So I have been dieing to play this game for a long time and I didn't want to wait to learn it with friends, so to teach myself I fired up a few solo play throughs.
As per per the rulebook instructions I set up a solo, one spirit game with 1 island board, no blight board, and a low complex spirit with the power suggestions. I choose the river spirit because it looks badass. i didn't much mind how badly I lost the game, but seeing as how I just dove right in, I wanted to see how all the mechanics work.
so thinking I had a solid grasp on what to do, I reset up for a 2 spirit game. I kept the river spirit and added thunderspeaker because, again, it looked baddass. I lost again pretty miserably.
I was losing to blight. Both games I think I underestimated just how bad Ravage is and spent a lot of time trying to thwart the building.
i reset that same game again and won but it wasn't easy. Thunderspeaker got a major power that gave the natives wings and could basically mass teleport huge numbers to anywhere on the island. That felt extremely strong given the dahan focus of the spirit.
This game was was so much fun I continued to play two spirit games with everyone. I didn't lose a game after the first two and think I have a good handle on basic strategy though I really feel like I'm missing optimal play styles with some spirits.
River: I think out of all of them, river felt the weakest to me. Not just in game power, but in thematic connection. It's so strong for other spirits and this one left me wanting. Great synergy with Thunderspeaker though with its ability to create more dahan on the map.
thunderspeaker: fairly hard to play and understand at first, this spirit utilizes dahan unlike any other character and turns them into a major focus. Once I picked up on that i felt like I had a lot of control and defense on ravages.
Moss: this one I really didn't get to make good use of his special ability to thwart building and ravages, but it's ability to just have resilient presence everywhere while having reliable building chip damage is great. I struggled early since the first rounds where all in mountains and sands where it has a hard time getting presence in, but I felt like I was consistently able to do good things.
Nightmare: I thought this spirit would be incredibly hard to play as since it can't actually destroy invaders. But playing this spirit really taught me just how valuable cumulative fear effects are. I had so much energy and not enough ways to burn it I think I coulda played him better, but his ability to churn out fear while converting it to defense was crucial to victory.
Wildfire: I played this one twice to try and get a hang of it, and honestly I'm still at a massive loss. I never am really able to use of the better levels of his innate powers (don't have the elements) and trying to spread your precence while tightroping blight management was very hard. I always felt I was hamstrung by low card plays or low energy and reclaiming powers for your growth feels like you just slow your progress to a crawl. I would love some advice on how ppl play this spirit as it didn't come to me as easy as others.
Ocean: dude, I friggin looooooved this spirit. I had so much energy from drowning stuff I couldn't spend it all if I wanted to. It really needs help on the inland, but the superior control it has on anything coastal is so satisfying. I wasn't sure if other players could push invaders into the ocean or if you could only push from powers originating from the ocean spirit. I played that we could, but I'll admit this was not clear.
Serpent: the opitome of a super late game characters. I felt like i was just bearly tredding water needing to use the mass shield every turn since there was little else of value I could do. I played this with wildfire for a game so obviously spreading presence became a huge issue due to blighted land everywhere. I never really could get the innate powers working and am not sure how I could have gotten the elements to make that work. But as soon as your past the cross section of your track, that spirit just can't be stopped.