Live streams and powers!
over 8 years ago – Fri, Oct 09, 2015 at 10:32:09 AM

Good afternoon! I don't have a story and strategy reveal for you today, but I do have some things that are just as exciting.

First of all, Eric is going to be doing a live stream of Spirit Island this Saturday! For this event, he intends to show more of the standard pace of the game. That means there won't be a lot of in-depth explanation, but rather the sort of game you'll see when you play at home. You can watch this on our Twitch channel starting at 10:30 AM Eastern time on Saturday, October 10th. There is general chat on Twitch, also, and they'll be attempting to answer questions there. If you can't make it for the live stream, Twitch does keep an archive for a while, and we'll be putting it on our YouTube channel soon after.

I also wanted to show a pretty significant aspect of Spirit Island: Power cards! Power cards are acquired through the game, and they allow you to tailor your Spirit's tactics and strategies to what is happening on the board.

Minor Powers require a relatively small amount of Energy to play and tend to have smaller or more localized effects. 

 Major Powers are the big guns. They have large effects, and they cost a little more to reflect that.

That's not a lot of detail, but it's definitely fun to show them off. Maybe take this weekend to see them in action, either on the live stream or by trying out the print-and-play!

Eric talks stretch goals and expansions
over 8 years ago – Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 12:16:29 PM

The main campaign page lists the $60K stretch goal as “All backers receive the Spirit Effects and Events Mini-Expansion! This contains new tokens and an Event Deck!”

You may wonder: what exactly is that?

It's more than you might think from the phrase "mini-expansion". From day 1, it's been the listed stretch goal I've been most excited about:

• It introduces four types of persistent effects to help drive off the Invaders: Beasts, Disease, Strife, and Wilds. These are the "new tokens" mentioned in the description; I'll go over what they do below.
• It nearly doubles the size of the Minor and Major Power decks. These are the decks from which Spirits learn new Powers. The core game has 36 Minor Powers and 22 Major Powers; this expansion adds another 31 Minors and 21 Majors. About half of the new Powers add or interact with the tokens mentioned above.
• It doubles the number of Fear Cards. Many of the new Fear cards interact with the tokens - panicked Invaders become afflicted with Strife, or flee from lands near Beasts.
• It adds another 6-7 Blight Cards, so you don't know exactly what's going to happen when the island Taints. Some have worse immediate effects but a larger pool of Blight, while a few ("Back to the Wall") have beneficial effects, but much less Blight before loss.
• It adds an Event Deck. Let's talk about this a little more.

Event Deck

At the start of each Invader Phase, you draw an Event Card. It has three parts:

• Main Event. Some of these describe an unfolding situation and offer a choice to the players. Others are things the Spirits have no control over, and may key off of the current Terror Level, Invader Stage, or whether the island is Tainted.
• Token Event. Beasts act of their own volition, and outbreaks of Disease may pop up or worsen on their own.
• Dahan Event. The Dahan take some sort of action - perhaps aiding the spirits, perhaps attacking the invaders, perhaps evacuating lands they see as unsafe.

There are several design purposes to the Events: first off, they add the sense of a living world. The Invaders are not predictable. The Dahan take matters into their own hands. Events occur that were not instigated by the Spirits. Secondly, they drive the behavior of Beasts, and to a lesser extent Disease. Lastly - but not least - they provide a bit of uncertainty about the future. This is a bad thing while learning the game (because it interferes with internalizing how the Invaders act) but a good thing once you've played a lot (you'll eventually reach a point where you know the game well enough that you start to lose tension if on a sure path to victory or defeat).

Tokens

So what are these tokens, and what do they represent?

The first three (Beasts, Disease, and Wilds) exist in individual lands. The last (Strife) is instead attached to individual Invaders.

• Beasts tokens represent any sort of wild beasts numerous, dangerous, and/or aggressive enough to be an ongoing problem for the Invaders. (The Dahan know how to avoid them, or to drive them off well enough to avoid substantial casualties.) They're unpredictable allies - unless you have a Power that lets you guide their behavior, they attack erratically and unpredictably (via Token Events), and are far more likely to pick off stray Explorers than to assault Towns of Cities.
• Disease tokens represent maladies and poor health. They keep population growth in check for a while: whenever Invaders would Build in a land with Disease, instead you remove one Disease from that land. Disease tokens don't spread contagion-style - it's assumed that there are lower-level outbreaks sweeping through more or less constantly, and the tokens represent particularly devastating concentrations of illness. (Also, game balance.) Unlike Beasts, Disease is dangerous to the Dahan - not so devastating as was often the case historically, thanks to their relationships with spirits of healing and vigor, but some of the Token Events dealing with Disease do harm the Dahan.
• Wilds tokens represent lands that are perilous to explore - where water is hard to find, there are environmental hazards or dangerous paths, or perhaps plants which look edible but are toxic. However, once a given danger is discovered and noted (there are always a few survivors), it's easily avoided by future explorers, and the dangerous aren't enough to touch the population of a Town or City. Whenever Invaders would Explore a land with Wilds, you instead remove one Wilds token.
• Strife tokens are put on individual Invaders rather than into a land. They represent internal turmoil and discord within the Invader ranks; during these turbulent times, fields go untended, farms remain small, and aggression against the Dahan becomes disorganized and ineffectual. Whenever a Strife-ridden Invader would deal damage - usually during a Ravage, though there are other possibilities - they do exactly 0 Damage, then remove a Strife token. (Like Defend, this still allows for Dahan counterattacks.)

