Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy – Raising Fledglings from Hatchling to Graduate

Open a school for young wyrmlings and train your fledgling dragons to greatness — the first Wyrmspan expansion adds a genuine new path to victory without disturbing the game you already love.

Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy is the first expansion for Connie Vogelmann's dragon-themed engine-builder, released by Stonemaier Games in late 2025. As a budding dracologist, you're no longer just a caretaker managing a sanctuary — you open an academy dedicated to raising the next generation of dragons, taking fledglings under your wing and training them toward graduation.

The headline addition is fledgling dragons, a brand-new fifth dragon type alongside the base game's small, medium, large, and hatchling categories. Fledglings arrive at a new Academy board, granting a small immediate bonus — coins, milk, or a gem — the moment you take one under your care. From there, dedicated training actions let you flip their tokens step by step toward "graduate" status, at which point they stop blocking a slot on your board and instead pay out victory points at game's end.

Designer Connie Vogelmann described the philosophy behind the expansion directly: "Dragon Academy is to Wyrmspan as the European expansion is to Wingspan" — more content, more decision points, all shuffled seamlessly into the base game without adding rules complexity for new players. Board's Eye View echoed the sentiment, calling training and graduating fledglings "a new, rewarding, and completely viable path to victory."

What's in the Box

What's New in Dragon Academy

How Does It Play?

Setup barely changes — add the training tokens to a shared supply and set up as normal. The core turn structure stays completely intact: excavate caves, entice dragons, explore with your adventurer. What's new happens at the Academy board, where sending your adventurer lets you take one of the available fledglings under your wing. Training must always proceed left to right — pay the cost shown in the next empty box, place a training token, and repeat until the fledgling graduates and starts scoring points instead of occupying a cave slot.

The five new Dragon Guilds add another layer worth tracking — one guild category, for example, lets you draw four dragon cards at game's end and score two of them as if they sat on your cave mat, a clever way to reward players who've built toward fledgling-heavy strategies. Reviewers have flagged one genuine downside: with 80 new dragon cards on top of the base game's already substantial deck, the combined draw pile becomes noticeably thick, and predicting which dragon types you'll actually see in a given session gets harder — though most reviewers frame this as adding replayability rather than a real flaw.

Because everything shuffles seamlessly into the existing game without complicating the rules for newcomers, Dragon Academy earns the same reputation the European Expansion holds for Wingspan: more content, more strategic texture, with essentially zero added learning curve for anyone who already knows the base game.

Rating Breakdown

Pros & Cons

Who Is This Expansion For?