Sharks and Reef Review! (Finspan Expansion!)

0:02 Hi everybody.

0:02 Hello. I'm Ryan. I'm Bethany. And we are Ryan and Bethany board game reviews.

0:06 And today we'll be talking about well not Finsspan. We've already talked about Finsspan. So we are talking about the expansion Sharks and Reefs. And this is designed by Michael Okonnell and it is published by Stonemire Games.

0:20 All right. So were you wondering what was in this expansion?

0:24 I was like I have no idea. An expansion called Sharks and Reefs. I want to give you two guesses of what it has.

0:31 Okay. Octopi.

0:33 Wrong. I knew you were gonna get this wrong.

0:36 And waste like garbage in the ocean.

0:42 Octtopi and waste. Coming new from Stonemire. You heard it here first. Just kidding. It's all about sharks and reefs. Those are the two major things that it adds.

0:52 Makes sense now. And of course, as always, more variety. Uh expansions adds tons of new fish to the fin span game. Uh many of which are sharks. And of course, there's a new feature called uh reefs, which are these little coil reefs that you're going to add to give you more special abilities. We'll get into all that later. Uh first of all, what is Finsspan? If you don't know what Finsspan is, if you missed our original review on it, this is in the Wingspan family of games from Stonem. First, there was Wingspan, all about birds. Then there came Wormspan which kind of made it more grandiose, a little bit bigger, a little bit more strategic, a little more things going on. Then Finsspan came out and Finsspan kind of dialed things back a little bit, simplified, streamlined some things. Uh, and we were wondering if they're going to make an expansion. We assumed they would. Uh, and guess what? It's here now. Let's get into it.

1:48 One of the things that is awesome and seamless about it is an iconography. It was so easy to understand and seamless. They give you another card. I love it. Like this has nothing to do with this game, but this game did it. I just appreciate so much when games give you like a player aid. You want to know why? You want to know why, Ryan?

2:06 Why?

2:07 You want to know why? Cuz when Ryan teaches me the game and I can see all the little reference points of what he's talking about, I learn it better. Developers, just keep that in mind. I can play your game faster and better. And the expansion gave me a little card, so it all worked out and I understood what was happening. I'm didn't realize I was gonna be so passionate about iconography and a player aid, but I am.

2:30 If you were wearing headphones, I apologize. You just probably just uh sharks obviously a very prominent part of this expansion. Um, this sharks allow you to do these big plays that really shake things up, but it's usually at a pretty strong cost. usually have a lot of resources or things they need to do. Sometimes they need to cover up some of your fish. Uh so that way fish that are already on the board that are giving you abilities, points, whatever the case is, you're covering them up because you're essentially eating them is the kind of what's going on thematically. So uh you're able to do these big plays but at a great cost. Um you can even mess with your opponent's boards. I don't know if the original game had a whole lot of that, but now you can kind of mess with your opponent's boards both positively and negatively. Some of these cards will give your opponents uh an egg or a little fish or draw a card or little small things like that, but you get a better version of that usually. Um but this one uh specifically with the sharks is going to take some of your schools of fish. It's going to scare them away and they kind of multiply.

3:32 They might but they might cause good things for you as well. But the point is your your schools of fish that you've made are going to get scared away by these sharks and mess with your opponent's boards, which is kind of a cool new way to interact with each other. So, for the reefs, there's three different types of reefs that you're trying to grow. When you take an action, you can choose an additional action, and you don't actually have to have a a fish card there to do it. And you can choose to take that additional action in order to grow this reef. And then there's going to be additional fish cards that are going to be interacting with that depending on how many reefs you've grown per section. So, it's really cool. You're trying to grow this out. It's another way to earn points. It's another way to get special abilities, but you still have to grow them out as well. And it's pretty well balanced with the um there's certain reefs that score score you a lot, but it's kind of harder to sacrifice for that. And then there's other reefs that don't score you as many and it's easier to populate those. So, it's kind of fun to do that and how the cards kind of manipulate that as the game goes along.

4:32 All right. So, this board that you're laying your fish out on uh is kind of divided up into vertically three different sections. There's, you know, how much light gets to the different parts of the ocean. There's like the daylight section, the twilight, and the midnight section, which is like the really, really deep dark part of the ocean. And then there's also, you know, the parts of the near the coast all the way into the deep water. So, it's kind of divided up. It's kind of a grid format. In the original rule book, it hinted at and they give you iconography for something that they hadn't yet released that had to do with the deep deep waters and the estuaries, the very very very top waters. Yeah. and they had hinted at it, put the iconography, preprinted it on the board and then just like I was remember looking what is this? Nothing was mentioning what this is and then I found in the rule book oh it's going to be for future expansions. So I have been waiting and waiting and waiting like what does it mean? What is it going to do? And basically it's finally here. It happened. It's basically a prerequisite for certain kinds of fish that in real life do live the very very very top or the very very very very very bottom. Uh, so, uh, it was fun to see that finally come to fruition. I've been just I' I haven't been able to sleep at night for years knowing that there's icons out there not being used years.

5:43 Oh, wait. That's just cuz we had a newborn baby and we haven't been sleeping for

5:47 Yeah.

5:48 since then. But, uh, yeah, now I can finally resolution.

5:53 We'll sleep again sometime.

5:55 We slept eventually. We'll get back to it. Overall, I really enjoyed this. I do want to let everybody know that one of the awesome things about Fenceband was the fact that it it had kind of lowered the complexity of these systems and I do think that this expansion as it does add variety as most expansions do. It does add a little bit of comp complexity to the game. I enjoyed that. I liked that. Whenever I play this, I'll play with it. Everything's already mixed together and it's all in the same box right now. So, whenever we get this out to play, we will play with the expansion. But I just want to let everybody know that it does add just a scotch of complexity. I enjoyed that. I liked it. I'm always going to play with it.

6:35 I agree. I still love Finsspan. I'm going to tell you something uh scandalous. We got rid of Wingspan because of Finsspan. True.

6:46 Um Wingspan's great, but the expansions just kept adding and adding and adding and adding and it was already a little It wasn't complex, right? it was it's it's a it's an entry- level game or it's it's very accessible. Nevertheless, by the time you add everything in to set it up and to play it as is a more bigger ordeal than what I want from what it is.

7:04 So, if I had to choose a base game, Finn spans the best of them and the expansion that it adds doesn't change the setup or complexity all that much in terms of what you need to know. Uh that being said, this expansion made it more replayable, which of course is always a good thing. Um, only downside is I would not start a newbie with this one right out of the gate with the expansion. Teach them fins span first, which I think is going to be uh they're going to love. They're going to find it very accessible and then kind of mix in these cards as well. Um, it's not overly complex. It's not overly crazy. In fact, it's simpler than wingspan like we talked about in my opinion. Um, but if you want to get them um their best foot forward and really understand it, peel this out first and then add it back in once they're familiar.

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7:58 Guys, thanks for watching and we will see you next time.

8:01 Bye.

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8:22 Bye.