What Spirit Islands are you comboing?

Cheers on game 101!

I never counted where we are at in plays. But we have a lot. It’s just suck a good game.

That one game has spiraled. The girlfriend and I knocked out two last night.

She played River in both and I did one as Volcano and the second as Many Minds. This was my first game as Many Minds after the official release. I played a play test / prerelease version that still had some damage. I knew going in that I would not have much damage.

First game went a little ugly. Island blighted. We then did ok. Volcano is really cool. I just wish I was a little better at him. Will take some more plays for that to be true. I got some pretty cool majors. Lots of invaders exploded in Volcanic retribution. The Obsidian Forest major is pretty amazing with extra range.

I played much better as Many Minds. Part of that is lots of time on Thunderspeaker. Defense is also the easiest of innate powers to have. It makes your decision tree much simpler. I feel like our card draws were better this game too.

Gonna play Starlight tonight. Excited to be digging back in.

I love Many Minds but you have to constantly be thinking about where the late game damage is going to come from, either by grabbing another board's dahan or getting other damage dealing powers.

Obsidian forest is draw droppingly good. iirc it's only 3-4 energy too.

I was left a little non-plussed by Volcano in our most recent play. While I recognize its potential for interesting turns and I did have a couple, what bugged me was the difficulty in assisting other areas of the island other than my own board (which was routinely scoured clean.) So much of what it does depends on destroying presence that it feels less like you're building up to something massive and more like you have one (ahem) explosive turn for every three that go by where you're mostly: "Well, I can remove the two explorers in my corner but, other than that, I'm just placing presence 4 spaces away." It certainly could just be a practice thing.

For sure Volcano is weird with range. But with 3 presence on a well placed mountain you should be able to hit most if not all the board with a lot of powers.

I feel like there are a few spirits that just feel meh at low difficulty. I think Volcano may suffer from that. Volcano incrementally increases damage in what is ideal your kill zone mountain. Where as someone like Thunderspeaker just kills and moves on.

The other half may be who you are teamed up with. You may have a much more satisfying game paired with Keeper or River who shovel things into your kill some than with say Lightning. I like some heavy kill pairings but not sure I would enjoy a heavy damage partner as Volcano.

All this chatter about Volcano is making me rethink playing Starlight. May just give Volcano another play.

So played as Volcano again paired with River. I think I played much better. This is a team with some teeth. They play off each other pretty well. The extra energy thrown Volcanos way can be pretty huge. It kept me swimming in power cards. And a little extra energy for River from Volcano helps a lot too. Let’s River aggressively go bottom track and just hard spam cards.

Badlands on the coast make Rivers inmate rank 2 and unique 2 damage on the coast power card champs. As well as Rivers ability to just shovel stuff into Volcano’s kill zones.

There may well be better team mates for Volcano but River is pretty strong.

My play improved too. One thing I did was only play presence into one mountain on each board. Hitting that 3 presence stack is really a big deal. It can’t be understated how important that +1 range is.

One other thing I found myself doing a lot of was one presence eruptions. That’s enough to kill a village and a explorer in your starting mountain because of the badland. You could of course let it go and then kill more stuff. We were playing at low difficulty and I spoke to that in my previous post. The one presence eruption did a lot of work though.

I feel like I am getting a better grasp of Volcano and they are a ton of fun. It’s a very different spirit than anything else and that takes a lot of adjustment. It sure did for me.

Not sure who I plan to play next. I will likely get in another game tonight. May do Starlight. I have one spirit left to play. Which is The time spirit. I can’t quite recall the name. They will take some effort to play as well.

I went with Starlight. Teamed up with River. I had one of those opening minor power draws that set me up for success and dictated my path for the game. Drew into defend 2 everywhere I have presence. And with that I was off down a path of defense by earth elements and presence movement. I eventually took 2 fire elements to get some damage running.

With Starlight covering defense River went nuts on killing things. Super fun game. Go with the flow Starlight is pretty relaxing. Still a little complicated. It not bad at all. I do have a hard time not grabbing earth elements though as defend 5 every turn is just flat out amazing.

I don't think Starlight is that complicated because it's fundamentally a guided experience via draws. The complexity I find overwhelming is something like keeper of unseen paths or whatever which I will never, ever play. Way too many options and deeply entangled in other people's decisions in a way I find drags out Spirit Island unpleasantly. ymmv of course.

Yeah. That’s pretty spot on for Starlight. I think you have a few relevant decisions about how you reclaim and if you go for lots of card plays or damage. It that’s mostly small fry.

