As Chris Farley has commanded: a thread about Spirit Island

[Kalir]

BE NOT AFRAID

Perhaps the most anticipated spirit to come out of Jagged Earth, Starlight Seeks Its Form is, bar none, the most customizable spirit in the game. It's a personal houserule that every time you finish a game playing as them, you need to come up with a new name for the spirit, after all of your choices in how it forms.

A big part of how this customization takes place is from the three Growth choices you get each turn, with each one being relatively minor. If you take all three choices you have as a lump sum, it makes it seem much more useful. For example: lots of spirits would be perfectly happy with a growth that adds presence at range 2, gains a power card and NRG, and gets an extra card play for the turn. Course, then the problem is that you've locked off other potentialities for Starlight for this game, namely spike NRG gain and a full reclaim option. While it is possible to screw yourself out of things other spirits would call essential this way, it's not impossible to play the spirit in that event if you use your unique powers wisely.

Additionally, your innate powers are not designed with the expectation that you'll hit the thresholds for each of them every game. Slowly Coalescing Nature forces you to build an elemental specialization, one which you should heavily contour to your early power card gains (and which in turn should be built to accommodate the other spirits in play). This is not a spirit you can expect to play the same way every game, which is part of the attraction!

A big part of this is that your unique powers are built to be forgotten. Each of them only provides a single Moon, which means you can at least get Sidereal Guidance going, but the effects themselves are meant to be replaced as your spirit crystallizes. Peace of the Nighttime Sky is a nice stopgap early on, when you lack the capability to do a whole lot else with the island, but it simply does not punch hard enough to make it worth keeping, even without the Terror Level restriction.

Speaking of Moon, it's a nice element to focus on for Starlight if you lack better choices, especially seeing as Shape the Self Anew has a really strong threshold and Sidereal Guidance is a nice one to aim for early. Don't feel beholden to it, though.

I was gonna say that Shape the Self Anew is also a card you might consider holding on to if you shyed away from the Growth options for gaining powers, but then I realized that nobody needs Reclaim Half AND Reclaim All.

Speaking of, most spirits need Reclaim All in order to even come close to maintaining tempo. Starlight Seeks Its Form has no fewer than FIVE ways to reclaim cards available, three of which are Growth options that it gets to take three of each round. Do not ever feel like you're forced into that Reclaim All option, handy though it is. It is more than plausible to build Starlight without needing it, and Gather the Scattered Light of Stars is an instrumental part of that.

Here's the other card you might consider keeping all game. It's one of those "any, but use it on another spirit probably" cards that actually is completely understandable to use on yourself, given how Starlight Seeks Its Form works. It's also a great tool to have on hand if another spirit gets a dead draw, but feels more comfortable with minor powers over majors.

 

[Kalir]

It wouldn't be a Spirit Island expansion without some new colonial jackasses to crush.

Habsburg is a really interesting adversary for a few reasons. The first is that their escalation makes them drastically accelerate Town placement, and they have a lot of rules that make Towns much more mobile and hardy, at the expense of being unable to build inland Cities. This greatly rewards powers that can chunk multiple Towns in a single land at once, naturally.

The other is because this is an adversary like Sweden, where the Ravages can potentially be a lot more dangerous. While Sweden gets to add two Blight at sufficient damage, Habsburg instead gets to advance their alternate win condition. This combines with the accelerated and mobile Towns in a REALLY mean way, and discourages letting a bunch of Invaders gather for TOO long in a land... which acts as a natural check against the above strategy. This is a really tricky adversary for sure.

I haven't gotten a chance to try out adversaries yet, largely because everyone I play with is either new to the game in full, or new to the Jagged Earth spirits, but this one honestly looks like a ton of terrifying fun. Naturally, there's the big thematics/gameplay thing with the Explorers now representing hunters. And those Explorers pack a SERIOUS kick with how rapidly they come out and their bonus damage. This is an adversary where those "1 damage to each Invader" cards go from weaksauce to damn near essential, and where you can't EVER let Explorers just pile up in the corner and hope for the best.

Revealing the Coastal Lands Invader card is always a moment to watch out for in any game. It's not much, but it's a layering of multiple land types that adds pressure to already-pressured lands, and gets 3 actions a board instead of 2. Even without the Escalation benefit, that's still scary. Scotland, as an adversary, is all about making the coasts as scary as they can possibly be.

When initially revealed, the devs outright said "you'd think Ocean's Hungry Grasp would be a powerful spirit against them, and you're right, BUT." Runoff and Bilgewater definitely sounds mean as hell to Ocean, since they can no longer afford to just tides-out to dodge Ravages, but I honestly think this invader is scary to Ocean anyway. You can hit them really hard with their coastal focus, but they hit back just as hard with their huge amounts of structures.

And honestly, even if Ocean's Hungry Grasp feels comfortable taking Scotland on... that's a LOT of Coastal pain for the other spirits to deal with. You'll really want to look into long range powers or high mobility, so you can affect coasts aside from your own.

 

[Kalir]

So, you might've had an idea, but the previous spirit, as well as Fractured Days Split the Sky, are the first spirits to exceed the High complexity ranking, ending in the Very High complexity tier. Starlight Seeks Its Form is mostly there for information density and the ability to screw yourself out of viable functionality, but Fractured Days Split the Sky is absolutely deserving of the Very High complexity. And a big part of that is the Fragments of Shattered Time rule, fundamentally changing the value and utility of presence in a game.

Rather than placing Presence, most of the time when you open up your presence tracks, you do so by gaining Time. So it's entirely plausible to get your Presence tracks cleared out incredibly quickly into a game (and also not especially critical to do, given how absolutely weaksauce they are). Many of your powers expend Time, so you'll need to constantly try to gain more as the game moves on... but going for more Time cuts off some of the better resources you can get from your amazing Growth choices.

And the cool thing is that even this mess has a thematics/gameplay link too! As a spirit of day, night, and eclipses, Days is especially distant from the island compared to other spirits, which is reflected in how rarely they'll actually place Presence on the island. Each of its Growth choices is tied into a theme of either past (Sun), present (Air), or future (Moon). It's also a spirit of wide, sweeping temporal power, which is reflected in how absolutely ridiculous the powers it has are.