Each of these opens up new ways to play. Most Powers that add Beasts have an alternate option that keys off of Beasts being present; you can either guide a smaller number of Beasts or just always use the Powers to add more, relying on sheer numbers to make the island inhospitable to Invaders. Disease and Wilds can both lock down areas of the board, albeit in different ways. Strife plays well with a Dahan-centric strategy, throwing the Invaders into chaos so the Dahan can win previously unwinnable fights.

They also open up the design space: there are several Spirit designs which rely on the existence of these tokens. I expect these to show up as stretch goals sometime after we hit $60K, and am keeping every single finger I have crossed that we end up able to include them!

Why an expansion?

If all this is that awesome, you may ask "why is it in an expansion rather than the core game?"

Complexity: These things are great once you know the game, but when learning, all they do is add additional complexity when you least need it. I highly recommend playing at least 2-3 games before adding in the expansion materials.

I'm going to repeat that in case you're skimming: Play at least 2-3 games before adding in the expansion materials! But once you know the core game, the expansion stuff is quite easy to learn.

Cost: Between art and components, putting the expansion materials in the core game would have boosted printing costs, and thereby, MSRP. Since these elements aren't not strictly needed to play - the core game is great on its own! - splitting them out into an expansion makes the pricing of the core game more accessible.

If you have questions, ask away!

A New Adversary Appears! Sweden!
over 8 years ago – Wed, Oct 07, 2015 at 09:09:51 AM

We reached the $55,000 stretch goal! That's really spectacular. At this stretch goal, we'll be adding Sweden as a third Adversary to Spirit Island. Paul is personally very excited about this, since he's quite the history buff. He was so excited that he decided to write up the following bit about how Sweden fits into the world. Take it away, Paul!

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The adversaries of Spirit Island come from a world very like our own. The year is A.D. 1701, and the Great Powers of Europe have begun a scramble for colonies throughout the world. In the alternate history setting of Spirit Island, this scramble is even more intense than in our own world, as historical events have transpired to lead to the rise of many major naval powers. 

Kingdom of Sweden

Ruler: King Erik XV

Following his triumph at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, King Gustavus Adolphus led the Kingdom of Sweden to further victories over Catholic armies, defeating and partitioning the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with Brandenburg and Russia in 1644. Following his death in 1651, Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded by his son, King Gustav III, who went on to defeat Kingdom of Denmark in a series of campaigns between 1657 and 1668 and secure total Swedish dominion over the Baltic Sea.

Gustav III was succeeded by his son Erik in 1683, who became the eight Vasa ruler of Sweden. Under his rule, constrained from further growth on the continent by Russia to their East and the Holy Roman Empire and Prussia to their south, Sweden begun leveraging their powerful navy to set up colonies throughout the world.

The absorption of former Polish lands in the eastern Baltic has given Sweden a significant influx of Slavs and other non-Scandanavian people. While a tremendous boon to their economic and military power, this demographic shift has also been a source of internal turmoil as the Kingdom of Sweden attempts the historically difficult task of integrating a multi-ethnic society. Along with a desire for more natural resources, Sweden's desire for a "safety valve" outlet for discontents and political agitators has driven their desire to establish themselves as a colonial power.

Actual play videos, and who will like Spirit Island.
over 8 years ago – Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 07:43:44 AM

We've heard a lot of requests for a video of some gameplay in progress. Well, Chris Burton, one of our friends and playtesters, decided to make exactly that. They're playing a game against The Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia using Vital Strength of the Earth, River Surges in Sunlight, Thunderspeaker, and Lightning's Swift Strike. Not only will you get to watch them play, but Chris also takes a lot of time to explain what is going on in great detail. Take a look at the beginning of the game here, then go check out the introduction and the rest of the game on the YouTube playlist. Thanks, Chris, for making this!

Note: We typically recommend placing the Invader deck on the first space on the Invader board. Despite it being different in this video, however, it was still played correctly.

On top of this, Eric also wrote up a nice breakdown of the elements of Spirit Island that different types of gamers may enjoy. You can check that out on BoardGameGeek.com and join in the discussion there, if you haven't already!

Make sure you let all your friends that may be on the fence about these videos. We're pretty confident that they show off what a great time Spirit Island is!

In-depth look: Vital Strength of the Earth
over 8 years ago – Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 01:29:09 PM

Say hello to another Spirit from the core game: Vital Strength of the Earth! Eric wrote up more goodies for you wonderful backers. If you stay tuned, you might even get to see this one in action tomorrow... But I'll save that for tomorrow's update (and for huge files to finish uploading).

