Finspan Quick Start Guide & How to Play | by Stonemair Games

Hello, welcome to Quackaloupe. Thank you for being here. Today we're bringing you or kind of bringing myself in the future a quick start guide for Thinsspan. This is going to be a rapid little overview of all the things you need to know to get this back to the table after you've learned it, played it, and then haven't gotten it to the table in a while.

These quick start guides are designed to remind you how to play the general framework, not teach you the very nuance specifics and allow you to start setting up running the game and playing with only a few minor specifics or details that you need to double check in the rule book, which is much less of an inconvenience when it comes to getting a board a board game off the shelf and onto the table than watching a long 30 minute rambling video walking you through all the nuance details that you're already familiar with.

Scrubbing through it at two times speed and missing something fairly important or trying to sit down and reread a rule book, even one this size, happens to be a little bit more boring and a little bit more of a uh barrier to entry when I already know the game. I just I just don't I don't remember it.

If you're excited for these style of quick start videos, please hit that subscribe button down below and let me know which game you'd like me to do a quick start video for next. Remember, the objective is to get the games that you own played. All right, Finsspan. Finsspan goal. Objective main overview.

Score as many victory points as possible. And just like Wormspan or Wingspan, if you've played either of those, you're going to score victory points from everything. But there's a helpful little reference guide on this achievement board if you need a refresher. You're going to score victory points from eggs, one point from fish, one point.

From schools of fish, which are three fish combined, six points from swallowed fish, including the ones that are already here on the board, as long as you've played a card that is bigger than them on top of them, one point each. Along with that, you have your objectives from each week that'll score at the end of the round.

And if you're playing on side B, achievement side B with the asymmetric puzzle pieces, you'll score three additional points for being the person that achieved the most of any one of those objectives. That's the core premise. Outside of that, victory points come from the cards that are face up and visible on your board.

It's the little wave symbol that's right next to those cards that indicates that you will score four points at the end of the game. Sometimes that is very important to pay attention to. There is also endgame scoring, which are all going to be conditional. Things like this lovely fish here is going to score you 10 additional points on top of the two that it already has if it has one egg, one fish, and a school of fish sitting on top of it.

Meaning, this is worth potentially 12 victory points, which is pretty massive in a board game like this. Along with the fact that the egg would be worth one, the fish would be worth one, and the school would be worth six. This is actually worth 20 victory points if you've achieved everything for it.

Holy cow. That's I I'm just doing the math on that. That's a ton of victory points. Okay, that's the overview. Score as many victory points as possible at the end of the game. You're going to be running through four weeks or four rounds of the game with six actions each. On your turn, you can do one of really two things.

You can either play a card by putting a little mele over here into that uh play a card zone, paying the resources which are in the top left hand corner of the card, or you can dive going down one of the three locations on the board. Now, if you're playing a card down onto the board, you have a few things to remember.

First off, you have to make sure you pay the resource cost. Like, this card has to go on top of another card. This card costs two eggs. This card is going to have you discard or spend two cards that are in your hand. they go into your own personal private graveyard and take one fish off the board. So, you're sacrificing a fish in order to play a fish, and you'll probably gain that fish back sooner or later.

Some other things to remember is you have cards that are corresponding to their region zone. Purple, green, and blue. Blue being the card interaction, draw and recover from your graveyard. Purple being the lay eggs zone, and green being the hatch those eggs and maneuver them. So they're either on cards or they turn into schools as the game continues.

Some cards are restricted to those regions. Make sure you check the left hand side of the card to see if the card that you want to play has to go in a specific location. Finally, you have your three regions up and down. Some cards or most cards have a type of zone that they want to be played into. So for instance, this one wants to be in the sunny or the dusky part of the reef.

whereas this one is happy in the dusky area or down here in the very bottom dark. So depending on how much sunlight each one of your fish want as well, you'll have regions to play them down into. This is important to keep in mind because your dive action is going to deal directly with the cards that you've put down.

So for instance, let me pop a card down here. And let me go ahead and pop this lovely boy down here. or let me find one that'll actually trigger and give me something. Ah, well, either way, either way, my diver is going to start going down. If I take a dive action, I'll draw a card because I have a card in this region zone.

I'll recover one from my graveyard. Now, I must do these in order because I have a if activated, and this is me activating it right now. I, however, in this zone will not be able to take the benefit of drawing a card because I don't currently have a fish there. I'll move down here. I'll draw a card and then the first person, first little diver to make it down to the bottom can take has to cover up and then it's optional for them to take the benefit.

So, draw from the graveyard, go ahead and gain an additional egg or move one of your adorable little individual or groups of fish. Like I said, each zone is going to correspond to different types of actions. So, laying eggs, hatching eggs, gaining cards, and you have three already preprinted fish on the board.

