In 2019, Wingspan took the world by storm.

Rookie game designer, Elizabeth Hargrave, hit a home run on her debut board game with a Kennerspiel des Jahres win. Board game lovers and bird lovers alike all flocked to it. It’s a card-driven, engine-building board game featuring 180 unique birds. Since its initial publication, Stonemaier Games has sold over 2 million copies of Wingspan!

Inspired by that success, Stonemaier Games published Wyrmspan in 2024. It’s a dragon-themed board game with similarities to Wingspan but with plenty of unique elements and an added level of complexity.

Which leads us to the release earlier this year of Finspan.

With 125 unique fish cards, Finspan has players diving into the oceans for aquatic life. They’ll grow their collection of fish, discover fresh eggs, hatch them into young, and nurture them into schools to gain the most points.

So the big question is, “Is Finspan just a quick spinoff without substance, or is it a good game of its own accord?”

 

How to play Finspan

In the game, players each take their own ocean board and 6 divers of a color. They’ll place their starting eggs and young in the designated spaces of their ocean and draw 2 random starter fish cards as well as 3 fish cards from the main deck. All fish cards in a player’s “hand” are actually placed face up to the left of their ocean board.

Finspan is played over 24 turns – broken down as 6 turns during each of the 4 “weeks”. Each turn, players will either play a fish card from their hand to their ocean or dive down one of the dive sites on their board.

PLAY A FISH CARD

If a player chooses to play a fish card on their turn, they place one of their divers in the grey box at the top left corner of their board. They choose a fish card from their hand, pay its cost, and place it on their ocean board.

The cost is noted in the upper left corner of the fish card. These costs may include discarding a card from their hand (to their personal discard pile) or discarding an egg or a young fish from their ocean. Some fish must also consume an existing fish in the ocean as part of the cost.

Where a fish may be played in the ocean is also indicated on the card. The icons on the left show which of the 3 different ocean zones a fish may live in (sunlight, twilight, or midnight). Likewise, if there is a color band down the right side of the fish card, it must be placed in that dive site (column).

A fish card may be placed on top of an existing fish. In doing so, the previous fish is “consumed”. To do so, the played fish must be larger than the fish it consumes (size is listed in the bottom left of each fish card). The consumed fish remains under the new fish and will be worth 1 point at the end of the game. Any eggs, young, or schools of fish on the consumed fish remain in the space.

If the fish card played has a “when played” ability, the player may gain the benefit.

DIVE

If a player chooses to dive, they use one of their divers to move down a chosen dive site column and take associated actions. They first place their diver at the top of the dive site column and gain the benefit printed in the brown box if they have at least 1 fish in the Sunlight zone. These benefits may be gaining a card, gaining an egg, or hatching an egg to young.

As the diver moves down the dive site, they may gain the benefit of any fish card in that column that has an “if activated” ability on it (brown box). They also gain benefits at the start of the Twilight and Midnight zones if they have at least 1 fish in the zone.

The first time a diver reaches the bottom of the dive site, they gain an additional benefit. If another of that player’s divers gets to the bottom during that same “week”, they don’t get the benefit again.

 

END OF WEEK

After each player has taken 6 turns (used all their divers), the “week” ends. All players gain points based on this week’s achievement listed on the Week board. For example, they may gain points based on the number of eggs and young in their ocean, or for each school of fish, or for having full rows of fish.

There’s also a Side B of the Week board where players can randomize which items score each week.

Players then collect all their 6 divers and the first-player token is passed clockwise to the next player who will start the next week.

 

END GAME SCORING

After week 4, the game ends and players total their points.

Some fish have “game end” abilities. Players with such fish first carry out those actions.

• Fish – gain points printed on visible fish (listed on the left side of the card).
• Consumed Fish – any fish cards under visible fish are each worth 1 point.
• Game End (yellow) – gain points listed on any “game end” fish that grant such points.
• Eggs and Young – gain 1 point for each egg and each young.
• Schools – gain 3 points for each school.

Players total these points with the points they received at the end of week 1, 2, and 3. The player with the most points wins!

 

Can the whole family enjoy Finspan?

As you can see, the game play and flow of Finspan is very straightforward. On each of your turns you either play a fish card or dive one of your dive site columns. Then it’s the next player’s turn.

However, that sounds fine and dandy until you start actually looking at your fish cards and try to figure out how to best use them to your advantage. As such, Finspan is best suited to players old enough to think through a lot of options.

Since every fish card is unique, you’ll discover a lot of information to process to make your choices of what to to. Playing a fish card seems simple. But you have a lot to think about it doing so.