For example: Invader deck control. This power has such a ridiculously high cost for a reason: not only can you force total knowledge of how the invaders will act, but you can ALSO temporarily degrade their offensive for a turn, by lowering the Stage of the Invader card. This one is monstrously good when combined with Isolate effects, where you can legit just turn off the Invaders for a full card if played right.

Would you believe that this card, which makes Invaders Build AND Ravage, is the cheapest one Fractured Days Split the Sky gets? It can do a lot of good stuff, though, if used properly. If you use it in conjunction with a Defend effect, even the Build/Ravage combo can be of use for quickly destroying even unrelated Invaders!

Hey Vital Strength of the Earth, cool timestop power you have. Here's that power but better.

Flexing aside, this one is tricky to actually wield, and the reason why is really subtle: it's the Sacred Site. Remember, Fractured Days Split the Sky rarely actually places Presence on the island. Are you SURE you want to commit to a Sacred Site under those circumstances?

And finally, what is perhaps the most broken power in the game. Turning off Invader actions for an entire board is MAJOR. This does require a lot of planning though: not only do you have to decide which board is safe to take a double action from the Invaders, you also need to have Presence on those lands to move around (which can set up Absolute Stasis, HINT HINT) and you need to have 3 Time in the bank just for that. Every single power that Days has access to can either win or lose the game, depending on how masterfully it's played.

 

[aturtledoesbite]

this is the real brain hurty juice

 

[Kalir]

I'm more or less out of content to discuss, I think. I could go over different scenarios, but I don't know enough about them to make real informed posts about them (except the powerups one). So instead: promo spirits! Again!

Downpour Drenches the World is the third spirit with a heavy focus on a single element, and that's great and all, but what's more neat is their unique style of gameplay from Pour Down Power Across the Island. As someone who favors spamming lots of Minor powers for thresholds each turn, I usually like to try to set each power to do as much as it can, like each one being its own little puzzle of where is most optimal to play it. This has the advantage of offloading the mental energy I need for choosing the cards in the first place, because hey, it'll probably be good SOMEWHERE. For this reason, I am completely unsuited to playing Downpour, because all of their mental energy goes into assessing the board state and going "how many use cases does each of my powers have".

I especially want to call attention to that second Growth option that discards cards. When you take that, you're acting under the assumption that at least two of your cards will not be useful for the foreseeable future. Don't be afraid of that discard either, embrace it. For Downpour Drenches the World, reclaiming cards is mostly done to get that one power you know you'll need this turn back, so you may as well get rid of all those other things so you can really go ham on placing Presence.

As fun as it might sound to spam a Major power every turn... you're not going to get more than one or two repeats from any given Major, even on a good day. Cleansing Floods is still a good power on this spirit, but you tell me when you're ever going to have 10 NRG stockpiled on this spirit. Still, even Minor powers can be good if spammed. Rain of Blood being worth 3 Fear... eh. Rain of Blood being worth 18 Fear? NOW you're talking.

In addition to the spamminess, Downpour Drenches the World has a few thematic elements. One of these is Wetlands: not only do all of its powers require or benefit from Wetlands, it can temporarily turn other lands into Wetlands with Sacred Sites. For Foundations Sink Into Mud, this is most obviously beneficial to put up a Sacred Site in one land and just hammer it with rain until every structure dies, but you can help out other spirits this way too, mostly with targeting. It also gives A Spread of Rampant Green more places for their Presence placement!

Isolate is a really powerful effect if you can spam it, especially early on. It's not super great on its own though, but the fast Explorer and Dahan push makes this an incredibly handy card for controlling positioning on the island. Lots of choices here: you can ensure that a single board gets no Explores, move Dahan over to a Defended land to counter, group up Explorers for an area attack...

The other reason why Downpour Drenches the World isn't my style is because they're a defensive spirit, but one that makes it hard for Dahan to counterattack. Their innate version of Encompassing Ward lowers counter damage, increasing the amount of Dahan a land needs to fight back, and this power pushes Dahan away. Your defense is good, but like Vital Strength of the Earth, it can't be the only thing you rely on, or you WILL get overwhelmed, and faster than you think.

Downpour Drenches the World is also very good at returning destroyed Presence to play. This gives them some clear synergy with spirits that make a habit of doing that on the regular. And of the two that come to mind (A Spread of Rampant Green, Volcano Looming High), they both have plenty of reason to repeat cards by paying their costs. It's nice how things line up like that.

 

[Kalir]

Many players often say that it's more important to learn moving the Invaders and Dahan around than it is to learn how to block or destroy them. They're absolutely right, of course. Finder of Paths Unseen is for those who wish to pursue that philosophy of playstyle to the exclusion of all others.

First up, let's talk about that Presence track. By letting you place Presence from any adjacent space to an uncovered one, Finder of Paths Unseen allows you to customize how you run the spirit as far as elements/card plays/NRG goes with considerable ease. Don't get too excited about that, though, since Finder also uses more elements than any other spirit in the game, making use of everything except Fire and Animal. You'll need to be super judicious about your power gains and which cards you play each turn, because while you CAN trip all your innates, it requires a lot more finesse than other spirits that just spam their hand and call it good.

You also need to be more choosy about what powers you take, owing to Responsibilities to the Dead. You simply cannot spam offensive powers and hope for the best, or you will get yourself killed and cost your fellow spirits the game. Instead, you can either pick up a huge Major power to crush a giant stronghold of Invaders in one blow, or simply set up things for everyone else. And you are very good at the latter: not only does Finder of Paths Unseen have some of the best range in the game, but you can also link lands from anywhere on the board if you like, allowing other players that move things around to really put them to optimal use.

Okay, let's stop and address something right here. That text saying you get to move Invaders? THAT IS NOT NORMAL. Normally, if you're moving Invader pieces, it specifies which ones, and most of the time it means Explorers and/or Towns. Finder of Paths Unseen begins play with the ability to move Cities. That in and of itself is worth highlighting in bold red text. Being able to relocate Cities lets you freely keep the Invaders from setting up big capitals except for the lands you explicitly say they get to go to.

You're also able to move Presence around for other spirits, which is... only sort of powerful, most of the time. It helps to keep new players from overconcentrating in their lands, but new players should not be in a game with Finder of Paths Unseen. It's also good with spirits that have a hard time stretching out to further lands, or those who need to establish Sacred Sites somewhere.

