|
Tekopo posted:Lure of the Deep Wilderness My only addition would be that some boards are marginally better than others for Lure, especially in a single-player game. Don't have my game out, though, so I'll have to leave it as an exercise to the reader. As to the question of Ocean/Lure, I've only played River in a three-way game, never seen a pure two-player game. I think my presence was a lot more critical for Ocean than for Lure, but Ocean was a less experienced player who had never played the spirit before (neither had Lure, but honestly the one drawback of Lure is it's really easy to play). I think they'd be fine together in a game; Lure would just have to pick up a lot of pushing minors or (more likely) set up two mosh pits (which is what I've always called them too).
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 07:29 |
|
|
Tekopo posted:I really want to try Ocean paired with Lure, but yeah, honestly I think pairing Lure with a pusher spirit like Finder or BoDaN makes the combo a lot stronger. I almost feel like Lure and Ocean almost compete in a way and aren't as strong together as people think. Do people have experience with pairing Lure/Ocean? I posted this on the previous page ConfusedUs posted:My girlfriend and I play SI at least once a week. My favorite spirit is Ocean. Her favorite spirit is Lure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 17:04
|
|
|
Ah cool, thanks, must have missed it before.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 20:33
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:Lure of the Deep Wilderness Incredible write up, thanks a bunch for this. Lure Is definitely one of my fav spirits and is one that I push players to on a second or third play because of how well it synthesizes the themes and gameplay of spirit island. It also benefits from being open-ended - you can go top or bottom track fairly well with mean kermit, either going hard into your innates and plays or using your natural tendency to lump up invaders into something you can nuke from orbit with a big ol' major power. One thing that I want to talk about too with this spirit is how amazing Softly Beckon Ever Inward is. It's an absolute fucker of a card and is maybe the single most impactful thing any spirit can play in the opening turns of the game. Because of how the Gather ability works, this can solve three or four problems simultaneously - pulling an 2 explorers from two lands about to build, and two towns from two lands about to ravage. You can wind up solving every problem on your board at once and still benefitting a neighbor - it's hard to overstate how useful that is on the first three turns of the game. (Maybe the land you just pulled everything into turns up as an explorer next phase - that's ok! Because you're the frog, you can nuke that from orbit anyway, and ignore the spare explorers when defending!) The animal and Dahan gathers are nice too for getting your mosh pit started, but the invader manipulation is really what makes it shine. If you think about cards as problem solvng units - that is that each card should ideally solve a single land's issues, the value of Softly Beckon becomes really apparent. Most cards are capable of solving the problem of a building explorer or a ravaging town in one land. The rider effects of those powers or their ability to let you use an innate gives you an option for a second solution, so maybe with some spirits you're looking at 1.5 problems per card. But Softly at minimum solves two problems, and usually does more. The energy cost is a little high, but Lure's ability to get extra energy in the growth phase means you can always push into it if you need it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 21:47
|
|
|
Just won a game (England 2) (Difficulty 4)(Sun Bright) on the back of an edge case that I thought worth mentioning. If fear cards cause you to earn a fear card, the newly earned fear card resolves during the same invader phase, at the bottom of the stack. I triggered Level 4 innate alongside Tempest of Leaves and Branches to kill off two of the four remaining cities, knowing four lands were about to ravage with one blight left on the card. Terror Level 3 so I figured, get rid of as many cities as possible and hope against hope Fear could handle the rest. Drew Scapegoats first which earned the next fear card. Isolation took care of a city. And Fear of the Unseen, just earned, took care of the final city. Skin of my teeth to say the drat least. What a game. I went full bottom track Sun Bright, taking one top track early on for Tempest. One thing you should definitely not do is ignore the special rule, like I did, for the entire game. Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Apr 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 22:44
|
|
|
Poopy Palpy posted:The difficulty it adds because of the tempo changes sounds cool. The difficulty it adds by being completely illegible less so. I guess we never found it illegible, but we started with the thematic board and never really tried the Eurogame board. Pretty easy: Mountains = Mountains Yellow = Sands Green with No Trees = Wetlands Green with Trees = Jungles I know people who don't play it complain about it a lot but I feel like in the actual games it rarely ever comes up as "What is this??????" It is also nice because it starts the game with some animals, diseases, etc on the board which make things a lot more fun with Spirits and powers and such. We never really try to meta-game it with starting positions but it is cool to start somewhere near a lot of animals and then lucky-draw some animal-based minor power that you would normally just ignore. It also just feels more like a real island in that the geography flows more correctly and you have big mountain ranges. Spirits that have a home in certain biomes are a lot more interesting because you spread into neighboring boards a lot more naturally. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Apr 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 08:53
|
|
|
Perry Mason Jar posted:You throw newbies into a Difficulty 8/9 game? Yeah! We figure we're meant to lose the first game anyway. Then if we lose we'll just start over again and if we got utterly smashed I can lower the difficulty, but we always use Thematic Board and at least an Adversary Level 2. The first co-op game I ever played was Space Alert so maybe that broke our brains in a certain way but we think losing is fun. We do the same with most of those sorts of games, though. Dead of Winter is Hard-Mode Main Objectives only, Twilight Imperium is 14 points, etc. I think getting chucked into the deep end can actually be helpful for some people because it feels like things matter. I had learned a few co-op games at another guy's house who just did everything as easy and simple as possible and it felt like I was getting babysat. I suppose it's the difference between a DM who fudges the dice to make sure you prevail and the one who happily cackles and lets you get your head bit off at Session 1 to teach you how the game works. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Apr 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 08:57
|
|
|
Mr. Grapes! posted:
The balanced boards start the game with diseases in the cities and beasts in the lowest numbered land without any icons!
