Participation was up for the second Wingspan PBEM tournament as sixty-eight players completed a total of ninety-nine games. Play consisted of three rounds, during which each player completed four simultaneous games. During each round players were ranked according to their cumulative results using a 1000-100-10-1 scoring system.

Lola Davidson led the standings after Round 1 as the only four game winner. Eight players won three of their games: Lumin Sperling, Vlado Barun, Steve LeWinter, Michael Barone, Nancy Arseneault, Giovan Battista Pignatti, Chris Wildes, and Carl Chauvin. Twenty-three players advanced to the Semifinal and the required score was once again 1210.

Michael Barone won all four of his games to finish atop the Semifinal standings. He was followed by Lumin who once again won three games. Curt Collins won two games and was the only returning finalist from 2023. They were joined by fellow double winners Carl Chauvin, Lola Davidson, Julian Dalla-Barba, Vlado Barun, and Nick Henning. Jack Wolff also won twice but missed out on the Final due to his other results.

Carl, Nick, and Vlado each won one game in the Final to finish 3rd, 4th, and 5th respectively. Julian won twice and took 2nd place. For the third round in a row, Lumin won three games to become the 2024 Wingspan PBEM Champion. The top six finishers were:

1. Lumin Sperling
2. Julian Dalla-Barba
3. Carl Chauvin
4. Nick Henning
5. Vlado Barun
6. Lola Davidson

Lumin had the highest winning score with 128. He also had the second-highest winning score of 120. Rob Murray earned the lowest winning score at 71. Carl and Lola tied for the highest non-winning score with 108. In both of those games, Julian was the winning player.

The average score across all games was 82.5 (up from 78.9 in 2023), while the average winning score was 94.6 (up from 91.7 in 2023). Seat 2 had the most wins with 36, along with the best average finish (2.26) and highest average score (84.2). After having the most wins in 2023, Seat 3 had the fewest this year with 18. This was a wider disparity compared to last year, where there was only a 6 win difference between the best and worst seats.

Congratulations to all of the laurelists and thank you to everyone who participated in the event. Lumin was kind enough to provide a recap of his tournament experience, which is included below.

In the final round, I was lucky to open a Wood Duck on Table 7 and a Towhee + Ruddy Duck on Table 4.

On Table 7 I had poor draws, eventually having to play birds with food abilities in both the forest and grassland rows. I committed to building up those rows just barely in time to pull a good game together. Carl's tucking engine looked very strong, but didn't maximally accelerate into an ideal endgame. With both of us having high bonus card scores, and Nick's overall solid egg game, I was fortunate to come out with a 1 point win there.

On Table 4, my Round 1 was pretty close to perfect (especially for seat 4.) When nobody in seats 1-3 reached for the Indigo Bunting in the tray on turn 1, I greedily played Ruddy Duck first and then grabbed Indigo Bunting on turn 2. Given my specific hand, Vlado's early hummingbird activation saved me a full action. Additionally, I was able to draw both an American Coot and Sandhill Crane that nobody else was interested in. With that setup, I was going to be hard to beat and won by a fairly comfortable 11.

On Table 5, I did not have a good early hand. Julian's Wood Duck game went smoothly and he coasted to a win, and I'm a little fortunate to have stolen 3rd place by 1 point - just did not have any real synergy or good access to cards - which didn't let me snowball into anything amazing. Defaulted into heavy eggs despite never having a 4th bird in my grasslands.

I think the biggest story by far is Table 8. I had a somewhat risky opening hand, getting a Pileated Woodpecker but no water birds. While very strong at best, the eggs the Pileated Woodpecker gives opponents can save them a full action - which is really something I'd like to avoid doing. However, this game had an incredibly lucky moment which I think literally won me the game (and therefore quite arguably, won me the entire event) from an otherwise uninspiring position. Curt is going first in Round 2, and I'm going second. Wood Duck flips in the tray to start the round, which is the best early card in Wingspan, or at worst top 5, assuming the big 4 are banned. The key here for me is that while I've built a game that couldn't really be more hand-crafted for a Wood Duck, Curt's game couldn't really be less hand-crafted for a Wood Duck. Instead of taking an action defending it from me, Curt lets me have it, opting to continue building his engine around the incredibly strong Towhee-Crow grasslands combo. Given that 2nd place was decided by 1 point, hindsight suggests it might have been a Prisoner's Dilemma for Curt? Taking Wood Duck would be an extremely clear blocking move if it was 2-player, but we all know taking time to block well before halfway in a 4-player game can sometimes have disastrous results. Anyway, it was exactly what I needed and I racked up a big score of 120 for the biggest win of the final round.

When it comes to Round 1 and the Semifinal, I'm proud to have notched the highest numerical score in Round 1 (table 40) thanks to a devastatingly strong wetlands tucking engine, and the biggest (% of 2nd) score in the Semifinal (table 3) despite having somewhat average birds in that game.