First, can you pay the costs? If the cost is a card or two to discard, which cards will you get rid of? Since they all look tempting to play, thinking about discarding them can be tough. Or does it require you to discard an egg that you’re also hoping to hatch later? Or you may even need to pay by discarding a young. But getting the young to gather into schools is worth more points at the end of the game, so do you really want to discard that young? Thus, each beneficial fish played will cost you something in return.

Then once you’ve decided that, you need to figure out where to place the fish in your ocean to maximum effect. First of all, you need to respect any zone or dive site placement requirements. For some you may also need to consider which existing fish on your board the fish may need to consume. Then there are the benefits they grant. Do you want an immediate benefit, or do you want the benefit when you send a diver to a that dive site, or do you want an end-game benefit?

And also keep in mind how you’ll gain points that week. That will also impact where or how your play your fish along the way.

There are so many tradeoffs throughout the game, that your mind will be clicking the whole time.

And it’s exactly that variety that will drive a lot of players to choose to play Finspan again and again. While the flow is the same, every game will play out uniquely because of the combination of fish in your ocean.

There’s definitely plenty of fish in the sea!

Wingspan has done a wonderful job at introducing modern boards games to a ton of people who hadn’t realized the variety of games available to play has exploded in the past 20 years. The bird theme and level of detail with each bird opened many people’s eyes to the joy of playing games again. And Finspan is set to keep that trend going.

Finspan definitely stands on its own. While people may always compare it to Wingspan, it doesn’t need to be. Sure, there are a number of similarities, but you don’t need to have played Wingspan or Wyrmspan to enjoy playing Finspan. Although fans of the prior games will also be able to enjoy Finspan as its own game with its own flare.

The 125 unique fish cards are definitely the heart of the game. However, all that uniqueness also has a few big drawbacks.

The first is that since every card is unique, it will take several plays to get familiar with the various options you’ll have for doing well.

The next drawback is that the luck of the card draw will have a big impact on your options. For example, getting stuck without fish cards that grant benefits of drawing more cards makes it hard to get rolling. It’s nice that each dive site has ways for players to get cards, eggs, and young, but the luck of the draw with every fish card being unique may hamper you for a while. Of course, that also makes it so that players can’t go with the same strategy every game. You’ll have to adjust to the uniqueness of the cards you draw.

That being said, we do like the benefit of being able to pull cards from your discard pile. The icon for that action looks like a dead fish. So even though we may have to discard a card as part of the cost of playing a fish card, there are ways to get some of them back.

Another drawback of every fish card being unique is that you’re so focused on how your fish cards and diving will work together for your benefit that you’re not really able to pay attention to what the other players are doing on their turns. Likewise, players really don’t impact each other during the game. As such, it feels like a multi-player solitaire game. “I focus on my ocean and try to get it working well, and we’ll catch up at the end of the game to see if I worked our more points than you did.”

Personally, I prefer games where I get to see what other players do on their turns as well. I love playing games for the social interaction. And Finspan is laking in that area.

That being said, there’s also a solo mode in Finspan. And frankly, it’s a great game for solo play because of what I’ve just mentioned.

Another downside we’ve found with Finspan is that it’s a table hog.

Each player’s ocean board is so large that it’s very hard to fit a 5-player game on a table. In fact, even our board game table doesn’t fit all 5 players very well. If we have 5 players, we need to play the game on our extendable dining room table. As such, a 3-player game may be the best for playing on a typical family table.

That’s another reason it’s hard to pay attention to what other players do on their turn – because you can’t see across the table to all of their unique fish cards in hand and in their ocean. So you can’t really gauge how they’re doing until the end of the game.

One thing there isn’t any question about though is the high quality components included in the game. The game boards and cards are fantastic. As with all Stonemaier Games games, quality of production is top notch. The game icons and information on the fish cards are easy to read and the art on the ocean boards hits the theme beautifully.

We also bought the upgraded components. The young and school tokens look great on the board and the fish eggs are so fun to handle. What’s really cool is that even though the fish eggs are round, they do have a small flat side, so they don’t roll around the game board once placed. That’s great attention to detail.

 

How does Finspan score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Because of the huge variety of fish in the game, Finspan begs to be played again and again. Yet, due to the length of the game (an hour once experienced), they won’t be back to back game plays for us.

The straightforward game play and wonderful theme make Finspan a great game to enjoy with friends and family. And like Wingspan did for bird lovers, we anticipate the Finspan aquatic life theme will draw many more people to experience modern board games in a fresh light.

Stonemaier Games definitely has another hit on their hands. Ready to give it a try? Grab a copy of Finspan for your family.

The Board Game Family would like to thank Stonemaier Games for a review copy of Finspan. 

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