The world of Wingspan dives into new waters with Finspan

The Wingspan line of games is adding another entry into its growing ecosystem, Finspan will allow players to explore an all-new environment of aquatic life:

Finspan is designed by David Gordon and Michael O’Connell and illustrated by Ana María Martínez, Catalina Martínez, & Mesa Schumacher

The vast World of Wingspan now includes aquatic life! You are a marine researcher seeking to find and observe an array of aquatic life in the colorful Sunlight Zone, ghostly Twilight Zone, and pitch-black Midnight Zone of the world’s seas and oceans. In Finspan, the fish you discover over 4 weeks will generate a series of benefits as you dive deeper into the ocean.

Each dive site specializes in a key aspect of expanding your research:

Grow your collection of fish.

Discover freshly laid eggs.

Hatch eggs into young and consolidate young to form schools.

The winner is the player with the most points gained from fish, eggs, young, schools, and achievements.

Here’s what Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave says about Finspan:

“Fish have been a surprisingly common request from Wingspan fans but I didn’t feel like I had the bandwidth to do them justice. So I’m absolutely delighted that someone else was available to take this one on. As I did with Wyrmspan, I played the game and weighed in on the design at several key points in the development process. It’s been such an interesting puzzle to help make games that feel like they’re in a family with Wingspan, while still delivering a different play experience.

Some Wingspan fans will be familiar with the story that I was out on an Earthwatch trip tagging sharks and rays in Belize when Wingspan went up for sale at the beginning of 2019. The marine biologists on that trip have become Wingspan players, and I got to visit them and playtest Finspan with them last year. It’s a fun extra connection between the two games. I can only hope that Finspan will inspire people to connect with the marine world and conservation in the same way that Wingspan has made people birders!”

Schedule: The product launch will be available to everyone on January 22. Production is complete and freight shipments are arriving at fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. You don’t need to be a Stonemaier Champion to order, but if you want to support our content and get a 20% discount on every order for a year, now is a great time to join. Finspan will also be available from retailers in late February.

Details: Read and see more about the game–including the rulebook and design diaries–on our website and on the announcement trailer.

Community: Discuss the game and ask questions on BoardGameGeek, the Facebook group, or on our Discord server.

Here’s a sneak preview of a few of the things that are different in Finspan:

When playing a card, you are not limited to the first open slot of a dive site (though most fish have specific depths where they live or specific dive sites). The cost of most fish is to spend other cards from hand; these cards go into your personal discard pile, and there are ways to reclaim some of those cards.

While diving, you gain a benefit at the top of each zone if you have at least 1 fish in the dive site for that zone. This provides a similar feeling to how playing cards in Wingspan provides a sense of progression even if those cards don’t have “if activated” abilities. When diving, you go all the way down a column whenever you dive (you’re not limited to sequential cards in play). There are also once-per-round bonuses at end of each dive site (which rewards action diversity).

There is a strong focus on spatial elements, both in terms of where you play fish and where you lay eggs, hatch eggs into young, and move young to form high-value schools.

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