As your only defensive card, you'll be tempted to play Offer Passage Between Worlds to preserve Dahan for counterattacks during Ravage. That's fine in moderation, especially as you don't have much offense on your own, but you're still losing the Blight race there. I'd mostly use it to reposition large groups of Dahan.

A nice simple method of scattering a concentrated land out. Whether you actually want to do that to the Invaders is another matter, but it's a good way of shuttering dangerous Ravages, at least.

One of the biggest limitations on Finder's movement abilities, strong as they are, is that you usually have to have some kind of stipulation on the land you're moving to. Without that, you could just force adjacency on everything and group literally all the pieces you want to in a single land. You'll still likely be able to do that, it's just going to take some brainwork to do.

This, plus the extremely disparate elements on your innates, is likely why Finder of Paths Unseen begins play with six unique powers. There's also the pressure to find a good Major power early on to hit one land as hard as you possibly can, so having extra forget fodder for that is nice. Gunning for thresholds on Major powers is hard given your extremely scattered innates, but I'd try to prioritize Air, Water, and Moon, in that order.

 

[aturtledoesbite]

Wait, so if Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares uses this, the effect instead reads...



EDIT: after doing some quick math, if you've got enough power cards to cycle that four times (the maximum possible) and can hit five cities, you instantly win a 1P or 2P game.

Of course, there's no way Bringer can cycle four times before it creates enough fear not to need to.

I've been told to post this here to make you two sad.

 

[Mogri]

It does not, in fact, make me sad

 

[Kalir]

I have some other news: there's a Target-exclusive Spirit Island expansion coming out apparently, suited to newer players as an ideal lightweight entry point into the game. Details here.

Needless to say, I will be picking it up and doing a breakdown of it.

 

[Patrick]

Yeah, Horizons looks neat. I could easily fit the new spirits in my box with the base game + jagged earth, too. But 1) I still haven’t played all of the JE spirits, and I want to play all of the spirits that I have more, and 2) Nature Incarnate is around the corner and I might want that even more. But it’s def a good time to be a SI fan.

Also, I made my own invader board. It’s a little more compact and easier to follow than the original. You can check it out here if you’re interested.

 

[Mogri]

Also, I made my own invader board. It’s a little more compact and easier to follow than the original. You can check it out here if you’re interested.

That's funny to me, because they released a "deluxe invader board" that's substantially larger (and clearly unnecessary).

 

[Patrick]

That's funny to me, because they released a "deluxe invader board" that's substantially larger (and clearly unnecessary).

That's exactly what got me started. I had heard that they were releasing a deluxe board and I thought "finally, something that takes up less space." I was shocked when I saw it. I started asking around to see if anyone had made a smaller board instead, and I ended up just making it myself.

 

[Kalir]

Got my copy of Horizons of Spirit Island. For what it's worth, the only new content in it are the five new spirits, all of which I would comfortably rate at Low complexity. Beyond that, the Fear and Power cards included are almost identical to those in the core game (and each spirit includes a Power Progression list if you want to play that way, although they do overlap with the core game spirits). The board included is two-sided for 2 players or 3 players, although it's hard to say whether it takes up less table space than the build-your-own island boards.

I'll do my spirit writeups here as usual in the next few days, but if you aren't especially interested in this set, that's okay. Leave it on the shelves and let newbies to the game know it exists, since that's what it's there for.

 

[Kalir]

Making new low-complexity spirits is a difficult task, not least because the design philosophies of Spirit Island kind of prevents them from using a lot of the tools at their disposal to still fit the mold they're looking for. They want a spirit that doesn't do too much that a new player wouldn't expect, or that would teach contradictory lessons due to ignoring or being hindered by specific rules. Honestly though, I think the five spirits in the Horizons set pull it off.

Seen here is Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot, an offense-oriented answer to Vital Strength of the Earth. With a steady presence placement, high NRG but low plays, and generally high cost cards that pack a kick, the comparison is easy to make. Also note the reminder text sprinkled liberally through the text, both here and on the cards these spirits have. You and I already know that a +1 damage boost only applies once, to the first "type" of damage that a spirit does, but with Horizons being marketed towards newer players, those reminders can be a nice stepping stone if they don't want to dive straight into a much more expensive collection right off the bat.

Another similarity Teeth has with Vital Strength of the Earth is the limited range. Less of a dependency on Sacred Sites, but all of their unique power cards have a range of 0, so you're going to need to either use your innate to slither into lands and combo them, or place your presence much more aggressively to capitalize. The Defend effect here is pretty absurdly strong, but scaring away Dahan weakens the impact of a potential counterattack, so it's hard to appreciate. Course, you can easily set yourself up for a vicious follow-up at slow phase.

Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot has just a little Fear generation to them, enough to combine with their existing absurd damage to make later Terror Levels easier to reach. It also gives them more reason to go after Explorers as cruft rather than purely focusing on structures, as many offensive spirits tend to do. That's a nice thing about them: in their simplicity, everything is a viable target, so they aren't forced to specialize in hunting specific pieces the way, say, Lightning's Swift Strike would.

At a first glance, you go "haha what 3 extra damage that rules."

Then you slow down and think about it, and realize that in a vacuum, most spirits in a game with Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot haven't got much inclination to go for damage powers, on account of being in a game with Teeth.

Then you slow down, think even more, and realize that any weak fast 1 damage power becomes a hell of a lot scarier with a +3 stapled on to it.

Or, as they say, "haha damage go brrrrrrr"

If Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot does have a weakness in what enemies they can hit, it's Cities... but even then, Death Approaches From Beneath the Surface can eat a City fairly trivially. That third threshold is pretty easy to get if you account for the sparse amount of Fire in your unique cards. When looking for new powers, Fire element should your priority over Animal. Which won't be a hard choice; most damaging powers have Fire anyway.

 

[Kalir]

If Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot is Horizons' answer to Vital Strength of the Earth, here's their answer to River Surges in Sunlight. Sun-Bright Whirlwind is the spirit I would most readily say is suited to new players, and it definitely helps that their visual design is that of an adorable light lynx. Making movement of Invaders such an essential part of the spirit, while at the same time giving them nice attractive options to scale up for a superkill, is pretty much the perfect recipe for a newbie spirit.

