Finspan is the newest addition to the Wingspan line. With similar ideas to Wingspan, Finspan is focused on fish. Players play fish cards with various powers and activate them to gain benefits, with the goal of scoring the most victory points.

Gameplay

The mechanics of the game will be familiar to those who have played Wingspan. The game is played over four rounds, and each player starts with a hand of cards and six workers. These workers are used to either play cards on your tableau or dive, which activates cards with abilities in a column. The cost of playing cards is a combination of discarding cards, eggs, young (hatched eggs), schools, and consuming another fish (playing the card on another card with a smaller finspan). Similar to Wingspan, the player board is divided into three different regions, and each fish card determines which region it can be placed in.

Unlike Wingspan, the number of available workers isn’t reduced each round. You have access to all of them every round. After each round, intermittent scoring happens based on the objective for that round. These objectives are randomized and vary each game.

Fish cards provide various benefits. Besides scoring points, some provide immediate effects like drawing or playing more cards, gaining eggs and young, or ongoing brown effects that are activated with the dive action. Some of the immediate or ongoing effects can affect all players. Some cards also provide an endgame benefit that triggers before scoring.

One of the core mechanisms of the game is hatching eggs, moving young around, and forming schools when three young are in the same spot. You generally want to form schools, as each one doubles the victory points for the three fish, but that’s not always desirable since you might need your young for paying costs.

Unlike Wingspan, all players have a public hand of cards. This had limited impact on our games, as we were mostly focused on our own cards and didn’t pay attention to what others had, mostly because there’s little to no player interaction in the game. What cards other players have could affect the race for objectives, but there are too many variables to consider in that case.

Finspan also has no display of cards, and all draws happen blindly from the main deck. This was probably done to make the game lighter, but nothing prevents you from introducing a display of cards, similar to Wingspan.

When it comes to complexity, Finspan is noticeably lighter than Wingspan. The mechanics and cards are more streamlined and better suited for lighter sessions. However, it’s not light enough to be considered an absolute entry point to the series. Meaning that if someone can learn Finspan, they can also learn Wingspan with a bit more effort.

Solo Mode

The solo mode is straightforward and easy to pick up. On the Automa’s turn, you reveal a card, and the Automa either draws cards or hatches eggs and tries to form schools. In the end, the Automa scores points for cards and tokens depending on the difficulty level. It interacts with you in only two ways: when it draws a card with an effect for all players, you gain that benefit; and when you play such a card, the Automa gains eggs.

The AI turns are quick and simple with no downtime. However, since there’s little interaction in the game, I stopped using the Automa after a few plays. There’s almost no change to the game without the Automa, and that’s perfect for me as someone who likes beat-your-own-score solo modes.

Components and Artwork

The artwork on the player boards is fantastic, but the cards aren’t great. Wingspan is far superior in that department. The cards just aren’t as colorful, which is understandable given that they depict fish instead of birds.

Production quality is what you’d expect from Stonemaier Games: thick cardboard for tokens and boards, great card and rulebook quality, and a tray to fit cards and tokens. The game also comes with excellent player aids for each player.

Final Thoughts

We didn’t know if we were going to like Finspan, and we were pleasantly surprised. The game takes little time to set up, plays quickly, and is a lot of fun. We still prefer Wingspan, and if we had to pick only one, we’d go with Wingspan. However, while Finspan shares some similarities with Wingspan, it’s different enough to justify owning both games.

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.