a cave

Pay the Explore cost and move your adventurer through the chosen cave from left to right. Activate eligible cave and dragon abilities in order as the adventurer passes them.

The first Explore of a particular cave in a round costs less than the second or third. Repeated exploration therefore creates stronger chains but requires eggs as well as coins.

Stop signs

If your adventurer reaches an excavated space that has no dragon and exposes the stop sign, the exploration ends there. Filling the cave with dragons lets future Explore actions travel farther and trigger more abilities.

Dragon Guild

Certain effects advance your guild token around the Dragon Guild track. Gain the benefit of spaces you reach. At designated points, you place one of your limited player markers onto the current Dragon Guild tile and gain its benefit.

Rounds and passing

Players continue taking turns until they pass. Once you pass, you take no more turns that round, although other effects can still benefit you. At the beginning of each round, players normally receive a fresh allocation of coins and an egg according to the rules.

End of the game

After four rounds, score Dragon Guild markers, visible dragon points, end-game abilities, eggs, cached resources, tucked cards, public objectives and remaining items.

See Wyrmspan Scoring, Dragon Guild & Eggs for the full list.

Common beginner mistakes

  • Trying to entice a dragon before its cave space is excavated.
  • Exploring right to left as in Wingspan; Wyrmspan explores left to right.
  • Ignoring habitat restrictions on dragon cards.
  • Forgetting higher egg costs for later excavations or repeated cave exploration.
  • Passing and then trying to take another normal turn in the same round.

Related Wyrmspan guides

See the Wyrmspan game guide for the overview. Continue with Wyrmspan Strategy for cave sequencing, coin efficiency and Dragon Guild planning.

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