There's still enough to separate the two in design, though. River Surges in Sunlight had to pay more attention to terrain, owing to their strong unique rule that makes Wetlands automatically Sacred Sites, plus some very strong powers that synergize with Dahan. Sun-Bright Whirlwind, by comparison, leans more into damage and speed, not unlike Lightning's Swift Strike, but with the caveat that this is scattered across multiple invaders, suiting it more to taking down Explorers than structures.

Also, weird as it is: we finally have a spirit that is "just" a wind elemental. You wouldn't think that would be too hard to find, but all of the other spirits that leaned into Air either did so as an ancillary side thing, or looked into the more esoteric, underlying aspects of Air as an element, such as thought. (If you're curious about these aspects, they're listed in the manual!)

A new Raging Storm for a new generation. Again, it's best used either on Explorer-bloated lands, or with a combo followup from a buddy to finish off the structures you've battered.

Note the clarification text here as well. Remember how I complained about newbie misinterpretation of Raging Storm earlier? That shouldn't happen nearly as often with this one.

This card, while it looks funny and seems strong, is actually rather counterintuitive a lot of the time. Yeah, it can stop a land from ravaging pretty cleanly, but by pushing everything in that land to different locations, you're missing out on some very important advantages a Push normally applies: choice. You can't send those Dahan and invaders to the same land to be hit with a stomp later, and if you're next to another land about to be stomped, you either make the next ravage potentially worse by launching more invaders there, or condemn Dahan to a bloody end.

Being able to speed up a movement power is good, don't get me wrong. Fast powers are good powers, and anyone who has played a game with Lightning's Swift Strike can attest to that.

It's just... is this really a power worth 1 NRG? It feels like a bit much. In the long run, provided you use it on allies (and why wouldn't you) it still works out to free. But it could be 0, I think.

Oh yeah also Sun-Bright Whirlwind has two support powers it can start out with. That's cool.

Maybe that's why Gift of Wind-Sped Steps costs 1. Being able to stack both of these effects on another spirit for free would be kind of a lot, honestly. Ah well, your NRG income is really good and your innate is even better. It's fiiiine.

 

[Kalir]

See that Presence placement option in the Growth set? Yeah. That is the ONLY terrain dependency, by default, that the Horizons spirits have. Which, if you think about it, wasn't that different from the four Low complexity spirits in the core game. Only one there with a terrain dependency was River, and even then it was a soft dependency of "these are automatically Sacred Sites". Same kind of deal with Rising Heat of Stone and Sand here. You can double-place Presence, always a strong option, but if you do it's explicitly going to Sands or Mountains. And that makes for a nice combo with your Sacred Site effect, allowing you to quickly sap the health of the Invaders wherever you choose.

Speaking of: I really like this special rule for a Low complexity spirit. It's an effect we haven't seen before, it's simple enough for new players to get, and it's got a pretty clean synergy with their innate and their unique power cards. Lot of damage synergy in this set, too. Shroud of Silent Mist is probably feeling real happy right about now.

Heat doesn't have the same kind of raw aggro that Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot does. Fittingly, it's more about debilitating the invaders before destroying them, a kind of offense/control mix. Which, usually when you think of that, you think of like... poison or fiery burning or whatever. Tying this mechanic instead to overwhelming heat is a pretty unique touch, I think.

This one's cool. This is just primo thematics/gameplay synergy right here, and it's carried off so simply, too! Oagh!

Having the reminder text clarifying that special rules are always on is nice, too. Not that we ever doubted it, but it's a cool way of telling newbies another avenue for cheesy combo shenanigans, put onto a very nice card for just bleeding a Town dry (or if you really want to get fun, moving into a region after everything gets chipped down by another spirit).

One issue I find a LOT of the spirits have, outside of Horizons at least, is that they just... forget to do damage. The core set was especially notorious about this, tending to favor just raw destroy effects where possible, or having their damage be considerably more situational. And in a game where damage doesn't do a lot unless you stack it, requiring teamwork with other spirits, that can rather disincentivize it.

Jagged Earth did a lot to fix that, though, with more raw damage spirits like Stone's Unyielding Defiance and Vengeance as a Burning Plague, plus the "enabler" slot with Shroud of Silent Mist (although Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares also kinda did that). And now Horizons is here with Rising Heat of Stone and Sand as a pretty decent incentive as well.

Hey look, active Dahan cooperation in the base kit! ...Okay, Sun-Bright Whirlwind had some cooperation with their special rule, but they felt a little iffy about it. Call on Herders for Aid is just about one of the best setups to a Defend I've ever seen in the game. Get the Dahan in position, chase out anything you can't handle, and hell, move some Dahan if you want! This is a really good card!

That said: there is another spirit in this set even better at Dahan cooperation. But I'm saving them for last because they're my favorite.

 

[Patrick]

Such good art on that card.

 

[Kalir]

That special rule? That's really good. A really good rule. I think that special rule is good. It looks pretty good to me.

Like, yeah, you're juggling four elements, it only works on Sacred Sites, and whenever you're using your innate, unless you've stacked 3 presence in a land (not a terrible idea on occasion for this spirit) you're removing that Sacred Site.

That's okay. Still a good special rule.

That special rule is the only really outlandish thing to see among Fathomless Mud of the Swamp's kit, though. All of their powers are extremely generic and well-rounded, making this a good option for someone who doesn't really know what they want to do in a game.

Their cards are good, mind you. I won't say no to a Defend 5 and 1 Fear. Maybe a little overvalued at 2 NRG but it's fine. They're just... I really can't think of a lot to say about them, y'know? Just a nice generalist toolbox, and that's fine cuz thats okay.

Like... if I have any card to say anything about, this one is probably it. Because it's a push of up to 2 explorers, it's a good way to deal with a land that just got explored, but you left some dude over from a previous action or four. Good range too, just need a Sacred Site, which you will have. And if it's IN your Sacred Site, one of those explorers was probably generated from a Build anyway.

I don't mean to be negative here. If nothing else, this is still a delightful mischievous mud otter and I have to respect that. But even for a Low complexity spirit, there's just... not much that's interesting going on here. Except for the special rule being good.

 

[Kalir]

Ha ha ha! Yes! Yes!!!