These are not fancy examples. These count towards your action. So, if I move down this without anything else on the board to begin with, I would go ahead and have uh a draw card ability, a lay egg ability, and a hatch egg ability triggered. That's your base starting premise. Along with that setup includes putting out two eggs, one fish as resources that you might need, and five cards, two of which will be these lighter starting cards to begin your engine.

You can also see them with the gray mark in the bottom right handed corner. And three cards just randomly drawn from the deck laid face up out onto the table so that everyone can see what you have and what you might be playing. Okay, that's the gameplay. Like I said, you're going to be going through six actions per round or per week and four total weeks.

That means you have 24 total actions. Some of them might build, some of them might change, some of them might let you do extra things that seem like actions, but 24 total actions before the game comes to its conclusion. The game will probably run around 40 to 60 minutes depending on players and how long you hem and haw as you go through.

So, it's a very quick playing, very rapid game. the end of the game, which is the end of week four, you're going to go ahead and pull everything together and score. The scoring pad is very, very straightforward. You have your first three objectives or achievements. Remember to give those bonus points if you're the person that got the most or give the bonus points to the people who gained the most if you happen to tie.

You'll then have game end points from yellow cards if you have any on the board. You'll have points printed on visible fish, which is going to be the majority of your scoring potential. But this game is usually tight, so don't overlook an opportunity to get an extra egg or an extra fish or make an extra school as you play.

Then you'll score eggs, young schools, and consumed fish, giving you your final total. Pretty straightforward, pretty up and down on the nose. A few things to remember, just I'm sure as I mention them, you'll be aware of them, but a few things to remember as you're diving back into this. You have your own personal discard pile.

Do not share discard piles with other players because you'll be recovering those cards as you play. You have a slightly confusing consume symbology. And so I will set this down here and make sure you're aware. Play fish. Use a card as a cost or gain a card. Use an egg as a cost or gain a card. Hatch an egg.

Use a fish as a cost or gain a fish. Use gain a school or use a school as a cost. As a cost, cover a fish that's already on your board that's smaller than the fish you're playing down. Or as a benefit, take cards that you have in your hand that are available and tuck them under a card or under the card uh that is bigger than them.

This is recover a card from your graveyard. This is play an egg down on the board. This is move a fish or a school of fish. This is everyone gets to do the action that you've triggered. It's a friendly action. And these are restrictions on where they can be played out onto the tableau. Out of all of those, the only one that's really confusing happens to be the consume action because it feels or operates slightly differently.

All actions are optional. You can choose other than the resource cost of course, you can choose to take or not take a bonus action. Even if it's a shared bonus action, like all players get to lay an egg. If I triggered that, I could choose I don't want to lay an egg. Everyone else still can, but I can forgo that if for some silly reason I needed to.

This really matters when it comes to hatching eggs or uh getting rid of certain uh things like like moving something to become a school if you need little fish in order to pay for the next card that you're going to be playing. Moving on down, you can only have three fish in a region, one school, and one egg.

If you happen to have three fish in a region at any one point, they immediately become a school. But then if you have three more fish on top of that, they won't transform into a school unless that school moves away because you can only have one school, one egg, and three fish is two fish if you want them to stay individual and you don't have a school already there.

On top of that, your cards are laid out on the on the table. They are technically public. It probably won't matter right away, but sometimes you want to pay attention to what other people are playing and utilizing. So keep your eyes open for cards, specifically cards that lay eggs and trigger groupbased abilities.

And then finally, fish placement is one of those things that matters. You can always cover up fish if they're smaller. You can go in any location or region as long as you're paying attention to again the type of zone the fish wants to be in if it has a border indicating that it is blue, purple, or green.

And then finally, wherever you want to stack it. uh meaning that you trigger the abilities in the sequence that they are laid out. So if I have a consume fish ability here and a draw card ability here, I might want to play them in order that allows me to have an extra card in my hand to see if it's one that I might be able to tuck underneath one of my consume fish abilities.

That's one of those instances where it matters or a lay egg and hatch ability in the green zone here. I might want to make sure that I am able to get that egg onto my table before I have an ability to hatch it because I can't go backwards with those abilities as they sequence. All that being said and done, that's how you play Worm Span or Finsspan, Wingspan.

It's one of the wingspan board games. It's the one where you chopped off the wings and put the fish under the sea, I believe, or put the birds you dropped. I'm just I'm losing track of my analogies here at the end of the video. But hopefully you enjoyed this. Hopefully this is a good refresh or a good quick start guide.

I didn't hold your hand anywhere. I just told you what was up. Reminded you how to play. Let's get it to the table now. Stop hemming and hawing. I need to end this video so people don't think it's longer than it really is. Whatever the case, whatever you do, hit that subscribe. This is a good video.

Hit that subscribe button. I want to do more of these, but no one does them. So, like I need you to support this type of content so that I can continue. So, leave a comment on what game you'd like a quick start guide for. I swear if you live Kingdom Death Monster or Mage Knight down there, uh, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna strangle someone and and and or just just sub.

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