Hi there. (Greetings and some musings)

Games Spirit Island
1

Hi. I finally got Spirit Island from the KS a couple days ago. I would like to give this game great use, but my options are limited (my FLGS ceased to exist a few months ago, and I live a bit far away from other prospective players (not plane distance, but not walking distance either). So I guess my main options would have to be solo or the classic "two player solo, what do you mean -- schizo?" stuff.

I have the full thing, 12 spirits, 4 adversaries, 8 scenarios (if I've counted correctly).

Anyway, first to see if I have things right, I'll do a mock train of thought. Game is about to start. I am Vital Strength of the Earth (I picked randomly among the low complexity spirits), on board B (again, random pick). I have a Sacred Site on b7, and a single presence on b8 as per setup. Initial exploration was on Mountains (more randomness).

First is growth: Option 1 seems useless because of reclaiming all my zero cards in the discard, but there is some consideration here for the long distance presence (which would mean I can put influence anywhere on my board, and in other boards if they exist). Second option gives me another power. I don't know how to feel about that. The only sensible option would be to put presence on b8, and I don't seem to particularly need a second sacred site there.

So we come to the right pack. This seems to be the best one for now. I get to add presence in a new spot. A good choice seems to be b4 for range. I also gain two energy, which is good, because my powers are quite expensive).

Now I can get that presence from the Energy track, or the Plays track. Energy seems better for me right now. Although maybe trying to get quickly to 2 card plays would be a sensible option, for Gift of Strength. So, three more energy (total 5) and one card play. We're expecting building in the Mountains, and Exploratioon somewhere else. My first thought is that b7 is taken care of itself with Earth's Vitality (though that is for next turn, this turn there is no ravage). I cannot trigger Gift of Strength with one play.

Guard the Healing Land can fix the blight on b4, but too passive, better next turn somewhere else. Pass. A Year of Perfect Stillness is a good option to stop the building on, say, b2. Rituals of destruction can destroy the newly built town in b7, so that's something. And draw of the fruitful Earth lets me move people somewhere, more useful when I've seen where the next explore is, but then I don't prevent a build, only a ravage.

I play A Year of Perfect Stillness and target b2. New town appears on b7, and some dudes appear somewhere else. I have two energy remaining.

Did I get this right? (Ruleswise. I may have made bad choices, but for now I'm concerned with playing right. Playing well comes next.)

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Next thing: I've read somewhere about a notation being somewhat developed. I love game notations, the problem with this game is that so many power names and fear cards and later events and all that don't lead too well to notation. It seems useful, but not really compact. We'll see. :)

My final question for now, (at least until I get some plays) is whether there's more adversaries / spirits to come, and if so, the only adversaries can come from the ones that have a flag on the map in the rulebook? (I am technically from a country that is in this map and has not an adversary yet, but on heart I am from a [s]region[/s] country that doesn't have a flag there. Political turmoil. It's not only for the 17th century.

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That's all for now. This seems to be quite the wall of text, sorry. I hope to learn a lot about this awesome game.

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Welcome to the forums (and Spirit Island)! I'm on my way out the door, but I'll take a look at this later and verify if someone else hasn't already.

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Welcome to the forums!

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I have found myself wishing the power cards were numbered more than once already.

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Welcome! And your play looks perfectly good, rules-wise.

The idea with the notation would be to spell out the card names, but abbreviate everything else. It could work, I'm planning to try to notate one game myself.

There has been thought about potential future expansions, but no announcements yet. Paul developed an alternate history specifically geared to having lots of potential colonial adversaries. I don't know whether the countries with flags are the exhaustive list of potential adversaries; it may be that some of the flags just didn't fit on the map. I'll have to let someone else speak to that.

6

Hopefully, that would come with colored disks/reminder tokens for two more colors and board pieces to be able to make the "canonical" island.

Edit: Was green avoided as one of the colors just due to color-blindness issues? I found it odd that green corners were used on the power cards for one of the progressions, but that green wasn't a matching option for presence disks.

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Is that a vote towards the contents of a hypothetical future expansion?

Edit: Was green avoided as one of the colors just due to color-blindness issues? I found it odd that green corners were used on the power cards for one of the progressions, but that green wasn't a matching option for presence disks.
Yes, that's exactly right. The color-blindness issues are a much smaller deal when sorting out power cards.

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That is exactly a request toward the (partial) contents of a hypothetical future expansion.

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Thanks everyone. So it seems I got the mechanics right, cool. Now what do you think is the best way to learn it? It's going to be a slow process... I am not able to setup this as much as I'd like it. :)

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Everyone has their own way. I worked my way through solo games with each spirit against level 0 adversaries using blight cards, adding events when I got to the two expansion spirits. Others quickly dove into two spirit games, or drilled down playing the spirits they struggled with. To each their own.

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Most of my games have been 4-player ones that have had a focus on the easy spirits, because we've almost always had at least one person learning the game. There's no one "right" way to do it.

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Generally speaking, Low Complexity spirits give you effects that are all upside (there's no wrong way to use them, just better and worse). Mid Complexity spirits give you tradeoffs (a misplay of some power or rule could actually hurt you, but probably not other players). And High Complexity spirits dramatically change the rules in a way that other players should at least be aware.

So with that in mind, it's fine to play most medium complexity spirits in games with new players. You don't have to play Low complexity just because they are. That said, I'd recommend not playing a token based spirit (Keeper or Sharp Fangs), just so you don't have to explain what the tokens do. And it's probably fine to play Serpent with new players because your support powers can help prop up new players when they make a mistake or otherwise fall behind in some way.

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I like that as a description, and we haven't busted out any expansion content yet (although that might happen before we add adversaries/scenarios). It's more than the new folks have taken the low-complexity spirits, and some of us stayed there voluntarily - but now we're open to letting the veteran players take whichever spirit they like.

14

I'd say if you want to just learn the game for yourself, grab one of the four low complexity spirits and play a few games without adversaries, scenarios, events, blight cards, ect.

 

Once you feel like you've got a handle on the rules for at least two of them, you should probably have a good idea where you want to expand from there. I went into more complex spirits, but kept solo for a long time, and I loved adding in the event deck and tokens. Started playing with those before I checked out adversaries and scenarios (though some of the scenarios might make for good learning games to).

 

 

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One more question. At the back of the power panels, the bars for Offense, Defense, and Fear are pretty clear, but what are Control and Utility?

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I believe control is the ability to push/gather Dahan and Invaders while Utility refers to abilities that give other spirits energy, extra powers, extra elements, etc.

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Control would be pushing and gathering, while utility is likely a catch-all for everything left over.  Stuff like card help, energy gain, and helping other spirits.