Eyes Watch From the Trees is easily the winner for the design of the Horizons set, and may well be a top spirit design out of ALL the spirits we've seen so far. Like Shadows Flicker Like Flame, it's a Fear-focused spirit that has a fair degree of Dahan cooperation, but it trades away Explorer control in favor of Defend, owing to its strong special rule and innate. Defend in isolation is fine, but getting a free Dahan gather any time you do it is honestly just what Low complexity was missing, even moreso than every other spirit's special rule in this set.

Also like Shadows, Eyes Watch From the Trees is one of those spirits that isn't really clearly understood by the Dahan. They don't know if it's one spirit, a group, or some weird collective like Many Minds Move As One, and the stuff it does gives it a very fey vibe, of being enigmatic and tricksy but mostly harmless and helpful. And, of course, the visual of literally just a whole bunch of eyes peering out from hollow knots is pure elegance.

Oh, and now might be a good time to mention that the spirits here use the same Power Progression Deck system that the spirits in core set use to ease newbies into the game. For the most part, these powers are the same as used by the core game spirits with one or two differences, so while you CAN use the deck included with Horizons to build decks for each of these spirits while using your existing deck to build power progression for the existing Low complexity spirits... instead don't? Don't.

Also Eyes uses a lot of the same powers as Shadows in their deck, which, y'know, actually makes sense.

Oh, whoops, turns out Eyes does have a terrain dependency I totally missed. Unsurprisingly, it likes to lurk in Jungles. This is the only power it has with that kind of issue, but its starting presence goes to Jungles anyway, so new players will learn that they have to extend out to other lands to get this power to work. And this power is nice, too. Kind of a weaker Favors Called Due, but without needing to overwhelm the invaders.

This power is made by its surroundings. Remember, all you need to kill a City is 3 damage. All of your Defends gather a Dahan to them. This plus any Defend effect greater than 1 in the game can kill a City on Ravage. Or you can use the 1 damage to take down an Explorer before it Builds as usual... or you can combo it with the damage friends in this set! Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot would be happy to juice that up to a 4, and Searing Heat of Stone and Sand can let you oneshot a Town without any muss or fuss.

A slightly more expensive Wash Away that trades efficacy for a bit of Fear generation? Oh, you shouldn't have! Thank you!

Wash Away still scales better given the potency of River Surges in Sunlight's innate when it gets up there, but it's not like Eyes Watch From the Trees lacks for ways to use this.

Eyes' biggest weakness, by far, is a dependency on their power card draws for Defend. Boon of Watchful Guarding is great and all, but it literally only has that and its innate to work with. Ideally, you pick up at least one Minor with a Defend by turn 2... but then you run into the issue of what if it doesn't have the Moon and Plant you need to get your innate up and running? It can get to be a real conundrum, and ironically, Eyes Watch From the Trees may be the spirit that most needs to learn when to flex away from their core elements or skillset in favor of a new gameplan.

 

[Patrick]

I've been playing a bunch of Spirit island recently. Horizons and the Nature Incarnate crowdfunding campaign has brought it to the forefront of my mind, and also I've had a lot of 1-2 hour periods free where I could sneak in a game.

I tried a few 2-handed games, but they were taking like 2.5 hours, whereas I can finish a 1-handed game in about 45 minutes. I do really like the interaction between spirits though. I think with practice and familiarity I'll be able to play 2-handed more quickly, but for now I'm sticking to 1 spirit.

I tried out all of the Aspects that I hadn't touched yet (including PNP ones from the promo), and I finally tried Vengeance and Mist. I do not mesh well with Vengeance's need for blight, but Mist clicked right away and is one of my new favorites.

And I went ahead and picked up Horizons. I played a recent 5-player game with 2 newish players, and it was a bit too hectic. I was answering a lot of questions (even from the players who are more experienced, since I own the game), and I had a hard time driving my own moderate complexity spirit while managing everything else. I thought about how much easier it would be if we were all playing low complexity (and better designed) spirits, and that decided it for me.

And I decided against backing Nature Incarnate. I will probably pick it up eventually, but it looks like it has a lot of complex spirits that my group will be overwhelmed by. Between the base game, Jagged Earth, and Horizons, I have a wild amount of stuff already. In a year or two when NI comes out I can decide if I still want more.

 

[Kalir]

I'll be covering Nature Incarnate soon, we just got our copy. I'm looking forward to it!

 

[Kalir]

None of the spirits in the Nature Incarnate expansion are made of meat. It's a figure of speech, not a literal thing. Hi! What?

Ember-Eyed Behemoth is our first spirit to represent both the expansion and its new signature Incarna mechanic. Four of the spirits in the set (and three of the Aspects for existing spirits) come with a unique Incarna piece, used for targeting some of their powers or effects. Incarna always counts as Presence for all intents and purposes, and depending on the spirit and/or whether it's empowered, it can count as other pieces too. For Ember-Eyed Behemoth, it's automatically considered a Sacred Site when it's empowered. As far as lore mechanics go, Incarna differs from a Sacred Site by virtue of its depth, so to speak. It is the most significantly "there" part of the spirit, not just where its influence occurs. Incarna is possible to destroy, but usually the spirit in question has an easy way to re-establish it.

Ember-Eyed Behemoth is an extremely straightforward implementation of the concept, hanging out at the low end of the complexity chart with Shifting Memory of Ages. Its gameplan is effectively just to Godzilla at the invaders, marching into their lands and crushing everything it sees. Even before its Incarna is empowered, the innate power is very good at doing this, and is almost as easy and essential to its gameplan to activate as Massive Flooding is to River Surges in Sunlight. Sure doesn't hurt that its element selection trends towards very good damage powers in general. Honestly, the most surprising thing about it is why we haven't had a Godzilla spirit before now! Sure, we had a Major power so strong it needed an errata nerf, but that's just not the same!

This is, curiously enough, the only damaging unique power available to Behemoth. And it's solid, for what it is. 2 damage is a nice chunker of a hit, and the Badlands aren't hard to get established in your initial lands with your double presence placement option. Doesn't have any fancy tricks or a cheap cost, but that's fine. It's a nice uncomplicated beatstick, and sometimes you just need that.

Ember-Eyed Behemoth doesn't really play well with the Dahan, but fortunately they know well enough to stay out of its way. This results in this power, which is kind of weak as a defensive measure but is excellent at saving Dahan from a land that's about to get hammered for more damage than they can take, whether it comes from the invaders or the spirits.