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 12:42
|
|
|
I dont have horizons, but i just looked at the sun-bright board and realized how good pure bottom track is. You could probably get Majors without having to go top track more than once. Bottom track will be more consistent, I assume, since there are going to be a lot of useless majors for SBW, but still. e: softly beckon is how you get away with playing only one card on turn one and lose nothing much. Amazing card. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Apr 7, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 22:28
|
|
|
Did someone say sun?
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
Played my first game with B&C (ended up grabbing it over JE for now, $25 from Amazon (I know) with free shipping is as good a price as I'll find for it anytime soon) and yeah people weren't lying when they said "core game is amazing but get an expansion ASAP"! It seriously adds so much dynamism and breathes so much life into the island. I can definitely see how B&C was always intended (though I like that it was split off). Strife especially altered the way I approached the game, at least on this play-through. Took Sharp Fangs and my brother grabbed Ocean's, for the third time in a row. It's funny how he's been OTP and I basically refuse to play a spirit twice in a row. I've definitely never finished a game with that much presence on my tracks! I really like the stalking, hiding, ambushing feel of the spirit - I think they nailed it. Initially I was looking to play Keeper but, sheesh, just reading the spirit you're like okay this is... overtuned. I didn't want to be so powerful in a low difficulty (2) game. I'm pumping our next game up to a 4 minimum, he's a natural and there's no need for training wheels at all anymore. This game was a stress free Terror 3 victory affair. Boy lit up like a Christmas tree when he had had the elements for a kicked Cast Down into the Briny Deep, practically jumping up and down after wiping his board lmao. Dahan fight back against a strifed city and a strifed town to destroy final city on next Ravage.  Fun!
Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Apr 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 00:55
|
|
|
Oh yeah, Keeper is one of the strongest in the game. It's up there with Rampant Green. Team plant is outrageous, by the way, if you ever want a pairing for the highest difficulties, although it sounds like your teammate is already picked out for you. I usually rotate between all the spirits like you do, but there was a period where I played nothing but Starlight Seeks Its Form. Sharp Fangs has never clicked with me but it's one of the better spirits and I like the way you're constantly spalling off beast tokens so they can wander off and eat white people. It has a really interesting relationship with the event deck, sort of like Thunderspeaker does, when you get around to trying that. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Apr 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 07:07
|
|
|
Oh we played with the Events deck right away! I think beast only attacked, with it mattering, once. But that was really on me, as I should've had much more beast tokens down by then. I know I played Fangs very suboptimally, I've been turning it over in my mind strategically for next play through. I feel if you don't use your first innate power every turn (and I didn't) then you're almost certainly playing suboptimally.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 15:15
|
|
|
Played a 3-player game against France as Bringer, along with Ocean and Thunderspeaker. So, none of us leaned into beasts at all and our three beasts just kind of lay where they started. But for some reason, mine (never theirs) was always in the right place to kill things from beast events. I think it ate 6 explorers and two towns. We named it "Godzilla". We just narrowly avoided "blighted island", which was good, because the blighted island effect was "kill 1 beast on each board".
