Finspan
- Board's Eye View
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
This isn't the first time Stonemaier have published a game that seemed at first sight to be a spoof. The announcement of the cute, family-friendly My Little Scythe version of Scythe sounded implausible in 2017, but it proved to be a great little game in its own right, as well as a primer for introducing new players to the intricacies of Scythe. Following in the wake of the highly popular Wingspan and its recent successor Wyrmspan, the news of a fish-themed addition to the range attracted much wry comment and mockery. Now tho' that Finspan is out, how does it stack up?
Finspan is designed by David Gordon and Michael O'Connell. The similarities with Wingspan and Wyrmspan are obvious. Over four six-turn rounds, the 1-5 players are placing cards out to create their individual tableaus: vertical boards, each representing three different diving areas (ie: columns) and three different depths of water. You're placing fish cards onto your board, paying the cost in cards, eggs, 'young' (individual fish) or schools of fish. The eggs and fish that you pay can come from anywhere on your board, and when you spend cards they go to your personal discard pile, from which some other fish cards will let you draw. This makes the game both more forgiving and a tad more accessible than its bird- and dragon-themed predecessors.
When you place a card, you'll either get an instant benefit (card draws, egg or fish placement, or draw cards from your discard pile), a benefit when you take a 'dive' action or an end-game scoring benefit. Some cards give a benefit to all the players, and that's pretty much the extent of interaction in the basic game; moreso than Wingspan and Wyrmspan, Finspan plays like a multiplayer solitaire game. Tho' players' 'hands' are open (cards are always laid out on the table), every player is almost entirely focused on building their own card and points-scoring engine; you're only likely to mither over a rival player's ocean tableau if you fear a card that benefits everyone gives other players more than it gives you. There's an achievement board that scores for something specific each round; if you play with the flip side of this board that uses randomised tokens you'll score for different things each time and there's a competitive element too because there are extra points for the player who does best on each achievement.
A 'dive' is the alternative action you can take on your turn instead of placing out a card. You place one of your turn-marker meeples at the top of a column. You gain the benefit for each region through which your diver moves through, provided there is at least one fish in that region, and you gain any of the 'when activated' benefits on your fish cards in that column.
Much of the initial appeal of Wingspan was the beautiful ornithological card artwork. Fish may not be quite as universally appealing but the illustrations of each species from Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Mesa Schumacher are of similarly high quality and, from the snippets of info on the cards, players are likely to finish each game knowing more about fish than when they sat down to play. With no food tokens to collect, Finspan is notably easier to play than Wingspan or Wyrmspan, tho' there's a higher luck factor, in that how well you do could well be determined by the cards you happen to draw. That might be a concern if this were a long game but our plays at Board's Eye View have all come in at under 60 minutes, even at higher player counts. Just be warned that the large vertical player boards make Finspan rather a table hog: you'll certainly need a big table to accommodate a five-player game.
Shown here in our Board's Eye View 360 is the game with the optionally available 'deluxe' components (wooden fish tokens and soft fish eggs); the game ordinarily comes with cardboard fish and egg tokens.