Keeper is a lot. It’s so heavily reliant on its teammate that it’s pretty weird. But I can for sure see how it could be an unfun experience. I think keeper is super fun with Lure, Volcano, and Forbidden Wilds. It can be a lot for others. They usually have damage to spare.

Keeper is for sure one of those that can just rub you wrong. Bringer is the same way in that regard.

Think my next game will be playing a spirit whose name I am completely blanking on but has the randomness of Let’s see what happens and all that. I’m just feeling that way today.

So played as Grinning Trickster. How could I forget that. Just a joy to pilot. It’s a great spirit that can do some nuts stuff. I think tricker is not flashy. And I sorta underestimate how good they are. It’s a sum of parts thing.

I drew a minor that targets another spirit letting them repeat their lowest cost power by paying for it again and you get to do the same. It was absolute bananas. I used it for Impersonate Authority and landed 4 strife on the board. Just sick filthy good fun. And that carried us.

Psyching my self up to give Fractured Days a try. It’s my last unplayed spirit. We will see if I stick to this or not.

Ended up going with Lure. Turns out Lure is still really really good. Paired up with Green.

In retrospect it may not be that odd a game for Lure. But I really only gained 2 power cards all game. With greens help I was about to get to the end of the energy track and I had 3 card plays. I was doing pretty bonkers stuff. Through an event we both had a bonus element for the game. I chose plant, and it let me hit 4 plant for my innate real easy. I had some crazy turns. Killed 8 explores in one power. Stuff like that. Lure is just so good. I never defended the whole game and kept my board clean and no blight placed. And that was with explore on the zone with a village turn one. It felt real strong.

May now be talking a few nights off from playing. It hope to get back to it soon.

Lure is really really powerful.

I feel there is a very broad learning curve that goes from “I have to deal damage” to “I have to prevent builds” to “I want to get the invaders exactly where I want them” and I wonder if Lure is a spirit whose estimation increases with experience.

Tried out Wildfire and Vengeance together a few days back and almost wiped ourselves out with blight placement (triple cascade at one point!) and presence destruction. Had the blight card that penalises you for playing 4+ cost powers but we were mostly able to dodge the impact because Wildfire had literally burned its board to the ground and Vengeance’s innates were steadily wiping out the rest.

I’ve never focussed so much on blight cleaning minors before though! Wildfire had gone heavy on destruction and not worked on cleaning up its own mess so there were points where we had to remove a blight just so that Wildfire could place presence without ending the game through a chained cascade. A fun spirit pair, although Wildfire’s blight didn’t help Vengeance quite as much as I thought it would because everybody was already dead and it wasn’t until late game that we really started to synergise.

Just musing on the conversation about Finder of Paths Unseen (I assume you don’t mean Keeper of the Wilderness because that is a great one). I agree completely that it slows down the game because it interferes so much with the board that it has to play in very tight synergy with the other spirits. It’s more than just saying “I can make you fast”, “I can make you repeat” or “I’ll handle that ravage/push that explorer” as it can totally throw another spirits turn sideways if the player isn’t clear on what they are doing and when. It’s too much hand-wringing for my taste but I wonder if it would be pretty cool in a double-handed solo, directly helping you to manipulate things to the advantage of your other spirit?

All the same, Finder generally stays at the bottom of the box for us along with Fractured Days and Trickster, the former being a step too far on complexity v. fun and the latter too random for our taste. Stone is also not getting much love, think I will try it again in our next play.

Few thoughts. I did likely cross Finder and Keeper. They would be a power duo for sure.

I was originally turned off of Trickster. Mainly because of Let’s see what happens. Now I just see it as a maybe something good happens and maybe I learn an awesome power card maybe not. The real fun in Trickster is Strife. Lots and lots of strife. And pretty great Dahan movement.

Finder is obviously no killing kicked to 11. More so even than Bringer. And that’s not for everyone for sure. But even more than Bringer you need your teammates to be onboard as you will be dumping crap for them to deal with. This can be a hard thing to do as a player and is not for everyone. As a huge Bringer fan this is a fun change every once in a while. As the girlfriend is major adverse I don’t tend to play Finder with her as you generally want a major to clear the mess Finder moves around the board.

We should probably have a bit of a chat about isolation. Don’t know that we have talked to much about it. I really like it. It can be a bit of a crapshoot though. It’s likely best on Downpour where you can blot put half the board. Or with Fracture and you recur invader cards. It is for sure the thing I have used the least.