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I have played plenty of Wingspan (Speaking as one of the married Boardgamers whose wife adores the game). After 20+ games a year for the last few years, I more than welcomed a change in location and fauna. And, while I think that alone would have been enough for me to be interested in picking up Finspan, I was pleasantly surprised by all of the positive changes to the Wingspan formula.
When I say that Finspan turns the Wingspan formula on it's ear, I'm referring to how, in Wingspan, the tableau is laid out left to right whereas in Finspan, it is laid out from top to bottom. Other than the obvious “Well, this is going to take up some weird table space” thoughts, it is a thematic and wonderful choice. Actions taken with your Divers start at the surface of the ocean and descent downward, triggering actions and rewards until your diver reaches the ocean floor. And the cute little dive suit meeples are lovely.
Finspan also has some default fish printed on the boards. These don't score at the end of the game but allow you to trigger rewards in areas you don't have a full compliment of fish. Later in the game, you can cover them with a larger fish when you truly get your engine humming (Hopefully with something that will score at end game or, something that is simply better for your engine). I love their inclusion because it helps to jump start the action and makes early dives feel more fruitful. Also important to kick starting that engine is the inclusion of Starter Fish cards, which you add in when dealing out each player's initial hand. These assure that you will have something to play early and usually add cards to your hand or eggs to your board (which you can place because, hey, those default fish are printed on the board!).
Finspan uses Eggs,Young Fish, and Schools of Fish to allow you to score points. Schools of Fish are placed when you have 3 fish together in a single area. Schools are made easier to form since you can trigger a move action which allows you to congregate fish on a card space. More importantly, end game scoring gives you six points per school where three single fish only scores three points. Eggs are a single point and have the restriction of only only egg per fish card. So, a run of placing eggs, hatching them, combining them into schools and then starting the process over gives more of a engine feel to your engine building. At the same time, all of these resources are also used as the currency within the game, with players using them to play cards from their hand. This means you never really feel too starved for a particular resource to play a card you want to get into the sea.
Also new to the mix are personal discard piles. You know that pain of discarding a card that you know might be something you can totally take advantage of later? It's gone, because plenty of cards allow you to pull something back from your personal discard pile on later turns.
Some fish cards have a color band which restricts which column they can be played into. They don't detract from look of the cards but file it under the “One Rule I Get wrong” because it's not on every card and sometimes, I simply didn't see it when I went to play a card. Factor in the other placement restrictions (Sunlight Zone, (Rod Sterling) Twilight Zone, and Midnight Zone) are clearly indicated with icons on each card, it's just an odd little (easily missed) quirk.
One thing that did “Surprise” me is that low price point on Finspan, I paid 45.00 for it, which seems extremely reasonable. But it has a little less Stonemaier flair to it (Tokens for Eggs, Young and School instead of custom meeples/markers). Fear not, if you look at the pictures I have with this review, you'll see I picked up the upgrade pack. Despite the NEON yellow Fish and NEON salmon colored Schools, which really clashes with the realism aesthetic the rest of the game touts, those little fish eggs are just too cool to pass up.
Finspan takes the Wingspan formula and makes it sleeker. It's smoother, feels a tad lighter, but somehow offers more end game scoring opportunities. Is it better than Wingspan? I just know that Finspan is the my favorite 'Span game to play. At the risk of sounding like a vendor on the wharf: This fish is fresh.
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