Scores 🗞️ Slow News Day #78

Hey,

It was probably mid-2022 when we first played Wingspan. Mat and Rosie introduced us to it and we were baffled in our first game. Then we played again. And again. And we went home and talked relentlessly about it and eagerly awaited our next opportunity to play.

We couldn’t do a lot about our newfound hobby. When you’re living out of a car (or, sometimes, a suitcase), board games just don’t really work with the lifestyle.

But, when you love something enough, you find a way to make it work.

We bought the base game in March 2023, the European expansion in June, and the Asian expansion (as an excellent birthday gift from Bex) in August that year.

It’s been everywhere with us—across the UK and over into France, played on plywood coffee tables and centuries-old dining room behemoths. We've been relentless, obsessed, enamoured to a fault.

We’d talked for a while, half-laughing and half-serious, about counting how many games we’d played. Half-serious because it was actually possible; we keep the scorecards of each game, after all.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I did it.

Not only did I collate our all-time scores, I digitised them and created the beginnings of a monster dashboard of Wingspan data.

We’re up to 227 games played 1-v-1. Bex is the overall winner, with roughly 55% of games going her way. The greatest margin of victory to date is an embarrassing 39 points in Bex’s favour.

This game has been a gigantic part of our life for the last year—we’ve played it on ~60% of days in which we've owned it. Each game we’ve played has cost us pretty much bang on £0.50 and it’ll only go lower the more we play.

Value for money: absolutely.

Value for life: undoubtedly. We’ve created a shared language of silly references, fond memories, and an anchor of consistency in a changing lifestyle. We’ve enjoyed each other’s company, tested our brains, and spent time away from screens. It's been invaluable.

I won't keep you waiting. Please enjoy our lifetime Wingspan score tracker. (Improvements and requests welcomed.)

(Sadly, we’ve only just started to add dates to our scorecards. Almost all entires are undated and, so, not in specific date order. I think they’re close, but not reliably accurate.)

Slow down guide

Need a little help moving slower?

Ease your way out of Friday afternoon with this newsletter, a nice cup of something, and a little background music. Steal my setup if you aren't sure where to start.

After I press send, I’m going to be pressing the brew button on another bean-to-cup machine—different to my Dad’s one that’s got some airtime over the last few weeks. This one’s in my coworking kitchen and I’m putting in a cup’s worth of Brazier Coffee’s Altitude House Blend. We gave Wellington some serious thought during our search for somewhere to settle and, while we didn’t go for it in the end, Brazier was a pretty powerful attractive force. Worth tasting, if you haven’t already.

This week, I’ve really enjoyed Angels Bowling by Darryl Rahn. If you know artists like Dan Croll or Another Michael, you’ll dig it. He’s syrupy slow, folk-infused, and sings like there’s a tiny smile in the corner of his mouth. That’s just nice, isn’t it? All of those things together, like a couple of birds on a board and a few hundred games recorded and immortalised.

Take it easy,