Thanks! I'll keep that in mind!
Well Foote, I'd love to help crowd-source this issue, but I'm still here trying to be patient.
*runs off to check porch again*
Yep, still being patient.
Also being patient. In a particularly aggravating turn of events, my game was supposed to be delivered yesterday, only I used my work address, which isn't open on Saturdays. So now I have to wait until Monday, and pray that the failed delivery didn't screw it up in their system.
Earth and Lightning are probably one of my favorite combos I’ve found. With 3 natural defense in Earth’s sacred sites and the ability to gather Dahan and explorers, if done right can lead to the invaders attacking your defense and the Dahan wiping out the invaders. Then Lightning picks off the stragglers left behind and whatever is too big to risk with a sacred site. Basically it’s a roving caravan of maruading Dahan protected by the earth itself with backup from some lightning.
I beat the lvl 3 first adversary!
Oceans and Lightning.
I gotta say, oceans is brutal strong. Sure it can't touch the inlands for the most part, but the entire island coast was just dominated from the start and really eased the pressure that normally comes from stage 2 escalations (yeah just put those towns on the coast and imma eat them no problem).
Lightning was very useful, not only for the building control, but it's reach across the island was amazing for me. Not only that, but lightnings ability to speed up the slow and overly strong ocean powers put me in control early in the game.
The early 3rd stage was painful this game. I had a stage 1 jungle followed by a mountain/jungle stage 3 into a jungle stage 2. In the far corner of the island was a jungle that ended up having 2 cities 2 towns and 3 explorers. The blight flipped the card to unhealthy side and we were on the clock there as blight was gonna be a huge issue. But luckily ocean grabbed a major power with a huge reach, defense, and a devolve mechanic for cities. That plus lightning picked up the major power that turns blight and adjacent blight into a damage bomb basically saved the game as that area was gonna cost us the game from a massive cascade.
ultimatly we won the game through fear stage two win condition of no buildings as we were able to pick off (and devolve) the few remaining towns before the invader phase where we would have lost by blight.
Im freakin loving this game.
Awesome! That triple-whammy on terrains is a hard one to overcome, but sounds like you did it fine.
Oceans is particularly strong against Brandenburg-Prussia, for the reason you mentioned--I noticed that myself recently. The escalation effect of England, for instance, is much worse, since most likely the land with the most buildings will be well inland.
This thread is just making me want to play this game. D: Hopefully I'll be able to find it if I ever get Spirit Island, lots of great strategy here!
For Adversaries, Is it almost necessary to bring spirits that excel in building destruction? Oceans and lightning are some of the best with straight up town/city destruction in their Kit.
How does someone play something like shadow and or river and not get overrun by blight from ravages
like wildfire I may need to spend more time to learn them and characters like ocean just fit my play style better so they are easier to grasp.
There are a lot of different strategies that you can use. Spirits like Ocrean and Lightning are good at dealing with towns and cities, once the Invaders are already somewhat established.
River, which is more pushing focused, can move explorers and towns around so that the invaders never even get to build new towns and cities. It's generally a less expensive way to deal with threats further in the future, but it also means that you aren't generating much fear by destroying buildings, so you'll have to find other ways to scare the invaders away (Shadows is obviously good at this).
Different Adversaries are very different, and require very different strategies. Brandenburg-Prussia isn't as focused on buildings as, say, England; denying exploration or killing explorers before they build can be quite effective against the Prussians. (One tip: getting one damage on a slow phase may seem weak. But that's enough to kill an Explorer. You don't know where the Explorers will pop up, but you do know that they will pop up somewhere.)
… characters like ocean just fit my play style better so they are easier to grasp.
It is definitely true that certain spirits fit certain play styles better!
Prussia is just really fast. Everything they do is just an uptick in speed from the base game. Preventing builds is good and all, but how do you deal with the blight cascade from secure strongholds when you finally get into the 2nd ravage and the early stage 3 invade double whammy with shadow or river?
You need to clear out those strongholds before they get in to the 2nd ravage…
Right. How do you do that with shadow or river?
Shadow has a card to either reduce a city to town or a town to explorer. The most effective found though early game is to gather many Dahan huts right in that stronghold the gather 4 Dahan cards is very good for this and will cause fear if used properly and then play the extremely effective card that denies damage on Dahans. 4 Dahan's hut = 8 damage cleans up very nicely and the whole any range as long as a smurf house is there makes it extra scary as you can pull that off right in your partner's land. The innate Fast gather 1 explorer also steals a build phase if used properly. At some point you might need some direct damage but I also was lucky enough to find a defense 10 that cost 1 as my first extra power that game so could do either one death trap per turn or 2 death traps in a turn River also helped eith those strats by concentrating invaders and Dahans but in the nd pulled out the major power big guns.
@Foote
Have you played with any of the expansion stuff yet (Events, tokens, etc)?
i have not yet. There's so much to dig into in the base box alone that I haven't even considered adding the expansion yet on top of it. Reading through the content, the expansion is rather large for how small the box is.
I will get there eventually though!
had my first game with England at lvl2 today. Lots of buildings. Using both Green and Speaker I was able to secure a comfortable fear1 win right before stage 3 exploration came up. Speaker has some great internal combo bombs and, for the second time, got the major power of dahan wings which might be the best power it can pull. Green was its usual resilient self offering a lot of control where I needed it.
That's a good call! Once you do want to add it, I suggest playing a basic game (no Adversary) with spirits you already know, but add the Event cards + tokens. Then, step it up into the new spirits, and then finally add an adversary back in.
FWIW, Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds from the expansion is my favorite spirit :)
Personally, I always like having at least a Level 0 adversary (flag effect). The invader's growth curve is just a bit too flat otherwise.
The design philosophy with those escalation effects was to have, per board, two areas of threat at stage I, three areas of threat at stage II, and four areas of threat at stage III.
The Trees and Stones Speak of War is pretty clutch too, though it would be better if it had +Air.
I am liking Thunderspeaker. But yet to win a game with it.
After getting used to the rhythm I been winning my game. It didn't help that we used Major powers wrong. One day I will get all the rules right.