Taking a look at the Man at Work famous song lyrics, "I come from a land down under where women glow and men plunder", so does the new League of Legends Beta Server from Riot. In fact, they have launched a Beta server in Oceania for players in the region and soon will be creating the world's first official Oceania tournament to help celebrate the deed....

Oceania Aviation Ltd - bases in Ardmore Airport Auckland & Queenstown Airport NZ. ... Josh C chatting with the Prime Minister of NZ last night.

Bobby Maddex speaks with Michael Jones, Archimandrite Meletios Pantic, and Fr. Paul Patitsas about the Orthodox apostolic missionary movement in the area of Oceania. Together they discuss the growth of Orthodoxy in the South Pacific including the building of new churches and training of native priests. Listeners can learn more and support missionary efforts by visiting the websites of the Orthodox Apostolic Ministry of the Holy Metropolis of New Zealand and Orthodoxy for Tonga.

Miller brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having been a vital part of SHOWA's operations for nearly two decades.

When Wingspan was released in 2019, it caused quite a stir. It's a compelling board game that detours far far away from the usual themes of conquest or agriculture. The game romanced me with its beauty, mechanics, and unique subject matter (see my review here). Later that same year, the first expansion (Wingspan: European Expansion ; review here) was released. It proved to be more of a subtle change to the footprint of the game versus a turn-everything-upside-down-and-wow-you kind of addition. It took me awhile to warm up to it, and I wasn’t sold on it as a must-have item. More recently, Wingspan: Oceania Expansion, was released in 2020.  After several games, I’ve taken to this expansion much more than the previous one. That might be, at least in part, because my expectations have evolved for the series. Taking a lesson from my experience with the previous expansion, I assumed when opening the box that the designer (Elizabeth Hargrave), wasn’t likely to include any major disruptions in the mechanics that would upend the game as we know it. Instead, I expected another subtle shift in the mechanics and a widening of the bird inventory, both of which we did get.

Oceania  introduces:

• New bird cards from the Oceania range (some with spiffy game end powers)
• New round goals
• New bonus cards
• Eggs in a new color

As in the base game and previous expansion, the artwork is stunning. Here are some of my favorite new birds, based solely on appearance:

The cute and cuddly Little Penguin

The exquisitely beautiful Many-Colored Fruit-Dove

Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo (this badass will totally steal your lunch money)

Guild’s Finch (performing at the Copa Cabana nightly)

The punk rocker Crested Pigeon

Beyond my expectations, this expansion also introduced a new type of food - nectar. Nectar is both more useful than then other types of food (it can be spent as a wild food, substituting for other foods in most cases, and putting spenders in line for end game “biggest spender” point awards in the process) and more restrictive (any nectar left in your supply at the end of a round must be discarded). Along with the nectar comes new dice with nectar depicted and new player boards with spaces to hold spent nectar.  Elizabeth also provided a detailed explanation for the reasoning behind including nectar in the expansion rulebook and I thought that was a nice touch. I found that playing with nectar changed the emphasis of my actions to acquiring and spending nectar as much as possible in order to get the bonus points at end game for most nectar spent per action row.

The new player boards provided with Oceania also make it possible to refresh the dice in the feeder, refresh the cards in the face up draw pile, and have changed the resource quantities harvested when completing actions. There’s been an overall shift to more food and more cards while scaling back egg production. This may have been done to address concerns with egg spamming in the base game– a powerful, late game strategy in which players spend their last few turns laying eggs in order to capitalize on the point value of the eggs and the bonus cards that focus on egg production. We didn’t feel any pain in the reorientation away from egg laying because we played our games with only the new round goals and the new bonus cards (none of which focused on egg laying) to get a good feel for the expansion. But I’m not convinced that weakening the egg laying action row was really a good idea. On the surface, it seems to heavily discourage egg laying at all except as minimally needed for playing more birds. And it feels like a heavy disadvantage if you’re saddled with a bonus card oriented toward egg laying and your opponents aren’t. Oceania  also introduces some birds with egg laying powers, so that might balance out the action row weakening somewhat, but it would probably take hundreds of games across varying player counts to properly evaluate the net effect of these changes.

Despite my reservations about how the egg laying engine seems to have been crippled in this expansion, I still highly recommend it based on the twist in play the nectar brings and the replayability gains from the new card and goal inventory (especially for players who’ve played through the base game a ton and are getting a bit bored with the goals). I understand that the automa mode has also been updated quite a bit with this expansion, although I haven’t played that yet and am not covering the solo mode in this review. 

I’m three games into the Wingspan franchise and as a completist, I'm firmly committed to maintaining a complete collection; it’s certain I’ll be picking up the next expansion when it’s released.

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: card drafting, dice rolling, action selection, set collection, solo

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Exports to Oceania in South Africa increased to 1310.85 ZAR Million in March from 902.57 ZAR Million in February of 2020. Exports to Oceania in South Africa averaged 1068.62 ZAR Million from 2014 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 1785.36 ZAR Million in August of 2018 and a record low of 574.50 ZAR Million in May of 2014. This page includes a chart with historical data for South Africa Exports to Oceania.

Imports from Oceania in South Africa increased to 1426.59 ZAR Million in March from 1152.37 ZAR Million in February of 2020. Imports from Oceania in South Africa averaged 1329.03 ZAR Million from 2014 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 2501.83 ZAR Million in November of 2018 and a record low of 795.89 ZAR Million in April of 2016. This page includes a chart with historical data for South Africa Imports from Oceania.

Exports to Rest of Oceania in Indonesia increased to 68.22 USD Million in February from 60.85 USD Million in January of 2020. Exports to Rest of Oceania in Indonesia averaged 43.12 USD Million from 1998 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 120.40 USD Million in August of 2008 and a record low of 0.40 USD Million in January of 1998. This page includes a chart with historical data for Indonesia Exports to Rest of Oceania.

Imports from Rest of Oceania in Indonesia increased to 71.60 USD Million in February from 46.56 USD Million in January of 2020. Imports from Rest of Oceania in Indonesia averaged 47.09 USD Million from 1998 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 134.43 USD Million in May of 2018 and a record low of 4.80 USD Million in December of 2001. This page includes a chart with historical data for Indonesia Imports from Rest of Oceania.

Imports from Oceania in Netherlands decreased to 152 EUR Million in February from 178 EUR Million in January of 2020. Imports from Oceania in Netherlands averaged 153.84 EUR Million from 2014 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 260 EUR Million in May of 2019 and a record low of 79.30 EUR Million in November of 2015. This page includes a chart with historical data for Netherlands Imports from Oceania.

ORDER overturned an 11-point deficit on Train and pulled out a 22-19, double-overtime win to seal a 2-1 victory over Chiefs Esports Club on Saturday in the...

From the first moment Western explorers encountered the people of the Pacific islands in the late 18th century, they recognised they were dealing with something special.