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Vital Strength of the Earth is a spirit of the support and sustenance that growing life gains from the ground below. It finds animals (including humans) quite interesting, but they fall outside of its bailiwick. While it is not a Spirit born of sunlight, its cycle of life is ultimately nourished by the sun, and the sun's constancy and power align well with its nature.

It is old, and its strength runs deep; while most Spirits have heard tell of the Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island, Vital Strength is one of a few which can sense its uneasy sleep. It is patient and unhurried, though it understands the need to act with more alacrity when dealing with humans. (If you take too long, they forget what you were working on together and pack up to move elsewhere, which is such a shame.) It has good ongoing relations with multiple Dahan clans, treading carefully around their attitudes towards debt and favors; it does not see the world from the same angle of reciprocity, status, and obligation that the Dahan do.

Like Lightning's Swift Strike, Vital Strength of the Earth is one of the four low-complexity spirits - but its play is in many ways the opposite of Lightning's! Its panel looks like this:

Some things we see:

• Growth: Every single Growth option adds exactly one Presence. Vital Strength can't blast out Presence quickly, but it does so steadily and inexorably.
• Growth: It has a strong Reclaim option, and a weak Gain Power option. Vital Strength does much better than other Spirits with frequent reclaims, possibly using the same Powers multiple turns in a row without sacrificing expansion. (Earth and Sun are both elements of constancy.)
• Presence tracks: It has amazing Energy gain, but very low Card Plays. It can take all game to reach 4 Plays, which Lightning's Swift Strike could achieve on Turn 1 if it wanted to.
• Innate Power: Gift of Strength - This is basically "double a Power Card's effects", phrased as "Repeat a Power on the same target" to avoid a zillion ambiguities about what's meant by "double". This seems pretty awesome, but it looks hard to trigger: it requires 3 different elements, and even the base level will take a bare minimum of 2 Power Cards to trigger, so it's not going to be a factor in the very early game. The higher levels let it affect more costly Power Cards, which sounds great, but perhaps hard to accomplish.
• Special Rule: Earth's Vitality - Wherever Vital Strength has a Sacred Site (more than one Presence), it Defends against the Invaders. "Defend 3" reduces total Invader damage by 3, which will completely negate the damage done by a Town (2 damage) + Explorer (1 damage), a fairly common situation. In addition to the benefits of preventing Blight (avoiding Presence loss, not losing the game), this can help set up Dahan counterattacks to take down smaller Invader groups.

What do its Unique Powers look like?

  General patterns:

• Holy moly, those are expensive! Three of the four cost 3 or more Energy to play. Vital Strength is going to need that good Energy gain, and couldn't play two of its Unique Powers on Turn 1 even if it had two Plays.
• But with that expense comes a lot of raw power; those costly cards are much more potent than most starting hands. Vital Strength can shut down the Invaders hard - though it'll have a bit of a tendency to overkill, spending lots of energy to achieve more than is really necessary.
•  Only one of the cards (Rituals of Destruction) has Sun + Plant + Earth. Triggering the Gift of Strength innate with only 2 Power Cards will require that Rituals of Destruction be one of them.
•  There's not a lot of Fear generation - none, outside of Rituals of Destruction.

 Individual cards:

•  A Year of Perfect Stillness completely shuts the Invaders down in one land - no Ravaging, Building, or Exploring! Of course, the Invaders rarely focus on the same terrain twice in a row, so you'll usually only prevent one Invader Action; its breadth is more about flexibility. It can stop a new City being built, or prevent an overrun land from Ravaging - particularly valuable if the land's already Blighted. (Though because it prevents the Ravage altogether, it also precludes Dahan counterattacks.)
•  Draw of the Fruitful Earth entices Explorers and Dahan. Gathering Explorers out of lands where they're about to Build is very effective, though since this Power is slow that use will always be a bit speculative. It's also this Spirit's one method of moving Dahan, which is important for Rituals of Destruction (below).
•  Guard the Healing Land both Defends against the Invaders and removes Blight. As often as not, you'll only need one effect or the other in a given land, but when both are useful, it can turn a pending catastrophe into something completely harmless. It can only be used near a Sacred Site. However, Defends stack, so if you use this on a land with your Sacred Site, it'll reduce Invader damage by a total of 7!
•  Rituals of Destruction is a very strong offensive power, but can only target a land with Dahan. (Vital Strength of the Earth provides the magic and the raw power for the Ritual, but needs the Dahan to execute its other pieces: making patterns upon the land to help channel the Ritual's energies, bringing special ritual materials or items for it to focus upon, and calling lesser spirits to aid.)

 Overall: Early in the game, Vital Strength of the Earth can completely handle whatever problem it focuses on, but only has the Energy and Card Plays to focus on one thing at a time. Rituals of Destruction is a big offensive hammer, and is also key in triggering Gift of Strength easily, but needs a little more Dahan movement than Vital Strength starts with, so will require either drafting Dahan-moving cards or coordinating with other Spirits, with the latter often preferable due to Vital Strength's constrained Card Plays. By late game, it will have most or all of its Presence out, and can gain 8-10 Energy/turn: enough for excellent defense with its starting Power Cards, or for an incredible beatdown if it's picked up some offense-oriented Major Powers.