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 17:15
|
|
|
I probably don’t play it well, but Sharp Fangs always feels like it relies on drawing a proportional amount of beast events. Without fail, whenever I play it, we only get disease/strife events. Other than that, building a small doomstack of animals and stampeding a city is always very fun
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 17:18
|
|
|
Sharp Fangs has it kind of rough, the B&C minor deck is not very kind to it. Token powers and events are a little bit undertuned in B&C as the dev was wary of giving them too much value, and there are no 0-cost plant+animal powers other than one of your uniques, which makes bottom track very taxing on your energy. A lot of experienced Fangs players preferred to lean on the top track instead; the top track elements mean that after a few turns you only ever need 1 plant and 1 animal to hit your main innate, letting you play off-element majors using your burst energy growth while still doing your main thing just as consistently (or more!) than the bottom track. Jagged Earth finally adds a 0-cost plant+animal minor and multiple blight manipulation plant+animal cards in the minors deck, as well as a ton of great defensive animal element cards and also Blood Draws Predators which is better than a lot of majors for you. With the JE cards in the mix Sharp Fangs absolutely fucks whether you're going for top track majors or bottom track minor spam.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
If the event deck feels unkind to Fangs, it's also an interesting spirit with no events since beast tokens become deterministic. I have trouble doing without the events though. I want events. Just thought of something. Switching the fear deck to a similar non randomized system could be really interesting for Shroud, which the fear deck can absolutely gently caress over if the game wants. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Apr 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 17:33
|
|
|
Rules question: so JE adds a rule to discard the top event in the first invader phase, without resolving the event. I don't think this rule is in B&C. I was skipping the event but not discarding the top card, just a preference. But it actually makes a difference for France Level 2 with the Event card setup... is France balanced around discarding the top event card or not?
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 19:59
|
|
|
Perry Mason Jar posted:Rules question: so JE adds a rule to discard the top event in the first invader phase, without resolving the event. I don't think this rule is in B&C. I was skipping the event but not discarding the top card, just a preference. But it actually makes a difference for France Level 2 with the Event card setup... is France balanced around discarding the top event card or not? edit: nm, misread the question, listen to this guy V V V the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Apr 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 20:05
|
|
|
If you're skipping the event entirely just put France's card one higher in the deck, it's meant to happen on a specific turn.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 20:08
|
|
God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
|
I get that, it's just unclear whether JE is adding something that mitigates this change because it's also JE that adds the rule. That is, is it balanced with just B&C - is it errata or expansion-specific? The B&C rulebook also doesn’t say to skip events on the first invader phase, but it feels like errata so I went with it. Skipping versus discarding changes things for France but, should I be doing neither? Both? If I'm only playing with B&C? Just demolished France Level 2 with Keeper (on second try, to be fair) (and everything going in my favor... lol) so maybe I should favor just sticking to the vanilla B&C rules and not skip first invader event at all? Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Apr 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:04
|
|
|
Perry Mason Jar posted:I get that, it's just unclear whether JE is adding something that mitigates this change because it's also JE that adds the rule. That is, is it balanced with just B&C - is it errata or expansion-specific? The first turn event can be extremely swingy, so they decided that the game is better without it. The errata would have been "skip the event the first round" were it not for France. If you skip the event the first round, Slave Rebellion comes up later than it should. Rather than errata both the event draw and France, the errata for the event draw was done in a way that would not change the event timing for France.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:15
|
|
|
Doing an event on the first turn can be incredibly swingy, discarding/skipping it is just to make the game a bit more consistent. No reason for it to be specific to JE. Like adding an extra blight to the card it's just a rule change that made sense.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:15
|
|
|
Perry Mason Jar posted:I get that, it's just unclear whether JE is adding something that mitigates this change because it's also JE that adds the rule. That is, is it balanced with just B&C - is it errata or expansion-specific? The JE rule is written specifically to keep France's event card in the same place as the B&C rule (also, if you discard the top event on turn 1 then you're more likely to remember to do the event on turn 2 than if you just skip it altogether, so it helps you practice good habits.) If you don't touch the event deck at all turn 1 and didn't adjust the France event manually to compensate, at that point you're just houseruling. You can play B&C with or without the updated rule. It doesn't necessarily make things easier or harder, just less random--the newer rule is technically a little easier overall as there are more ways for a turn 1 event to go catastrophically wrong than for them to go catastrophically right, but it's still possible for the invaders to just get absolutely destroyed by the event and make the game trivial. Most of the time it's not going to be a huge deal one way or another if you play the turn 1 event though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:17
|
|
|
Exactly the replies I was looking for, thanks so much!
