What Spirit Islands are you comboing?

Today was like the breakthrough day. My spouse and I blew off our afternoon of work and played Spirit Island 3 times in a row, we only meant to play once but my spouse wanted to keep playing. It was so good! I added the expansion sans events in the first game and then we took of the training wheels on game two and went without the extra growth before the start of the game, still did well and won all three games.

The expansion is *great* and I haven't even used the events---I don't think my spouse would like it because the lack of randomness in execution is one of her great pleasures in gaming (e.g. setting up combos and watching them execute). Cannot recommend Branch and Claw enough, the token additions are pitch perfect.

My spouse has basically found "her" Spirit. She loves the wildland spirit in the expansion that bumps Dahan out of the way and creates the wilds that prevent exploration everywhere it goes. The amount of energy that spirit produces is just like out of this world if you can get your powers working to get wilds out there. I tried the Ocean twice and ended with a game of the River. I *love* playing the Ocean. Getting resources from kills is a blast and figuring out how to push everyone to the coast is a good point of cooperation. We found that the Wild spirit and the Ocean are a really, really good combinations---the Wild Spirit focuses on slowly creating a wild wall well inland and pushing out while the Ocean controls the coasts and tries to pull powers that gather from inland so it can get to them. Nice complementary stuff. Have either of you guys got any thoughts on the Wild spirit? We found it almost overpowered in our first three plays with it. But I can see where if you can't get the wild out there quickly it's really hard to spread presence except with the fourth spread option which could be difficult (can't spread to blighted land).

I'll keep Sweden in mind. We are moving toward starting to experiment with all of the different options, still playing very generic in general. Might add a blight card and/or a low level colonial power next.

Anyway, overall, what a game.

I told MB that I snagged his copy plus Branch and Claw mostly because of how you'd been singing its praises, Gary. Hoping to find out over the weekend how much fun you two have been having.

Unless you guys are expert gamers skillwise to start, definitely play with the additional growth before the start of the game for a few games! It let us get into the real meat of the game, which is all of the different powers going off along with elements, even when we weren't very good.

Hope you enjoy it!

Jackwraith wrote: I told MB that I snagged his copy plus Branch and Claw mostly because of how you'd been singing its praises, Gary. Hoping to find out over the weekend how much fun you two have been having.

Also, FYI, when you get it check the printing number. If it's 4th or 5th edition of the base and 3rd of branch and claw, they'll send you some errata fixes (very minor) for one dollar with free shipping. It's a pretty damn cool thing of them to do. See here:

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2086554/err...now-available/page/4

Yeah, GTG are pretty cool all over. They can be somewhat erratic at times but they always see things right, really good ethical business. I also admire how diversity and representation were such important things for them even seven or eight years ago before it became such a talking point, really admirable.

Anyhoo, Spirit Island, I definitely recommend using blight cards even from the start, they add a fun element. If you are worried about unpredictability in the game you can always look at what the blight side is before you play so you know what will happen if you hit the threshold. Same for the events, you can always put the deck face up so you know what is coming next. There really isn’t a wrong way to play the game if it suits you one way or the other.

I’ve always struggled with Keeper of the Wilds for just the reason you mention, I seem to get locked in to a few lands where I’m then ineffective. I’m going to try it next time we play and see if I can do better!

I am guessing with Keeper the getting locked in thing really hits home as you get to higher levels of difficulty. We're now basically at 0. Might be the case that Keeper is especially powerful at low levels.

Maybe. It's more likely that I'm just a muppet with this particular spirit and cannot parse how to make it work. Actually I think it might be down to playstyle as I usually go a bit fast and loose and don't worry too much about the invaders ravaging or creating strongholds, and Wilds does not like either busy boards or blighted land. So I'm naturally drawn to spirits like Thunderspeaker, Sharp Fangs, Ocean, Serpent, all of whom are either long term pay-off or roving warriors in nature.

Gary Sax wrote: Also, FYI, when you get it check the printing number. If it's 4th or 5th edition of the base and 3rd of branch and claw, they'll send you some errata fixes (very minor) for one dollar with free shipping.

Got a 3rd printing of the base. Not sure what printing of B&C because I don't have the box. Do you know what I should be looking for in the expansion? I poked around the BGG page for it and didn't see anything obvious.

No idea what the specific problems are or how you would know which B&C version it is... The problems are 100% not a big deal, I think GTG is doing something completely unnecessary by sending out this errata pack on their dime. We've played the "wrong" components 10 times and did not noticed anything wrong except I noticed a misspelling on one of the boards (the rock guy, I think?).

I can take a look at what the branch and claw changes are when I get the errata pack in a couple weeks. I'll report back and you can look at your components to see if you have those problems.

Here is the link to the official errata page: querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Errata

A couple of the cards have game-altering errata which is why they put together that pack. Jackwraith, it sounds like you almost certainly have the second or third printing of Branch & Claw so will probably need to get one of those packs at some point.

Played a quick game today. Introduced blight cards. So we're now officially at certified level 0 and consistently kicking its ass.

The mentality/personality mesh of the powers is as important as mezike mentioned. My spouse took the rock guy and I could just see her bristling at how that power has limited card play options and does most of its work early with its presence placement defense fronting a Dahan wall.

mezike wrote: Here is the link to the official errata page: querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Errata

A couple of the cards have game-altering errata which is why they put together that pack. Jackwraith, it sounds like you almost certainly have the second or third printing of Branch & Claw so will probably need to get one of those packs at some point.

Looks like I have a 1st or 4th(?) printing of B&C, because I ran through all of the examples and didn't find any problems.

Pretty sure that is a 2nd or 3rd printing Mark- I got it not that long ago, and it was after a restock.

My assumption is purely based on how quickly it kept selling out, so i’d be really surprised if the two came from different print runs if they were bought together. But yeah it’s just an assumption, and you know what that means.

Got in two games yesterday at three players, which is not my norm. Both really fun. Had the Serpent as an ally, and he just makes others better. He is really great at making some spirits really strong early. First game he buffed lightning, Getting the fire symbol from elsewhere to trigger Lightning's innate while doing the double presence play is really a big deal. Also the extra card helps Lightning as well.

Second game I played Bringer with serpent and thunderspeaker. lots of symbol shares. Serpent just makes some spirits hum. Bringer helped Serpent get the symbols needed to really shine as well.