Finspan: Sharks and Reefs
Transcript
Hello. So, today I'm here to tell you about Finsspan Sharks and Reefs, which is the expansion for Finsspan. And people always ask me, what's my favorite Span game? And the answer is whichever one I've played most recently. I love all things Span. I think I have all of it at this point. So, very excited about this. Thank you to Jamie from Stonemer Games for sending me this review copy. Let me tell you how this works. So you will take your fins span board that you have that looks like this where we go from the daylight zone all the way down to the depths of the ocean and you now have an overlay board that you are going to place on it and it is double-sided. So you will place it right there just like that and it blends right into your board. So some of the things that are new is we now have coral that is going to go there. not coral from The Walking Dead, but coral in different colors, and they will go on their designated reefs.
There are now going to be fish that require that you have coral already placed there. I almost said garl in order to play them. Some fish are going to get you benefits, and at the end of the game, you're going to get points for the coral that you have in there. And if you fill an entire section, you're going to get a bonus. So, as your diver travels down, every time it passes the coral, you will get to place one there, assuming it's not already full. You cannot have more than six. And look how cute they are. I love the purples because they're brain coral. The other ones, I don't know which coral they are, but they're still adorable. All of this will also fit into your Finsspan base box. So, that is also great news. There is a nice bigger card organizer that comes in. it should you need that. If not, I'm sure you can find another purpose for that. So, there are some new starter fish that will get shuffled in with the existing starter fish. There is a new score pad so that you can now account for coral. I need to laminate mine so it's still so that I'll have a million of them. You then have a new achievements board. So you have your regular standard size A where the achievements are spelled out for you and then you have your other side where you get six new achievements with the expansion to mix in with the existing ones so that you have more variety there. So lots of new which is great.
You get a new player aid that will help you with the new iconography that is on the board and on some of the cards. And then you get some new automa cards because yes, this game plays solo and it plays fabulously solo. So you will have that going on. So like I said, as your diver is going down, you will be adding the different coral to your reef, hence the reef name of reef and sharks. And then you get all of these new cards to add into the existing game. So, some of them are going to have some new abilities on them and some new costs. So, all of the cards that need coral are going to go up here in the daylight zone. And when you play them, you're going to get their ability just like you do in Finsspan. So some of them like this one says when played this swell shark when played I get to play another fish without paying its cost which is great because you can do that but only it shows you only a certain type of fish. This sand tiger shark tells me that's when played I'm going to gain a green coral, which is great. And I have to discard a school, but I get four different individual fish to play throughout my area. So, that could be really helpful to get all those individual fish and place them. So, I'm losing one school, but I could be
gaining a whole bunch more schools. Um, so there's just a lot of different things that are happening. So, this one tells me at the some of them at the game end I'm going to get scoring conditions. So, all of these new cards all take place. Not all of them. Most of these new cards I'm seeing just a couple exceptions. I thought it was all of them, but it looks like with the exception of just a couple, all of these cards are played either exclusively in this top sunlight zone or some of them can be played in both and just a couple can only be played there. So, you get a whole new variety of cards, you get some new abilities, and you get the coral.
So, this is an excellent expansion to the game in my opinion because it adds something that's really interesting to the game with the coral edition and with some new abilities, but it doesn't change the game in such a fundamental way that you feel like you have to relearn it. It feels like, okay, I know Finsspan, I now get to do a little bit more. It's kind of how I feel about the hummingbirds in the Americas expansion for Wingspan that it's not changing the entire game, but it's giving me a little bit more that's making the game a little bit better. Now, if I were teaching this game for the first time to people who are experienced with hobby games, I would absolutely throw this in from the beginning. If I'm teaching Finsspan to people who haven't played a lot of hobby games yet, I'm probably leaving this out until the second game. I play this game solo frequently, so I will not be playing without this any longer. I left all these components separate from my main box until I did this video. And now everything will be going in my main box and my Finsspan box will be getting recycled because for me it will no longer be necessary. So I think this is an excellent addition to what is a game that I already truly truly love. So, if you are a fan of Finsspan and would like just a little bit more strategy and some new variety, then go ahead and pick up Sharks and Reefs. Let me know if you have it. Have you played it? What do you think of it? Give me a like and a follow, and I'll keep bringing you more board game content. Thanks. Bye.