It's usually my playstyle to go straight for more card plays as fast as possible with most spirits, but unless you're also grabbing new power cards, that's kind of a bad idea for Ember-Eyed Behemoth. Fortunately, that's what its third growth option excels at (and it also sets up nicely into your once-per-game empower growth). The fact remains that your starting powers trend expensive, and your NRG income is... not bad, but not great either.

Every single Incarna spirit runs into the same issue, in that they have one dedicated piece doing really cool stuff in whatever lands it touches... but there are a lot of lands, and it can't possibly manage to touch them all. Exaltation of Grasping Roots helps you ensure that whatever lands you are clearing out stay cleared out as long as possible, which in turn keeps you from needing to make harder or even impossible decisions with your Incarna. Ember-Eyed Behemoth is a bit on the low-mobility side with its Incarna, mind you: there's only one other spirit in the set with worse mobility for it. (Can't speak to the Aspects yet, but Thunderspeaker, Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island, and Lure of the Deep Wilderness have the Incarna Aspects, and of those, I would call exactly one of them "mobile" in any sense.)

 

[Kalir]

Curiously, Nature Incarnate didn't add that many new power cards to the game. Which is honestly great in my opinion, that deck is getting massive already and we don't need it being further diluted without good cause. Moreover, many of the cards they did add to existing decks replaced some existing cards that got removed (like this one replacing Growth Through Sacrifice) and a few other cards got errata'd or removed outright (such as the War Touches The Island's Shores event).

This power is primarily a stalling defensive toolbox, combining Isolate and Defend but offsetting it with sidelining a Dahan for the Ravage. It doesn't have any kind of mechanical effects in common with Growth Through Sacrifice, though. It is also the only minor power added in this expansion.

Instead, we get this new Major power to trade extraneous presence on the island for instant and permanent Minor Powers. It's a bit of a risky tradeoff that most spirits won't necessarily go for, and it's best suited to spirits that can add presence quickly, still make use of removed/destroyed presence, and have plenty of demand for Minor powers (for example, A Spread of Rampant Green or Volcano Looming High). And, of course, trading three presence on the island for instantly getting all the elements you'd need for any thresholds in play is always fun.

Okay, even setting aside the pure feelgood energy of this card: this is an extremely strong and economical effect for just clearing out Invaders! The biggest issue is that it can't deal with Blighted lands without the threshold, which in all likelihood is where the Invaders are going to be most strongly concentrated. And while that threshold isn't impossible to get, most spirits that traffic in two of those elements don't usually have cause to touch the third, so pretty much everyone is going to have to splash a bit to hit it.

The entirety of the conflict in Spirit Island takes place on that island. Every power focuses on a land, and the further out you get from it, the less you can realistically do to affect it (Ocean's Hungry Grasp can only eat boats offstage for some Fear, and Fractured Days Split the Sky has greatly limited Presence on the island due to its distance). This is the only card that takes the fight out from the island to the homelands of the Invaders. And, as both artwork and effect indicate, this is Vengeance as a Burning Plague's dream power. Only that particular spirit would have the cojones (and lack of discernment for targets, not everyone in a colonial power would have supported colonization) to take the fight straight to the capitals. This gets reflected as the threshold effect cashing in the Disease on the board, sending them home to just chuck Fear cards from the deck immediately.

In short: this power is terrifying and awesome.

This card has some language codification for some of the effects that existed on an earlier power, Bargains of Power and Protection. Fundamentally, the spirits of the island interact with the Dahan through these "bargains" when they want to have some long-standing arrangement, due to the history of the island that I'm not super qualified to talk about (but we'll cover it with another spirit in this set). Instead of making the Dahan into auto-Defend powerhouses, this lets you set up two islands to be teleporters, immediately shunting any pieces moved there anywhere you like. This is an incredibly useful power, not just for facilitating your own teleportation of useful pieces, but for making sure those two lands never have an Invader in them for the rest of the game.

Ay yo dream power for Many Minds Move As One. Or Sharp Fangs Behind The Leaves. Or any spirit that depends on Beasts, really. The biggest problem it has is depending on Wetlands for the initial targeting, but also with that kind of movement range you can literally collect every single Beast on a board together and pile them on some poor unfortunate suckers. Only issue is that it won't usually destroy anything stronger than an Explorer, and the push effect can be kind of goodbad depending on the situation. Still, a solid choice for many spirits.

You like Elemental Aegis, right? What if you could give it to anyone, it also healed presence, and you could also skip actions as per the healing? Fun card, but unless you're targeting an ally with lots of destroyed presence (see Transformative Sacrifice) it's a bit expensive. The threshold is cute but a bit weak in my book.

 

[Kalir]

Spirit Island really has a lot of ways to get creative with defense. We've had Vital Strength of the Earth just being the literal Defend mechanic with a hint of timestop. We've got Eyes Watch From The Trees incorporating Dahan counterattacks. Stone's Unyielding Defiance just facetanks hits and counterattacks in turn. Shroud of Silent Mist doesn't strictly defend so much as it simply disables the Invaders for a while. Many Minds Move As One does a bit of everything, depending on the Beasts they've got. And now we have one that goes down the route of extreme pacifism, in the form of Towering Roots of the Jungle.

Lorewise, this spirit effectively served as neutral ground for the Dahan and the spirits during the early days of their coexistence. Now, it serves much the same purpose, allowing a safe haven for the Invaders where they cannot be harmed, but where they in turn cannot harm the island. Obviously, half of that is bad for every other spirit in the game, but A: you have workarounds if you need them, and B: nobody said the spirits were entirely monolithic, either. Not saying Towering Roots of the Jungle is a traitor to the cause or anything like that, just that it would prefer a gentler approach than most. Note that its Revoke Sanctuary And Cast Out power removes Invaders, without destroying them. Now you, too, can hit 'em with the "Sir I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to leave".

Note that this spirit has the least mobile of all Incarna pieces, having to sacrifice existing Presence to move it. It doesn't exactly have poor Presence placement range, but the fact that you have to convert an existing bit of Presence into yout Incarna, especially when you have no real guarantees that it'll be safe there without a buildup of your signature Vitality tokens... it's a scary prospect. You probably should move it around at least once a game, though. No sense putting your hyper-defense powers somewhere that isn't under attack, y'know?

