I played as Ocean's Hungry Grasp for the first time yesterday and absolutely loved it.
The biggest disadvantage for this spirit, probably, is its lack of reach, but that limitation allowed me to more easily and enjoyably consider my options. With a relatively limited number of lands I could target, it was easier to make decisions. I focused on adding minor powers, accepting limited reach, and was able to play the entire game with that relatively smaller and thus easier decision space.
And I _love_ getting the energy from the drowned invaders. I always had more energy than I needed! Plus I was able to trigger my innate powers early and often.
It helped incredibly that the other person I was playing with picked up a power that could target me and allow me to affect anything at an additional 2 range. That happened in the last couple of turns and by then there were only a few places on the board to deal with anyway, to the expansion of the decision space one might expect didn't really happen.
To go off on a tangent, though, I've started to notice that the games I'm playing tend to be won in terror level III by destroying the cities. The last few times the board has actually had quite a few invaders on it and lots of blight. I'm not sure how much I like this. It doesn't really feel like we've won so much as found a loophole. The board is still covered with invaders and blight. Perhaps I need in my mind to envision all of the invaders running away and the blight slowly being healed over time. Wins like this would be helped by a postlude in which I see the island become clear and cleansed.
Terror 3 no city wins I imagine the invaders start to flee to the cities for safety, and whe the cities fall, they no longer feel safe in towns or off on their own and either leave or go native eniugh that the Spirits don't care.
I always imagine some voodoo-esque religion arising out of Christianity and honoring the spirits.
It always enjoy making up that stuff after really intense games.
Perhaps I need in my mind to envision all of the invaders running away and the blight slowly being healed over time. Wins like this would be helped by a postlude in which I see the island become clear and cleansed.
I know some people who, after winning, like to immediately remove all remaining Invader pieces - and nothing else - to represent the remaining Invaders fleeing. (Which is thematically what those later Victory conditions represent.) There's usually a fair bit of Blight - you can tell there's been a war - but with nothing else to preoccupy them, the Spirits can clean that up with focused effort.
Personally, after a win, I mentally shift to seeing all the Towns/Cities as ghost towns being overgrown by the wilderness. :-)
I always imagine some voodoo-esque religion arising out of Christianity and honoring the spirits.
That can happen during game, too! (It's what the Fear card "Belief Takes Root" is meant to represent.)
The one friend I've got hooked to the game loves Ocean as well, but we've found that pushing powers are just sooo much more powerful with ocean in play.
Seriously, generally a push 1 can prevent a ravage or a build if you get an explorer, with ocean it destroys the towns and gives him energy. And the fear generation is enormous, as every drowned town or city is destroyed and generates fear.
He really wants me to combo Ocean with River someday, to truly elevate the "shove food in my mouth" game we end up with.
Ocean is kind of nuts… The first time my wife played it, she reached a point where she started complaining that she had nothing in reach to drown.
“Are you kidding?!” I replied. “That’s a good thing!”
I had a potentially even better Ocean game last night, too. I love how quickly and often Ocean can acquire new powers - I ended up with Gift of Power (which did a great job countering the Memory Fades Blight card) AND Tsunami AND the cleansing flood major power, I forget the name. I was awash in so many waters, moons, and earths that I regularly triggered all the major power thresholds and got to the highest level of Ocean Breaks the Shore.
Definitely one of the most powerful spirits…in its domain.
If she think's that's bad, the last game I played featured Ocean holding a Tsunami and having no decent targets for it because the board was so empty. There's nothing more disappointing than washing away 1 town and 3 explorers with one of the most powerful cards in the game.
Ocean, to me, has the best claim for most powerful spirit. It is dominant, with the downside being it can't reach inland. But the coast is the only place you can't secure, and there are 32 lands on the 4 player map, 7 lands are more than 1 push from the coast, meaning 78% of the map is a single push from its grasp. Ocean Breaks the Shore isn't hard to get tier 2 on, which means you can let invaders build on the coast and clean it up rather easily. Other spirits just have to be smart and shift focus inland.
Ocean loves major powers, but honestly is best served with ones that have good reach or support others, because your innates are your real might, and you can drown explorers with minor powers. Big damage majors normally aren't worth it, you need powers that let you help the battle inland.
I have a counter argument here, which is that Ocean is just the strongest spirit against less difficult invaders. At lower difficulty levels, invaders are much more likely to get coastal footholds than inland, which is much easier for Ocean to deal with. At higher difficulty (think 6/10 or higher), the invaders often entrench themselves inland, which is much, much harder for Ocean to deal with. So I wonder if this feeling about the strength of Ocean will continue as more people play harder games.
The game I want to try next is Bringer of Nightmares with Ocean. Scare the towns to jump into the ocean. Fear for the scare, fear and energy for the drowning!
I actually just tried the two together against Level 3 Prussia (with events). We were slaughtered the first game - the first three invader cards were Jungle, Mountain, and Jungle/Mountain, and our most inland spaces were both Jungles.
I dominated in the revenge match. The Invaders still made their way into the jungles, but the Dahan wiped then out and pretty quickly there were no more invaders left.
Bringer’s Dahan movement and defense are good enough to root out single cities as long as you don’t let things get too out of hand.
Oceans is so much fun to play and is so dominant in it's reach. I try not to play it because I need to get better with other spirits, but It clearly stood out from my very first play that it was going to be a fast favorite of mine.
Ocean's is really just a marvel of mechanical/thematical design. Even the way that presence goes through high/low tide periods of crashing to shore then retreating back through the nessesity of the growth options is just so immersive in a way that other spirits arn't. It's an incredibly satisfying experience.
Tried it last night. Accidentally let the invaders build a city in an inland land, so we were pretty much forced to go for the fear strategy. This was not a problem at all, given that both Ocean and Bringer can do tons of fear with just their innate power!
I played a solo game as Ocean's Hungry Grasp the other day, and it was really fun! However, I did pick up the +2 to your range power and kept going, "Yes, I can use Drown on inland lands! Oh, wait, coastal only." "Hey, I can use.... nope, still coastal only." "And then I can push.... wait, that's also coastal only" x.x It was driving me crazy! But then I picked up some major powers with range and used my giant stash of drowned invaders to crush everything.
The "Spend (X) health of invaders for an energy" ability is so amazing in a solo game. "Okay, I drowned a town and an invader with a cost 1 power card. That's three energy for me!" I think I ended with a barely advanced energy track (just enough for the first two elements) and a nearly fully advanced card plays track. I just had so much power.
Unfortunately my Dahan were at least two lands away, meaning that even if I could move them there it would have prevented me from doing pretty much anything else. Thankfully we were already well into Terror Level II and generating 1-2 fear cards per turn.
+2 to range is still very good for Ocean. It's no good on your starting cards, as noted, but you'll have a much easier time targetting with almost any other power.