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
I like to discard the card because it slightly narrows down the chances of drawing events I hate and gives me mildly useful info. I've made decisions based on this or that event I absolutely knew wasn't in the deck, like years of little rain or the one about missionaries. Then again, B&C still has strange madness among the beasts and a much smaller deck, so I could see not wanting to do it when you're playing Fangs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 01:03
|
|
|
I believe Strange Madness is one of the events that the designer recommends removing from the event deck for being too swingy overall. Same with the one that nukes coastal invader cities since drawing that on the first two or three turns can trivialize the game in the other direction. I think the last event he recommended removing from B&C was Outpaced.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 03:45
|
|
|
I can remove Outpaced? Oh hell yeah, that one is annoying.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 04:32
|
|
|
Gave Mists another try in a 3 player game against Scotland 6 and it went super well. One of the other players was ocean and I got tidal boon a couple times which really helped, I wasn't so dependent on drawing zero cost powers with the right element. We kept the island from blighting for a really long time while towns steadily built up, and I got to wipe out a whole bunch of them at once a few turns in a row, which was great. It was still fairly close in the end, on the second last turn we got an unfortunate event that caused us to add something like eight blight instead of two. We won a fear victory right afterwards with only 2 blight left on the card.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 08:43
|
|
|
Awesome! I'm always pumped to hear about mist wins. It tacks that Tidal Boon helped a lot - in multiplayer scenarios I think that mist really benefits from just a touch of support early game. Keep in mind that it can return the favor with the card that let's you gather other spirits' presence. The clause in that card about moving presence when it would be removed can let you cheese certain recurring blight effects or event cards.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 09:28
|
|
|
Are y'all just playing with your homies? I'd like to get some more games in, either on the Steam App or TTS, but I don't have too many friends with both time and interest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:23
|
|
|
I play a ton solo, physical version. I taught it to exactly one other person who comes over and plays every once in a while. I also go to a FLGS BGN weekly (today!) and about half of them have heard of and enjoy Spirit Island. I've never played it there though cause I'd rather try out something new, but I could. TTS goon games sound fun though! Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Apr 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:29
|
|
|
The two games where I have tried to teach have been disasters, running so long that people had to leave before we hit the point in the game where it starts to feel good. I asked the gaming group that I haven't been able to make it to in three years if there had been any Spirit Island play and it sounded like it didn't make much of a splash with them. So, I've made peace with the likelihood that it might just be a solo game for me. It's a very good solo game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:42
|
|
|
Mostly I play on TTS with friends, or on my yearly boardgaming country side retreats. This year we are going to what I've been told is a polder in the netherlands.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:45
|
|
|
I have a local friend who works early morning shifts and hates learning new games at the weekly game night because it takes so long for more complex games that he prefers. We started playing exclusively Spirit Island like 2 months ago because he can get there early to set up, finish a game or two in 2-3hr, and he can be home without losing too much sleep. Also that campaign I linked is fine, it started out pretty normal so no comment on scenario design. It did get us to try a level 6 Prussia for the first time with some minor homebrew (had to sac 2 presence 4 times before you could win normally, but got a perma defend 3 wherever you did it) and we came down to the last invader card which was a lose condition I’d never really had to consider before! The mix of phase 2/3 cards can be brutal when you get the same region drawn multiple times, but also dahan + explorer takes care of itself neatly once you’ve cleared a spot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 15:53
|
|
|
Good lord I forgot about adjacency rules for Explore  I've been exploring into every land no matter what for the last I don't know two months. Oh noooooEdit: it was Distant Exploration that alerted me to the rule, which I remembered back in my first few games and quickly forgot about, playing it wrong ever since. Excited to play the correct way LMAO Perry Mason Jar fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Apr 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2023 22:44
|
|
|
Played a game of Spirit Island with the newest entry-level spirits and we bumped the difficulty down after getting our asses handed to us and causing a new player to burst out crying at it all. I took Eyes Watch From the Trees, a defender/fear spirit that draws in Dahan when you add defence to a land. It's a fun little engine, and we went up against the Hasbergs. I got on top of my board early on by defending up constantly,. drawing in Dahan, who in turn pummel the invaders to bits. It was nice dunking on the game after having a rough run of games.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 07:48
|
|
|
I'd play the hell out of some steam app SI goon games. I have never played Mist with another human let alone two, and I'm curious how that looks. Not possible on the steam app, I'm just saying. The support would be amazing but it feels like it'd dilute Mist's fear card income?
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 19:15
|
|
|
Playing Mists with other people is a long session of reminding them to please not come in and destroy your damaged settlers that you're cultivating for fear.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2023 19:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 07:29 |
|
|
This game is so drat good and really captures the ' how the hell can we win at this' to 'oh poo poo we're about to win at this' flow, though my partner always plays at nearly the highest difficulty levels and I have to convince them to slum it with me in level 2 or something'. I do wish the steam version was better and fuller as can't always play in person and don't like to rely too much on TTS
|
|
#
?
Apr 13, 2023 02:44
|
|