Speaking of Vitality: what is it? It's one of the new tokens added in this expansion, much rarer than the others (almost exclusively wielded by Towering Roots of the Jungle). It's kind of like a Strife token spread thin: if Blight would be added to a land that has none, you can remove a Vitality token there instead. If it wasn't for your Incarna's strong and desirable empower effect, standard procedure for these would be to scatter them all the hell over the island to stall out the Invaders' main victory condition, and that's still not a bad idea. Goes without saying that Wilds is also really nice to throw on lands as well. This power is pretty strong for being 0 NRG, but you gotta make sure it comes out early and that you have lands you can aim it at before they get explored, rather than after. Slow speed really puts a thorn in its side.

Aside from Revoke Sanctuary And Cast Out, this is the closest you get to an attack power. And honestly, since it gives Fear and removes pieces scaling with Terror Level, that's not a bad attack power for something that's only able to target from your Incarna. For best results, pair it with Fear powers from other spirits, to hit those higher Terror Levels faster. And with your element set, there's plenty of Fear powers that fit your portfolio nicely.

Personally, I really like having spirits meet up in lands in my games, but outside of being able to combine your ranges to hit the same lands there's no direct incentive to do so. This power completely changes that, and coming with such a protective spirit as Roots makes it very attractive. On its own, for most spirits, you're looking at a Defend 4 on a good day: nice, but not exactly gonna win the day. In a 4 player spirit game, where everyone's hanging out in Roots' Sacred Site? Yeah this is a Defend 10 for 1 NRG. Yeah that's pretty good.

Another card that grants powers, not a big surprise and by no means unwelcome. This one's got some curious side effect to it, though. First is the fact that using it on yourself forces a Major power, while using it on an ally lets them choose Major or Minor as they see fit. It's a strange distinction, and Roots definitely wants a Major sooner rather than later since they're on the high-NRG side, but most spirits don't want to spring for one right out of the gate (or even at all, depending on the spirit).

Second is healing damaged presence. This one combos really well with spirits that end up damaging presence, either their own (A Spread of Rampant Green, Volcano Looming High) or others through their recklessness (Heart of the Wildfire, Vengeance as a Burning Plague). And hey, scroll up for a bit and review Entwine The Fates Of All. Yeah? Yeah you see where I'm going with this.

 

[Kalir]

The cost for this one as far as NRG goes is pretty low, but that threshold is an awkward one, and it's one you'll really want. Still, this is a nice power if only by virtue of being a long-range damaging power. Most powers with both range and damage tend to be far more restrictive or expensive.

Hey! Did you notice that the numeric effects on this card increment up from 1 to 5 as you pass through the effects? Isn't that cute. Anyway, putting that aside, this power costs 7 NRG for a reason: this is effectively the Major version of Lightning's Boon. Even without the threshold effects, you have a ton of ways to drastically amp up Spirit tempo for the turn and absolutely no reason to focus all of that tempo gain on a single land. Like hell, just having a fast power that says "You and another Spirit do 3 damage in one of your lands" is already a really strong effect at fast speed. You can also accelerate no fewer than four cards. And if you somehow do get the threshold for it (certainly not easy but far from impossible) you also get some really good stall out of it. Good card, absolutely worth the price.

A healing power that is also a control power. Lots to consider with this one, especially with the threshold: do you pile up a bunch of Invaders in the land you just healed so you can then demolish them in one blow, or scatter them out to disparate lands to be more isolated pickings for whatever spirits may be close by?

I gotta say though, I'm a bit confused about why they'd say "add and then push a Wilds" rather than just "add a Wilds in range 1". To my knowledge, there aren't any Spirits that specifically get boosts off of pushing generic tokens, most of them care about specific pieces, and none to my knowledge can piggyback off of moving Wilds.

Oh this card is an absolute mess. First of all: you're banking 5 NRG on a specific land not taking action AND having 12 health worth of Invaders to mess with. You may want to combo that with a timestop power, because without the Invader deck playing VERY nicely, your options for getting this card to activate can be sharply limited. Second: the marked Beast threshold is a very fun ability that just permanently adds a mini-Fangs to the board, making it a stellar power for cleaning up the island as you go without needing to devote any future cards to it. But, again, that element threshold is tricky to hit for most spirits. Earth and Animal do not often see play on the same spirit.

MULLIGAN!

I haven't really touched on how the different Adversaries interact with the assorted cards in the game, and the reason for that is, uh... I haven't actually played against them that often, and especially not at high levels. See, I play with my partner jenkitchen and her sister usually, neither of which is really keen on getting THE OFFICIAL INSTAGRAM OF CHAINSAWS levels of difficulty in their games. So I tend to gloss over the effects of, say, Russia making Explorers far more deadly and survivable, or Scotland turning the coasts into a death hell zone, or England preventing you from shuttering Builds or letting a concentrated chunk of buildings exist in one land. It's honestly kind of a failing of these writeups.

Not that I really need to address the fact that health bonuses don't apply for this power because what the hell this power is NUTS

 

[Patrick]

I gotta say though, I'm a bit confused about why they'd say "add and then push a Wilds" rather than just "add a Wilds in range 1".

I think it’s just thematic. Pushing a wilds looks like undergrowth slithering.

 

[Mogri]

MULLIGAN!

This doesn't look nearly worth the cost unless you meet the Moon threshold.

 

[Kalir]

I have a ton to say about today's spirit, almost none of which relates to it being a Good Dog.

When I introduce this game to new players to the concept, I always make a point of moving away from any assumption that the spirits are "gods" of the Dahan. Not only is it an inaccurate concept for describing the complex relationship between the Dahan and the spirits, such an outlook tends to diminish the Dahan, make them lesser, and I'm not about that. My usual go-to description in games is "they're cool with us, we're cool with them", with possible exceptions depending on how their particular spirits interact. It's a bit reductive, but a good fit for the mostly-cautiously-coexistent nature of the Dahan and the spirits on the island.

Hearth-Vigil's backstory comes from a time where that wasn't the case, during the rise of the Servant Cults alluded to on Thunderspeaker's panel. The Servant Cults were, despite my assumptions at first, a phenomenon that existed before the Invaders ever made landfall, and to my knowledge they DID revere certain spirits as gods. Their appearance brought forth a change in Dahan culture from the systems of warfare to those of unannounced raids and poisonings, and while war is hell, raiding as described is somehow worse. The Dahan that initially contacted Hearth-Vigil for aid in this time did NOT want to treat it as a god, and instead outlined a proper contract-like "bargain" that would have the spirit watch out for any such raids to protect the Dahan that bargained with it. Hearth-Vigil agreed to the terms set before it, but at no point was the bargain something that included reverence or worship. And when the terms expired as they were set, Hearth-Vigil simply found the arrangement it had with the Dahan in its community to be agreeable enough that it just kept on doing what it was doing, and the Dahan certainly had no complant with that.

That kind of interaction is, at least to me, the fundamental core of my understanding for how the Dahan and the spirits broadly coexist. The spirits are a living aspect of nature that the Dahan understand and respect, but do not elevate or use as a divine mandate for anything. Similarly, the spirits have long since learned about the Dahan, and for the most part tolerate their existence, with some being more or less considerate of their lives, and the Dahan measuring their approach on a case-by-case basis.

Similarly, when the Invaders arrived, most of the spirits were caught with their metaphorical pants down, the scene displayed on the game's start reflecting the first wave of Invaders already having done the bulk of the damage and the initial Explore representing more on the way. Hearth-Vigil starts with a number of advantages on setup due to it being in the right place at the right time to respond to the Invaders due to its nature, and as such starts with bonus NRG and some extra Dahan in its lands. Again, the other spirits are accordingly at the sweet spot of power to be able to intervene, but none are so ready for the niche as Hearth-Vigil, at least initially.

Hearth-Vigil's gameplay ends up being a more defensively-oriented counterpart to Thunderspeaker. While Thunderspeaker has the Dahan proactively march around and destroy the Invaders (and dies alongside them), Hearth-Vigil instead fortifies and is fortified by the Dahan it lives with, but struggles to do anything faster than reactive measures to the Invaders. This card is a cheap and fast way to get Fear, and isolating is nice too, but for containing the Invaders' advance, it pales compared to Sudden Ambush.

Hearth-Vigil is also a rare example of a spirit that synergizes strongly with the Dahan, but has problems getting them to move out from its lands. Which only makes sense: why would anyone want to go out into a decades-long battlefield when they could stay safe and healthy? It's kind of like if you took River's Bounty and said "this is my basis for an entire spirit now".

For this reason, a lot of Hearth-Vigil's powers require you to have Dahan in the origin land, not necessarily the target. For Coordinated Raid, it works best if you split the difference, having Dahan from different lands come together for a punchy and economical 2 damage. Keep Watch For New Incursions is your primary way of getting Dahan out of your lands, but despite being a Gather, it can't tag in distant Dahan. You have good presence placement range, but you'll end up gravitating Dahan to your lands even if they might be more tactically advantageous further afield.

As far as elements go, Hearth-Vigil has a really creative main combo of Sun and Animal, which both matches up with and stands differently from Thunderspeaker. Animal is much more key, and Fire isn't part of Hearth-Vigil's gameplan at all, instead favoring Earth and Air as secondary elements. Which is kind of an issue actually: those elements are not often found on the same cards. Like Ocean's Hungry Grasp, you may have to pick and choose which innate is going to be your main tool, and which one will be left aside.

 

[Mogri]

That spirit looks extremely my jam. I love having my mushroom pals do my dirty work, and I always wish they weren't so frail.

Defend effects might be a better answer all around short of that very cool innate, but there's nothing stopping Good Boy from picking Defends up.

 

[Kalir]

Most of how Nature Incarnate adds to the existing content of Spirit Island isn't with new powers, but rather new Aspects for existing spirits. This I very much like, because it gives players more reason to revisit old favorites, and it keeps the power deck from being too diluted with multiple versions of the same card and only rare instances of funny unique effects. Here, we have something for Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares, leaning away from the "nightmare" part of its portfolio and decreasing its passive fear generation (which is a problem for Dread Apparitions) in exchange for a tool that both gathers and dilutes damage dealt by the Invaders and Dahan in an area. This segues nicely into its predilection for Major powers, letting it concentrate everything into one land to then hammer the hell out of it with the biggest cannon it has.

It's even included some new components to allow a handful of spirits, like Thunderspeaker, to use the new Incarna rules. And of the spirits to get an Incarna, Thunderspeaker is the most obvious and badass choice of the lot. It's not QUITE like playing directly as the Dahan (especially since the Incarna still counts only as Presence, not Dahan) but having the Incarna directly on the board and still subject to Sworn to Victory does help a lot to make the spirit feel even more human. Losing Manifestation of Power and Glory REALLY stings, and the innate power swap is a little underwhelming, but Call to Bloodshed for free is a nice consolation prize, and you'll get lots of little bits of chip damage by slinging your Incarna all over the place.

One thing I'm not completely sold on for Aspects is using them as "patches" for spirits that have generally underperformed. Shadows Flicker Like Flame has already had this problem with having far more aspects than any other Low complexity spirit, but now we have Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves (and later, Shroud of Silent Mist) having Aspects assigned to them almost purely to fix any issues they've had. It's a co-op game and the balance is still pretty tight across the board, I'm fine with just using spirits that are a little bit weaker if they're fun enough (and Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves and Shroud of Silent Mist are both an absolute blast).

I'm putting my favorite aspect in the first post and you can't stop me. The base ruleset for Shifting Memory of Ages is already really fun for letting you immediately gun for bighuge Major powers, and this one still has a bit of flexibility in that regard with the bonus elements it starts play with. Having Element markers go from hitting thresholds to saucing up your powers with metamagic effects on a case-by-case basis is awexome as hell I love it. Do note that the effect you're attempting to amplify must already be something the power does. So, for example, if you're using Call of the Dahan Ways, you can ONLY use Air or Moon.

Two aspects in the set even include alternate unique powers for the spirit in question! This set shifts A Spread of Rampant Green from Moon to Sun, and gives it the ability to synergize with and generate Wilds tokens. It obviously makes for a much stronger control game that keeps the Invaders from being able to safely establish basically anywhere, but losing Gift of Proliferation suuuuuuuucks. That power is like half the reason you even PLAY A Spread of Rampant Green!